Beautiful Maria of My Soul Read Free Page A

her stomach to do it, she gave that Sixto a cautious nip on the side of his face, saw the bristles in his nostrils, the spiderwebs in his ears, smelled the rawness of his breath, and felt sad for the man; but wouldn’t you know it, at the same time he couldn’t help but take her hand and move it towards his right leg, where something had crept forward, uncoiling gradually, a stony gargoyle’s erection, like a piece of tubing expanding inside his trousers—was it filled with tears or blood? (Of suffering, or of lust?) At the sight—and touch—of it, her knuckles having grazed that protuberance, María turned away, pulled back her hand, pretending that nothing had happened.
    They both pretended, Sixto, with a deep breath, starting the truck again and driving it over to a delivery pen. There he had some kind of discussion with a foreman and, letting drop the rear gate, rousted his swine, some forty or so, into their own little compound, where they were to be counted, weighed, and, depending on that, kept to be further fattened up on palmiche or else led immediately to the slaughter. María, it should be said, for all the animals she had (reluctantly) killed herself on the farm, had never experienced such an overwhelming scent of blood and entrails in the air before. Or maybe it was all their suffering that she was feeling—squeals and blurting cattle cries resounded from the long stock houses inside. Somewhere nearby, and much worse, however, was a tannery, which filled the air with a viscous smell like lacquered rotting flesh, so foul as to turn her stomach. She had to get out. Stepping down from the cab, and feeling ashamed of herself, beautiful María, in her first act in Havana, stumbled over to a corner where she emptied her guts into a puddle of stagnant water—her lovely reflection, with her startling eyes, staring back up at her through the muck, her expression bewildered, as if to ask, Chica, what on earth are you doing here?
    Oh, but the workers were nice to her. She cleaned up in one of their washrooms, its flush toilets and spigot taps delighting her. Someone gave María a bottle of Coca-Cola, someone else, a package of chewing gum, and a third offered her a cigarette, which she declined. Then, foran hour or so, she just sat waiting in an office thumbing through magazines that she couldn’t read, though the pictures of Hollywood stars always engaged her. Johnny Weissmuller, still making those Tarzan movies, was the sort of man that always made her wonder just what men in loincloths thought about as they swung through the trees. And Tyrone Power, a dazzlingly good-looking fellow whose teeth were so white she wondered if they were real (though, according to María, as she would tell her daughter a million times, he was not as handsome as her músico.) Once Sixto had settled up, he introduced María to the boss, who, taking one look and caring little about what she could do, offered her a job “cleaning,” as he put it, for a peso a day in the slaughterhouse. She turned him down—it was just too much for her, too much blood and stink, the torrents of flies alone enough to make her sick again.
    Afterwards, Sixto drove her to a cheap hotel near the old quarter. And while she had pretended that everything was fine about staying there, she didn’t feel too good about the way Sixto, with a happy look in his eyes, kept promising to visit her whenever he came back to the city, about three or four times a month, he said. So for the sake of avoiding any hurt feelings, she thanked him for all his help and stood by the doorway of that hotel waving farewell and smiling as if she really hadn’t been offended and frightened by what she had seen in his trousers—men saying one thing, but meaning another. Once his truck had disappeared down a street of whose name she had no inkling, María, with her little cloth sack and her new purchases, excused herself and left the dingy lobby of that hotel. She had nothing against the