Chapter NINE
She’d noticed him coming into the club a few times before: he was older, somewhere on the far side of his thirties, had a pock-marked face, clear gray eyes, and a pencil-line mustache. He comported himself with authority, hardly ever looked up at anything, not even at the floor show, and always seemed involved with going over a ledger book, or some volume that he was reading. He always dressed nicely in a white silk suit, wore a lavender cologne, or was it lilac scented? The sort to drink only the best stuff, he ordered the same meal of fried pork chops with onions and papas fritas without fail, then smoked cigar after cigar until some late hour, when, as quietly as he’d come in, he would leave. A man of regular routines, without any interest in wasting his money in an adjoining casino room, where there were gaming tables and a roulette wheel, he seemed almost indifferent to that place—why he went there she didn’t know, nor, in fact, did María particularly care.
That she met him at all was a matter of pure chance. Since part of María’s job was to keep company with the club’s patrons between shows—all the girls had to—she had the misfortune of finding herself at a table with a group of drunk Americans who were beside themselves over the fact that María happened to be wearing so little—just a glittery bandeau and a silvery, tasseled pantalette under a diaphanous chemise. And because the unspoken assumption, the myth (sometimes the truth) had it that such women were often very willing to moonlight as prostitutes, one of these men, a burly fellow, muttering all kinds of drivel she couldn’t understand, had taken the liberty of reaching over to fondle María’s leg under the table. As she, in a fit of pique, stood up to leave, the drunk took hold of her hand and pulled María onto his lap. Just then, before even the club bouncer, a bald black giant named Eliseo, could intercede, this man, Ignacio Fuentes, watching from his table, marched over and grabbed that drunkard’s forearm, forcing it from around María’s belly. Then, looking intently into the drunkard’s eyes and saying a few words in English, and before his friends could make more of a commotion, Ignacio opened his jacket and showed him something that drained the fellow’s ruddy face of color.
“Okay, okay,” the man said, holding up his hands. “I get it.”
“Good,” Ignacio said firmly. “Now apologize to the lady.”
The man mumbled his regrets—and Ignacio, in case María didn’t get the drift, translated: “He says he’s very sorry to have bothered you.” Then, as if his contempt for the fellow had turned to air, and to smooth over the situation, perhaps for the sake of María’s job, he called the waiter over, buying them a round of drinks: “Give those sinvergüenzas whatever they want.” Bowing cordially, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he headed back to his table, and María, who’d had that kind of thing happen to her before without anyone particularly caring, followed him.
They spoke for only a few minutes—she had another show to perform—but in that time, while thanking him, María had decided that this caballero, a gallant, wasn’t the usual sort who came into the club. Despite his macho demeanor, there was something fiercely intelligent about his eyes, intimidating and somehow reassuring at the same time. Perhaps he was a teacher, maybe a university professor, and a very lonely one, a soltero with a preference for that kind of place. But obviously he couldn’t be—how many maestros were so courageous, and for that matter carried inside their jackets the sort of something that so quickly quieted so unruly a man? What most intrigued her was what he wore on the thin gold chain around his neck: a crucifix, a medallion of the Virgin de Cobre, and a third symbol, which she supposed had something to do with los judíos: it was just like the Star of David hanging outside the synagogue on Santa Clara Street in the old city.
(“Oh, these two,” he would later tell her, “are for my faith, and the third I wear in case los judíos were right all along.”)
He didn’t really have too much to say to her: he seemed only obliquely aware of her lusciousness. It was as if her beauty meant nothing to him, which, in a way, she liked and despaired over at the same time. (Was it that he didn’t find her attractive?) Just before going backstage to change into her costume for the second show, an elaborate dance routine staged to the music of Moisés Simóns’ “Cubanacan,” she told him her name—“María…María García y Cifuentes”—and with that, he smiled for the first time. Though he had a few teeth missing, she found his appearance reassuring.
IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE TO FIND HIM WAITING FOR her on the street afterwards, at four in the morning, María in a raincoat and veil, Ignacio leaning against an alley wall across the way, casually smoking a cigar under the flickering glare of a misspelled neon sign—nigth clubnigth club. She’d come out with three other dancers, one of them, knowing María as a solitary sort (translation: a poor thing scared to death of the city), exhorting María to enjoy herself for a change. (Pero con cuidado, with caution.) So when he offered to accompany her for a while, she didn’t mind. That night, without even attempting to hold her hand or to pull her off into the shadows for a kiss, he seemed a gentlemanly sort, a real caballero, as if he’d never push her up against a wall and take advantage. (Deep down, at the same time, she wanted him to.) Calmly, Ignacio told her about himself: he was a businessman, un trabajador, who’d gotten a little lucky with a going import and export concern, mostly in appliances, based in the harbor. His negocio required that he travel now and then, not just across the island but sometimes to the States—“Tú sabes, pa’ América, y los ciudades de Miami y Nueva York”—but now that they were becoming acquainted, how could he look forward to leaving Havana?
