Read Online Thoughts Without Cigarettes by Oscar Hijuelos - Free Book Online

was a Cuban summer after all—and yet, finally closing my eyes, after tossing in sweat, I’d just as soon awaken to the somewhat cooler morning and rooster calls, and carts and hawkers passing by on the street, cans and bells clanging, ever so happy to do what I, as a young boy, was prone to do, which was to eat and eat things like sugar-covered pieces of bread fried in lard and to sip from my own cup of heavily sweetened café con leche . Occasionally, as a special treat, my aunt boiled up a pot of condensed milk, to which she’d add an exotic and deliciously nutty flavoring, so deep and dark that for years, well into my twenties, I wondered just what that magical “Cuban” drink had been. It was one of the tastes I most vividly—and fondly—remembered from my stay in Holguín, and I truly became convinced that its Cuban origins were what made that drink so special, as if its uniqueness had been distilled from some obscure roots in the deepest jungle; this was an illusion I held on to until the day came when my mother, breaking that spell of decades-old nostalgia, advised me that my magical Cuban elixir, something I believed had come from heaven and considered better than honey and cinnamon and all the sugars in the world combined, was nothing more than Borden’s milk mixed with a few tablespoons of Hershey’s syrup.
    Along the way, I spent time with my Majorcan-born abuelita , who, with sunken but sweet eyes and skin nearly translucent from age, wore her gray hair tied back tautly over her head, in the formal Spanish style. She lived with her oldest daughter, my aunt María, and if there was anyone from whom Cheo derived her gentle and saintly character, it was surely her mother. The sort to sit in a corner and take in things quietly around her, as if contented with a kind of invisibility, she’d suddenly reach her hands out to grab me if I were passing by, just to request a kiss — “ Dame un besito! ”—my abuela ’s face, so solemn before, softening with happiness. It was in her company that my mother seemed most tranquil; they sometimes shared a bench by the window in the front parlor—I can remember my abuela , bathed in sunlight, always sewing some garment—and while they would speak softly about missing each other (perhaps) or of matters concerning my abuela ’s frailness, for she was not in the best of health (perhaps) or of plans to visit my grandfather’s grave together (definitely, for, indeed, they went to the cemetery one day), what I can mainly recall is how my abuela treated her second-eldest daughter with utter tenderness, sometimes reaching over to gently touch her face and say, “Oh, but my darling Magdalencita.” What my mother felt just then, I can’t say, but she always behaved around her with reverence and humility and gratitude, as if to show Abuela María that she, indeed, had outgrown the spoiled ways of her youth. She, in fact, never seemed as much at home as she did in those days with her mother in Holguín. (But that’s all I can recall about her, my mother’s “ santa Buena ” and how they were with one another.)
    Now, her namesake, my aunt María, aside from the fact that she bore a strong resemblance to my mother in a way that the gentle Cheo, with her teaspoon-shaped face and sweet smile, did not, I can’t remember at all, though her husband, Pepito, remains vividly with me. And not because he was much beloved in the family and known as a good provider and a patriarch, but because he carried me about his country place, a farm, and just about everywhere else we went, on his shoulders. A bookkeeper in Holguín, he had a longish face, intensely intelligent eyes, and a manner that was both serious and warm. He wore wire-rim eyeglasses. (Years later, a balding priest I once saw meditating in a garden in Rome reminded me of him, as if Pepito had returned as a ghost.) One of those