Havana Jazz Club (17 page)

CHAPTER 32

On the way to his studio, Gerardo thought about all the unexpected turns his life had taken in the last year.

He could remember the long whistle of the train announcing its imminent departure as if he were hearing it right then, and when he closed his eyes, he felt a trembling as the train pulled out slowly and then began to surge forward at full speed. Gerardo sprawled in his seat and inhaled deeply, savoring the moment that marked the end of his old life and the beginning of a new one. Though he was already seventy, he was as excited as a teenager.

When he opened his eyes again, the black mouth of the station had shrunk in the distance. Then his gaze fell on his own reflection in the window, and he smiled. That friendly looking man blurred before him, then returned his smile. He and his image winked and then faded so that all he could see were the monotonous, gray buildings that marked the outskirts of the city.

He had a long journey ahead of him and he was glad. It gave him time to think. He let himself be rocked by the sweet sound of the train wheels chugging against the tracks. He had always liked that sound, though on modern trains, he realized, one felt it more than heard it. He recalled traveling as a child with his father, who always complained that the sharp whistle woke him up at every station and that the rocking of the train was destroying his kidneys . . . But that was precisely what had excited little Gerardo as a boy: the whistle, the swaying, the clattering—it all made his imagination run wild. Then he would see himself on horseback, transported to the wide prairies of the Wild West, galloping over the land like lightning, being chased by bandits, and rescuing beautiful damsels. Every shake, every loud screech, every violent twist on the tracks was an impending danger that he, the brave cowboy, had to conquer with his ingenuity and heroism. Finally at the end of the trip, father and son would arrive exhausted and covered in dust in their remote village. The village was actually very close to the city, but in the fifties, distances seemed longer—Gerardo remembered with a faint smile.

He had always liked trains, which he considered an invitation to dream. Sometimes, he and his father went to the little station in the village with no intention of going anywhere, at least not physically. They traveled through their imaginations. They would sit on a bench on the platform and observe the bustle of the passengers; the smoking machines; the comings and goings of the trains; the reunions and farewells; the tears, hugs, and a few passionate, furtive kisses. One of his favorite games was to follow one of the travelers with his gaze and make up his destination, imagining who awaited them at the other end, fantasizing about what had brought them to this mysterious and remote place. His father would tell Gerardo all about other cities and towns he knew of—whether it was by the sea, or surrounded by tall mountains, whether it was cold or hot, whether the people were friendly or reserved. And if he didn’t know the answers, they would make them up together. When they got home, Gerardo would rush to draw it in one of his notebooks. He had always liked to draw.

Beyond the station, where the tracks blurred until they disappeared in the distance, was an unknown, unexplored world that called to him. He dreamed of getting on one of those trains one day and riding it to the end of the line, wherever that might be.

That moment had taken fifty years to arrive. But he finally found himself sitting on a train that would take him far away, toward the northeast, to the Barcelona mythologized by years and dreams. He left alone, carrying no luggage, ready to start over. He was eager to absorb the colors of the sea and capture them on his canvases as he had always wanted to—as he had almost forgotten he always wanted to.

Wide plains greeted him through the window. The fields sown in tones of gold, chestnut, and red made up a capricious geometry, the colors of the earth competing in beauty with the exultant blue of the sky, which cried out to be the deserving protagonist of some hypothetical canvas.

How had he gotten to this train? Sometimes he doubted any of it was real. But these fields were real, and the soft buzzing of the train was real. Back there, in his hometown, he had unleashed a small cataclysm in the heart of his family, and everyone thought he had lost his mind. He smiled again. It wasn’t really surprising that they thought so—he had been rather surprised himself at what had transpired in under twenty-four hours.

Several days before, when the business where he had worked for nearly forty years honored him with a good-bye lunch for his retirement—at which he had received the standard watch and commemorative plaque—a strange uneasiness had materialized inside him. “Now what?” chirped an insidious little voice in his brain, interrupting the laughter and conversation. “Now you slow down and enjoy life,” he replied to himself. A mocking laugh echoed in his head, but he did his best to ignore it and rejoin the party. He had retired early because he had felt tired and despondent for some time. It took a huge effort for him to get out of bed every morning and spend all day at a job that he had no interest in. Nothing had any meaning anymore. His children were grown, and the needs of the family were more than covered. He sensed that he was wasting his life, the only one he would ever have, and he wanted to do what he liked in the years that were left to him.

