But as much as she appreciated his kindness, the dinginess of that café made her feel even more hopelessly lost and sadder than she had before. Something about standing in the doorway of such an establishment, a rag in hand, and peering down the narrow street, half lit by sunlight, with passersby, mostly men, slipping in and out of the shadows and brick or stucco walls in every direction she looked, made her feel wistful and heartsick for the more verdant spaces of her valle. And all the signage—hanging in shop windows, on banners slung across the street on wires, posters and pamphlets stuck on the walls—bewildered María, a sense of stupidity and ignorance churning in her belly. Having no idea of what that café owner wrote in chalk on a slate board behind his counter, left María wishing that all such words would go away. For all her gorgeous looks—Sí, mamá, you’ve told me so a million times before—she envied the brilliant winged birds of the forest back home, who, flying so happily through life, seemed free from such confusions. There in Havana, where every written word seemed a mystery, María’s illiteracy hit her in ways it never had in the countryside.
At least the proprietor of that hole-in-the-wall café never tried anything, but with so little money in her pocket, and having used up the remainder of her paltry savings, she’d head back to la Cucaracha fearful that, because she was falling behind on the rent, her landlady might evict her. After a while she started to pay for her room by cleaning up the place—mopping the halls, scrubbing its toilets, and sweeping out its musty entranceway. Watching life in that hotel unfolding around her, she became aware of all the comings and goings of la Cucaracha’s tenants, especially the professional women who took men up the stairs in the late hours of the afternoon into the night. One of them, a redheaded whore, always winked at María sweetly. On those evenings, terrified to go out by herself—even in the countryside in Pinar del Río nights always made her a little fearful—she’d pass the time sitting on a bench in the reception area, listening to radio melodramas with la señora, and nice music, by way of live concerts broadcast by CMQ. A musty bladed fan turning overhead, and moths dissolving into dust in the buzzing ceiling lights, they’d converse, Matilda, a widow, recalling the promise of her youth when she fell in love with the man she eventually married, a simple shoemaker from a town called Cárdenas, who died in her arms at the very foot of the staircase after a fall.
“And what is it that you’d like to do?” she asked María, and because María never gave an answer, la señora shook her head disapprovingly. “You should make up your mind, or else find a good man to marry.”
Languishing there in boredom, María was in her room one evening, examining her naked body, smooth and stately and curvaceous in a full-length mirror, something which she’d never had the opportunity to do in the countryside, where the only espejo they had, hanging off a post outside their bohío, was the broken one, the size of a man’s palm, before which her papito shaved himself every third morning. But there she stood, a gorgeous apparition of cinnamon-colored flesh, with breasts so perfectly shaped that even she found their symmetry startling, her nipples dark as raspberries, a shock of black hair, dense as a crow’s nest, shooting out from between her long legs. Surprised by her own grace and voluptuousness, and stepping one way and the other, María had to admit that she looked pretty good, better than she could have imagined. And the mirror? If that mirror were a man, it would have been salivating; if it were a carpet it would have taken flight; if it had been a pile of wood it would have burst into flame, so lovely was María. Of course, she forgot that people could look inside—and, turning, glimpsed her across-the-courtyard neighbor, the fellow with the pompadour, out on his balcón, doing something to himself frantically, a cigarette burning between his lips, his face wincing in ecstasy as she hurriedly closed the shutters.
She came to a decision: seeing that men wanted certain things from a woman like her and that she hadn’t had much luck with finding jobs of a normal sort, María became resigned to taking another route, as so many young girls had before her. And that was to entangle herself in the labyrinthine nightlife of Havana, for which the city was famous.
Oh, if she’d only known just how seedy that could be.
