The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (54 page)

In the middle of the night she would wake to urinate and find him sitting up, short-breathed and gasping, or murmuring painfully in his sleep and flailing about the bed as if he were drowning. She would watch him shake and then couldn’t imagine what he had been dreaming about, never knew what to do when he got out of bed and went into his kitchen, where he would sit at the table drinking rum or whiskey and reading some book.

They were happy for a long time, despite her doubts about his age and the pains that sometimes racked his body. But then, abruptly, things started to come apart. One night after he had taken Lydia and the children out to eat, he lay doubled over in bed with terrible pains in his gut, as he’d eaten a big pot of Dominican chicken and rice, which had been hotly spiced with sausages. With Herculean effort, he managed to get himself out of bed (everything about him quivery because he had put on so much weight) and struggled down to the bathroom, where he tried to exorcise the burning insect larvae inside his gut, retching out, with the beer and plantains and the rest, tadpole-shaped dollops of blood, tails veiny and fluttering in the toilet water. Then he just barely made it back to his bed, where he collapsed, shaking with obesity and fear. That was the night of the strange dream, when he saw seven spirits, five of whom he recognized immediately: Tomasa, Pereza, Nicolena, Nisa, and Genebria, women he had known from Cuba. Then there were two shoeless men wearing rags and straw hats, whose faces were covered with white paste like carnival corpses. Circling around the Mambo King, they were chanting:

“Cesar Castillo, we know you’re very tired and soon it will be time for you to die.”

Again and again and again.

“Cesar Castillo, we know you’re very tired and soon it will be time for you to die”—like a nursery rhyme.

They harassed him for an hour and then slipped off into the night (they would return in the darkness of his hospital room three months later) and the Mambo King, a sweaty mess with heaving chest and bloated stomach, sank back into bed and felt his limbs swelling: when he woke in the morning, his skin was covered with blisters and sores, the kind which used to plague his father in Cuba, when things had gotten very bad. And he was ashamed to take off his clothes in front of Lydia and would make love to her wearing a shirt, turning his head away when she would look at his face.

When the pains got even worse, he looked up an old friend who worked in a pharmacy and sometimes gave him pain pills for toothaches. While his friend recommended that he go to a doctor, he gave him a small jar of painkiller pills anyway. Instead of seeing a doctor, Cesar took the pills and drank some whiskey, feeling so much better that he lumbered down the stairway and stood out in front of the stoop to enjoy the early-spring weather. The sun felt good on his face and a mood of great optimism came over him. And things were very interesting now. Looking across the street that day, he saw himself and Nestor walking up the block. Then a big checkered cab stood idling in front of the building with Desi Arnaz stepping out and removing his hat—Miguel Montoya and Lucille Ball behind him.

And across the way, he saw lines of people waiting in front of the Club Havana. He blinked and the lines were gone.

Then he saw an unbearably beautiful woman standing in front of the
bodega,
stared at her and realized that the woman was Beautiful María, who had taken his brother’s soul. Someone should show her a thing or two. And so he walked over to her, grabbed her roughly by the wrists, and dragged her upstairs to his apartment. By the time they’d gotten into the bedroom, he had removed all of his clothes. “Now I’m going to show you something, woman.”

And he buggered her with his huge thing, but not in a gentle way where the woman’s insides get all soft; not in the way where he would finger her at the same time so that she would come. He did it violently, showing María a thing or two. Except it wasn’t María, it was Lydia.

“
Chico,
why are you trying to hurt me so?”

“Oh, no,
mami.
I don’t want to hurt you, I love you.”

But he kept taking those tablets. And they would put him in a bad mood.

“You know there’s something I’ve never told you,” he said one day while visiting her in the Bronx. “And that’s my opinion of Puerto Ricans. Everybody knows you Puerto Ricans are jealous of us Cubans; there was a time when it was very rough for a Cuban to walk into a Puerto Rican bar. But that’s not your fault, not at all. The Puerto Ricans hate us Cubans because even the lowest Cuban who came here with nothing has something now.”

