“Don’t fuck with me!” “So much already?” —he continued—, if until the other day we were going to listen to it at the “Dos Gardenias”. “The other day,” for people our age, is a long time. Not years, but decades.
I was debating whether to contact X or not. We had only met again, almost by accident or miracle, in Xalapa, Veracruz, in 2021, when our personal stories ran along different paths, both with children and half-finished careers. We didn’t finish well. We Cubans don’t find it easy to make friends with the couples we meet along the way. But it was Isolina, which had been a kind of mortar for our brief and intense relationship. The truth is that he was not surprised by my call.
We had our first “serious” date at “Dos Gardenias”, in 7th grade, Miramar, when we were still studying at the University: she, Mathematics; I, Philology. I remember that I went around half of Havana looking for those flowers to bring her as a gift. But there was no case.
On that occasion we both had cold hands and lips. We talked profusely, about everything and nothing, we laughed with a spontaneity worthy of better jokes, and – yes – we looked into each other’s eyes with an intensity that I have never experienced again.
Isolina was at the piano. She sang the song that made her immortal. We both knew the lyrics, and we were anxiously waiting for that part where it says: “Two gardenias for you / that will have all the warmth of a kiss / of those kisses that I gave you / and that you will never find / in the heat of another love…” And what do you think? Well, we kissed for a long time! We didn’t mind being in a public place. We exercised that power that lovers have, during a moment of passion, to erase everyone who is not themselves.
We continued going to “Dos Gardenias” whenever we could drain our parents’ wallets, which were quite diminished in those times. We made the piano-bar our temple of love. Every night several singers performed, almost all of them very good. But we went to listen to Isolina, the matriarch, whom we had secretly adopted as a fairy protector of our troubles. I write the last word, and smile. X will make fun of me if he reads these lines. In bullshit he called me “The Archaic.”
Isoline
We learned almost everything about Isolina Carrillo Estrada. That she was born on December 9, 1907 in Havana, and that that eighty-something-year-old woman in 1995, a versatile instrumentalist, was the composer, in addition, of anthological pieces such as those also from Filinesque ““Kissing party”““Song without love”“Incredible”“Irony”“Far from you”, “In case you came back”. We also knew that “Two gardenias” had its world premiere in the voice of Guillermo Arrondo on the radio station RHC Cadena Azul in 1945. Los Panchos spread the number universally, which also featured outstanding performances such as those of Daniel Santos.
More recently, the versions of Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, Diego El Cigala, Natalia Lafourcade, Café Tacvba and Alejandro Sanz, just to mention a few.
In an interview performed by the poet and musicologist Helio Orovio, Isolina said that the number arose from the discrimination she was subjected to by a young Colombian composer, who did not open the door to her apartment during her birthday celebration, with the argument that he did not want black people at her party. The same young man who had gone to the teacher days before so that she could help him direct a “composition.”
Always according to Orovio, “On March 11, 1947 in the Panart studios, in the heart of Havana, and with arrangements by Dámaso Pérez Prado and the bandoneon of the Argentine Joaquín Mora, Daniel Santos recorded (…) ‘Two Gardenias‘ for the Columbia label, with the accompaniment of La Sonora Matancera.”
Sooner than we would have liked, the final stanza of the number we loved came into our lives. Immaturity on both sides, misunderstandings, malicious interventions by acquaintances, rushed us to the last lines of the song: “But if one evening / the gardenias of my love die / it will be because they have guessed / that your love has betrayed me / because there is another love…”
Our last meeting also occurred in “Dos Gardenias”. Omara sang “Maybe”, by Juan Formell. At that time all the songs alluded us. We received the verses like stones in the chest: “Maybe / if I had kissed you again / things would be different now / I would have a memory of you. /// But maybe / if I had spoken to you, my love / I would have you here by my side and I would be happy…”
And so, with that tremendous music in our heads we entered the night of Havana, each one on their own, carrying the regret that would surely come with the years.
AX I photographed her from behind in Xalapa. This is how my photographic series was born Why don’t you want to listen to what I tell you?which today has more than one hundred images.
That year, while I was looking for even one gardenia, these helpless verses occurred to me:
“It is a serious thing not to have a flower / to give to a girl. / and even more serious is not to have a girl / to give a flower. // But loneliness goes beyond the bowl of the hands / when there is no girl / nor a flower / in many dreams around. // In such circumstances it is advisable / to cross the night, distracted / whistling an air of Isolina. // It is the best antidote / for other people’s happiness.”
