The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (44 page)

There were others. One of these ladies was just for fun. Every year or so, he would fly down to San Juan, Puerto Rico (wincing as the pilot would announce they were flying over the eastern tip of Cuba), and from there take a rickety shuttle plane to Mayagüez, a beautiful city way out on the west coast of the island. He’d take a public car up into the mountains, where time seemed to dissolve, where farmers led their animals down the roads and men still rode horses, until he reached the town where this woman lived. He’d met her at a dance in the Bronx in 1962 and that was the year he first went to bed with her, first walked the dirt road of her town and saw the powerful river rushing downstream from the Dole pineapple cannery. He always had a nice time. She had two grown children and didn’t want anything from the Mambo King but companionship. He would bring her gifts—dresses, earrings and bracelets, and perfume, and transistor radios. One year, he made her the gift of a television set. Nice times, he’d remember, playing cards, watching television, and conversing with the family, eating, napping, eating, napping. Around three-thirty it would rain for half an hour, a torrential downpour that would get the river really churning, and he would sit on the porch dozing in enjoyment of that sound (the rain, the river) until the sun came back out and he would bathe, wedging himself against some rocks, as there was usually a powerful and swift current, float on his back and daydream. Kids swimming all around him, kids jumping in from the bank and from the sweet-smelling trees. He’d stay there until it got too crowded for his taste. Around five-thirty the workers from the cannery would come down and jump in and that’s when he would gather up his things and go back to the house.

So for two weeks he’d rest. Her name was Carmela and she liked to wear flowery dresses. She was five foot two and must have weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, but she was a pleasure in bed and as sweet-hearted as any woman could be. She owned a record player, which blared out her windows, and whenever he bought her some item of jewelry, she would sit out on the porch waiting for passersby to whom she could show it off. One funny night they went to see the film
Ben Hur
in the small chaotic tenth-run movie theater that had been overrun by light green insects which had come swarming up out of the floorboards after an especially heavy rain. The insects were everywhere, on the chairs, on the customers, flying across the scenes of Judah Ben Hur racing in the Circus Maximus. These insects forced them to leave early. On the way home she tightened her grasp on his hand, as if she never wanted him to leave, but he always had to. When they’d part there were never any troubles.

Then there was a woman named Cecilia, and María, and Anastasia, and on and on.

As if all the music and women and booze in the world would have made a difference about the way he felt inside: still sick to his heart over Nestor.

This sorrow was so adamant five years, ten years, fifteen years later that he was almost tempted to go into a church and pray, when he wanted a hand to cut down through the sky, to touch his face the way his mother used to, soothing him, forgiving him.

Walking up La Salle Street, his head bowed, back slightly stooped—those years of hauling the incinerator-ash-filled cans were starting to get to him, he had some days when he sought repentance through suffering. Sometimes he was unnecessarily rough with himself, driving a wood chisel into his hand one day, or carelessly grasping a hot steamy pipe while working on the boiler. The pain didn’t bother him, for all his scars, bruises, and cuts. Because he was a diehard macho and because the pain made him feel as if he were paying his way in this world.

Once, when he was coming home from a job, walking along Amsterdam Avenue, three men swooped down on him, pushed him down on the sidewalk, and started kicking him. The Mambo King rolled over and covered up his head the way he used to when his Papi beat him . . .

A loosened half row of teeth, split lip, aching jaw and sides, somehow all so soothing . . .

Many of his friends were that way, troubled souls. They would always seem happy—especially when they’d talk about women and music—but when they had finished floating through the euphoric layer of their sufferings, they opened their eyes in a world of pure sadness and pain.

Frankie was one of those men. Frankie with the worst breaks in life. He had a son whom he loved very much, but as the kid got older he spit in his old man’s face. Cesar was always separating them when they’d fight in the street, and he’d accompany Frankie downtown to the juvenile pen to get the kid out. Then the Vietnam War came along. His son had grown up; six foot one, broad-shouldered and handsome, the big-dicked healthy wise-ass son of a Cuban worker.

