Naked in Havana (10 page)

I realised I was still picking out notes on the piano. I put my hands in my lap, as if I had been doing something wrong. “I wasn’t really concentrating.”

“Well, you play better that way.”

We stared at each other.

“Is that how you learn to sing bolero?” I said, and I think she knew I wasn’t making fun of her, that I meant it.

“Yes, that’s how you learn.”

“And Bach’s etude?”

A half smile. “You learn that by sitting at a piano and practising.”

Reyes came out of the bedroom, buttoning his shirt, a lazy smile on his face. He put on his white linen jacket and gave me an exaggerated bow. “You play beautifully,” he said.

“I have a very good teacher.”

“So do I. I should leave you both to finish.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do the same for you,” I said.

He paused at the door. “Well, sometimes even an unfinished symphony can be a classic.” He closed the door softly behind him.

After he left, I thought about the monogrammed handkerchief that Inocencia twisted between her fingers when she sang at the club. “RG.” Now it all made sense.

If you had asked me if I had spared a thought for Reyes Garcia since Angel’s party I would have said no, but I would have been lying. My first impression was that he was arrogant, conceited and unattractive. So why did I think about him so much? I told myself it was because he made me angry and I wanted to put him in his place. I hated that he had seen me so weak and that he had made fun of me, that he thought he knew so much about me when really he knew nothing at all.

And now I’d seen him naked. It should have made me feel like I had something over him, that I had settled the score. Instead I just felt agitated, and God help me, jealous. I couldn’t think.

Inocencia took me through the lesson. We sat next to each other at the piano for an entire hour, and I could not look her in the eye. We had stepped across a line that should not be crossed, except between lovers. When you know how someone comes, you glimpse a part of their soul.

We practised the étude, she gave me my homework for the week, and we talked about authentic performance practise against the theory of modern jazz technique. When the lesson finished I picked up my study books and made to leave, as if this had been a normal day.

Inocencia called me back.

“Your problem, Magdalena, is you don’t have a good ear.”

“At school, my music teacher said...”

“I don’t mean for music, I mean for your heart.”

“Pardon me?”

“When you love, you listen to your pride, but you don’t listen to your heart. Your love is all in your head. It holds you back musically, and one day it will hold you back in your life.”

I just stared at her.

“You have no idea what I mean, do you?”

“Is there a book I can read?”

She sighed and gave me a sad smile. “It doesn’t matter.”

Oh, but it did matter. As it turned out, it mattered a whole damned lot. But I was eighteen years old. Whoever listens to advice at that age?

Chapter 15

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said as I came out into the sunlight. His car was parked under a ceiba tree right outside in the street; it was a brand new Chevrolet Impala with a cherry-red bonnet, boot, mudguards and doors. There were even virgin-white Firestone whitewalls.

“Nice car. Did you steal it?”

“No, but I’ve stolen cars just like it. I have many talents.”

“Yes, we know that.”

Luis got out of the car, started over, thinking I was being accosted, but I waved him back away.

“Do you come here for lessons, too?”

“Now and then. How much of our rehearsal did you see?

“Why, are you ashamed?”

He threw back his head and guffawed at that. “Ashamed? A long time since anyone accused me of that. Most people know me better.”

“You are never ashamed of anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Not even a sub-standard performance?”

“I’ve never been accused of one.” He took off his sunglasses and grinned at me. Was I supposed to be charmed? I wanted to score just one point over this man before I ignored him completely for the rest of my life.

“Didn’t you hear me come in?”

“I had my mind on other things. And Inocencia...”

“Was screaming the house down.”

“I took it as a compliment. So you saw everything. Did you learn anything?”

“I learned to knock in future. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone about it.”

“I don’t care if you tell the whole world. I don’t have a wife or a reputation to lose. Do you want to have dinner sometime?”

His effrontery was breath-taking. I was lost for words.

“Is that a “yes” or a “no?””

“I cannot believe you would even ask me. I just saw you making love to another woman.”

“Inocencia and I go back a long way. I’m not in love with her, she’s not in love with me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Why, did she say something to you?”

“As if you would care.”

There, that was my exit line. I turned my back on him and started across the road. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he called after me. “You don’t think I’m going to give up, do you?

Against all my better instincts I turned around. “I don’t care what you do.”

“Yes, you do. Or you wouldn’t have turned around. You don’t like me, do you?”

“Not a bit.”

“That’s all right, I’m an acquired taste. What about tomorrow night?”

“My father would never allow it.”

“Your father wouldn’t have to know. He never found out about Angel. Is that your only objection?”

“No, it’s not my only objection, Señor. In fact, I have so many objections I wouldn’t know where to start. It would be dark by the time I finished with them all. I told you, you would be the last man on earth I would have dinner with.”

“Oh you will, one day. It’s fate, Magdalena, and you can’t stop fate.”

“Well I can give it a good try.”

I hurried across the road to the car. Luis held open the door for me and I climbed in. I turned around and stole one last look at him as we drove away. He was leaning against the driver’s door of the Impala, grinning. He took a cheroot out of a silver case and lit it and waved his hand in a mock salute.

I ignored him.

But all I could think of all the way home was the way he had made Havana’s greatest
bolerista
sing. Why couldn’t Angel ever do that?

Chapter 16

Hotel bookings were down all across town, the war was keeping people away for the first time. Papi spent more and more time in the courtyard with his cigars. Early in the mornings I could hear him muttering under his breath as he read the morning newspaper. Everyone was on edge. No one knew what was going to happen.

That night at dinner I noticed the dark rings under his eyes were back. He barely touched his chicken, and when Maria clucked her tongue and tried to remonstrate with him, he made a languid flick of his hand to have her take away his plate. He put a pink tablet under his tongue when he thought I wasn’t looking and washed it down with a glass of rum.

“I saw Angel in town today,” I said to him, as casually as I could.

He put down his cigar and looked around at me, his eyes like slits. “You just bumped into him by accident. On your way to acting class.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“A coincidence.”

“Ask Luis, he’ll tell you.”
Dios mio
, I thought, if he asks Luis, I’m dead.

He puffed on his cigar. “Cariña, Angel is getting married soon. Forget about him.”

“I went shopping in the Nacional, he was in the lobby with his father,” I said, as casually as I could and hoped it sounded convincing.

“I guess there’s no law against going into the Nacional.”

“He told me his father says the rebels are winning, Papi. That’s why they’re getting out of Havana. What if the
rebelde
do win?”

“I told you, we have nothing to worry about.”

“It scares me that they’re leaving and we’re still here. What if they’re right about Castro and the
barbudos
? Everyone seems so afraid.”

“Everyone is afraid of change. But in the end, in Cuba, you find that nothing changes at all. It’s just different people stealing all the money, but it’s the same people losing it all. That’s the way life is.” He put his hand on mine. “Let’s forget all this ugliness. Tonight I want you to put on your best dress and come with me to the club. Let’s listen to some great
bolero
and forget about Salvatore and Castro and Lansky and the rest of them.” A smile lit up his face. “What do you say, cariña?”