Facey

Title: Dancing to 'Almendra'

Author: Mayra Montero

Reviewed by: Laura Facey

A friend who has never been to Cuba remembered hearing the country explained as somewhere you know music is playing around you even when you can't hear where it's coming from. I heard this description a few days after returning from a trip to Havana, and found that sentence exactly captures the essence of Havana without reducing its beauty, mystery, or reality.

'Almendra' is a well-known danzon, a popular genre of music with the upper class in pre-revolution Cuba. Mayra Montero quickly introduces us to a couple that is hypnotised by the music and that dances, over and over to the tune. This pair is the narrator's best friend's mother and her boyfriend, who turn out to be key players even though they only appear briefly, dancing. Do you follow? Meeting these among quite a few other characters at the beginning of a novel can be confusing, or at least distracting, but Montero mixes personalities, facts and a light touch so well that she allows the reader to set his own pace - you can race ahead as easily as you can slowdown to savour each detail.

Joaquin Porrata, the narrator, compares listening to 'Almendra' to "watching a pendulum", especially when the couple dances to the tune. This romantic rapture he experiences as just an observer almost makes you forget that the novel is actually a mobster story, a mystery, dare I say a work of creative non-fiction? Joaquin is a journalist who starts out on the performing arts beat until he receives the break of a lifetime in the form of a note tying the death of a hippopotamus to the murder of Mafioso Anastasia. (This central murder that is investigated throughout did, in fact happen, but the hippo clue and other embroideries did not).

Mayra Montero was born in Havana in 1952 and sets Dancing to 'Almendra' there in 1957. Her journalism background perhaps influences her smart choice to make the primary narrator a newspaper journalist. Joaquin has a nose for where to find a story and can describe with the detail of a reporter the dynamic characters and circumstances that comprise every situation. From his lesbian sister and brother who sympathises with the revolution to Juan Bulgado the lion feeder and his idol George Raft, Joaquin presents detailed observations that lend credibility to an otherwise unbelievable murder mystery.

This allows the reader to trust him, take a back seat and enjoy the journey through the bloody trail of mob life in the razzle-dazzle decade leading up to the revolution in Cuba. The adventure begins with a note found by a chambermaid in the Rosita de Hornedo hotel, who gives it to her lover Juan Bulgado (who prefers to be called Johnny Angel or Johnny Lamb in honour of George Raft roles, illusion is everything), who then involves Joaquin. Along the way there are stops at the zoo, New York, lovers' bedrooms, the morgue and the prominent casinos of the day, including the San Souci which, given the tension and violence, ironically means 'without care'.

The San Souci is where Joaquin meets his eventual lover and the other narrator, Yolanda. Writers likePhilip Roth and Michael Chabon throw punches with every sentence, I dare you to find an uninspired chapter in either of their works; Montero doesn't have that in Joaquin's narrative but she approaches it with Yolanda's. Yolanda is a sympathetic character, who

tells the story of her life-a quest to meet a magician who will put a spell on her heart-up until she meets Joaquin. She grows up in the circus under the eye of Chinita, a woman who was the lover to Yolanda's mother's husband. As the partenaire to a magician she loses an arm; she is later drawn to another disfigured man, the San Souci creative director Roderico, or Rodney, who has advanced leprosy.

While Joaquin has his poetic moments in telling a detailed story, like when he describes the double lives of not only people but also his country, "Between the imaginary face and the hidden face was shifting ground, insidious quicksand that swallowed up everything," his reporter's account is greatly aided by Yolanda's infused warmth. In describing Rodney, "that ugly, really ugly individual, a kinky-haired mulatto with a mouth like a sewer, who for the moment had only one quality: knowing that the thing that moves us most is the memory of what we've given," Yolanda personalizes and gives depth to Montero's plot.

Not only does 'Dancing to "Almendra"' survive a translation from Spanish to English, a beautiful one by Edith Grossman, it also tells a riveting story whose twists, turns and outlandish personalities do not disappoint. Mayra Montero has a knack for venturing outside historical truths enough to keep our interest without losing sight of potent realities that stand on their own. Beyond that, her journalist's eye and lyrical voice do justice to the indescribable qualities of Havana, and this insight into pre-revolution Cuba alone makes this book a must-read.