Pero, Mami, didn’t you always tell me how terrible you felt about being alive when your beloved sister, my aunt Teresa, was dead? Didn’t you tell me, after you’d been drinking those Cuba Libres, that you really didn’t give much of a damn about yourself? That even the way you looked seemed a curse to you sometimes, as much as you ride me about my own?…
Chapter FOUR
Even those jobs didn’t come easily. Warned by her matronly dueña, María had to be careful about getting mixed up with the wrong sorts. “And believe me, querida,” Matilda told her, “Havana is full of them.”
Nevertheless, for days María went to just about every club and saloon she could find, usually in the late afternoons. And while she overwhelmed most everyone she met with her beauty, there was just something about her too precious for even the most jaded of proprietors to despoil, though there were exceptions, some club managers looking her over so lustfully that they made her nervous. That she had never danced anywhere except in a cervecería—beer joint—in the countryside, the sort of place where the men pissed off a back porch, or had any professional training, did not help matters. Most, taking her for a rustic bumpkin or a child of the slums—they just knew from the wide openness of her expression, the gaudiness of her clothes—advised her to go back home, before she wasted any more of her time or, worse, ruined her life. But she had to eat.
You don’t know what that’s like, Teresita, unless you’ve had to go through it yourself, sabes?
At first the establishments she approached were, so it seemed to her, of the better sort, but she had no luck. And so, instead of going to those nicer clubs along the Prado, or out in Vedado, near Calle 21, she started lowering her sights.
AT ABOUT ELEVEN THIRTY ONE EVENING, SHE FOUND HERSELF knocking on an alleyway door in la Marina, the brothel district, not far from the harbor. A squat and corpulent Catalán, with a melted wax face and Xavier Cugat mustache, needed only one look at María before inviting her into his establishment. He called it a “gentleman’s club,” but it was just a sad-seeming place, filled with smoke and darkness and lots of drunken men. His office, at the end of a dingy and rank-smelling hallway, was just as bleak, cases of liquor piled against the walls, a haphazard collection of showgirl photographs pinned to a board behind his desk and, alongside it, a sofa, which emanated its own history of grief. There, as he looked her over, he couldn’t have been more blunt: The job, if she really wanted it, would involve showing herself off, he said. There’d be no stage to perform on, just several tables that had been pushed together in a nearly lightless barroom, over which, in her new high heels and with her new dress off, she was to stride before that crowd, enticingly. He would pay her five dollars, just for that.
It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d ever be proud of, but she would do it out of hunger, her stomach prevailing over her pride, may God please forgive her.
Of course, he wanted to see what she had to offer. When María, trembling, disrobed, at first just down to her slip and undies—she wore no brassiere, didn’t own one—the Catalán, having watched her carefully, told María, “Now off with the slip.” And when only one stitch of clothing remained, that was too much as well—“Quítalo, todo,” he demanded. Sighing, she did as he had asked and was soon standing naked before him, one hand placed over her breasts, the other over what cubanos euphemistically called the papayún. Tilting her head back, in shame, she closed her eyes, as if to pray. “Don’t be afraid, mi guapita,” he said. “It’s perfectly natural to feel a little shy the first time—but just remember, you have to start somewhere, after all.” Courteously and with an almost avuncular manner, he handed her a black silk robe, reeking of perfume, its fabric covered with falling purple blossoms, and told her, “Now, come with me.”
Why she somehow trusted him was beyond her future understan
ding; perhaps she felt protected by God—she had “la fe” then, and strongly so. Or, as she often also thought, she just wasn’t thinking too clearly: being young and alone and hoping naïvely for the best, as if people were naturally good, will do that to you, sabes? Sighing, her stomach twisted into knots, she followed him into that bar, which, in the style of Spanish taverns, lacked windows, its interior hazy with shifting plains of smoke. Some big band danzóns blared from a jukebox. The room itself (in memory) smelled vaguely of urine and spilled beer, sawdust, stale fritters, and flatulence (perhaps), and was so dimly lit that its darkness almost came as a relief to her. Patiently (and out of hunger) she waited beside the Catalán, who, banging on a pot to gain his patrons’ attention, made a quick introduction in what she took as English—“What’s your name anyway?” he asked her. And then, without further adieu, once she had climbed atop the long table, he yanked off her robe, and María, tottering in high heels, revealed her naked graces before a room filled with men, mainly Americans, who, in their cups, whistled and hooted at her.
