sunken-eyed proprietor—he seemed nice enough in his forlorn way—she just didn’t want to take a chance of Sixto getting any ideas about coming back to find her.
Chapter THREE
H aving gone from hotel to hotel and boardinghouse to boardinghouse for most of that afternoon, she found the cheapest place possible. It was off Virtudes, or perhaps San Isidro, or maybe along one of those narrow winding cobblestone streets near the harbor—a place of such squalor that she’d one day get the shivers just thinking about it. A kindly anciana, la señora Matilda Díaz, of portly dimensions, was one of those gallegas whose skin had a yellow pallor from smoking cigarettes from dawn to dusk. With a mustiness that no amount of nicotine could cover, she took a liking to the young woman, an innocent from the countryside with obviously no experience of what living in a city like Havana was about. The men around there , muy suave, or real slick, were not to be believed or trusted.
“You should be careful,” she told María. “I was once as pretty as you, believe it or not. But, as you can see”—and she shrugged—“the passing of the years will wilt even the finest bloom.” Shortly, she took María to a room on the third floor which cost about a peseta a night, or a quarter, a rent that, even in 1947, would have been considered inexpensive (as opposed to two hundred and fifty dollars a night for a suite in the Italian port town of Portofino, where María and her daughter, by then a doctor, were to stay many years later). There wasn’t much to it, just a cot, a lamp, a chair, a washbasin, a speckled doorway mirror, with a toilet and shower down the hall—“Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t”—but, though far from being comfortable, at least it had a high doorway with shutters and a little balcony that looked out onto an inner courtyard and over to other similar rooms.
Used to the countryside, where everyone knew your business, Maríamade nothing of the fact that right across the way she could see one of her neighbors, a lanky dissipated fellow with a wild pompadour and pronounced gut, standing on his balcony in only a pair of calzoncillos. Frying some bacalao over a hot plate, he whistled as soon as their eyes met. From another direction, a woman, obviously a whore, closing her shutters, sent María a kiss off the upturned palm of her hand before going inside to do whatever whores did. (María knew but didn’t let on, while the señora, well aware of the quality and livelihood of her tenants, simply shrugged again.)
Still, María took comfort in having neighbors and in the fact that she could at least open her windows to get a breath of air at night. But María, out on her own for the first time, and feeling frightened by the prospect of having to get along in a city she hardly knew, where she’d have to depend on strangers to help her get around—she was an analfabeta, an illiterate, after all—could barely work up the nerve to go out that evening. Just too much was going on—trolley cars clanging, cars honking horns, horses clip-clopping along, distant sirens blaring, radios sounding from a half dozen windows, voices chattering, a river of life out on the street. Coming from the sticks, she found herself feeling far more clueless than she, without knowing anyone, could have predicted. Por Dios, she even started missing that damned campo, where not much ever really happened, and her papito, who could be a pain in the culo, as well as the farmers and their animals; and she missed her younger sister, Teresita, and her mamá, who were both dead.
Lordy, it was a lonely place.
With her stomach queasy from hunger and her gum chewed down to nothing, all she could do was to go downstairs and ask the señora for something to eat. La señora Matilda was not a stingy woman, and cooked her a tortilla of potatoes and chorizo, but once María followed her into her little suite of rooms, the sight of the absolute filth
Chapter THREE
H aving gone from hotel to hotel and boardinghouse to boardinghouse for most of that afternoon, she found the cheapest place possible. It was off Virtudes, or perhaps San Isidro, or maybe along one of those narrow winding cobblestone streets near the harbor—a place of such squalor that she’d one day get the shivers just thinking about it. A kindly anciana, la señora Matilda Díaz, of portly dimensions, was one of those gallegas whose skin had a yellow pallor from smoking cigarettes from dawn to dusk. With a mustiness that no amount of nicotine could cover, she took a liking to the young woman, an innocent from the countryside with obviously no experience of what living in a city like Havana was about. The men around there , muy suave, or real slick, were not to be believed or trusted.
“You should be careful,” she told María. “I was once as pretty as you, believe it or not. But, as you can see”—and she shrugged—“the passing of the years will wilt even the finest bloom.” Shortly, she took María to a room on the third floor which cost about a peseta a night, or a quarter, a rent that, even in 1947, would have been considered inexpensive (as opposed to two hundred and fifty dollars a night for a suite in the Italian port town of Portofino, where María and her daughter, by then a doctor, were to stay many years later). There wasn’t much to it, just a cot, a lamp, a chair, a washbasin, a speckled doorway mirror, with a toilet and shower down the hall—“Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t”—but, though far from being comfortable, at least it had a high doorway with shutters and a little balcony that looked out onto an inner courtyard and over to other similar rooms.
Used to the countryside, where everyone knew your business, Maríamade nothing of the fact that right across the way she could see one of her neighbors, a lanky dissipated fellow with a wild pompadour and pronounced gut, standing on his balcony in only a pair of calzoncillos. Frying some bacalao over a hot plate, he whistled as soon as their eyes met. From another direction, a woman, obviously a whore, closing her shutters, sent María a kiss off the upturned palm of her hand before going inside to do whatever whores did. (María knew but didn’t let on, while the señora, well aware of the quality and livelihood of her tenants, simply shrugged again.)
Still, María took comfort in having neighbors and in the fact that she could at least open her windows to get a breath of air at night. But María, out on her own for the first time, and feeling frightened by the prospect of having to get along in a city she hardly knew, where she’d have to depend on strangers to help her get around—she was an analfabeta, an illiterate, after all—could barely work up the nerve to go out that evening. Just too much was going on—trolley cars clanging, cars honking horns, horses clip-clopping along, distant sirens blaring, radios sounding from a half dozen windows, voices chattering, a river of life out on the street. Coming from the sticks, she found herself feeling far more clueless than she, without knowing anyone, could have predicted. Por Dios, she even started missing that damned campo, where not much ever really happened, and her papito, who could be a pain in the culo, as well as the farmers and their animals; and she missed her younger sister, Teresita, and her mamá, who were both dead.
Lordy, it was a lonely place.
With her stomach queasy from hunger and her gum chewed down to nothing, all she could do was to go downstairs and ask the señora for something to eat. La señora Matilda was not a stingy woman, and cooked her a tortilla of potatoes and chorizo, but once María followed her into her little suite of rooms, the sight of the absolute filth
Similar Books
The Secret Lives of Married Women
Elissa Wald
I Drink for a Reason
David Cross
Dead Secret
Janice Frost
Darkest Love
Melody Tweedy
The Wolfe Widow (A Book Collector Mystery)
Victoria Abbott
Every Part of You Taunts Me
Megan Hart
Full Bloom
Jayne Ann Krentz
Closer Home
Kerry Anne King
Sweet Salvation
Maddie Taylor