Heart of Tango (4 page)

“Give her a few years and she'll be a real woman, soon as she learns what a man is. And fills out a little,” insisted the shopkeeper, who liked his women big, buxom and wide-hipped.

“There won't be any shortage of candidates,” added Canaro.

“She'll be getting married on Sunday. To Berstein. To El Rojo.”

“Goddam krauts!” said De Bassi, who followed the war news from Europe and took the Allies' side. “They're even beating us at that.”

“El Rojo never gets mixed up in politics. He might still speak Spanish like he's holding an almond under his tongue, but he's as Argentinian as the best of us.”

“I couldn't sleep if I was off at sea and left a peach like her at home,” said Canaro with a wink. “Buenos Aires is full of lonely men.”

Guffaws all around. Without thinking I got up and, as I was on my feet, walked off in the direction of the lavatory in the courtyard. Anything not to keep hearing their comments.

The girl had plucked a string that I didn't know I had inside me. Suddenly every lyric of every tango I had ever danced in every café in Buenos Aires sounded to me like a page from a diary that I had still to write.

I leaned against a wall, took a deep breath, rolled a cigarette, and tried to recall every detail I had seen of her: silhouetted against the light, the glint of a tiny earring, a dark curl peeking out from her chignon, the sleeves of her white blouse transparent in the light that streamed in from outdoors, diminutive feet in a small pair of boots revealing her fine ankles, the ankles of a ballerina . . . That was it.

But even so . . . Even so, I panted as if from heavy lifting,
cigarette trembling in my jittery hands, and my stomach churned when I recalled the Gallego's words: “She'll be getting married on Sunday.”

She had been living in La Boca for two years and it was only now when it was too late that I'd met her. I had no idea who this El Rojo was, but I was sure that, whoever he might be, he didn't deserve her. From what Canaro said, he had to be a sailor, a guy who'd leave her alone for weeks and months at a time, struggling on her own to make ends meet in La Boca, a district brimming with whores and
compadritos
. Honest fellows, too, but fellows who happened to be lonely, no wives, no family, nobody to lean on, far from home.

The Gallego's courtyard was a jumble of empty bottles, rusting cans and discarded rubbish, but a slender tree had sprouted by the back wall, and overhead the sky was clear, wide and blue, with a scattering of frayed clouds lit bright by the midday sun. More or less like my life. Underfoot, the filth from which I had emerged—the squalid tenement house on Corrientes where my parents lived after they came over from Genoa, the poverty that was all I had seen throughout my childhood, the long years of factory work, of night-times studying by oil lamp so I might climb out of it all someday. Overhead, the open sky, the world I had always dreamed of, which day by day seemed to move further off but to shine all the brighter. And here in the middle, today's grind, the newspaper I worked at, changing my name from Giacomo to Diego (sounds
better for a tanguero), my bachelor flat, the tango I danced every night in the best cafés. My friends were all musicians, instrumentalists, singers, composers, songwriters—or dancers, like me.

But it wasn't enough. And though I had always known that it wasn't enough, in one instant the girl had made me understand that the sky was still clear—far away, but clear, for anyone who had the will to fly.

For that alone, she deserved a present, so I walked back in and proposed, “We could play at her wedding.”

“What wedding?” asked Flaco Martínez, who never noticed what was going on but was a tolerably good piano player.

“The girl's. Natalia's.”

“They already signed up Firpo's orchestra,” said the Gallego from behind the bar.

“Of course they did,” Canaro smiled. “They want the clod-hoppers who can't follow our beat to be able to dance. But they must have some cash if they could hire Firpo.”

Firpo and Canaro were night and day, especially in the rhythms they used, and a rivalry was slowly but surely growing between them. We professionals danced “à la Canaro”; everyone else, “à la Firpo”.

“What if you went and serenaded the doll on Saturday night?” the Gallego suggested. “That's what girls in Spain love best of all.”

I glanced around at everyone there.

“Who's game?”

“Count on my violin,” said Canaro. “Right about midnight, during our break at the Royal.”

