The Gods of Tango (12 page)

“And if she doesn’t get picked to go on an errand—how she complains!” said Palmira.

Diana looked ready to protest.

“Come on,” Palmira said, “you know it’s true.”

“Maybe it’s true,” Diana said, grudgingly. “But I have my rights.”

“What rights? You’ve been reading too many anarchist pamphlets.”

“I wish,” Diana said, and she laughed.

Palmira laughed with her.

“You don’t read anarchist pamphlets, then?” Leda asked, eyes on her
sewing. This anarchy. The strikes, the riots, the bullet in Dante’s chest. There was so much for her to understand about Buenos Aires.

The sisters didn’t respond. She looked up; they were staring.

“You can
read
?” said Diana.

“I can.”

“My God.”

“Who taught you?” Palmira said.

“My father.”
And Cora
, she thought, but her cousin’s name stuck in her throat.

“And you can write too?”

“Yes.”

An amazed silence settled over the girls. They sewed on. Finally, Diana said, “Well then, you can help me write my own anarchist pamphlet. On the rights of middle daughters.”

Palmira smiled. “And the eldest daughters?”

“You’ll have to ask her for another one.”

“What do you think, Leda?”

“Why not?” Leda said. The smell of shit rose up behind her. It must have been one of the little children; a cluster of them was playing with sticks in a bucket, squealing, enraptured with their invented toy. The girls either didn’t notice the smell or were inured to it, focused on their work. Leda felt embarrassed, though she wasn’t sure why—there was no shame, was there, in knowing how to read and write, she certainly didn’t want it to be otherwise. And yet it bit at her, this difference between them. These girls had not grown up the way she had, a landowning family, meat on the table, books in the house. She tried to lose herself in the stitches, taking shelter from her thoughts in the repetitive rhythms of the needle. She made it through several hours without having to speak. However, in the afternoon, when the light began to deepen to a heavy gold and her hands ached with each stitch, right after Francesca announced that in an hour they would put their supplies away and cook dinner, Palmira said, “Leda, tell us about your village.”

“Please,” said Diana. “We’re so bored with each other’s stories.”

Stitch, stitch. Leda didn’t look up. “I don’t have any interesting stories.”

“There must be something,” Palmira insisted. “What is the village called again?”

“Alazzano.”

“And how big is it?”

“Not big.”

“How many people?”

“About a hundred.”

“What! No more than that! You must know everyone.”

“Yes.”

“I bet that’s wonderful.”

Stitch, stitch. Light flashed on Leda’s needle.

“Not at all like here,” Palmira continued. “It’s impossible to know everyone in Buenos Aires.”

“Especially since we’re never allowed to go out,” said Diana.

“That’s for our own good,” said Palmira, “and you know it! Really, Diana.”

“Oh, come on. You yourself just said—”

“Let’s get back to Leda’s story—”

“—that you wish you could go out and meet more men.”

“I said no such thing!”

“But it’s what you meant.”

Palmira poked Diana with her needle, drawing a pinhead of blood.

“Ouch!” said Diana. “Mamma!”

Francesca came out of the kitchen and slapped Diana across the cheek. The cluster of children behind them, who now squatted in a circle shelling beans into a bowl, looked up in unison at the sound of the slap. They watched, faces expressionless. “Stop distracting your sister and get back to work.”

“But—”

Francesca raised her hand again. Diana flinched and bowed over her sewing. The children resumed their shelling.

After a few minutes, Palmira said in a low voice, “What about fruits? What grows in your village?”

“Figs,” said Leda. “White and purple ones. Hazelnuts. Lemons. Olives, of course, all over the hills.”

“I’ve never even heard of a white fig,” said Palmira.

“It’s sad,” Diana blurted, “what happened to your husband. Shot in the head like that.”

Head. Not chest. Leda felt sick, faint, the courtyard tilted dangerously.

Francesca returned, hand raised to strike Diana again.

“No, don’t,” said Leda. “Please. It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right, she’s a rude girl.”

“I’m not offended,” Leda said.

Francesca looked torn between maternal discipline and the laws of hospitality. She hovered for a moment, then disappeared to the kitchen.

The three sisters sewed in silence for a while.

Leda stared at the white cloth in her hands, now a canvas for broken shards of her cousin’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Diana said under her breath.

“It’s all right,” said Leda.

“I heard he was very brave. On that day, I mean.”

“Of course he was,” said Palmira.

“But you didn’t even get to see him once he was your husband.” Diana’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You didn’t get to, you know, sl——”

“Diana,”
Palmira said, needle threatening her sister’s arm.

Diana hushed.

“At least you still have time,” said Palmira. “You’re so young, you can marry again.”

“There are many men here looking for wives. Palmira’s gotten several offers,” Diana said proudly.

“That doesn’t matter,” Palmira said quickly.

“Yes it does,” Diana said. She lowered her voice again. “They won’t let her marry until our brother finishes school. We’re all working so he can study.”

“And for the family.”

“Always for the family.”

Stitch, stitch. Blinded by white cloth.

“Almost time to pack up,” said Palmira.

