Heart of Tango (9 page)

The music stopped. We pulled apart slowly, painfully, as if the time we had spent together had been enough to turn us into a single being. I looked down at my shoes, then glanced off at the window that separated us from the world outdoors. With a half-smile, he nodded his head as if pointing me toward the chair where I had left my boots, while he turned to the table where his hat was waiting.

I watched him put it on slowly, adjusting the angle over his left eye, and take another look at me, from far away, a long glance full
of words that I didn't know how to hear. Then he disappeared into the shadows at the other end of the hall. I tied my boots as slowly as possible, expecting to see him walk back my way before I finished. But I had time to lace my boots, put on my overcoat, pick up the handbag I had been carrying the whole time we were dancing, and light a cigarette.

An older man, probably the milonga organizer, came over to tell me that they had to shut down, that it was almost four in the morning, and that he hoped I had not found the music or the atmosphere disappointing. I thanked him, not daring to ask whether there was another exit in the rear of the hall, whether someone should check to see if there might be anyone left behind in the men's room before they locked up.

A minute later I was in the street, standing in snow that had been pockmarked by the tracks of all the couples who had just left the dance, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, calling myself an idiot for not speaking up, for not knowing whether I should keep waiting there, like a dog without an owner, for someone who had promised me nothing. I lit another cigarette and smoked it down to the filter, feeling the cold grow more and more intense despite my overcoat, twirling the rosebud that I had just plucked from my hair where he had placed it. I didn't even know his name or his address or the slightest bit of information that might lead me to him if I lost track of him now.

I waited for nearly half an hour, knowing he would never come,
that it was impossible to pretend this was just a misunderstanding. I looked through the posters over the door in an effort to penetrate the darkness on the other side of the glass and perhaps discern a light at the back of the hall. One of the posters announced the next milonga, a few days before Christmas, on a Saturday that I would be spending in London.

I walked slowly back to the hotel, floating in the memory of the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me and at the same time wallowing in self-pity for my loss, for the humiliation of being abandoned. The night porter handed me a note: the bus would be picking us up at a quarter past seven, after breakfast.

Back in my room, I looked at myself in the mirror, thinking that if the night had turned out differently there would now be a double image here, his white body contrasting with his tanned face, my blond tresses next to his polished black hair. Refusing to let myself think about it any longer, I emptied my handbag of money, lipstick, cigarettes, hotel card. I took off my dress and was about to pack it in my suitcase when I realized that something had fallen to the floor. It was a visiting card, antique typography on yellowed paper: “Diego Monteleone”, it said. Underneath, an address in Buenos Aires, crossed out, and in a small, masculine hand (as my primary-school teacher used to say) was written, in pencil, another address in the district of La Boca.

It took me more than three months to extricate myself from my contracts and fly to Argentina. It didn't surprise anyone that I would need a few days off, but in any event it had been weeks since I cared what might or might not surprise my colleagues. Diego had made a date with me and that was all that mattered.

No sooner had I moved into the hotel than I grabbed a taxi and gave the driver the address. It took us more than an hour to get from the Florida district to La Boca, crossing street after street, each one shabbier and emptier than the last, until we reached a street that only a tourist could find picturesque.

The street number on the calling card belonged to a small house with windows that had not been cleaned in a long time and decaying wooden walls that might once have been blue. The cabby turned to me with worry in his face.

“Did you really mean to stop here, madam?”

I asked him to wait for me and got out of the taxi. A strong wind, reeking of rot and stagnant seawater, swept bits of paper, dry leaves and litter along the street and around my legs. I rapped several times with my knuckles, but the house was empty, seemingly deserted.

“Are there any tango studios in this area?” I asked the man. “Any milongas you've heard of?”

“Around the corner there, on Caminito, there's a couple of good spots, but it's too early still. You'll have to wait an hour or two.”

I asked him for his phone number so I could call him when I was ready to leave the district, and let him go.

“If you don't have anything to do to pass the time,” he told me before driving off, “on the next street over, the one that passes by the wharves, you've got the Quinquela Martín Museum. All the tourists come here to see it.”

When he drove off in the cloud of dust raised by the wind, I felt as if I had been abandoned in the desert. But I knew that Diego had to be here, very close by. Somewhere near here he was shining his dance shoes, combing brilliantine into his jet-black hair, waiting for the moment, waiting for nightfall so he could enter the milonga and find me there.

Both tango spots were closed, their chairs turned upside-down on the tables, their bars clear and gleaming like highways to nowhere.

The museum was open but empty, almost desolate, abandoned like a cemetery where no-one brings flowers any more. I bought an entrance ticket from a listless little deaf man who sat there reading a sports paper and ventured into the lonely galleries, my footsteps echoing through the labyrinth, my gaze wandering across paintings that had been hung without any discernible plan on walls painted in sad pink, sickly yellow, deathly green.

I had no desire to look at Quinquela's works. All I wanted was to leave that place and find Diego, or else go back to my hotel, to the city center, to the hustle and bustle of the capital with its shops and bars.

I paused between two possible paths to the exit from that dusty, decrepit place. And then I saw him.

On a bilious wall, between two horrendously sad, dull paintings, his green eyes fixed me in a fiery stare from under the black brim of his hat.

