Chapter NINETEEN
That next Sunday found them on a trolley heading out to an amusement park, west of the city, El Coney, which had been nicknamed by the locals after its famous Brooklyn counterpart to the far north. For the occasion María had put on a sundress and wore a wide-brimmed hat and white-framed sunglasses; she carried a one-piece bathing suit in a bag. Nestor had brought along his own swimsuit and a notebook, which he proudly showed her.
“I always carry this with me, in case I get an idea for lyrics,” he said as they jostled along la Quinta Avenida towards las afueras of the city. “Because you never know when that might happen-you think you can remember a line the next day, but they’re like little dreams that go away unless you write them down. I always use what I call my special pencils. You see, María”-and he pulled one from his pocket that was practically worn to the nub-“I use only pencils that I have found on the sidewalk or on the street and other places; it’s as if I’m inheriting the ideas of the people who owned them. This one I picked up in front of the cathedral-probably belonged to a priest or a nun-and so when I’m writing with it, I feel that I’m getting a little help from Dios. But I also have a pencil that I found outside Ernesto Lecuona’s house in Vedado. I can’t prove that it fell out of his pocket, but just the idea of it gives me a different kind of inspiration. With that one, I write down my notes and the chords of songs.” He smiled. “My older brother Cesar thinks I’m eccentric for believing such things, but I figure, what’s the harm of it, if those notions help me make a beautiful song.” Then smiling, he added: “María, te parece una locura? Do you think that’s odd?”
“No,” María said. “Not if it makes you happy.”
But, my goodness, he was different from Ignacio.
“You think so?” And he flipped open his notebook, showing her a page filled with new lyrics. “I wrote this, thinking about seeing you again, just a few days ago. How do they read to you?”
She pretended to understand what he had written down. Though her lessons with Lázaro had slowly progressed, to the point that she had learned hundreds of words, she had yet to comprehend complete sentences, let alone the lyrics of a song; but it had to be about the majesty of love, though she couldn’t say for sure.
“Son bonitas,” she told him. “Muy, muy preciosas”-“They’re lovely and very, very fine.”
“And the sentiments? Do you feel they are possible?”
“Sí, cómo no,” she told him.
“Oh, but María, if you only knew how happy that makes me feel!”
So perhaps he was already writing about her, María would think years later. Perhaps those lyrics, which she couldn’t decipher, first opened his heart to the notion of their love. Perhaps, without intending to, she was already raising his hopes. What of it? She felt something for him, perhaps just gratitude for his kindness, and maybe a curiosity about his tender soul. What else could she have said without giving her ignorance away? In memory, that trolley floated along the laurel-and palm-lined streets of that avenue, the sea’s air so clear and without any sense of passing time-she was just nineteen after all!-and just like that they were walking along the promenade, too mutually shy even to dare hold hands, but feeling like they wanted to.
The amusement park, just about three blocks long and nestled between the Miramar Yacht Club and the white sands and cabanas of la Playa de Concha, enchanted her, for as a guajira from the countryside, she’d never visited such a place before. She had loved the carousel, whose enameled horses went circling up and down, and left María laughing at the sheer foolishness of adults, among so many children, riding such things. Then they got on La Montaña Rusa -the Russian Mountain-a mousy roller coaster that whipped along its rickety, curved tracks with abandon, María screaming and Nestor holding her tight. (This they rode three times, Nestor feeling the weight of her breasts against his knuckles, María laughing in a way she never could with Ignacio, Nestor growing somewhat nauseated over the motion but not willing to let María go.) They played games of chance. They ate ice cream, sharing their cones like children. Later, as they were standing on the causeway, watching these adventurous and perhaps crazy fellows jumping off a diving board into the sea from atop a three-story-high replica of a Coca-Cola bottle of painted cement, Nestor first took hold of her hand, and she didn’t resist.
Then, because it was such a beautiful day, they headed into the public restrooms, the floors covered with sand, to change. Shortly, out on the beach, María first saw the glory of Nestor’s graceful physique-his broad shoulders and flat belly, the curling hair that flourished upwards from his navel like hands in prayer over his chest-while he, in turn, along with about every other man on the beach, felt like weeping at the sight of her spectacular dancer’s body. In a green bathing suit, she had followed Nestor into the water, the two of them drifting out and splashing in the waves, oblivious to the people around them, when, out of nowhere, God threw them together. Or to put it differently, hit by a wave, she tumbled into Nestor’s arms, and for a moment their warm bodies pressed together, and just like that Nestor lifted her up as if he were about to carry her across a threshold, and then, while holding her, his hand grazed the lower front of her bathing suit and then slipped back so that she could feel his palm against her right nalgita. When he dropped her into the water and she stood up, her dark and curly hair now slickened and falling straight and sparkling over her shoulders, through her bathing suit’s modesty pad bubbles came seeping and popping out, and what surely made his heart beat faster, through the top of her suit jutted her stiffened nipples. Was she embarrassed or ashamed? No: what she felt was that she wanted more of that sweet man.
Soon they were embracing, and that was a mistake, or perhaps it was utterly natural, but once their bodies were touching, she started to feel within his trunks the kind of earthly response that made María gasp. And while part of her wanted to pull away, María, the same more or less pious mujercita who had been at Mass that very morning, let Nestor press even more deeply against her luscious center. The sensation was so pleasurable, and of an intensity she had never felt with Ignacio, that something unraveled inside of her. She forgot the nightclubs, the saintly gazes of church statuary, the very fact that they were only thirty yards or so from a crowded beach. Why she took hold of him through his suit, she could not say. (Here’s something else: sitting with her daughter and watching television, a rerun of Zorro with Tyrone Power playing the hero, pero en español, she’d recall to herself her first impressions of its weight and thickness and how it made her feel, if nothing else, that this hombre, Nestor Castillo, was muy, muy virile y fuerte.) And, God forgive her, the sight of his excited pene, distorted by the amplifying effects of the water, so agitated María that she, floating out of herself, couldn’t help but put her hand inside his trunks.
His face became a mask of pleasure and death at the same time, or, to put it differently, the tenderness in his eyes became overwhelmed by desire.
Okay, in retrospect, perhaps this was an exaggeration; it had happened so long ago that the pieces of that day came to her like snippets of vaguely remembered music; after so many years she couldn’t even recall the timbre of his speaking voice, save that it was mild and gentle, a real tragedy because just hearing him somehow calmed her. One thing was certain: coming out of that water, they were in a state of mutual excitement. It would have been so easy for them to slip into one of the cabanas, which lots of young couples did in those days, to ease off their swimsuits and, in the confines of one of those narrow tents, make furious, hurried love… But, as Maria believed, the heavens were watching-or someone was-maybe her late mamá, Concha, or poor Jesus himself, with the bloodied tears of His sacrifice dripping down his face instead of tears of pleasure, of sea salt and kisses and youthful love, and that thought so rattled María she had to fight herself, for as they, timidly holding hands, waded to shore through that tepid water-so clear she saw mollusks breathing through the bottom sand-all she wanted to do was to fall back into his arms so that Nestor could cover her body with kisses.