On his first day of retirement, he walked into the town center to buy a few things. He had an almost childish fixation on buying some jeans, which wasn’t as banal as it might seem. In fact, it had a very special significance for him, as it was a symbolic way of recapturing his youth and his long-lost freedom, the spirit of rebellion—everything, he suddenly realized, that the inertia of life had put in a dark corner of his soul until they were forgotten.

He didn’t understand how it had happened. Forty years earlier, he had been a stubborn young man, full of hope and energy, who dreamed of becoming a celebrated artist. Even back then, he had shown his work in a couple of very successful exhibitions with great reviews, and it was clear that he had promise in the art world. But then, just when his fledgling fame was starting to take off, he met Rosa. She was a tremendously beautiful woman, so lovely that even she seemed overwhelmed by her beauty. She was timid and suspicious, and only the contemplation of the handsome young artist’s work succeeded in opening a tiny crack in her inscrutable character. That kind of negation of her own beauty immediately fascinated the young man, who wanted to paint her from the moment he first laid eyes on her. She was attracted to the painter as well and accepted his proposal. They started to see each other frequently and soon fell hopelessly in love. After a stormy romance plagued by breakups and reunions, Rosa told him one fine day that she was pregnant. Gerardo was at a decisive moment in his career, and his agent warned him that the announcement wouldn’t benefit him, but he loved Rosa and didn’t hesitate. They got married right away, and soon after, Silvia was born. From then on, Gerardo tried to balance his artistic career with sporadic jobs teaching classes in art school that allowed him to fulfill his new responsibilities. But, slippery and capricious, success stopped smiling on him, and when Alex was born a year later, Gerardo was forced to find a full-time job that could support his family without hardship. Even then, he promised himself that he wouldn’t give up his true vocation, thinking that he could return to it fully once the kids were a little older.

But work and all sorts of other obligations held him back, and there never seemed to be time to shut himself in his studio and pick up the brush. Gerardo knew that the employee was strangling the artist, but there was nothing he could do at that point to change it. Someday things would change, he told himself, and he would be able to paint again.

As the children grew older, the need for space obligated the parents to turn Gerardo’s studio into Alex’s bedroom. The canvases and paintings ended up in storage. They were forgotten there for a long time, until one day Rosa was cleaning and decided to throw out the tubes of paint and dried out brushes once and for all. Gerardo’s dreams had dried out by then too. With resignation, he accepted the fate that life had drawn for him, so different from the one he had imagined.

He sighed sadly as the train continued down the narrow scar of iron track that split the fields in two. He stood up to stretch his legs and go to the dining car.

He continued ruminating as he ate a sandwich and drank a beer. He didn’t regret any of it—he had done what he had to—and his two children were able to go to university, and the family had led a comfortable life.

He smiled at the thought of the morning he went to buy the famous jeans. He went into the store and headed straight toward his goal. After trying on a few pairs, he decided to walk out in them. At work, he had had to wear a suit and tie. He had gotten so used to it that casual clothes seemed to have disappeared from his wardrobe.

“These are my first jeans in years,” he confessed to the girl at the register, smiling like a child.

“Cash or credit?” she asked, snapping her gum.

“Credit,” Gerardo replied, not losing his smile.

He strolled back to his house slowly, enjoying the first rays of sun falling on the city like a caress after a long, tedious winter. As he passed a store window, he saw his image reflected in the glass and felt rejuvenated.

Rosa seemed annoyed that he was home so soon. And when Gerardo showed her his purchase, she spat out that they were ridiculous, that he was too old to wear “those things.” He felt wounded, but he didn’t want to start one of their frequent arguments.

“I’m going to put the studio back up in Alex’s room,” he told his wife as they ate. “Since the kids aren’t here anymore, I have time to get back to painting.”

“Yes, just what we need,” she said sharply. “Now that we finally have the house in shape, you want to fill it with junk again.”

Gerardo didn’t reply. After eating, he helped his wife clear the table and said he was going out to get some coffee.

