A short while after a senior black lady using a red-colored garment more white tresses came up in the second-floors windows. She searched puzzled then again accepted Willy. “ Hola. Hola. ” She allowed us upstairs.
Their particular label are Gladis Castaneda, and you can she ended up being a professional traditional pianist from inside the Havana through the the newest 1950s. She is a small woman inside her eighties otherwise 90s. She nodded when he said Los angeles Reina. Sure, she said, he’d lived in which neighborhood, correct across the street. Here, on tissue, is actually an individual who understood the latest legendary Superman-facts, actually, that man in fact stayed.
Superman, Castaneda said, try high, solid, respected. “Folks knew him as Queen,” she told you. “He had been gay, however you failed to wreak havoc on your.” She questioned me to sit. “He was the level. However, strong. Muscle.” He previously skin eg hers: dark, although not most. “He had been an effective people. Not one person got an issue with him.” I asked in the event that everyone in the society know exactly what he performed for an income. “Child, it actually was many years ago. He left years ago.”
Willy questioned in the event the she knew what turned into regarding him, and you can she told you she thinks he died in the Miami. Their own times is waning, and Willy nodded to me to indicate it was time we go.
Upon the road, we found a vintage man leaning contrary to the wall. Their title are Elado. The guy sent an effective cane and you may used a loose environmentally friendly sweater with a Masonic symbol clinging off a sequence doing their neck. Willy told your we were in search of information regarding the person it entitled Los angeles Reina.
“ Si, si, ” the old man said. “Los angeles Reina-people understood him. Mulatto. Regarding the level,” he nodded during my direction. “Every person acknowledged him. He lived here to have 2 decades. Needless to say, everybody else knew exactly what the guy did getting an income.” He said Superman left into You.S. into the 1959. “Nobody realized their term. Everyone just entitled him Los angeles Reina.”
We joined her roomy apartment, and you may Willy explained everything we was indeed starting
Across the street from the church, roosters crowed. A good girl wear Rollerblades talked on the a wages cellular phone. A vintage people inside a fabric golf limit used a beneficial cigar towards a beneficial backless wooden chair.
His hair is actually light and you can wild
I walked thanks to Los Sitios to the Barrio Chino up to i arrived at lovingwomen.org Beratung the 507 Marquis Path. I stood in the street looking at the entrances to help you a good martial-arts college or university: Escuela Cubana de Wushu. It got a reddish and you can reddish act having a silver foo puppy and you can a purple iron door.
The doorway is discover. Into the top entrance was a courtyard that have a small restaurant and many stationary exercise equipment. The newest theatre just after stood in which the school’s outside courtyard is actually. I attempted to envision where stage could have been. The newest putting on a costume area in which Superman ready to accept new let you know. This new balcony where drunken tourists saw new overall performance.
A few days later on i gone back to Barrio de- los Sitios in order to material for others just who may have recognized Superman. Regarding flat strengthening alongside Gladis Castaneda’s, i satisfied Superman’s real neighbors: a former pizza cook called Roberto Cabarero, 82 yrs . old, that have a greatly discolored and you can extended muscle shirt, sagging brown shorts on the fly open, and black colored clothes having holes on leg. His skin sagged such a-sea turtle’s.
Cabarero’s flat, where the guy existed along with his wife, is smaller and ramshackle, littered with rubbish. His spouse seated in the exact middle of the little home, rocking back and forth when you look at the a wood settee, speaking loudly at the not one person particularly. An invisible blared tinny dated Foreign language music, and you will a puppy came in and you may out from the room in order to eat crumbs off of the flooring. A security time clock sounded during our conference. Nobody troubled to turn it off.