This Babalu Goes Out To You…
I am the son of Ricky Ricardo… I see that you do not believe me, that you are skeptical. The look on your faces seems to ask why the son of the great Rumbero is working in a small lounge off Calle Ocho in Miami instead of performing on his own TV show on Telemundo, or perhaps on Sabado Gigante as a special guest of that great host and humanitarian Don Francisco. Before I continue with my next song, I will explain.
You understand that I cannot reveal my sources, of course. It was difficult to track down Ricky’s few remaining comrades, and those that would speak with me, agreed to do so only after many traguitos of ron, and after I swore never to reveal their identities. But, what I can tell you…and this will no doubt startle some of you and upset others…but what I can tell you is that Ricky was a Marxist, that he fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra, that it was ultimately Ricky’s Marxist leanings that led Lucy to pull the plug on their show as well as their marriage, that Ricky sang Babalu on the night that he rode a tank into Havana alongside Fidel, Che, Camilo. Ricky’s exploits were always kept secret to protect his valuable position as an American celebrity who could travel in the highest circles of the capitalist empire with impunity, but it has been revealed to me without a doubt that most of the revolutionary excursions attributed to Che were actually carried out by Ricky. Ricky was the only survivor of the doomed Bolivian expedition that ended with the slaughter of Che and his men. Sometimes I lie awake at night and think to myself that I am not half the man my father was, but then I think at least I have my father’s voice, and that has been a solace to me in my exile from my homeland.
It is not easy, as most of you know, to live in Miami, especially when you drive a rusted-out 1973 Dodge Duster, as I do, with no air conditioning, and live in a small apartment in a duplex in Hialeah above a vieja who secretly slits the throats of roosters on Sunday and pours their blood on a statue of the virgin she keeps on her enclosed back terrace. The last time I brought a muchacha back to my apartment, this vieja’s chihuahua made a point of coming out and peeing on my best pair of Florsheim wingtips when I tried to express my friendship by petting its overly large head. Ay, papi. Life might have been so different if you were still around. Sometimes at night, I sing myself to sleep just to hear your voice.
My mother? Mayte, la culebra, the scorpion, the Mata Hari of Cuba’s revolution. Ricky met her in the very shadow of the Kremlin at the People’s Cabaret of Moscow when he first began dabbling in Marxist–Leninist ideology. The year was 1956, and Mambo was all the rage in Moscow. It was Mayte’s version of Guantanamera that compelled Ricky to pull out his conga drum and join her up on stage where the back and forth of his driving beat and the rhythm of her hips brought the house of Komisars down. “Joo have very bootiful eyes, joo know that?” he said in that suave manner of his, one hand running over his slicked-back pompadour, a slight bit of perspiration beading his brow. What woman could have resisted? My mother certainly couldn’t and before too long they were fighting the good communist fight together. You understand that I do not sympathize with their political leanings, of course, but after all they were young and in love.
These days in Miami, no one knows what it is to fight a revolution. The viejos play dominoes and listen to radio programs where other viejos talk about the way they are going to invade Cuba, take it back, and feed Fidel his own huevos after they have first marinated them in a mojo sauce and fried them up for him. But really, they are too old to do much of anything except play dominoes, and the younger Cubanos of my generation care too much about their townhouses in Coral Gables, their Toyota Landcruisers, and the private Catholic schools their children attend to have much of a desire to return to a homeland they can’t remember and which for the most part is rundown and un–air conditioned. You might mistake my remarks for bitterness, but really I am optimistic about the future.
As Ricky and Lucy’s marriage and television show dissolved, as the triumphant revolution began to remake Havana in its own image, the star-crossed lovers became the leading couple of the revolution. I was conceived in the presidential palace in those heady days after the revolution first roared into Havana, the sound of jubilant guns shooting into the air off in the distance as Ricky and Mayte made the beast with two backs on Batista’s favorite coffee table leaving a small stain behind which I have been told can still be seen if you pay a visit to the Museum of the Revolution in Havana. Someday soon, Castro will die, the embargo will be lifted, and I will return to Cuba to see that stain for myself.
Ricky was forced to flee the Revolution one night after his rendition of “My name is Cuban Pete ” brought the house down at the National Assembly after one of Fidel’s interminable speeches. It was obvious that Ricky was beginning to outshine Fidel, and it was painfully obvious, at that moment, to Fidel, who gave the order that Ricky was to disappear before Ricky had even left the stage. Ricky walked by Fidel and saw the look in his eyes, must have seen the hate and the death in them because he squeezed himself out of the men’s room window, stole Fidel’s private airplane, and flew from Havana to New York chain-smoking Fidel’s private stock of cigars. If there is one regret that I have it is that he did not choose to face off against Fidel then and there. Fidel ’s “Venceremos!” would have given way to Ricky ’s “Babalu” and I might be singing at a cabaret in Havana today instead of here on Calle Ocho.
My mother Mayte at first believed that Ricky had betrayed the Revolution, but eventually she too came to realize that the betrayal was on Fidel’s side. That is when she cast me adrift from the shores of the fishing village of Cojimar where Hemingway’s yacht used to dock, and in the most subterranean depths of my memory I can almost see her there standing on the shore, singing “Cielito Lindo” as I drifted away. “Aay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llore.” And that is how I drifted ashore by the Fontainebleu Hotel in Miami Beach, and was found and taken in by my surrogate parents who had never been able to have children of their own, and eventually came to sing here at The Three Mariners Lounge in la pequena Havana.
I discovered all of this too late to get to know Ricky, but Mayte survived Fidel’s purges and I have been told that she entertains foreigners at the Nacional Hotel’s Cabaret, and I have every hope that I will be re-united with her before too long.
Jose Marti, that great martyr of Cuba’s war for independence, once said that our wine may be bitter, but it is our wine. I forget why exactly I bring that up, but I feel it is important to say it. I can see that you still do not believe me. In Miami, one gets used to comemierdas who tell one unbelievable story after another. Sometimes, I think that from Fidel down to the most recent balseros what makes us all Cuban is that we like to tell stories that make the truth larger than it is. But, I believe that when you listen to this next song, you will recognize the truth of what I have just told you, that Ricky lives on in me.
I dedicate my next song, Babalu, to Ricky Ricardo and to Mayte, la Culebra.
Otium
