The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (21 page)

At center stage, a large ball microphone, spotlight, drumroll, and Ricky Ricardo.

“Well, folks, tonight I have a special treat for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present to you, direct from Havana, Cuba, Manny and Alfonso Reyes singing a bolero of their own composition, ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’ ”

The brothers walked out in white suits and with a guitar and trumpet, bowed to the audience, and nodded when Ricky Ricardo faced the orchestra and, holding his conductor’s wand, prepared to begin, asked them, “Are you ready?”

The older brother strummed an A-minor chord, the key of the song; a harp swirled in as if from the clouds of heaven; then the bassist began to play a habanera, and then the piano and horns played a four-chord vamp. Standing side by side before the microphone, brows creased in concentration, expressions sincere, the brothers began to sing that romantic bolero “Beautiful María of My Soul.” A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you.

As Cesar sang, his vocal cords trembling, he seemed to be watching something profoundly beautiful and painful happening in the distance, eyes passionate, imploring, his earnest expression asking, “Can you see who I am?” But the younger brother’s eyes were closed and his head was tilted back. He looked like a man on the verge of falling through an eternal abyss of longing and solitude.

For the final verses they were joined by the bandleader, who harmonized with them and was so happy with the song that at the end he whipped his right hand up into the air, a lock of thick black hair falling over his brow. Then he shouted, “
Olé!
” The brothers were now both smiling and taking bows, and Arnaz, playing Ricky Ricardo, said, “Let’s give them a nice hand, folks!” The brothers bowed again and shook Arnaz’s hand and walked offstage, waving to the audience.

Nestor tried, heaven help him. Every day he read that book on self-improvement by Mr. D. D. Vanderbilt, which he’d study carefully with an English dictionary on hand. That was Nestor in that California hotel at three in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed in boxer shorts and robe, trying hard to overcome his own skepticism about the victory of a positive attitude and of self-application over despair and defeat. After six years in the United States, he was still living with a growing dread of things. It wasn’t that he feared one thing in particular; he just had the sense that things weren’t going to work out, that the sky would fall in and lightning would strike him as he walked down the street, that the earth might open up and swallow him. He didn’t sit around dwelling on these thoughts, he dreamed them. He had been on the same plateau of dreams for years, the same dreams that had afflicted him in childhood in Cuba, when he used to wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat in a room swarming with crows or when he found himself entangled in burning coils of rope, when the rope mysteriously crept into his body through his ears and feasted on his insides, when he would wake up in the middle of the night and find the priest standing over him with his funeral cassock and a grim face like melted wax, his vestments and hands smelling oddly of
frijoles negros
and church incense.

Lately, he’d started dreaming again about crawling on his hands and knees along a narrow tunnel just barely wide enough for him to fit through; the tunnel seemed to go on forever into the distance toward a faint glow of light. And as he crawled through, his shoulders and knees wedged tight, he could hear voices speaking softly, just loud enough to hear but not to understand.

He had been dreaming this and awakened as the California sun burst though an opening in the Venetian blinds, its brilliant light pouring into the room. He felt his stomach muscles flutter, a shock went through his body, and he opened his eyes. It was around noon, and the first thing he heard was his thirty-seven-year-old brother Cesar frolicking in the pool outside with his new acquaintances, three girls barely out of adolescence in scanty one-piece bathing suits, giggly and absolutely delighted that Cesar Castillo, playing the sport, kept buying them high frost-glazed drinks of fruit juice, rum, spoonfuls of sugar, orange, and crushed ice, compliments of Desilu Productions.

This was their last day in California and Cesar was having the time of his life. There he was, wearing a little tarnished crucifix on a chain around his neck, thick curling chest hair damp and streaked with gray, a long Havana cigar in his mouth, head tilted back—not in pain, but in joy—soaking up the sun, sipping his drink, and flirting with the girls. They had rushed over to him because, at first, as he strutted around the pool in his oversized plaid trunks, they had mistaken him for the movie actor Gilbert Roland. The girls were thrilled to meet him anyway, thrilled that the handsome Cesar Castillo had promised them dinner that night at some fancy joint.