Rosa had changed, he thought sadly as he walked along. The years had soured her character, and Gerardo was sure she had stopped loving him a long time ago. He called his son who lived nearby, and they met up for coffee.

“Alex,” he said. “Are you happy with your job?”

“Well, it’s alright,” his son replied. “And I’m making good money.”

“I mean, does it fulfill you? Are you happy there? Or is there something else you would have liked to dedicate yourself to?”

“What’s up with you, Papa?” the boy asked.

“Nothing, son. I was just thinking you only live once.” He paused briefly and looked up at his son, forcing a smile that didn’t hide his preoccupation. Then he added, “Don’t give up on your dreams, Alex.”

That afternoon, he decided to go visit his daughter and newborn grandson. Silvia was his weakness. They had always had a very special relationship. In a way, he felt he had been formed by her because watching her helped him better understand life. Despite graduating with brilliant qualifications, she and her partner had chosen to open a studio where she made her own jewelry, which she sold at markets all over the country. They would probably never be rich, but they had all they needed to live and be happy. Gerardo applauded Silvia’s decision and admired her bravery, which was a source of constant conflict with Rosa, who had never liked that “hippie” who had snatched up their precious daughter.

“I’m leaving,” Gerardo announced suddenly, as he stroked little Ivan’s face, sleeping in his arms.

As he said those two simple words to his daughter, an idea crystallized in his mind that had been gestating subconsciously this whole strange day, and maybe for years.

Silvia immediately understood what he was really saying. She knew her father’s restlessness, his silent, latent frustration all those years, and she was glad that he was finally going to realize his dreams.

“When?” she asked.

“Today, now,” he replied. “I’m not going back home.”

“Are you sure?” Silvia let a mischievous giggle escape when her father nodded. “Mama’s gonna flip out.”

Gerardo shrugged and kissed the little one on the forehead before handing him back to his mother and walking toward the door.

“I’ll call you when I get settled,” he promised as he embraced his daughter.

“We’ll come visit you soon,” she said, stroking her father’s beard tenderly. “Be happy, Papa. You deserve it.”

Gerardo headed straight to the station and booked a ticket to Barcelona for first thing in the morning. Then, he looked for a hotel nearby where he could spend the night, and he called Rosa to tell her his decision. He would have preferred to tell her in person, but he knew how she would react.

“Have you lost your mind?” his wife screamed at him, enraged. Gerardo had to pull the phone away from his ear so that she wouldn’t blow out his eardrum. “Stop being so foolish and come home right now!”

“I’m sorry, Rosa. I’ll call you soon. Good-bye.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me! Gerardo! Gerardo!”

Evening was falling meekly over Barcelona when Gerardo arrived. As he stepped out on the street, he raised his face toward the graying sky, which decided to bless his arrival with a brief and intense shower. He closed his eyes and let the rain drench his face. He inhaled the humid air, which smelled of wet earth, and took the first step into his new life.

CHAPTER 33

A year later, Gerardo had found his place in the world. He enjoyed a calm existence doing what he had always dreamed of. Age had mellowed his aspirations, so he didn’t yearn for anything more than to live the way he wanted and savor his freedom. The delusions of greatness, the dreams of fame and fortune, were ambitions that he left to the young. For him, happiness didn’t come from staying on the beaten path. He didn’t have a summit to reach or a finish line to cross. He didn’t need to fight for anything. All he needed to do was keep walking.

In spite of that—or maybe because of it—luck smiled on him, and his paintings sold. He faced this unexpected development with humor and stoicism. He continued to work hard, delighting in each brushstroke, re-creating himself in each painting for desperate art dealers and collectors, who hadn’t learned that the art of living was to enjoy each moment, to savor every second of life, every tiny detail.

One evening, on one of his habitual strolls around the Gothic Quarter, he happened to pass by the Havana Jazz Club and decided to go in. The mixed-race woman behind the bar immediately caught his attention. She was beautiful, zaftig. She looked sad, but he was captivated by her frank smile when she said good evening and asked him what he would like. Then, she moved away from him, and spent a long time absorbed in the jazz band improvising on stage, applauding enthusiastically when they were done. She only paid attention to him again when he called to her to settle his check. She smiled again, and he smiled back as he raised the collar on his jacket.

