Free Beautiful Maria of My Soul by Oscar Hijuelos Page B

auditions and took offense at any act requiring that she take off her pasties; mainly, she tended to put off some of her bosses by refusing their advances. One manager, a certain Orlando, at the Knock-Knock, off Zayas, fired her when she wouldn’t become his woman— “mi mujer” —but as shabbily as he had treated her, having her thrown out on the street, at least he hadn’t pulled out a knife like that hoodlum who ran a joint—was it the Club Paree?—by Ramparts Street; he cut off the buttons of her dress one by one and would have raped her on his office table had not María fallen to the floor feigning another epileptic fit— forgive me, Sister —her head twisting, teeth chattering, body shaking, as if she were possessed. Or she sometimes broke down crying, pleading that she was religious, and became so disconsolate that even the most heartless and goatish of men gave up their harassments, often thinking, as a trance burned in her beautiful eyes, That woman is crazy.
    But there was something about a sad man that always tempted her. In that instance, such tristeza was found in a certain Señor Aponte, proud proprietor of the Versailles in the Vedado, with its Folies-Bergère floor show. A quite rotund fellow and a destroyer of chairs, he always sweatedprofusely, a kerchief pressed to his damp brow. His dark eyes seemed anxious, as if, in his burly, struggling, short-breathing manner, he might drop dead at any moment. While the other girls made jokes about what an ordeal it would be to go to bed with him, María, liking the man, found his loneliness touching—he kept a cage of parakeets in his office and would be often overheard through his door speaking endearingly with them as if they were children.
    Still, it came down to the same thing. Called into his office to discuss a featured spot in the chorus, María had listened to him sing her praises as a dancer when, out of the blue, he pulled from a drawer a pair of elbow-length white satin gloves and then, with boyish reticence, asked her to put those gloves on and fondle him. “Please, I beg you.” Then he made a confession, declaring that it was very hard to go through life loving one of his dancers the way he loved her; that with his days in the world so short—he just knew it—he could go to his grave happily if only she would perform that little act. She almost did—not for a better job, or because of the way he had set aside a twenty-dollar bill on the ink blotter of his desk for her, but because he seemed to be telling the truth—he certainly looked like he was not long for this world. That evening she almost gave in to the inner argument that, far from being a lowly act, it would be one of decency and grace—his sadness cutting into her. In the end, however, even when she had gone so far as to slip those gloves on, the words puta and lowlife flashing through her mind, her kindlier inclinations lost out to her virtuous resolve, and, with tears in her eyes, she fled that room.
    A few weeks later, when she heard that Señor Aponte had dropped dead from a heart attack while walking in the arcades of Galliano, she surely had felt bad. When she heard the rumor that a love note written to one of the chorus girls had been found in his pocket, she was certain that it had been intended for her, though she wouldn’t have been able to read it. For days, she wished to God that she had honored that man’s simple request—perhaps a last wish—the money would have been useful and hewould have been happy. Who would it have hurt, and who would have known about it?
    No, she was not about to become one of those young girls who happen to lie down for money with men. It would have been easy enough to find takers, for she had already been stirring the male juices for a long time in that city, and the expression on María’s nearly ecstatic face as she danced left men seriously fatigued with desire. She’d already received half a dozen marriage proposals from men on