“Señoritas,
” he had said, “you name it and it’s yours!”

Through the Venetian blinds, Nestor watched Cesar paddling over to the side of the pool with big splashes—he did not know how to swim. Nature was calling, and he came back into their Garden of Allah bungalow, his urine powerful and noisy in the toilet.

“It’s beautiful here, huh? Too bad we have to go back so soon.”

The toilet flushed and he added, “Brother, why don’t you come out and join us?”

“Yes, in a few moments.”

A curvaceous female shadow appeared in the frosted glass of the bungalow door and called in, “Yoo-hoo!” And when Cesar opened the door, she asked, “May I use your little girls’ room?”

“Of course.”

Wearing a red bathing suit with a short pleated skirt and red high heels, the blonde, all of her, rump, breasts, long legs, bounced daintily across the room. As she slipped into the bathroom, Cesar approximated the width of her hips with his hands and sucked in air through his teeth. The blonde must have felt a little self-conscious about urinating in their bathroom, for she turned on a faucet, and Cesar took this as a hint and opened the bungalow door and waited, his slightly drunken frame wedged up against the doorway, stomach in, chest out, watching the pool and the palm trees in the distance, the shrubbery behind them spilling over with flowers—joking with Nestor, he once called them “the pubic hair of nature.” Happy in his thoughts, he whistled.

In a moment, Cesar and the blonde were back by the pool, jumping in and splashing water on the others. She was a good swimmer and gracefully plumed down to the deep end of the pool, gushing to the surface again, her body firm and tanned . . . Nestor supposed that he should go out, have a few drinks, and relax, but he told himself, “I’m a married man with two children.” But he kept hearing Cesar, relaxed and laughing. When he looked out, Cesar was kneeling by the three girls; they were lying face down on mats in a row: he was rubbing suntan lotion on their backs and the meatiest, sweat-beaded parts of their thighs.

Nestor winced, outraged. Why would this happy sight make him feel as if he would burst apart, as if the pain inside him was a viscous mud flowing through his veins? He was shaken by the old aches: when that happened, he would think “María,” but thoughts about his wife and children sank him into a deeper gloom.

All the same, he changed into a pair of blue bathing trunks and soon was lying out by the pool. The waiter brought him a tall glass of that tropical rum punch, and the initial swallow eased his spirit. Then he started to feel friendlier about the whole business with the girls and the time away from his family, so that when one of the three girls, a brunette, sat down beside him, asking, “Are you going to come out with us tonight? We’re going over to the El Morocco to catch an orchestra and dance. . .”

And she called over to Cesar, “What’s that orchestra called?”

“The René Touzet Orchestra. Brother, why don’t you come along?”

“I’ll see,” he answered tentatively, though he went everywhere with his older brother and hated to be left alone.

They had remained by the pool drinking until seven-thirty. Around four the waiter had brought them a tray of turkey, ham, and cheese club sandwiches, and they had talked about doing the
I Love Lucy
show and how everyone had been so kind to them. And they mentioned that they had a mambo orchestra in New York. One of the girls had a bit part in a Ricardo Montalban film called
Desperadoes from the Land of the Golden Sun.
Ricardo was a “dreamboat,” she said. And Cesar looked at her and said, “Well, you’re a fleet of dreamboats, baby.”

Poor Nestor. He could not help looking at one of the girls, a brunette. Her skin was golden-brown from the sunny California life and seemed to glow with the promise of pleasure. Even though he hadn’t said much to her, she seemed to have paired off with him, paying attention to him and making eyes when he’d look over. While the two others frolicked in the pool with Cesar, she had remained beside Nestor on a sun mat, and this struck him as “classier.” Her name was Tracy Belair, and when they later separated so they could get dressed for the night out, she gave Nestor a sweet tongue-nipped kiss. Taking a shower, Nestor thought about that girl and it gave him an erection. But he vowed to do nothing about her.