“It’s cold,” he said, stupidly.

The woman nodded and said good night.

“Good night,” he repeated.

As he left, he wondered how he could be so awkward. Why hadn’t he been able to strike up a conversation with her? He had acted like a stupid teenager. He needed to see her again. She was probably married—but what did that matter? He just wanted to see her again, to talk to her. There was something captivating about the woman, and it fascinated him.

Other obligations kept him from fulfilling his wish for the next few days, but when he finally had the chance, he headed over as excited as if it were a first date. This time he managed to strike up a trivial conversation with Billie and even found out her name. Though her unusual name piqued his curiosity, he abstained from asking about it. From then on, he stopped by almost every day to have a drink and talk to her for a while.

An undeniable current of kindness grew between them. But somehow unbelievably—despite the fact that all of Barcelona filed in every night to hear the Cuban singer—Gerardo didn’t even know she sang. Billie usually performed at the end of the night, and Gerardo retired early, so he had never heard her sing, and she had never mentioned it. She was always protective of her privacy, and she revealed little about herself, so Gerardo thought that she was simply the proprietor of the place. Billie, however, knew all about him. Despite whatever Armando and Matías thought, she believed he was a noble, kind spirit ready to open his heart easily. And Billie was a great listener. Her warmth invited secrets. Armando often teased her affectionately about this quality of hers. He said all the saps flocked to her, like flies to honey, to tell her their pains, and she always listened patiently and with great compassion.

“We should charge for therapy sessions,” Armando joked.

“Lots of people get lonely,” Billie replied, with a resigned air. “They come here, and they’re grateful they can talk to someone.”

Though Gerardo didn’t belong to that group, he hadn’t escaped Billie’s enveloping empathy.

That’s how she knew the painter had arrived in Barcelona a year ago from a small Castilian village, fulfilling a dream he had postponed for many years, to dedicate his life to art. She knew that he had two children and a grandson and that the reason he left the club early was because he liked to paint at night, when the city was sleeping and took on a special, almost surreal quiet, a peaceful silence only occasionally broken by some distant, muffled sound. That’s when he felt most inspired, free to let his imagination run wild, to distill the outside world and let the paintbrushes talk and slide wherever they wanted on the white surface of the canvas or page. Sometimes he worked all night and then awoke, surprised that the day was already well under way. When he glimpsed the picture he had painted, he sometimes didn’t recognize it as his. He remembered snatches, brushstrokes, short flashes of inspiration, as if he had painted it in a state of trance, of ecstasy. The colors looked dull and false under the artificial light of the studio, but outside, they shone like the sun. The inspiration for the paintings seemed to come out of a world of dreams, out of a universe that only manifested under the enigmatic influence of the moon.

What Billie didn’t know was that she was starting to appear in Gerardo’s paintings. She emerged in this dreamy and nocturnal world, surrounded by exotic landscapes depicting the Cuba she loved so much, as imagined by Gerardo, whose only references were books and the tourist brochures piled up in his study to relieve his absolute ignorance about the faraway island. Billie appeared in his paintings alongside a Malecón lashed by waves, nostalgically contemplating an infinite sea, her hair and dress whipped by the wind. She appeared evanescent and ethereal in front of colonial houses that Gerardo had copied from travel magazines; smiling in a Caribbean dress surrounded by people of all colors singing and dancing to the sound of tambourines; and suddenly in the shadows, mysterious and dark since the night Gerardo finally heard her sing . . .

A tight deadline on several paintings that he had promised to buyers forced him to break his routine and work long hours for several days in a row. He barely had time to eat and sleep, so for a time, he had to give up his daily visit to the Havana Jazz Club. After a few days of working tirelessly, he suddenly felt compelled one night to take a break and go to the club, even though it was almost closing time.

When he went in, the trumpet was spreading its golden, vibrant sound in the first notes of “Strange Fruit,” that heartrending, controversial song that had made Billie Holiday famous throughout the world. It spoke of the lynching of black men, in the southern United States, hanging from the trees like “strange fruit,” turning them into a grotesque and bitter harvest.