“But, se?or…”
“Call me Ignacio, please.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“What should I know?” he asked. “To be honest, María, before tonight, I’d hardly noticed you—not that I haven’t observed what a tremendous dancer you are—but I’m one of those fellows who believes there’s a reason why things happen a certain way. You know that drunkard who was bothering you? I’m almost grateful to him for what happened tonight.” He stopped on the corner of Calle 15 and began fingering the crucifix and the other medallions around his neck. “You see, María, soy viudo—I’m a widower, who once had a wife and una muchachita, a daughter. My wife’s name was Carmen, and she had family up in Tampa, and so I would send them off every so often to visit.” Then, a little sadly: “You remember the hurricane of ’forty-three?”
Of course she did, it was the same year that half their livestock drowned, the year that Teresita, so confused and lost, threw herself into the cascade’s waters.
“Their plane went down in that storm, and since then, well, how may I explain myself—I’ve hardly cared less about normal things. I do my work, I sometimes go out, but little else. I can hardly sleep at night thinking of what happened to them. Do you know that feeling?”
“Sí, se?or, I do,” she said.
“That’s the reason I’m always reading. It keeps my mind on other things. That’s why I sit enjoying the company of others without really having to talk with anyone. I can do that in a club like the Nocturne, where the food is good, and, of course, the entertainment exceptional.”
They were only a few blocks from the harbor walk, the Malecón, and because he could have cared less about going home and because María after a night of performances stayed up for hours, she didn’t mind accompanying him there. It usually took her an hour to stroll back to la Cucaracha, and the moon, with a sad, pocked face that always seemed to be watching, had lit up the ocean, a tranquil sight to take in.
“So, María, some parts inside of me—how can I put it—have been asleep for a long time. Fundamentally”—Pero, carajo, he used big words—“I haven’t had much interest in women. Not that I don’t notice, but mi deseo, my desire…for love has vanished.” And he tapped at his heart. “María, don’t you understand? I’ve been a dead man inside.”
Then he grew silent, a somberness overcoming him as if he had been embarrassed by his admission. On that night, automobile head beams flared along the grand curving roadway, a hundred residences and hotels, all aglow, their windows burning with light. It wasn’t until they could see the Morro castle in the distance that he came around again, with a simple question: “Just where is it that you live?” And when she told him that she had been staying at the Residencia Cubana, he could only shake his head. “I know of that place—isn’t it a disgrace?”
“Perhaps,” she answered him, feeling vaguely offended. “But it’s been my only home in Havana. I have my friends there, and the se?ora who runs it is very good to me.”
“But surely you must know what goes on there?” And when she looked away, he quickly added, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Along the way, a police cruiser had slowed up and pulled alongside them. Usually when that happened to María at night, she’d feel terrified of being forced inside—who knew where she might end up? Or what might be expected of her?—the prostitutes were always telling her stories. So she felt relieved when Ignacio, approaching the cruiser, a green Oldsmobile, seemed to know the officer. As he bent by the window, he and the policeman spoke, about what she could not say. She had walked over to the seawall, looking out over the bay and wondering how the gulf waters, which appeared to be so majestic, could smell so bad; at the same time, while she was taking in the immensity of that horizon’s expanse, which seemed to go on forever, a queasiness overwhelmed her, as if she feared that it would swallow her whole if she lingered too long. There was something else: as that cruiser took off, Ignacio rapping on its hood in a familiar manner, the policeman, with his visor cocked slyly down, smiled, nodded, and, as it happened, winked at María in an insinuating way that she found unnerving.
It simply offended her—I am not one of them, she thought—and now it was María who became sullen, so sullen that, once they reached the entrance to la Cucaracha, she could hardly wait to get upstairs. Though he mentioned an all-night cafeteria on Obispo where they could go for a while, she told him that if she didn’t soak her feet soon in a pan of salts, she’d suffer the next day.
“Bueno, do as you like,” he told her, though with a slightly wounded look on his face. And then, in a most courtly manner, he bowed. The last she saw of him that night, he was making his way into that quarter and had pulled out of his jacket pocket that book, that mysterious thing in which he took his solace.
Years later, while having lunch in one of those tacky South Beach sidewalk restaurants, all María had really told her daughter about the way she met this Ignacio—it could have been on one of many afternoons when mother and daughter, taking taxis, got slightly sloshed (Teresa, as usual, being a doctor, reminding María to go easy on those margaritas because of the salt) and María, with her own kind of dignity and pride, tended to give, depending on her mood, different versions of the same tale—was that she had first encountered Ignacio, “a very intelligent, hardworking man,” in a club she had been dancing in; and that he was very kind to her at first, a gentleman through and through, at least until he changed into someone she didn’t recognize. But before that they’d had a good enough time.