Yet, by eight o’clock, another drink had given him a feeling of weightlessness and elation and he suddenly filled with the kind of confidence that Mr. Vanderbilt described in his book. By eight-fifteen he felt immortal.

The phone rang, and it was Nestor who picked it up.

“Hello, this is Desi Arnaz. How are you fellows? Listen, I’m just calling to make sure that everything’s okay with you. You like the hotel and everything? Good.” Thanking the brothers again, he added: “And let’s not forget each other. Okay?”

Next thing he knew, Nestor was sitting at a table in the El Morocco, drinking champagne, the five of them grinning happily for a strolling photographer. This was a real classy joint. Everything on the menu was written in a florid script and had a French name, and many of the items cost as much as what he earned in a week at the meat-packing plant.

“Order whatever you like,” Cesar told everybody.

And why the hell not? Arnaz had told them to send him the bill. Soon their table was piled high with just about every dish on the menu: a silver bowl of poor shriveled-up snails like those which used to swarm over the patio of their house in Cuba after a rain, all black, sad-looking, and cooked with garlic; platters of filet mignon, lobster, shrimps, scalloped potatoes; and bottle after bottle of champagne. This was followed up at some indecent hour by bowls of baked Alaska and Italian
baci
—chocolate and vanilla ice-cream balls dipped in dark chocolate washed down with French cognac. And there had been intermittent kisses. At one point Nestor’s brunette looked at him for a long time and declared, “You know something, sweetheart, you look just like what’s-his-name, Victor Mature, isn’t he Spanish?” Later he became Gilbert Roland.

The orchestra sounded great, and after a while the five of them were out on the dance floor having a good time. In the midst of all this, however, Nestor decided to call New York, and that would make him wince the next day because he wouldn’t be able to remember what he had said or how he had sounded. Why did he think he’d left Delores crying?

When they left the club, everything dissolved, and then he was stumbling through the Garden of Allah’s door and pinching his companion’s bottom through her silver-lamé gown. More champagne bottles popped. And next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes and looking over at his brother: Cesar was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, one of the women’s brassieres wrapped around his neck like a tie, toasting everybody with champagne: America! Desi Arnaz! René Touzet! And love and romance!

Making zigzags across the floor, the two brothers and their three companions tried to dance the mambo. Then Cesar started to serenade his two women and he went off with them into his separate bedroom, leaving St. Nestor with temptation herself. How had they ended up on the couch, tongue-kissing? The young woman became more and more feline with each kiss. She wore a flame-red brassiere and little red panties, and she had a black mole in the shape of a flower just over her belly button. Her glowing body seemed so perfect, so healthy, so filled with life. He went mad kissing her. Naked and wet with his kisses, she said, “Wait a minute,
amigo,
you have to take off your clothes.”

And when he had his trousers off he felt a cringe of shame because, after all, he was a married man, a good Cuban, and a diehard Catholic with two children at home in New York, but that didn’t stop Mother Nature, or the woman from taking a long look at him and saying, “Brother, where have you been all my life?”

Then he awoke and in the dark made his way across the room on boneless legs to the bathroom, where he vomited. He went outside to smoke a cigarette: the sky was clear, thick with swirly stars that reflected in the pool. Why was he feeling so bad? Why had he felt so bad all his short life?

About five in the morning, he woke the brunette, who smiled and embraced him, saying, “Hello, lover.”

But he said, “You should go home now, huh?”

And that was that. She dressed and he sat watching her and feeling bad. Maybe it was the way he had said it, without an ounce of affection, after all he’d probably said to her when they were making love.

He tried to go back to sleep—they were to catch an eight o’clock flight home—but already the sun was rising. And so he took out that book of his and began to read an inspiring passage that he’d underlined: “In today’s America one must think about the future. Ally yourself with progress and tomorrow! The confident, self-assured man looks to the future and never backwards to the past. The heart of every success is a plan that takes you forward. In moments of doubt you must remember that every obstacle is only a temporary delay. That every problem can be solved. When there is a will there is a way. You, too, can be a man of tomorrow!”