Naked in Havana by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online

about the soul. I could train a monkey to learn notes! You must let the music to live through you, speak through you! Music is like making...well, it’s not like mathematics. It’s not right and wrong answers. You have to live it, you have to feel it.” Inocencia took off her glasses. “What is it you feel right now, Magdalena?”
    “I feel it’s time I went home.”
    “Is it a boy?”
    I couldn’t look at her. How do people know these things about you when you do your best to hide them? “Perhaps.”
    “Is that...that whatever it is you played...is that what you feel when you think about this boy?”
    I shook my head.
    “Then why can’t you play what you feel?”
    “I don’t want anyone to know.”
    “If no one knows how you feel, who you are, then who are they going to fall in love with? This pretty little picture? Perhaps your papi thinks that is the real you, but your eyes give you away. Or perhaps even you do not know the real Magdalena. Here, try again.”
    I did as she said and started over, but now I knew the notes were not enough, I did not know what to do. My fingers felt stiff and I fumbled through the first phrasings, when a moment ago I had been precise and assured. Inocencia stopped me. “Here, let me show you,” she said. We changed places. She sat down and started to play.
    The first notes were a mere whisper. Inocencia closed her eyes as she played, her fingers barely brushing the keys. She started to sway and her breathing became still. The notes rose and fell like a heartbeat. They were the same notes I had played, and yet it might have been another song.
    Her face twisted as if she was in pain. Then she started to hum, softly at first, matching cadence with the chords, picking blue notes that should not have been there. Somehow she turned Bach into Bolero. I imagined her in Papi's club, sweating under the lights, as her voice found a tremolo and hovered there. She found the last note and held it, high and plaintive, for what seemed like an eternity.
    When she finished we both sat for a long time, not speaking. Then she opened her eyes. “You see. That’s how you play when you’re in love with a man.” She closed the piano lid. “I think that’s enough for today.”
    I packed away my music books. Inocencia looked out of the window. She seemed so unutterably sad. I wondered if it was because the music had provoked some memory from the past, or if she had somehow glimpsed her own future.
    I hesitated at the door, debating with myself if I should tell her about Angel. I needed to talk to someone. But I worried that she might tell Papi and so I just said thank you for the lesson, and walked out.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 10

     
     
    When I got home I expected to find Papi sitting on the patio with his Santiago rum and Cohiba cigars, as always. But the cane chair under the avocado tree was empty. Old Rafa lay under the table alone. When he heard my footsteps his head shot up, but then when he saw it was only me he sighed and plopped his head back on the tiles with a look of studied disappointment.
    The Miami Herald lay on the cane table, uncreased, unread.
    I went looking for Maria and found her in the kitchen. She didn’t even have the radio on. Maria always listened to cubopop when she was cooking. The house was like a morgue. “Where’s Papi?” I asked her.
    “He’s in bed, he’s not feeling so good.”
    “Have you called Doctor Mendes?”
    “He’s with him now,” she said.
    My world was starting to crumble. This was just the start of it.
     

     
    Doctor Mendes came out of Papi’s bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. He had been our family’s doctor for as long as I could remember. He looked more like a wrestler than a doctor, a big man with broad shoulders, huge hands and a blunt face. Some people said he bullied his patients into getting well.
    When he saw me he put his finger to his lips and then took me by the arm, led me outside to the balcony that looked over