Havana Jazz Club Read online

  She looked down, unsure how to respond, but her heart was pounding and a timid smile danced on her lips. From that moment on, no man existed on earth except her beloved Orlando.

  They started to see each other alone, unaccompanied by her brother. They often went dancing, or to see a movie, or out to eat. Anything was possible with Orlando. Doors opened for him wherever he went, and there was always someone he knew who could make things easier for him. Billie never could have imagined that she would one day find herself strolling proudly down the Malecón on this Adonis’s arm, subjected to the malicious glares and half-whispered comments of passersby. But she held her head high: Orlando was her boyfriend. Soon, he would officially ask for her hand.

  At nightfall, the young suitor always walked her home and bid her good night at the front door with a chaste kiss on the cheek.

  Celia and Nicolás, Billie’s parents, watched uneasily as this relationship blossomed before their eyes. They didn’t care for it. They knew the rumors about the boy, and they were frightened for her. She was only fifteen! They were still paying off the debts from her quinceañera. It had been the most beautiful quinceañera in all Havana. Celia’s eyes still hadn’t recovered from the long nights she’d spent sewing lavish dresses for her daughter by candlelight. But she had pulled it off. The photo album they had made as a keepsake—which she guarded as lovingly as her old records—proved it, and she showed it to her friends and relatives proudly.

  They worried that this parasite of a boy would steal their little girl’s innocence and then abandon her. They didn’t want to see her suffer, but, flushed with love, she didn’t hear their veiled warnings. Meanwhile, Rubén lionized his friend, which only heightened the girl’s emotions and made the parents more suspicious.

  Orlando liked to brag about his Spanish origins. He told Billie that his parents had immigrated to Cuba at the beginning of the twentieth century, fleeing the hunger and misery that had plagued them in their beloved Spain. The boy had grown up with the tales of witches and enchanted woods that his grandmother told him, and the cruder, more realistic stories of life in Spain relayed by his grandfather, who had died without ever fulfilling his desire to return to the homeland. Orlando had seized on that desire, moved less by the sentimental impulse of realizing the old man’s dream than by a yearning for adventure and a better life than Cuba could offer. He spoke often of Spain to Billie, always making it out to be a kind of promised land.

  “Look at it,” he would say, pointing to a random spot on the horizon as they sat on the wall of the Malecón, staring at the sea. “That’s where Spain is.”

  Billie would nod silently, but her gaze often wandered to the north. She squinted, as though trying to make out the silhouette of America in the distance. That’s where New York was, the most extraordinary city in the world, where anything was possible. That was where she really wanted to go. She dreamed of bringing her family with her and singing with her mother in the legendary jazz clubs.

  Orlando, aware of the girl’s dreams, noticed her silence and hugged her, smiling.

  “We’ll go to New York someday, I promise,” he said. “And to Spain too. We’ll go wherever we want to go. You’ll see. The world is ours!”

  Then he jumped onto the wall and shouted out to the sea, “The world is ours!” He repeated it over and over with his arms outstretched in a way that always made Billie laugh.

  She trusted him and blindly believed his words. She knew he was capable of getting anything he wanted and that one day he would bring her to America.

  Orlando sat down beside her again and kissed her tenderly.

  “Sing me a song, my love. Sing just for me,” he whispered between sweet caresses.

  And Billie sung softly, just for her lover’s ears while he listened in silence, with his gaze fixed on the horizon.

  CHAPTER 3

  Almost two years later, Billie was helping her mother with the chores one day before her father and two brothers came home from work. A mambo by Pérez Prado gave rhythm to their tasks. While one toiled away in the bathroom, rag in hand, the other dusted the furniture in the living room, swaying her hips to the music. Before she followed her mother into the master bedroom, Billie put on a Pablo Milanés record. The first chords of “Yolanda” trailed her down the hall, the singer’s caressing voice slipping into the room with her, and Billie let herself float away on his words of love as she smoothed the sheets: “I love you, I love you, I’ll always love you.”