How did she feel? Slightly humiliated, and certainly ashamed; as María would confess to a priest a few days later, she had never sunk so low in her life. But as she strode unsteadily across that long table, from one end of the room to the other, she didn’t falter, thinking of those men as no better than animals, whose desires and anonymous expressions would, at least, put a few dollars in her pocket. And so forgive me, she told herself, for I have no one to look after me and I am hungry, amen.
What happened? After those strangers had gotten their fill of what no man had ever seen so closely before, María, covering herself with that robe, sat off in a corner daydreaming about what she would do with her pay. (She’d buy a plate of fried chuletas—pork chops—and rice and beans for twenty-five cents, along with some plantain fritters from a stand near the hotel, a new blouse from one of the corner stores, and perhaps take in a Barbara Stanwyck movie in the center for another quarter, and still have enough left to give her señora some rent money, so that she wouldn’t have to keep on scrubbing floors.) That’s when the Catalán, who had gone from table to table speaking with his patrons, came over to María and, in a rather pleasant tone of voice, told her to come back into his office so that they might discuss some matters of business.
What followed, she never cared to talk about—she’d never tell her daughter, not even during their most earnest talks about her rough beginnings in Havana—only that, once upon a time, it had been her misfortune to have stumbled, and stupidly so, for the sake of earning a few dollars, into a shadowy place. What was it that she’d remember? Back in his office, the Catalán offered her a drink, but she didn’t like her rum in those days—“I was an innocent”—and then he sat her down and told María about how everyone in the club had been much taken by her little performance and that, if she so wanted to, there would be other ways that she, a most beautiful young woman, could earn money. How so? she asked.
“By being nice to those fellows, that’s all,” he told her.
“Señor,” she said, without much deliberation. “All I want is my pay. I’ve done what you wanted me to do.”
But he just smiled and, stepping towards her, his expression changing, grabbed hold of her hair in his fist and, tightening his grip, asked her: “And who the hell do you think you are?” Then he slapped María’s face with the back of his hand and threw her down on the settee near his desk. To her horror, as she looked up to heaven for assistance, he undid his belt. At first she thought he was going to beat her, the way her papito sometimes did—she wasn’t always a well-behaved daughter—but, no, he wanted something else. Letting drop his linen trousers and his (rank-smelling) undershorts below his knees, he stood before her with his somewhat dense but not particularly long ardor in hand; truth be told, it seemed dwarfish, compared with the immensity of his belly. He then proceeded to do his best to deflower her, his enormous corpulence slamming achingly against her hip bones, his body sweating, his breathing labored—he was one of those grossly overweight men who, because of heft, thought himself a Hercules when it was far from the truth. She’d also recall that he wore a lilac aftershave.
But did he succeed? Screaming—surely, they heard her in the club—she fought him until her body was covered in bruises, his face and back with scratches. She prayed for her life, prayed to El Señor, who watches over the forlorn, until, in an instant, she was reprieved. Or to put it differently, until, in the throes of extreme physical exertion, some horrible and paralyzing pain seized the right side of the Catalán’s body—she was, without knowing it, a morena fatal after all. Unable to breathe, or even to lift his arms, he slumped over, beside María. When he asked her desperately for a glass of water, suspirando mucho, mucho, María, may God forgive her, told him to go to hell. And when he asked her again, as she gathered her clothes, María, a practical guajira, answered, “Okay, but tell me, where are my five dollars?”
