He remembers Aguilé himself—the flamboyant singer with the colorful cravats who became the voice of the exile. Mateo realizes that while he took a suitcase, he forgot to take his heart. It remained tucked under a loose floorboard in a house on Calle Obispo.

As the chorus swells, Mateo closes his eyes. He is no longer in a cramped apartment. He is walking down the , hearing the rhythmic slap of the waves that sound like a heartbeat. The song captures that impossible Cuban paradox: the music is upbeat, meant for dancing, yet the lyrics are a funeral for a home he can never truly return to.

The year is 1967. In a small, salt-aired apartment in Madrid, a man named Mateo sits by a radio, his fingers tracing the rim of a cold coffee cup. On the balcony, the laundry flickers like white flags in the Spanish wind, but his mind is three hundred miles across the Atlantic, tangled in the green vines of a Havana courtyard.