  Celia watched her daughter with concern. Billie was unusually quiet and pensive that day, and a puzzled Celia kept casting furtive glances her way, wondering what was on her daughter’s mind. She had always been a little timid, but she was normally a happy little chatterbox with her family and friends, and she had always confided in her mother. Celia had noticed, however, that her daughter had grown more reserved since she had started going out with that boy. But Celia thought it was understandable; everyone knows couples have their secrets … She would simply have to get used to that.

  Suddenly their hands brushed against each other over the sheets, and Billie grabbed her mother’s in hers. When her mother looked up in surprise, Billie locked eyes with her and a smile trembled on her lips. “Lovers, lovers, always lovers,” the Cuban troubadour intoned.

  “I’m getting married, Mami,” the girl burst out.

  Celia let out a muffled sigh and sat down hard on the edge of the rickety old bed. Billie did the same.

  “To … that boy?” Celia stammered.

  “Of course, Mami,” Billie said, giggling nervously. “Who else would it be?”

  “Of course, of course,” her mother repeated, too stunned to say more. “But … I mean … are you sure, sweetie? You’re still just a girl.”

  “I’m almost eighteen, Mami,” Billie reminded her. “Orlando has asked me several times, and I can’t put it off anymore, or he’ll leave me. I told him yes, and he wants us to get married as soon as possible.”

  “But, sweetie,” Celia insisted. “You haven’t been together that long. What’s the rush?”

  “You and Papi were very young when you got married …”

  “Because circumstances made us. You know that. His parents were opposed to our engagement. They didn’t want him to marry a black girl, and they planned to send him away to forget about me. Getting married in secret was the only way to stop them separating us,” she said, giving her daughter a squeeze and a teasing smile. “But you don’t have that problem, my girl. We don’t mind that you’re marrying a white dreamboat.”

  Billie laughed. But then grew serious again. “We love each other, Mama, and we want to live together as soon as possible.”

  Celia felt like her daughter was reciting a prepared speech. Suddenly she was assaulted by a terrible thought and scrutinized her daughter’s face.

  “You’re not … ?” she hinted.

  “No!” Billie exclaimed, offended. “Orlando respects me. We’re in love. We want to get married and that’s all. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Yes, sweetie, yes. Of course I understand … I’m sorry.”

  Celia realized that her daughter had made up her mind, and nothing she could say was going to change it. If she insisted on raising her objections, they would just end up angry at each other. That’s why she didn’t remind Billie about her own dreams of becoming a singer, crushed forever, vanished among the diapers and baby bottles. History was repeating itself, and she could do nothing to stop it. She could only hope that her daughter wouldn’t ever regret rushing into things, as she did.

  But there was something about Orlando that Celia didn’t like. She couldn’t put her finger on it. And it wasn’t the rumors—Celia didn’t pay attention to the nattering of old ladies. It was something more worrying, something like an intuition that the boy wasn’t being completely honest. He was handsome, sure, and charming. There was no doubt about that. She understood why her daughter had fallen hopelessly in love with him. But she found him arrogant, too pleased w
ith himself, and she was afraid that he wouldn’t love her daughter the same way she loved him. She was afraid that he would cause her little girl pain. Blinded by love, her daughter heard only the seductive words that—she had no doubt—he whispered in her ear, eclipsing Billie’s ability to think rationally. Billie, whether she realized it or not, was still a little girl who had been sheltered by her family all her life. She was innocent and gullible, and he was already a man through and through, who knew very well what he wanted, whatever that may be; who, she’d heard, had lived a full life, despite his youth. It was rumored that he was a man of the night—that he had an affinity for everything that came with the darkness. Celia was sure he wouldn’t forgo a good bender even though he was engaged to her daughter. There was always a charitable soul ready to fill her in on his every movement.

  Billie, however, had made up her mind. That very same evening at dinner, she announced her engagement to the rest of the family. Her father was speechless and looked over at her mother for support, but she merely shrugged helplessly.