And what happened? Came home one day, walking down the street in high jackboots, uniform pressed, and the brim of his military cap a shiny black. Out of his mouth came “Gook this, gook that,” and it was off to Vietnam, where on his first jump he landed on a mine and was shipped home in a metal container the size of a Kleenex box. On top of his closed coffin with swirly brass rails, a small American flag, a Purple Heart, a photograph of his handsome face. Cesar held Frankie by the arm throughout the funeral, looked out for Frankie, kept him drunk for a week.

He found some comfort in wrapping his arms around his friend’s shoulders and saying, “Now, now this will pass.” He found some comfort in feeling the man’s pain, as if it somehow aggrandized or glorified his own.

Sometimes there were three or four of them down in his apartment or in his basement workroom, drinking until their faces peeled off and all that was left was shadows.

Sad expressions, twisted mouths, voices so slurry no one could understand what the other was saying.

I
N THOSE DAYS HE HAD A FRIEND
who was a petty gangster with a reputation for sponsoring businesses. His name was Fernando Pérez and for a long time he had been considered a respectable member of the neighborhood. He’d been around for a long time and ran most of the numbers shops on Amsterdam and upper Broadway. He was squat, square-faced, short-limbed, and stubby-fingered. Gentlemanly in gray leisure suits, he liked to wear a white black-brimmed hat and pointy white crocodile-leather shoes with three-inch heels. He used to dine regularly at Violeta’s downtown and at another little place on 127th and Manhattan, where he would sometimes run into Cesar. Although he went around with two rough-looking men, he was the picture of civility. He kept an apartment on La Salle Street, a house in Queens, a house near Mayagüez in Puerto Rico, and a fourth, legendary apartment on 107th between Broadway and Amsterdam. This was known locally as the fortress, and rumor had it that the man kept all his money in a huge safe built into the wall, that to get to that safe you had to break down three heavy doors and fight off numerous bodyguards posted on the stoop, in the hallway, and then in different rooms.

He had been a big Cesar Castillo fan back when. He had courted his wife, Ismelda, at the dance halls where the Mambo Kings played, and on those nights Pérez had always sent the Mambo King a good bottle of champagne to drink at his table. They’d greet each other by the bar of joints like the Park Palace, send greetings to each other’s families. Their only dispute, now forgotten, had happened years ago when the Mambo Kings, after their appearance on the I
Love Lucy
show, had been closest to fame. Fernando Pérez had wanted to put them under contract, but Cesar and Nestor wanted nothing to do with him. It had hurt his feelings enough that for about ten years he never said a word to the Mambo King.

One day in 1972, as Cesar was sitting in Violeta’s restaurant, Pérez walked in with an entourage of friends. He was flashing a wad of bills and dropping twenties on the head of a young and delighted woman, who squealed and sent kisses flying through the air as she gathered up the money. And he announced, with grandiosity: “I’m buying dinner for everybody in here tonight.”

So the patrons applauded him and he sat down. His party dined on suckling pork and platter after platter of rice and beans,
yuca,
and
tostones.
Cesar had noticed him when he walked in, had nodded respectfully. Later, Pérez came over and they embraced as if they were the oldest friends in the world.

“It’s good to see you, my old friend,” Fernando Pérez told the Mambo King. “We shouldn’t lose more time in our friendship. Life is too short.”

They talked: Pérez had just gotten over a heart attack, and in the flush of appreciation for finding more time in this world, he had apparently turned into a more magnanimous soul. And there was something else: around Pérez’s neck there was a large, glittery, rhinestone-encrusted crucifix, the kind widows wear. This he touched continuously during his inquiry about Cesar’s life.

“What am I doing?” the Mambo King said. “I’m working with musicians, nothing that will make me rich, you understand, but I bring in my few dollars here and there. And I’m in the building over there on La Salle Street.”

He was saying all this with shame, because long ago Pérez had told him: “Unless you act now to insure your future, people will forget about you just like this.” He had snapped his fingers.