“En los bolsillos de mis pantalones,” he told her, gasping. So she rifled through his trousers pockets, encountering a stiletto, several condoms, some cards for his club—if she had been able to read she would have known that his establishment was called “El Savoy, a place for gentlemans [sic]”—and then she came to a clump of bills: from this she removed five American dollar bills. And then, because she’d been struggling lately, she availed herself of the rest, in both Cuban and American currency, which were equal in value, may God forgive her. Then, dressing, she made her way out.
LEAVING THAT ESTABLISHMENT, MARÍA HEARD NEITHER SONOROUS violins nor longing melodies echoing around her; nor any tremulous baritone voice, with its saintly inflections, confessing the greatest passion for her beauty, as if she were the object of devotion in a song of love. What she heard instead was Havana, circa 1947, at 2 a.m., a general din of restaurants, clubs, and distant voices coming from every direction and punctuated by the barking of dogs. Firecrackers—or shots heard in the distance; the caw-caws of seagulls alighting upon the slop barges in the harbor, or else swooping low to pick through the offal left in the trails of yachts. From a nearby edifice, a woman shouted at someone, “Eres un pendejo!” at the top of her lungs. Her high-heel shoes clacking along the flagstones of a placita. A cavalcade of partiers, honking their horns and whistling, in a postwedding procession of automobiles passed along the Malecón. The moon itself, a medallion, with a melancholic face looked down from the northwest, like a sanguine god without a word to say. From some alley, deep in the recesses of la Marina—or was it el barrio Colón?—a half dozen batá and quinto drums were beating. She heard police sirens: then, as the casino boats and cruise ships came into port, buoys and deck bells ringing, smatterings of music here and there from behind the closed doors of the all-night cabarets and bordellos; the skittering of cats and other scavengers foraging through the gutters in search of food. If she could have listened through the walls of some of the less respectable edifices she was passing, a thousand moans of drunken pleasure would have assailed her. If she could have eavesdropped into the cells of the central police command, where, unbeknownst to her, political agitators—the socialistas, the comunistas, the union organizers—were held, half dead from torture and beatings, in dingy lightless rooms, she would have heard them cursing, weeping, and moaning, not from pleasure but from agony.
Still reeling from her experience at the Catalán’s, she walked and walked though the streets of a city she had yet to know better. In an arcade, María bought herself a half-stale lechón sandwich from an all-night stand. Its owner, with his one milky eye and tattered flat boater cane hat, left over from the days when he was a 1930s dandy, tried to act as if she wasn’t the most ravishing young woman he had ever seen (even if she seemed a little sad). He checked her out just the same, as María, half starved to death, scoffed down the sandwich and then, meekly smiling, set off again. After roaming in the darkness of an arcade, and hearing the whistles of passing strangers, María, with her irresistible body, her high and firm buttocks jostling the fabric of
her ruffled cotton dress, finally got back to her hotel, with its fifth-rate amenities. Stretching across her bed, she spent the night half feverishly, visited by nightmares and missing the countryside she’d left behind.
Chapter FIVE
Oh, but her story to that point: Just leaving her tranquil valley, midway between the mountains and the sea, would have been enough to rip any heart into pieces; but she hadn’t really been given much choice about the matter. For one thing, in the wake of her beloved mami’s death, her papito, Manolo, had taken up with the most horrible woman imaginable, a hard case from a town along the gulf coast whom he, still an occasional músico, had met while moonlighting with some of his sonero friends at a wedding dance. Her name was Olivia, and he must have been crazy or desperately lonely to fall for her, or maybe she had bewitched him, because she was neither pretty nor softly feminine nor even funny. If she had any virtues, as far as María could figure, it was that she could really cook and Manolo liked to eat, but, even then, poor María, for the life of her, couldn’t begin to find anything else nice to say about the woman.
And Olivia must have known it from the moment they first laid eyes on each other, on the very day she moved in, with her horse-drawn cart filled with chairs and what few dresses she owned. After just a short few weeks, Olivia gave up on all her phony smiles and seemed to take a special delight in ordering María around and establishing herself as the new dueña of that household.