Louis-Alexandre Minutes later an elder black colored woman using a red-colored garment more white tresses emerged on the second-flooring windows. She seemed perplexed but then recognized Willy. “ Hola. Hola. ” She allowed all of us upstairs.
Their particular name was Gladis Castaneda, and you will she got an expert traditional pianist into the Havana during the this new 1950s. She are a tiny lady inside her 80s or 1990s. She nodded when he stated Los angeles Reina. Yes, she told you, he’d stayed in it people, proper next door. Here, from the tissue, are somebody who knew brand new epic Superman-research, in reality, the man actually lived.
Superman, Castaneda told you, is high, strong, respected. “Anyone understood him as King,” she said. “He had been gay, however you didn’t wreak havoc on him.” She asked me to sit. “He was the top. But solid. Muscular.” He’d epidermis such as for example hers: black, although not very. “He had been a man. No body had an issue with him.” I inquired in the event that everybody in the community understood what the guy did having an income. “Son, it absolutely was years ago. He leftover years ago.”
Willy requested when the she realized just what turned from your, and you may she said she thinks the guy died within the Miami. Their particular time is Hongkong Frauen actually waning, and you may Willy nodded in my opinion to indicate the time had come we wade.
Down on the street, i fulfilled a classic people leaning up against the wall structure. Their term try Elado. He sent a good cane and you may dressed in a free eco-friendly jacket which have a great Masonic symbol holding out-of a string doing his neck. Willy advised him we were searching for details about the person they entitled La Reina.
“ Si, si, ” the existing man told you. “La Reina-folks know him. Mulatto. Regarding your level,” the guy nodded during my guidance. “Everybody else respected your. The guy stayed right here getting two decades. Needless to say, everyone know what the guy performed to own an income.” He told you Superman left to your You.S. in 1959. “No one know his term. Anyone simply entitled him Los angeles Reina.”
I registered her spacious flat, and you will Willy explained that which we have been creating
Down the street of the chapel, roosters crowed. A good girl sporting Rollerblades spoke to the a cover mobile phone. An old people in a leather golf cap used a good cigar into the good backless wooden sofa.
Their tresses try light and you can crazy
We walked owing to Los Sitios on Barrio Chino until i turned up within 507 Marquis Highway. We endured in the pub looking at the entry to a martial-arts college: Escuela Cubana de Wushu. They got a red-colored and yellow facade that have a silver foo dog and you will a red metal gate.
The doorway is actually discover. Inside front entrance is actually an effective courtyard that have a little cafe and many stationary gym equipment. The fresh theatre shortly after stood where school’s backyard courtyard is actually. I tried to envision where in fact the phase could have been. The dressing up room where Superman ready to accept the inform you. The fresh balcony in which drunken visitors saw the new show.
A short while later i returned to Barrio de los Sitios to material for other individuals which may have recognized Superman. From the apartment building close to Gladis Castaneda’s, i met Superman’s real neighbors: a former pizza chef called Roberto Cabarero, 82 yrs . old, that have a heavily discolored and you may offered muscles shirt, drooping brownish trousers to the fly wide-open, and you may black colored clothes which have openings in the foot. Their facial skin sagged such as for instance a-sea turtle’s.
Cabarero’s apartment, where the guy lived along with his wife, are little and ramshackle, full of nonsense. Their partner sat in the exact middle of the tiny home, rocking to and fro inside the a wooden couch, speaking loudly in the nobody in particular. An invisible blared tinny old Spanish songs, and you will a dog came in and you will outside of the space in order to eat crumbs off the floor. An alarm time clock seemed during the conference. No one annoyed to make it well.