  Two days later, Orlando presented himself to Nicolás to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Aware that this was no more than a formality, and despite the whole business seeming too rushed to him, Billie’s father gave his blessing, knowing that his daughter would have her way, even if he opposed the union.

  He nonetheless tried to convince the boy not to hurry down the aisle. They should enjoy their engagement a little while longer.

  “You know how it is, boy,” he said to the suitor with a casual air of solidarity. “Once you get married, the babies come. Then there’s no time to enjoy being a couple. Life is to be lived, my friend! Enjoy it now! There will be plenty of time to be weighed down by responsibilities later.”

  Orlando listened attentively and nodded, a friendly smile on his lips.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied vaguely, after Nicolás’s long-winded speech.

  A few days later, the young couple announced the date of the wedding. There was hardly time to make the necessary preparations.

  “Such a rush, such a rush,” Celia grumbled. She turned on her husband and took out all her anxiety on him. “And you? You couldn’t have used your authority as the head of the family?”

  “What would you have wanted me to do, woman?” he said, struggling to defend himself. “I told them they’d be better off waiting. But love doesn’t wait. You know that, my love. They’re young … Like we were when we got married.”

  Nicolás took his wife in his arms and kissed her tenderly, trying to defuse the situation.

  “Bah! Enough fooling around!” She wriggled out of his arms, still clinging to her anger.

  But she was incapable of sharing any of her concerns with her daughter. Billie looked so happy that she couldn’t bring herself to disturb her with doubts. But that didn’t stop her from trying to prevent the marriage, albeit through veiled attempts. She tried to open her daughter’s eyes to reality while there was still time, or at least, to make sure she was doing the right thing and that her fiancé was good enough for her. She asked Billie lots of questions about Orlando, searching for some evidence that would either confirm her doubts or dispel them irrefutably and force her to admit that she was wrong, that she was nothing more than an obstinate, overprotective mother who would be suspicious of any man who courted her daughter. But all her efforts were in vain: In Billie’s eyes, Orlando was perfect. The boy even seemed to have settled down and put his wild ways behind him so that he could dedicate himself body and soul to his fiancée.

  Billie impatiently counted down the days until she would be united with him forever.

  CHAPTER 4

  She had just turned eighteen when she married Orlando.

  It was a simple wedding, since these weren’t the times for extravagances. Still, there was plenty of beer and rum, which the government made available in abundance for weddings. But to Billie, it seemed a sad affair. Her family didn’t seem as happy for her as she would have liked. Though they tried to act cheerful, she felt the tension in the air. Her fiancé’s family didn’t appear to get along with hers and kept their distance, and she even witnessed the beginning of an argument between father and son. Later, Orlando appeared to get in some kind of tiff with a guest that Billie didn’t know. She was a slightly older woman with a long mane of dyed blonde hair—a little tasteless, she thought—in a tight, low-cut white dress that wasn’t very appropriate for a wedding, since etiquette dictated that that color was reserved for the bride. Orlando pulled the woman aside, out of view of the guests, and when he returned to the party a little while later, he looked annoyed. The stranger didn’t reappear.

  Celia couldn’t help but feel anxious as she watched the scene unfold.

  “It seems like the groom had something with that—” one of the guests hissed maliciously in Celia’s ear.

  “Well it’s over now,” Celia said, cutting her off sharply and moving away.

  Billie had always imagined that this would be the happiest day of her life, that everyone would rejoice, and her whole family would share in her joy. But as it was, only her two brothers seemed truly happy. Even Orlando was tense, a far cry from the sweet, carefree man she knew. She thought maybe he was nervous; she certainly was. She even wondered whether her parents were right after all—maybe they should have waited a little longer. Did Orlando regret taking this step? She felt a surge of fear at such a terrible thought. No, that wasn’t possible. He was the one who had insisted they get married as soon as they could. She would simply have to show him that he hadn’t been wrong, that she was the wife he needed. Her mother’s advice would help make up for her lack of experience. She went over to Orlando and took his arm tenderly. He looked at her and smiled in that way that made her tremble. As he kissed her on the lips, all her fears vanished.