“Children,” Lydia said. “Why don’t you go into the living room and watch the television.” Then: “Why are you telling me this when you know my situation?”

He shrugged.

“You know what? You’re crazy. What have I done to you?”

He shrugged again. “I say what I think.”

“If you think I take things from you because I have no money, you’re wrong.”

“I was only talking about some Puerto Ricans, not all.”

“I just think you’re trying to start something with me. Now, please,
mi amor,
why don’t you just relax and sit here, I’ll make you something nice—I have some
chorizos
and potatoes I can fry up with eggs.”

“Yes, that would be good.”

He sat for a long time, watching her cooking. He smoked a cigarette and then he stood up and put his arms around her. She was wearing a nice soft pink Woolworth’s slip, without anything else on underneath, and when he put his hand on her bottom the softness of youth made him feel sad.

“I’m just an old man and I’m probably going to get worse, do you still want me?”

“Yes, yes, I do. Don’t be foolish, sit down and eat your breakfast and later we’ll take a walk up to the movie house on Fordham Road.”

Pacing in the halls of his house, he became more and more like that old German shepherd with matty coat and milk-cornered eyes who watched the basement entrance of a building down the street. He’d wait and wait for Lydia to return, stand by the window, wait by the door. And when she finally came home, happy with her rose, they would start to argue.

“And where were you?”

“At the florist’s.”

“Well, I don’t want you going there anymore.”

She tried hard to understand him and said, “Cesar, I think you are being a little unreasonable. Don’t worry about me,
querido.
I’m yours. Worry about yourself,
hombre.
You’re too old not to be going to a doctor if you’re not feeling well.”

But he pretended not to hear her.

“Well, I still don’t want you talking to any men.”

He slipped in and out of these moods. One Friday night, while toweling himself off after a bath, he daydreamed about Lydia. She was going to turn up at eight and they would go to a movie on Broadway, eat a nice dinner, and then go to bed together. He imagined her taut nipple in his mouth, kissing her quivering thigh. When she came, her whole body shuddered in waves, as if the building was shaking. That was something nice to remember, something nice to look forward to. That, and some of the
flan
Delores said she was going to make for him. Cesar really liked that
flan,
and so he decided that after having a drink he would go upstairs to visit his brother’s widow.

He’d had a hard day, his body aching. Even the pills weren’t working very well anymore. And he’d been bothered by
mareos,
dizzy spells. In reasonable moments he saw that he had been a little unfair to Lydia and he wanted to make things up to her. She would bring her kids down and stay with him through Sunday. Saturday night, he’d play a job, a party at the School of the Ascension.

He needed to rest, but it was past seven, and so he made himself another drink. Better to drink than to take those pills. He sat thinking about Lydia. Promised to reform. Yes, it was those pills making him act cruelly toward her. So, calmly, he went into his bathroom, took the pills, and flushed them down the toilet. Better to just drink, he told himself. Feeling tense, he went upstairs to get a piece of the
flan.
After so many years he still felt an attraction to Delores, and could not help but greet her with a fast little slap to the ass. But times were changing. When he had done that playfully with Leticia, she had chided him, saying, “A polite man doesn’t do that, especially an uncle.”

And now Delores said, “Cesar, are you going to be drunk when your woman arrives?”

Was that her reaction to a friendly slap on the butt?

“
Óyeme,
Cesar, I’m only telling you this because I care for you.”

“I came here for
flan,
not for lectures.”

She put a small plate of
flan
before him, which he ate ravenously. Afterwards he went into the living room, where he and Nestor used to write all those songs, greeted Pedro, and killed time sipping coffee and watching television with him. Now and then, when he heard the subway coming into the station, he got up to look out the window to see if Lydia was among the subway crowd. Around eight-thirty he started to get worried and went downstairs again to wait. He had another glass of whiskey at nine, then waited by the stoop for her until ten.