I moved closer, almost on tiptoe, as if afraid to wake a sleeping child. Because it was him. I knew it was him. The man who had given me the rose that I still carried with me everywhere, who had embraced my body at the milonga, who had made me fly above the music. But I had to make certain, because things like this don't really happen, because only in dreams and in the stories I used to tell myself at night were there men who dressed in black suits with silver pocket watches, who had strong arms and slender bodies, who smelled of old-fashioned cologne and black tobacco. Because only in my nightmares was there always a man who danced the tango like a god and who wore in his waistcoat pocket, lightly grazing it with his fingertip, as if to be sure it was still there, the lace handkerchief with my initial embroidered in red. And who looked at me proudly, knowing me, recognizing me, because I had come in search of him.

Under the painting, on a small plate, rusted around the edges, I could decipher: “
Tango is a lasting wound
. Unknown artist. Ca. 1920.”

S
aying goodbye to Natalia right after our wedding was the hardest thing I've done in my life. And it's not as if my life has been an easy one. Tell the truth, it only started getting on track after one of those chance events that sometimes happen to you—when I got on a ship bound for Argentina, discovered that I liked the sea, and became a sailor.

It wasn't the first time she'd waved goodbye to me from the wharf. Sometimes she'd come with other girls, sometimes with her father, but those other times Natalia had only been my girlfriend, my fiancée, a pretty little teenage girl I could aspire to but had no rights over. After so many failures in my life, I still couldn't believe it might be different now. When I watched Natalia from on board the
Southern Star
it was like watching a dream, knowing that sooner or later you'd have to wake up and realize it had all been a lie, you were still alone, with men and cables and cargo, nobody to love, nobody who cared about you.

But on that day, watching her from the ship, her in her dress
as blue as a piece of summer sky, I finally began to believe that luck was smiling on me. The woman waving her hand at me from there on the wharf was my wife, the one who'd always be waiting in La Boca for me to return, the one who'd give me children, the one who'd keep me company in my old age when the sea was nothing more than a memory.

My breath quickened when I recalled the night before: her white, smooth body, offered up to me on the bed, her modesty, her innocence, her mane of fragrant hair spreading over the pillow, dark and serene, like the forests of my homeland.

For many months I'd have to be without her. Worse still, without any news of her. But it was still better than all the times that had come before, because now Natalia was mine forever, and she was a good girl who'd wait for me in Buenos Aires until I got back.

I worried about my father-in-law's illness, above all because he had told me very clearly, in our conversation before the wedding, that he didn't have much time left and that Natalia did not know it, he had never wished to lay that burden on her. He also explained to me that he had no savings. What he was spending on our wedding was practically all he had. He even offered to let me withdraw my marriage proposal, because Natalia had no dowry and nothing saved for a rainy day. But we sailors in La Boca were like a big family, and I was convinced that, if the worst came to pass, Natalia would be safe until I got back because she could live decently on my salary. I had scarcely any expenses and was ready
to do without the little luxuries I had allowed myself as a bachelor so that she would have everything she might need.

But it broke my heart to watch her from the
Star
, growing smaller and smaller as we sailed into the distance, with her father ill, before I'd had enough time to make her truly mine, other than that one time on our wedding night.

Whenever I let down my guard, the tango lyrics that were coming into fashion then would fill my head, shameless songs about betrayals and insults and decent women who grew tired of being poor and wasting their lives in tenements and slums, who threw themselves at the first man with cash who would take them for a ride in his motor car. Marco used to sing those tangos at night, strumming along on his guitar. I had to give him a couple of punches once to get him to shut up.

I couldn't keep myself from recalling the guy who'd danced with Natalia at the wedding. My blood boiled. I'd done it with the best intentions. I hadn't wanted to make a spectacle in front of my father-in-law and all the guests by forbidding the woman who had just become my wife from showing herself off with another man.

When all is said and done, dancing is normal at a wedding. I didn't want to deny Natalia the pleasure of enjoying, decently, a couple of tangos in front of her father and all the neighborss. But that stuck-up little
compadrito
with his polished hair—he had such a gleam in his eyes that it turned my stomach and made me think about daggers flickering in the light of a street lamp.

Off at sea, under the moon, surrounded by men, the thought of those songs was like a dagger in my back, an intense pain that kept me up late and then brought nightmares in which Natalia, in a short, tight skirt and holding a cigarette, danced the tango in a cabaret under the dirty stares of men in tailcoats and bow ties. Those days I'd wake up full of bile, ready to bash in the snout of anybody who got in my way. And sometimes I did. My men would quietly wipe the blood from their noses, spit overboard, and avoid my eyes. Then I'd be disgusted with myself and hole myself up in my cabin for a few hours, until my anger went down and I convinced myself it was nothing but a dream brought on by jealousy and the anguish of being so far from her. I'd think of the moment I met her, at sixteen, sailing with her father for the first time. As I concentrated on the sparkle in her dark eyes and the grace of her figure, the beast within me would slowly calm down. Until all of a sudden any little thing reawakened it, a red veil fell over me, and once more the beast roared.

I would have given anything to know how to write so I could send her love letters from every port of call, but I'd never gone to school and the only fellow on the
Star
who knew how to read was the captain, and he only enough to decipher cargo lists and contracts.

Anyway, I didn't want to put myself in his hands. I didn't want anyone to find out about my love for Natalia and mock me for it, because if life had taught me anything it was that a man who lets anybody get away with taunting him, who isn't ready to make him pay for a snub, loses his authority.