  Celia couldn’t free herself from the pressure gripping her chest, as if an omen wanted to make itself known. She looked at her still-bewildered husband and was overcome by a wave of tenderness. The poor man was trying to feign happiness so he didn’t upset his daughter, but to Celia, who knew him so well, it was obvious that he was making an enormous effort to control his emotions. He wasn’t ready to let go of the apple of his eye, the light of his life, to accept that she had become a woman overnight and now belonged to another man.

  Celia sidled up to her husband and pulled him out onto the dance floor. Nicolás, groaning and complaining, tried to escape, but other guests soon formed a circle around the couple and began cheering them on with laughter and applause. Nicolás had always been a great dancer. Like the rest of the family, he had rhythm in his blood. After dancing with his wife, he danced with his daughter. He was not allowed to sit down for a long time, as all the women wanted to dance with him, and he passed from one set of arms to the next under the satisfied gaze of his wife. Later, mother and daughter sang to their guests, and everyone left the party in good spirits.

  It was only when Celia hugged her daughter good-bye that her emotions betrayed her and tears flooded her eyes.

  “But, Mami,” Billie consoled her. “I’ll be here, right here. I promise I’ll come see you every day. You’ll see. You’ll have to kick me out. You won’t even realize I don’t live with you anymore.”

  “Yes, my girl, yes. Please do that. Come and see me every day,” Celia begged, overwhelmed by an intangible unease, as if she had a premonition that this wasn’t going to go well and that a bitter future awaited her daughter.

  Her son-in-law hugged her next. She looked him in the eyes with an expression that was simultaneously a plea and a warning.

  “Treat her well. She’s still just a girl. Take good care of her.”

  “I will, Mama Celia,” he said, smiling. Kissing her sweetly, he added, “She’s mine to worry about now.”

  Nicolás and Celia watched as, amid the guests’ cheering, Orlando drove away with Billie in a car a friend had lent them. They would spend their honeymoon on the beaches of Varadero.

  Orlando told
her the news that night, when they were still sweaty and panting, settled in each other’s arms after making love. Billie, with the pleasure and pain of her first time lodged at the bottom of her belly, her heart and mind inflamed, drunk in love, found herself wrenched suddenly from a sweet and placid drowsiness.

  “We’re going to Spain, chocolate chip,” he announced, kissing her tenderly.

  “When?” Billie could hardly contain her surprise.

  “Soon,” Orlando replied, caressing her young breasts. “Very soon.”

  “But …” she replied, confused, suddenly on the verge of tears.

  “I’ll explain everything tomorrow, my love, okay?” he said, cutting her off with a kiss. “You don’t need to worry about a thing. It’s been a big day. Let’s sleep a little now, okay?”

  He kissed her again and turned over in bed, lacing his fingers through hers and draping his arm over her stomach. Billie soon heard his breathing become measured and deep. But, despite being exhausted after such an emotional day, she couldn’t get to sleep. Her brain was a tornado of thoughts—wild, out of control, with no order or direction. She thought about her mother, how strange and suspicious she had found her daughter’s boyfriend’s insistence that they marry right away. Why hadn’t Orlando said anything? Why hadn’t he consulted her, asked her opinion? Was he afraid that she would refuse to go with him or marry him? What would she have done if she had known? She couldn’t answer that question. She loved her husband madly, but the last thing she wanted right then was to go to Spain. She didn’t want to leave her country, at least not so soon.

  She had no idea when Orlando had made the decision to leave, how long he had been planning the trip. He had never said anything to make her suspect the departure was so imminent, neither during their engagement nor when he asked her to marry him. She knew that her husband was drowning on this island, that he wanted to escape, to travel, to know the world, but she had thought it was a distant, somewhat-outlandish dream, like hers of becoming a singer—something that would never actually happen.