Dominican Nights

I fell in love with the smell of tobacco when I was ten-years-old.

It was 1977, Balaguer was in office, and my sister and I where living with my aunt and uncle in their three-bedroom apartment in the Graco Center of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. My parents were trying to sort out their tumultuous relationship back in New York (where we lived) and thought it best their children be as far away from them as possible. This upset caused me to lose my school year, friends, and family.  The sudden changes to my young life might have been devastating if it had not been for my uncle, his Gibson guitar, and his Dominican cigars.

Mostly, I remember the nights. In Santo Domingo, power outages made my long-suffering aunt scurry around in the dark looking for candles in kitchen cabinets. “Help me light the house, girls” she called out to my sister and me, who sat with our uncle on the white-cushioned swing set in the balcony.

Aunt Bertha rode out the long-arm of corrupt government with hardly a whimper: She raised five strong and healthy kids with little money, little food, and loads of medicinal herbs and leaves. But, governmentally-imposed electrical outages were for her the last straw--an unnecessary trial for an already weary people. When she took her leave to one of the three rooms in the back she left behind a flickering flame and no dent in the darkness. Yet, the things that remained were larger than life: my uncle, his guitar, his cigar, the smell of flamboyal and millions of tiny stars. It seemed that Aunt Bertha thought her husband’s display of over-the-top romanticism as commonplace and dated as the offerings of a long-lost troubadour. But there was no doubt that Uncle Pedro considered his nightly rituals a mark of his manhood.

Pedro was the Caribbean counterpart of Ernest Hemingway, an adventurer who was always off to hunt quail or test his manhood in some risky enterprise that did not allow much time for raising families or being faithful to a single woman. When he left home on his hunting and fishing expeditions, he would not return for days on end. He favored cool white cottons shirts, khakis and a hunting hat. He had an off-beat imagination, a spirit of adventure, and, somewhat incongruously, manners that were exaggeratedly refined. When he spoke, his words were delivered in a gruff nasal tone that made them sound like they were adrift on an endless ocean. The times he took my sister and me for walks along the Malecón–a royal, palm tree-lined avenue overlooking the ocean, where the wind blew so hard it whipped hair into our eyes and mouth--he said that if we looked real close the waves would do that American dance called the swing for us; watch even more carefully and you’ll see the girls’ crinoline poodle skirts in the gentle roll of the sea against the rocks… “Do you girls know the swing?” he would ask, his words swaying back and forth, the dancing waves spraying us with salt water.

On the nights we sat on the balcony with Uncle Pedro his lips were curled round a Dominican, thumb strumming his guitar. He rocked on the white-cushioned swing set and sang romantic boleros that he never reached the end of, being compelled to stop and correct errors of rhythm, fingering or vocal interpretation. To be honest, the sight, smell and tone of the night were more eloquent than Pedro’s musical offerings. Dominican nights were always warm, with a film of humidity that clung to your pores like a moisture-saturated cloud that refused to burst. The air smelled of flamboyal, a flower that bloomed on hardwood trees. The bouquet traveled long distances on the breeze, making it impossible to identify the location of its source; but it was extremely fragile and dissipated quickly, The dark sky played host to trillions of stars that hung so low they were practically within reach, a spectacle that made us feel like we were living inside our own private planetarium. There was barely enough room in the heavens to contain them all. On such nights, the moon glowed brighter and clearer than we had ever seen it from our accustomed vantage point in Astoria, Queens, New York, so clear that you could distinguish each one of its darker, rough-edged regions. Count them. Take inventory of them.

Then there were Uncle Pedro’s fragrant Dominicans. He smoked Double Coronas with straight sides. They were hand-made with silky wrappers the tan shade of his skin tone -- Pedro’s family claimed a French and Taino Indian ancestry (further testament to the island’s long, colorful and varied history). He smoked two Coronas a night, and I could never tell when he cut, lit, puffed or exhaled. All there was to see and smell in the darkness were threads of smoke and a mild earthy aroma that traveled with the delicate scent of the flamboyal over the railings, up to the stars, and back down to the balcony like lovers spinning in a smoky eternity.

Whether or not I knew at the time, Uncle Pedro’s nightly rituals became an image, then a memory, and finally the only truth I know about men and the courage they must summon to live big lives in a world of shrinking choices. I know this because I saw Uncle Pedro pledge an allegiance to his manhood regardless of its effect on his wife and children, whom he both loved and cherished. Sure, his children would have wanted to spend more time with their father, but they respected his lifestyle choices anyway. More often than not, Aunt Bertha felt betrayed and angered by her husband’s actions. But, she loved him deeply and secretly, and, at no other time was this more evident than on the nights she walked through the darkness of the living room, stood on the threshold of the balcony door, and took a long loving look at her guitar-picking, cigar-smoking husband.

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