NOTHING COULD BE SAID OR DONE ABOUT LÁZARO, EL POBRE. HIS death was inevitable; she had that touch, after all. Still, María enjoyed her felicitous state, despite its encumbrances, though she knew that, within a few months, once she started to show, she’d have to leave her dancing behind. But could María complain? After years of working here and there, she was tiring of that business: the hours, the ogling patrons, the late-night worries that someone somewhere would drag her into an alley and take advantage (at least two of the dancers at the Lantern carried straight razors in their purses because of what had once happened to them). The sore feet, the pulled tendons, the rehearsals, the pinches on the ass, and especially the dietary restrictions. Because she was still a guajira at heart, her mouth watered in the way she made men’s mouths water at the sight of her, but only over the sights and aromas of a crispy-skinned helping of suckling pork, with sides of sweet plátanos and rice and black beans. Now, at least, despite all the calories María burned nightly during the shows, she’d be free to eat whatever she liked: those delicious whipped-cream-topped lemon-and mango-flavored pastries with the maraschino cherries that always made her lick her lips when she passed the festive windows of De Leon’s bakery, three-and four-scoop bowls of ice cream at the Louvre parlor, and no end of the chocolate bonbons which club patrons were always sending her backstage, the sorts of sweets which she always reluctantly passed off to the other dancers for their kids. And now? She’d be free to fill her belly to her heart’s content, appreciating all the maternity ads she saw in the newspapers about comiendo por dos-eating for two. So what if María put on a few pounds?

The manner with which Ignacio looked at her had become more tender. It wouldn’t matter, at least for a while, if she stopped resembling a sex kitten à la a cubana Marilyn Monroe, whom half of the bombshell American lounge singers and dancers in Havana tried to emulate (when not mimicking Ava Gardner). Soon enough, she’d become a burgeoning mamacita with even more succulent breasts, her nipples distended and swollen. Lately, he had actually become more delicate about making love to her (now that Ignacio considered himself so much larger, thanks to his treatments, he entered her only from behind) and treated her tenderly, as if María, in her embarazada state, had become the most fragile creature in the world. That suited her fine. She lasted two months before the management at the Lantern started to notice her pregnancy, and, in any case, though María could have kept working as an assistant choreographer, after so much time spent under the lights, she welcomed the idea of becoming a señora of leisure, like the fine ladies at the department stores, with their maids following behind them, or the ones she used to see heading up the Malecón in their sedans to the yacht club (unfortunately, for all her beauty, her skin was of a color unacceptable to its members). And she would have time to further improve herself, to take up, as she had always wanted to, a pen in order to record, even with her lapses in spelling, some of the thoughts that came to her, in the spirit of what the décima singers and versifiers wrote (and that made her vaguely ache, thinking about her papito, Lázaro, and, yes, Nestor, the one she’d let get away).

As for that bolero? Nearly a year and a half after it had first reached Cuba, “Beautiful María of My Soul” still occasionally played over the radio, and it had become a minor standard of sorts, a part of street musicians’ repertoires. But now when she heard it, María no longer felt the melancholy that had come over her strongly in the months just after Nestor died. Hearing it made her feel somewhat proud for having been the inspiration behind that lovely tune. At the same time, it still provoked her to think about Nestor, something that, with a baby coming, she thought best to avoid. Besides, she had no room left for tears. With all the leisure hours she spent either strolling in the Parque Central or sunning herself at the playas where they used to romp, or alone in her high-rise apartment-yet not quite so alone, the little being forming inside of her keeping her company-María came up with what she considered a most generous notion. She’d write a letter of condolence to Nestor’s older brother Cesar Castillo. María knew his address-the brothers had lived in the same building on La Salle Street.

And so, in the same labored and careful manner in which she composed any note, María penned a respectful carta in her much practiced handwriting, conveying her immense sadness at having heard about Nestor’s passing-for she had loved him very much.

Believe me, Cesar, I wish it had turned out differently, but I am still so happy that at least Nestor and me were something for a time: and I am proud that he thought to compose that canción about me.

She described her state of impending motherhood and, while not lingering on it, ended on what María hoped would be a high note: “To you and Nestor’s family, I send my affection.”

It took her a few days to mail that carta off. She felt so confident about having done the right thing that, a few weeks later, when Cesar’s response arrived, María truly lamented her ability to read. Once she got around to deciphering its wild handwriting-so bad it was nearly illegible-this is what (she thought) it said:

Dear María-

With all due respect, fuck you and fuck everything about you for throwing my brother into hell-and fuck yourself for even thinking that I can give a shit about your feelings, if you ever really had any for Nestor. Now that he’s dead, I want you to know that he suffered a lot of grief thinking about you. And don’t think he didn’t tell me about how you came up to New York to take him away from his wife and kids. Shame on you, woman! The poor innocent actually felt bad about sending you off to wherever whores like you go… I know it because I had to live with him, and though I can’t prove it, something muy jodido got worse inside him after he saw you. He just wasn’t the same after that, and I have this feeling that, if it weren’t for you, he’d probably still be walking around now, taking care of his wife-a real lady, in case you didn’t know-and his fine kids, who I’ll have to look after now. As for your baby-felicitaciones!-I hope you give birth to a blind crocodile, because that’s what you deserve.

Sincerely yours,

Cesar Castillo

PART IV. Another Life

Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

Though she’d long since torn up Cesar Castillo’s letter, a dozen others, from Nestor himself, were among the items that María chose to take along with her some three years later, in early 1961, when she’d leave Havana for Florida with her little daughter, Teresita. Not that she hated Fidel Castro as much as some of the Cuban exiles she’d meet there over the coming decades-she thought he was doing some good things for the people, especially the guajiros, particularly when it came to his literacy campaign and sending doctors into the sticks; and she supposed that anyone would have been better than Batista, whom everybody knew was some kind of crook. Caught up in the initial jubilation, she had been among the crowds lining the streets of Havana as Fidel and his followers made their triumphant procession on captured tanks and jeeps and trucks through the city in the second week of 1959, after they’d routed Batista’s forces in the wake of their successful guerrilla war. She’d hoisted up her daughter-not even a year old yet-so that the heroic leader might see her as he passed, but it wasn’t long before she, like so many others, as in a fiery romance, started taking a second look.