“Eres una maravilla”-“You are a wonder”-was the kind of thing she heard over and over again.
Her face, in some ways, must have seemed saintly. During her church visits to pray and dream, Havana Cathedral with its musty and timeless interior being a favorite refuge, María received endless (useless) blessings from priests, supplicants, and beggars alike. Now and then, someone in the plaza would make her the gift of a rosary or a vial of holy water or a prayer card-even a relic sometimes. And while she could not have been more polite or gracious, or more thankful for their gifts, María had stopped believing that such religious objects made any difference in this world.
Street urchins, traveling in packs, followed her, tugged at her skirt hems, danced by her feet, and harassed anyone else who looked at her. From their second-floor windows, old women, Spanish fans in hand, smiled, admiring her as well (María, after all, was their own past). As she was cutting through a cul-de-sac alley between apartment buildings, there was always some fellow, bored to death or horny, on his balcony to call down to María, asking, with a sly expression on his face, if she would like to have a drink or go dancing. On the majestic Prado, managers offered her free meals just for sitting by a table in their outdoor cafés. (At least María knew she never had to go hungry.)
Among the suave and easygoing cubanos she encountered daily, who flirted as a matter of basic decorum, it often amounted to a pleasant enough game, the very fact that María, wearing a sphinxlike mask, might occasionally crack a sonrisa, a smile, was enough to send these dandies and caballeros dancing happily off into their futures. Crude sorts, however, also abounded. In a market off Lamparilla, there was a carnicero, a butcher, she tried to avoid. Whenever she passed by his stall, which smelled of fresh-killed meat, he always gave her body an up and down. It didn’t matter if she was just trying to mind her own business. Winking, sucking air in through his teeth, he took delight in waving calves’ tongues, bulls’ testicles, and the biggest chorizos in his stall at her. And sometimes, if she were passing through a crowded marketplace, both disembodied hands and other parts pressed against her.
Worse, however, were the out-and-out obscene gestures that came her way, especially at night, as she went walking home. When the clubs had closed and even the bordellos of la Marina and Colón were winding down, there was always the chance that some borrachero, barely able to stand straight against an arcade column, might grab himself through his trousers, all the while boasting that he had a tremendous malanga awaiting her. (Some of those “caballeros” actually had a romantic gleam in their eyes-as if their ardor was akin to an expression of love, and as if María might actually fall to pieces and succumb to their masculine powers, the shits.) And you would be surprised by the number of times that such sorts of men, stepping towards María from the shadows, actually pulled their stiff pingas out to show her-oh, how María wished she had that butcher’s cleaver with which to cut those chorizos off, may God forgive her for such unkindly thoughts.
On those occasions-twice with the same degenerate whose appendage, enhanced by the glowing penumbra cast by the arcade’s light, seemed shockingly large-she spat and cursed such filthy-minded louses-the chusmas-for not leaving her alone; then she’d march stoically on. And each time she did, María felt her kindly guajira soul hardening a little more, her skin growing thicker, and her patience for the vicissitudes of men wearing thin.
Putting up with a lot, María could have used someone to look after her. And that feeling just grew stronger as time went on. Missing her valle, she sometimes spent her evenings off from the clubs in that hallway with la señora, with her slight urine smell, listening to anything on the radio, so long as she wouldn’t have to sit in her room alone. She dreaded the prospect of sleep-she’d twist and turn thinking about her dead sister and the look of horror on her face when she gave her a beating, kept imagining her drowning in that pool beneath the cascades. She’d get down on her knees to beg Teresita’s spirit for her forgiveness, but no matter what, no sooner did she finally get under the covers of her chinche-ridden bed, hoping for pleasant dreams, than she began to fill with a terrible apprehension that shot through her body like electricity; she’d sit up, trembling, and out of habit, and a feeble hope, she’d pray. And when that didn’t work, though she knew it was a sin, she’d reach between her legs, her fingers dampened by her tongue, fondling herself until, writhing and churning her hips into her own hand’s motion, she lifted out of her own history into the momentary oblivion of pleasure, breaking into pieces. And then, of course, she’d slip back into the gloom of guilt, even more deeply than before. But that was María.
In any event, she was working as a dancer in a new revue-that’s what the professionals called it-at the Club Nocturne, in Vedado, where, one night, fed up with her loneliness, she first met the man who, years later, was to become her daughter, Teresa’s, father.
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.