“It will make you feel better,” he told her, trying again. “But I don’t want to impose.”

“All right,” María told him finally. “But come upstairs with me. I’m filthy.”

Closing the cast-iron gate behind them, as he followed her up the steps to her solar, dogs barking around them, María could almost feel his eyes alighting upon her rump. She needn’t have been so suspicious; walking into her parlor, with shattered plates and turned-over chairs strewn about the floor, that músico couldn’t have been more noble, more polite. He practically sat on his hands while María went into her bathroom to wash and put on a new dress, and passed his time looking around the place, probably wondering just who that miserable prick had been. All kinds of things would have hit that pobrecito just then. He noticed that she certainly had a lot of nice clothes in her closet; her appliances, including a Frigidaire, were new too, and he guessed that the pictures of the older folks in a frame on her dresser were her mamá y papá-or maybe abuelos-but, in any case, they looked like they’d had a hard time in life. The only thing he made a peep about was the beat-up guitar he saw leaning against a wall. She had gotten it for a few dollars in the market below from the fellow who sold instruments, so that she could practice the chords her papito once taught her.

“Say there, do you mind if I strum on your guitar?” he called to her.

“Do whatever you want, pero es un tareco-it’s a piece of junk.” Passing a sponge over her body, María felt grateful, but somehow sad at the same time, to have Ignacio so suddenly out of her life. She wondered if those little pains inside her heart meant that she’d always have a soft spot for that cruel man anyway. Once Nestor began singing, however, the intimations of his fine baritone, so sincere and somehow pained, got her all quivery inside and she wondered what was going on with her. Dressing quickly-a slip under a florid dress, no nylons, and a pair of low-heeled shoes-she soon joined him again in the room.

“You sing really nicely,” she told him. And in that moment María began to wonder why she was already feeling affection, for a fellow she hardly knew.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

Handsome as hell, Nestor Castillo made the oddest impressions on her. As they walked in Havana vieja, not once had he looked at any of the other women who passed by. He seemed so self-effacing, and beyond this tawdry world, it would not have surprised María if, while blinking her eyes, she had turned around to find him wearing a priest’s vestments and holding one of those things that resemble ice cream scoops, an aspergillum, from which priests sprinkle holy water, Nestor blessing the narrow sidewalks and cobblestones before them. They’d hardly said a word to each other, but once they sat down in that café, up on a terrace, the horizon streaked with plains of conch pink in the sun’s setting glow, and after a few glasses of hearty red Spanish wine, thick as blood, Nestor began to overcome his initial timidity. By their table, and for the first time that night, as he wasn’t one for conversing easily, he broke into a big horsey grin and told her, “You know what? My mother’s name is also María. Now isn’t that something?”

Well, given that practically half of the females in Cuba were Marías, it shouldn’t have seemed so amazing to anyone. But why shouldn’t she smile back at that sweet fellow? While a squat but majestic jukebox glowed away in a corner of that café, playing some nice old romantic ditties-the kind Nestor aspired to write himself-María suddenly found that coincidence of their meeting on such a dismal day to be unimaginably significant, as if foretold by the stars.

Oh, it was all so very poetic, like something out of a bolero. And Nestor could have stepped out of a bolero as well. His outlandishly handsome features, his way of raising his eyebrows when something tasted particularly good, his dark eyes, which glanced at her from time to time, and the slightest of smiles that crossed his mouth now and then, but shyly, as if there was something unmanly about smiling, gave him a tragic air. She didn’t know him well, but María liked his solemnity, as if he were a matador, and the shy manner with which he comported himself-such a pleasant change from how most men regarded her. She couldn’t say he was easygoing or particularly talkative. But the way he looked into her eyes, as if he were seeing something wonderful in them, was more than enough to soothe her nerves.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t notice the way he struggled to look only at her face-surely he must have been aware of her body. And what was that hanging around his neck but a crucifix on a chain? Of course, she told him that she was a dancer at a cabaret, lately a featured performer, which was nice except that she only made a few dollars more a week than the others. She could have spoken about the problems she was having with the floor show manager, who, like most managers, unless they preferred men, eventually got around to expecting certain things from their dancers-how those bosses disgusted her. But she didn’t. Nor did she share with him the tawdrier episodes of her experience, the sort that made a woman, however beautiful, feel cheap and used. In fact, María was sometimes ashamed of her profession, almost as ashamed of her ignorance. No, on that night, as she would remember, María preferred to hear about Nestor’s own life and to take in the soulfulness of his expression, the tenderness of his voice.

AS THEY FEASTED ON A PLATTER OF MARISCOS Y ARROZ, WITH SOME chorizos-a paella-along with heaps of fried plantains, it was Nestor who did the talking at first. “Soy un campesino de Oriente,” he told her. “I’m a country boy from the east, from a quiet farm, tú sabes, near a little pueblo called Las Piñas, and I will tell you something, María. I was pretty happy growing up there amongst the oxen and pigs.” He was chewing on a delicate morsel and looking straight into her eyes. “Not to say that I don’t like Havana. I just miss my family y mi campo-my countryside. El aire puro-the pure air, el perfume de la jungla-the perfume of the woods.”

Por Dios, it was as if María were hearing herself speaking.

“I should have been a farmer, like mi papá, but I was just too sickly as a child. I wasn’t much good for anything when it came to the hard work in the fields. And because of mi enfermedad, I grew up holding on to my mother’s skirt. It wasn’t always easy, María. I practically never left that farm, and what learning I had, I owed to my older brother Cesar, who progressed as far as secondary school in Holguín. He taught me to read and write, and just about everything else I know.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin, refilled his glass with wine, took another bite, his expression uncertain.

“Cesar is everything to me, even if he can be a pain in the culo. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Surely not to Havana. He’s always been much more adventurous than myself. He’s a first-class músico and used to perform with many a conjunto out east, as a singer mainly, and because I was always the closest to him, the youngest-we are four-he took me under his wing and started me out playing different instruments and singing.”

“And he is much older than you?” María, watching Nestor intently, asked.

“Yes, by ten years, but that didn’t stop him from taking me around as a kid to all the pueblos and plantations where his charangas played. Sometimes we were away for days, and that created a problem with my papito, who didn’t want me to waste my time.” He shook his head. “He was always fighting with Cesar, and I was caught in the middle. But you know what? Once my hermano got me going with the music, well, what can I say? It gets in your blood, and there’s no stopping the desire. Do you understand?”