On the stage, Billie noticed his arrival but kept her eyes down, working hard not to show that she recognized him. At first, Gerardo didn’t notice her. The Billie he knew was familiar and close. The one he saw now, under the stage lights, was enveloped in a surreal halo, wrapped in a profound and private sadness that made her seem inaccessible, like a wounded goddess on her elevated pedestal. Her voice flowed densely, whispering and dark, her emotions contained. She seemed to be on the verge of bursting into tears. A furtive tear may have slipped down her cheek—it was hard to tell for sure—but the tears were certainly visible on the women in the audience who were listening in overwhelmed silence.

At the end of the song, enthusiastic applause jolted him back to the reality of the crowded room. Billie thanked the crowd with a light nod of her head and waited for the clapping to die down before she got down from the stage, transformed again into the unassuming and simple woman Gerardo knew. She responded naturally to the congratulations she received as she passed. When she got to the painter—who was staring at her with his mouth hanging open—she greeted him with a familiar gesture.

“I didn’t know you sang like that . . . Well, I didn’t even know you sang—you never told me,” he babbled, admiring and scolding all at once, as he trailed her to the bar. “That was . . . incredible, Billie. Marvelous, sublime. You left me speechless.”

“Doesn’t seem that way,” Billie laughed. “I highly doubt you could be left speechless.”

“It was . . . majestic, divine,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, and added, half serious, half joking, “I’m never going to forgive you for hiding this until now.”

“I didn’t hide it,” Billie said. “I sing every night. You just weren’t here, and it never came up.”

“It never came up?” Gerardo said incredulously, slapping his forehead. “Of course! Because I’m an idiot who only talks about himself. That’s why it never came up. I must have seemed like a moron acting like an artist when the one who really deserves admiration here is you.”

“Come on, don’t be silly.”

“What’s silly? That I’m an imbecile or that you’re amazing?”

“Are you guys fighting?” Armando broke in from across the bar, with a teasing smile.

“Billie never told me that she could sing so marvelously,” Gerardo said. “It’s the first time I’ve heard her, and I’m still recovering.”

“Well, that’s how she is. You’ll get to know her. Isn’t her voice incredible?”

Gerardo nodded, and the two men looked at her smitten for a few seconds, until she turned to them awkwardly with a nervous smile.

“What are you two looking at with those dopey faces? Give me a break!” she protested. All three burst into laughter.

A few months later, they had the inaugural exhibition of Gerardo’s work at the Havana Jazz Club, with a small party that was attended by a good-sized crowd.

Billie’s image was easily recognizable on the canvases: smiling and joyful in some, surrounded by bright colors that evoked happiness and freshness; in others, nebulous and nocturnal, almost spectral, submerged in darkness and wrapped in fog.

“He’s crazy about her,” Matías declared, as he contemplated the paintings next to Armando. “He practically wrote ‘Billie, I love you’ on all the paintings, like a teenager.”

“Come on, don’t be so hard on him, Matías,” Armando said. “Gerardo is a good guy. And Billie is happy. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her like that.”

“You’re right. But we saw her first. She’s our Billie. And now some seventy-year-old hunk is taking her away.”

Armando laughed.

“That’s life, my friend!” he sighed, then added, “But nobody is going to take Billie away from us, you can be sure of that. We may have to share . . . But all that matters is that she’s happy. She deserves it. She’s suffered enough.”

Matías nodded, and they both turned to watch her. She was splendid in a pearl-gray party dress that gently showed off her generous anatomy. She moved through the place, greeting everyone and unintentionally proving herself to be a magnificent saleswoman. Many of her friends and acquaintances succumbed to the temptation of buying a painting thanks to Billie’s sincere admiration and praise for Gerardo, who followed her movements with his eyes, smiling complacently. When their gazes occasionally met, they exchanged coded looks over the heads of the crowd that filled the room.

As a finale, at the guests’ insistence, Billie sang a few songs accompanied by Matías on the piano. Her performance was more joyful than usual, reflecting the mood of the event. She even got the guests to join her for the chorus, and Tatiana took the opportunity to go up onstage and show off like old times, under the warm and familiar spotlights.

Tatiana, unique and unrepeatable, ended up giving a spectacular performance, and it turned into her big night too.