Now that he had some distance on all that and he could tolerate things again, the Mambo King began to feel disturbed by what he did not have in this world. He was getting older. He was fifty-four and had been throwing his money away on women, gambling, and friends for years.

He had no health insurance, no security, no little house in the Pennsylvania countryside, as a violinist friend did. No little
bodega
like Manny’s.

What did he have? A few letters from Cuba, a wall filled with autographed pictures, a headful of memories, sometimes scrambled like eggs.

(Again, he remembers back to long ago and his Papi in Cuba saying, “You become a musician, and you’ll be a poor man all your life.”)

Cesar nodded. “Well, you seem in good shape,” he said to Pérez.

“God bless you, that is what I say to the world now.” And Pérez startled him by kissing him on the neck.

“I nearly died, did you know that?” he said to Cesar. “And when I was on the brink of death I had a revelation: lights showered down on me from heaven and for one brief moment I saw the face of God. I said to him, ‘Allow me the chance to do good for mankind, allow me to be your humble servant.’ I am here now because of that,
sabes?
and I can tell you I want to help you. What is it that I can do for you, Cesar? Do you need money? Do you need help with your music? Please tell me, I want to know.”

“There’s nothing I want, Fernando. Don’t worry about me.”

“At the very least,” Fernando said before returning to his diners and the pretty young girls whose breasts were spilling out the tight bodices of their red ruffled dresses, “you must come and visit me at my house in Queens. Will you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Good, and may God bless you.
Que Dios te bendiga!
”

And he dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, saying, “Give my friend here a drink.”

Then he embraced Cesar and made his way to his table: “Now don’t forget.”

Thereafter, the two men were friendly again. Pérez would drive up in a white El Dorado Cadillac and park in front of the
bodega
from which he conducted his business of loan-sharking and numbers running. He did so with an air of reverence and saintliness, making the sign of the cross over his customers and sending them off with his blessing. And when he saw Cesar on the street, Pérez would honk the car horn and wave the Mambo King over. It was always: “When are you coming out to Queens for a visit?” And: “Why are you so distant with me, my friend?”

“No, no, I’m not that way,” he said to Pérez. Then he leaned into the car window, making small talk, and usually walked away with a Havana cigar (Pérez would get them from a friend in Toronto).

One Thursday night, he went out to Queens, where Pérez lived in a three-story twenty-room house. In every room, pleated French curtains, a color TV set, and a telephone. Tropical-fish tanks and a big abstract painting in his living room, a stereo, bar. And he had three Cadillacs parked in front of the house. But what impressed the Mambo King the most was the swimming pool in Pérez’s back yard.

They dined in a screen-enclosed sun porch in the back, Pérez and his wife sitting at each end of a long, platter-covered table, and Cesar between them. Ismelda would ring a little bell and in would come the Peruvian maid, to whom they both gave orders: “Take the beans back, they’re much too cold.” “Don’t we have fresher bread?” “Bring another bottle of wine.”

They sat talking about the old days. Fernando would get up and reach across the table to touch his wife’s beringed hand.

“Our love started,” Fernando said to him, “one night at that place your orchestra used to play in Brooklyn.”

“The Imperial Ballroom,” his wife tenderly said.

“Man, you were great that night, up there on the stage. What was that song you used to start with? I have it on one of your recordings.”

“We used to begin our performances with an instrumental bolero called ‘Twilight in Havana.’ ”

“Your brother, may God rest his soul, used to open it with a long trumpet run, right? Something between Chocolate Armenteros and Harry James. I remember this well because I was at the bar watching the orchestra. I remember that song so clearly”—and he hummed part of the melody. “I remember it because it was during that song that my brother introduced me to my little wife here. That was almost thirty years ago, and look, we’re still together and prospering.”

He made a toast.

“You know what our plan is for the coming year? To go to the Vatican this next Easter and turn up at one of those audiences with the Pope. I want to have that honor and satisfaction before I finally enter the sunset years.”

And he went on about the prosperity of his children: two sons had gone into the business with him and flourished, two others were in college; he had seven grandchildren and enough money for the rest of his life.