“You coming, Yuyo? No squeezebox, no tango,” I said, knowing that Yuyo would play awake or asleep, paid or unpaid.

“You bet!”

“Flaco?”

“Not with the piano . . .”

“But you can also play flute.”

“Bring your guitar and I'll give the flute a whirl,” he answered.

“How about second fiddle?” asked De Bassi.

By now we were all smiling, as if all of a sudden playing music, the way we earned our bread, was some kind of mischievous prank.

“Do you know where the kid lives, Gallego?”

“On Necochea, in a one-story house, painted blue.”

“OK then, gents. Tomorrow, midnight, at the Royal. We'll leave together from there. I'll be dancing at La Marina—I'll catch up with you during the break.”

I draped my coat over my shoulder and walked out, though I didn't need to be at the newspaper office until later that afternoon. Letting my feet wander, I found myself standing on Necochea street in front of a blue house where I hadn't lost anything. Except, perhaps, a bit of my heart.

I
arrived at our house dizzy from the heat, and from something else that I had no word for, that I wished to have no word for. The cool air in the entrance hall felt like my mother's hand on a feverish night, and I couldn't help my eyes filling with tears at the thought of her, of how she had left me so alone, so young, right when a girl needs someone to talk to. I didn't even have the comfort of going to see María Esther and telling her what had happened to me at the grocer's, just as she couldn't tell me what had happened to her after her wedding when everyone left her alone with the fellow who had just become her husband.

My loneliness weighed on me like a marble tombstone, so I headed toward the sitting room, where I thought I could hear a rumbling of voices, in search of company that would pull my thoughts in a different direction.

The door was ajar, and from the hallway I could see the tip of a man's boot—El Rojo's boot.

I stood stock-still, holding my breath without knowing why,
and, squatting to set the bottle on the floor, pulled out a kerchief to dry the sweat that streamed down my face.

“So now you know how things stand,” my father was saying. “I had to let you know; I hope you understand. Natalia is all I have in the world, and even though I know I am leaving her in good hands, I wanted to be frank with you, in case you'd rather back out.”

My breath was taken away. I didn't know what my father had been talking about, but here he was giving Rojo a chance to undo the wedding. It felt almost as if someone had just knocked over a house of cards, but at the same time as if a very bright light was being shone into some very dark corner.

“I'm a man of my word, Don Joaquín,” Berstein was now replying. “As you know. I will care for Natalia with all my strength, this I swear to you. I love her. I have always loved her, from the first time I saw her, when she was still a child. You will not regret giving her to me.”

“Treat her well, son. Natalia, despite the state you see her in here, is a young lady. She deserved better than I've been able to give her, but, first, I married her mother against the will of her whole family, who wanted something else for her, and took her away to a village in Vitoria where the poor dear was consumed by sorrow and poverty; and then, after her father forgave her and I swallowed my pride and we returned to Valencia, she barely survived two more years. Natalia lived like a queen for a short time, and now she is suffering hardships again, as in her childhood.”

“You both live honorably, Don Joaquín. This is no tenement, and Natalia has no need to work outside the house.”

“As you know, this house is all I own; the only thing I can leave her.”

“I earn good money. We will do well. I am going to treat her like a queen, I promise you this.”

Silence followed. I didn't know whether to take advantage of it and make a bit of noise, as if I were just coming back from the shop.

“Treat her well the day after tomorrow, son. Natalia is an innocent young woman. She knows nothing about men.”

“I swear to you I will, Don Joaquín. Everything will happen slowly, at its own rhythm.”

“Thank you, son. I wish I could have talked to her about it, but with a daughter, such things—it isn't the same as if she were a boy; you understand what I'm saying. That's why I'm telling you all this.”

“And where is she now?”

“She went out for a moment to Uxío's shop. She'll be back at any time.”

I picked up the bottle and tiptoed into the kitchen, where I set about clattering with the dishes so that they'd think I had gone there directly to change the water the chickpeas were soaking in for our evening stew. In fact, all I had left to make for lunch was the rice.

