AND THE BROTHERS? WITH THE SUCCESS OF “BEAUTIFUL MARÍA OF My Soul,” a top ten hit on the easy listening charts, the Mambo Kings orchestra was suddenly in demand. In the spring of 1956 they had embarked on a tour, traveling from coast to coast in a refurbished school bus which they’d had painted a flamingo pink, and for two of the most glorious months of their professional lives they performed nightly in the social clubs and ballrooms of both small towns and major cities. Fresh off his turn as a walk-on character on the Lucy show and comporting himself like a movie star, the older brother, Cesar, relished every moment onstage, hamming it up for crowds from rural Pennsylvania to California, and satisfying a lot of women along the way. But Nestor? Never having easily adjusted to America, he had slipped into a monumental state of gloom. Under the lights and standing beside the ever vibrant Cesar, and always invigorated by the band’s music, Nestor found his moments of joy, but once they returned to their motel rooms, or traveled overnight to their next destination by bus-the stars hanging in the sky just like in Cuba-a profound sadness involving his wife, his children, and María, as well as so many other unattainable longings, overwhelmed him. How could it not, for with every performance there came that moment when the brothers, standing side by side, launched into their touching rendition of “Beautiful María of My Soul.” Each time they came to the line “How can I hate you if I love you so?” countless nights, both before and after he had married the wonderful Delores Fuentes, when, for reasons beyond his reckoning, he could only think about María, came back to him.

How could it be that he still felt the same way after so much time? And did María love him at all? He’d thank God that he hadn’t abandoned Delores, or flown down to Havana to make a fool of himself anew; thank God that he had his family to go home to after the tour. He’d buy the kids presents and with money in his pockets knew there were so many things that he and Delores could look forward to. And yet, each time they performed that bolero, which he’d truly come to hate in his way, Nestor’s heart festered with even greater longing for María. (Cesar, seeing this in his brother’s eyes, had to fight off an urge to rap him in the back of his head.) Why the glorious pain? The memories of her, Nestor’s own soul suffering through every note, every verse, every ascending trumpet solo: but why?

So imagine Nestor’s state of mind when, after years of not hearing as much as a single word from her, he arrived home from the tour to find a letter from María waiting for him. It had taken her two hours to compose, her handwriting, in pencil, erased any number of times but carefully rendered-as was Nestor’s, it was almost like the script of a child-and her spelling and sentences, for all her efforts to be correct, occasionally faltering, as they no doubt would, he thought, with a guajira from the countryside.

It went, in the English equivalent:

My dear Nestor,

Forgive me for my silents: all the years that did go pass, I had to forget you because I did not know what my hombre would have done to me, even if he is not so much a bad man. Pero él es muy macho, sabes? If I not had answer your letters, it was because I have feel very bad for my manera to write, which as you can see is not so very good. But I could not even put two sententcents together, if not because for my friend, un buen negro, que se llama Lázaro-he taught me what I know, even if it is not so good; because of him I had been able to read better your letters to me, but I did not want you to know soo much of my ignorance and stupid mente: and then I found out from your friend Miguel that you was married and then I became angered with you.

But now I have gotten older and know love only comes maybe once in a lifetime, like you have always say. Not long ago, you had send me the song, muy muy bonito, “Bella María,” of me, and I heard it many times on the radio and it has made me think to write you. Listen to it and I know that you must still love me very very much and it has made me think about how much I have love you too: I mean to say Nestor that I also haven’t forgotten what a delicious romance we had. I know you are married, but then I think that you would not have written a song so beautiful or too many cartas tan afeccionadas, did you not really have unhappiness? And because, mi amor, I really don’t have anyone to love me like you, I want to see you again. Even if for a day. I don’t want no more, just I am tired of not seeing you for so long and have thought to come to New York just to be there with you. Is that possible? I would come only for a little while. Would you let me know if you want me to, and I will let you know everything of how and when I would have arrived.

Te quiero mucho Nestor, mucho mucho. With all my heart.

María

He had been sitting in the park, a few blocks from the apartment building where they lived on La Salle, boats passing on the Hudson River, the first summery breezes coming off the water, reminding him of his dalliances with María, la bella María, along the balmy Malecón. Memories of necking passionately with María as she sat on that seawall, Nestor with his hand up her dress, if only for a moment-María had her dignity after all; memories of looking up in bed and seeing María above him, her thick siren’s hair covering her beautiful face, her voice a litany of moans. Just the pain of that memory alone tore Nestor into pieces, and that’s why he, at first, after reading it over, had crumpled the letter up and tossed it into a garbage can in despair. María coming to New York? For all his desires for María, he just couldn’t see himself being unfaithful to Delores. But, no sooner had he started to walk away than Nestor, swatting away a whirl of hornets circling the melted remains of a Popsicle, decide to retrieve the letter. Flattening it out on his lap, he read it again, forgiving her guajira mistakes, read it over until his stomach went into knots, wishing that María had written him such a letter years ago.

He headed off to a local Irish bar, the Shamrock, where the fellows found his quiet manner amusing. Never a hard drinker, he threw back a few rye whiskeys, his heart aching. Then he went home. He must have been a little tipsy when he sat down to write María, telling her that his decision was “yes, come to New York.” They’d have to be very careful, no one was to be told-not even his older brother, or especially his older brother. (“She must have had some kind of papáya, to make you so crazy,” Cesar used to say.) Here was his plan: Knowing that he’d have some free time away from the band the last week of the month of July 1956, when their musicians, by mutual consent, decided to take a vacation break-to hell with the McAlpin ballroom, which had become their usual Sunday afternoon gig-he agreed to meet with María that weekend, but only for an afternoon. (Even that made him nervous.) Planning carefully for the occasion, Nestor gave her the telephone number of the corner pharmacy where for years, before business demanded they get their own phone, the Castillo brothers had received their most important calls-the pharmacist sending a kid up the street to their apartment to fetch them. Treating the situation as if they were spies, he wrote: “When you telephone, María, just say that you have a message from Omar in Havana and leave me the number where you are staying.” Then he’d wait, without knowing if María was really going to keep her word. That’s what killed him-skulking around the apartment, he spent the next three weeks waiting for the day when the kid from the pharmacy would come knocking on his door, and in all that time, while conjuring all kinds of visions of what might happen, he couldn’t look Delores in the eye.