By then he found himself walking back and forth between the subway kiosk and his building. He felt like growling, and if anyone looked at him in the wrong way, his face would turn red, his ears would burn. Passing his friends in front of the
bodega,
he tipped his hat but did not speak to them. Merrily, he whistled a melody. His friends had brought out a milk crate and a television. They were sitting, engrossed in a boxing match.

“Come on, Cesar, what’s wrong with you?” they’d call, but he just kept on his way.

By eleven he decided that something bad had happened to her: that she was robbed on the subway, or worse. Standing on the corner, smoking one cigarette after the other, he imagined Lydia standing naked in a bedroom and climbing into a bed with cool blue sheets alongside a younger man, planting kisses on his chest and then taking him into her mouth. The florist? Or one of those men who stood on the corners giving her the eye and wondering what she was doing with the old man. If he could have ran up to the Bronx like a young hound, he would have. He’d tried calling her: there was no one home. He went through a period of remorse over his suspicions, prayed to God (if there is a God) that nothing had happened to her. Around midnight, he was drunk in his living room listening to mambos and watching television. By then, he’d tried calling her a dozen times without getting a response, and he fantasized that she was cuckolding him. He said to himself, I don’t need anything from a woman.

Around one o’clock, Lydia called him. “I’m sorry, but Rico came down with a bad fever. I had to wait in emergency all night.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“There was only one phone and I was in and out with the child. Always people waiting to use it.” Then: “Why are you being so stern with me?” And she started to cry. “You’re so stern.”

“How’s the boy?” he asked more calmly.

“It was food poisoning.”

“Well, are you coming here?”

“Hijo,
I want to, but it’s too late. I’m staying with the children.”

“Then I’ll say good night to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I don’t take this nonsense from anyone.
Que te lleve el demonio!”

In the Hotel Splendour the Mambo King winced as he swallowed more whiskey. Although he was starting to have trouble reading the time on his watch and he felt as if he were being propelled through a dense forest by a powerful wind, and the same mambo record, “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,” had been playing over and over, he ached happily for another drink, the same way he ached that night to be reunited with Lydia.

Slamming down the phone, he waited for Lydia to call him, sobbing the way the broads used to when he played around with them. He sat by the phone, and when it didn’t ring, he said to himself, To hell with her. But a few hours later he felt that he had been stupid and cruel and that he was going to burst unless he could do something to get rid of the bad feelings inside him. He began slowly to understand what had plagued his younger brother those years before, this pressing melancholia. He fell asleep without having tasted more than a bit of
flan;
he felt something like a bloody rag being pulled through his body. It was a funny thing, pain. The pain was sharp enough that he somehow felt more slender, rather than so heavy. The pains multiplied and were so bad that he wanted to get up out of his bed but could not move. He wanted some of the pills he’d gotten on the sly for toothaches, but each time he moved, the pain got worse. Around six in the morning, the sun started to shine through the windows, and the sunlight gave him strength and he managed with a great shove to get up off the bed. Then, in an epic show of will, and clinging to the walls, he made it to the bathroom.

Things did not improve. He would take the train to the Bronx unannounced and turn up at her door, drunk and convinced that she had some man hidden there. He would walk down to the corner and find that old hound sitting at the foot of the basement stairway, felt happy the day he watched the old hound take on a younger mutt in a street fight, snapping at the younger dog’s legs and sending it whining through the streets. That’s what he would do, he told himself, to all her young men—the ones he saw taking her to bed every night, because now, in the dresses that he had given her, and smelling sweetly of his perfumes, she was the most desirable woman in the world.

As he thought about those days, some confusion set in. There was something else going on, too, wasn’t there? His health was getting worse each day. Pink urine, swollen fingers, and little bouts of humiliating incontinence, when he would feel his own urine leaking down his leg and he would think, Stop, but nothing would stop. That humiliation made him want to cry, because even though he was an old man, he liked to think that he was clean, but those days, he feared, had gone forever.