If I had heard what my father told Rojo earlier that day, before
I had gone out and come back, maybe things would have turned out differently. But he had sent me to the shop so that he could talk with Rojo in private, and that changed everything, because there I had run into someone's gaze, a gaze that was all it took to knock down the world I had barely begun to build for myself.

I
left the editorial room just before nine. I had planned to drop by my flat first, but I saw that I wouldn't make it. I had picked up my tango outfit before going to the newspaper office, so I decided to grab a bite at La Fonda de los Artistas on Corrientes and then walk over to Salta and Rivadavia, where I'd be dancing that night at Café La Puñalada.

The hours I had spent at the office had kept my mind busy, but now, walking out into the warm January night and mingling with the crowds in the city center streets, I felt all at once as if my heart would break from loneliness, as if I had suddenly grown aware that my life made no difference to anyone. My parents had died years earlier in a yellow fever epidemic, my brothers and sisters had scattered to the four winds, nobody in Genoa could possibly remember my family any more, and even in Buenos Aires, the city where I had grown up, I didn't know anyone but the boys at the newspaper and cafés. And Grisela. She was only my dancing partner, though she'd have liked to be more. But I had never wanted to tie myself to
anyone. Never wanted to fall into the same trap as so many other immigrants—having lots of kids, then climbing one rung at a time down the ladder of poverty. Like my parents.

I didn't have a tango singer's voice, and I wasn't good enough at playing an instrument, though I could handle the guitar passably well. I would never gain fame and fortune through music. The newspaper and dancing the tango provided me with enough to survive and cover my modest luxuries, but not enough to support a wife and start a family. Besides, frankly speaking, I had never “loved a chick till betrayal, till madness, till death”, as the tango songs were starting to put it. The only girlfriends I'd ever had were poor girls prematurely aged by factory work, the misery of life in the tenements, dreams too soon shattered, the brutality of their fathers, their brothers, and later their husbands; girls who had once been flowers, and who ended up withered and trodden underfoot.

La Fonda was crowded to bursting, as always, but Doña Clemencia set up a table for me by the kitchen and served me a stew with more potatoes than meat and a glass of red wine. After, I rolled a cigarette and smoked it outside. I felt sweat streaming down my flanks as I walked toward the café where Grisela would be waiting impatiently for me in her tight skirt and high heels, staring into the green bottom of the glass of absinthe that rarely strayed from her hands those days.

The grandiose façades of the houses kept reminding me how I had sworn to myself a few years earlier that I'd be in Paris by
1920, leaving behind provincial Buenos Aires to undertake my conquest of the true capital of the world. But back then I was barely twenty years old, and with my hopes raised by the success of the first tango dancers in Europe I had conceived the notion that everything was possible. Now, walking up Rivadavia past Café Tortoni, I was starting to feel like an old man watching his youth slip away before him, knowing that he will never catch up with it.

She would be getting married on Sunday. Tomorrow night, I might catch sight of her at her balcony. And then, never again. Card games, dancing in cafés, articles for
La Nación
, the emptiness of knowing that this is all there is; you got dealt a bad hand, kid, whatcha gonna do?

I stubbed out my cigarette fiercely and, putting on my best imitation of a
compadrito
, entered La Puñalada, thinking that the café's name—the Knife Stab—was well chosen. I found Grisela leaning against the bar with her absinthe. The dance floor, as on every Friday, was full of couples. And single men with hungry stares.

I laid my hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at me with frightened eyes.

“Oh! It's you, Diego.”

“Just got here. I'm going to go change.”

She nodded and went back to staring vacantly at the mirror before her. There was a bruise on her arm, right above the elbow,
poorly hidden by the black gauze sleeve of her dancing dress. I didn't mention it.

We left just past midnight. She wouldn't let me walk with her, because some rich guy had promised to drive her home in his car. I gazed into her eyes, searching for something that wasn't there: contempt, fear, hope, defiance, anything. They were glazed over, like a window in the middle of winter.