Leda nodded. Her fingers throbbed and her back ached from crouching over her needle. She wondered how much money this labor would yield, whether it would be enough to purchase her own bread each day, once the money from the collection had run out. She didn’t know what to do with the sympathy the girls had extended to her. Suddenly she longed for Alazzano, where every tree and face was familiar, absurd when she’d been so desperate to leave but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t help picturing the orange groves, the river, the crush of hazelnuts under her shoe, baring their treasure. And yet she didn’t want to go back. What did she want, then? Another husband, as these girls were suggesting? The thought made her cringe. Her first task, she thought, was to survive. Her second task: to learn to live with the low buzz of her grief. And after that, to recover her appetite, which had dissolved at Dante’s death.

To be hungry again.

She could see no further into the future than that.

That night—after helping cook dinner and eating two bites in her room despite the Di Camillo family’s entreaties that she join them, and after Arturo’s alarmingly eager attempt to start a conversation when she crossed the courtyard to empty her chamber pot before bed, too much longing in his eyes, as if there were some aching hole in him she was supposed to fill—she lay in the dark, listening to the creaks and murmurs of the conventillo, her neighbors’ chatter, the constant stream of life in the surrounding rooms, and let her thoughts transport her back to Alazzano, with its glorious white figs that not everyone in Argentina had ever tasted, just hanging from the branch, wild, beckoning. How she would
take them down to dry on long slabs of wood so they could be enjoyed through the long winter, the sweetness of them speaking of the summer just past, honey captured on your tongue.

Her mattress was hard as stone. She turned uneasily and thought of Palmira. There she was under a white fig tree, gazing at the leaves cascading all around her like a crowd of wide green hands. Let me show you, Palmira: see how I reach up and find the ripest figs, the soft ones that are begging for your mouth. She watched Palmira eat the sweet and unfamiliar fruit, watched startled pleasure spread across her face, lips open, eyes wide—but then the air rushed around them and Leda turned and saw Cora, skin blue, hair wet from the river, watching them with a terrible expression on her face.

Cora, Cora, come closer!

What do you think you’re doing?

Palmira vanished. Shame a warm brick in Leda’s belly. She’d been caught doing something wrong, but what? Stealing fruit? Wandering too far in the night?

She asked to taste the figs
. Although this, Leda realized, was not exactly true.

Cora shook her dripping head, like a mother saddened by a wayward child.
Leda. This place is not what you think
.

Leda sat up in bed, covered in sweat. Hot thick air pressed at her from all sides. She felt both thrilled and afraid, though she couldn’t have said why. It was hard to breathe and she longed for ventilation, but it would surely be indecent, if not dangerous, to sleep with the door open. She kept it shut and lay awake until sleep rose to maul her in the darkness.

On Saturday night, the men took their baths in a great clatter of metal and hot water, each patiently waiting his turn to scrub and cleanse himself in one of three large tubs behind closed doors. They emerged looking refreshed and slightly bewildered. When the men were done, the
women took their turns. By the time Leda’s turn arrived the water was gray and clouded, almost as dirty as the floors. Silvana had just stepped out and was drying herself off discreetly in the corner. Leda knew by now to avert her eyes, the best form of privacy in conventillo life. In the tub, she scrubbed as quickly as she could, fighting her revulsion. Afterward, she felt more refreshed than she’d expected. Around one a.m., the men went out together, combed and groomed and buoyant. On Sunday morning, some of them were still straggling home as Leda and the Di Camillo girls rolled out thin sheets of pasta and cut them into precise rows—these Northerners made their linguini thicker than she did, it took getting used to, and there were also the breaks she took to kill roaches in the futile and eternal war against them—and children yelped in protest from the patio as their turn came in the tubs. At nine, Leda and the Di Camillo girls put aside the pasta, changed into their best dresses, and pinned back their hair. The church was just a half block beyond the butcher. It was larger than the village church back home; Leda had never seen so many people in one room in her life. Like the crowd at the port in Naples, only waiting for God rather than for a ship. She fidgeted during mass. She tried to stop. The nape of Arturo’s neck was right in front of her, exposed and somehow pure. He was a sweet man, really. Earnest. His prayers were probably sincere and full of hope. Why couldn’t she be like that? To keep still she counted the tiny hairs on Arturo’s nape, black, delicate, more vulnerable than anything on a man should be.

Even the communion bread tasted different here. Less airy, more tart.

After church, they returned to the conventillo, and the men brought tables and chairs and crates out from their rooms and arranged them together in the courtyard, for a communal lunch. Mimicking a family on Sunday, Leda thought.

There was meat on this day. There was wine on this day. The scent of basil and tomato sauce veiled the smell of filth. Wine bottles circulated around the tables and poured into each cup.

“Signora Chiara, your
bolognese
could drive the archangels to sin.”

“My daughters made it this week.”

“They are saints.”

“It’s true, girls, don’t blush—your mother has taught you well.”

Across the room: “So then I told her, listen, who do you think you’re—”

“Such beautiful flowers on the altar today!”

“Lent is coming. Enjoy them while they’re there.”

“With Lent coming there are a lot of things we should enjoy.”

“Oho!”

Laughter.

“Gentlemen! There are girls here!”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, Francesca, come on—”

“Because if she tries that with me one more time I’m telling you I’ll—”

“Leda! How do you like our Sunday lunch?”

At the sound of her name, the tables went quiet. Leda felt all eyes on her. She should say something, but found she couldn’t. Expectation thickened the air.

“Is it as nice as back home?”

“Of course it’s not,” Francesca said. “Nothing ever is.”

It wasn’t true—Leda had not felt such warmth and ease at Sunday meals in Alazzano in years—but Francesca’s words punctured the mood. The conversation continued more subdued, weighed down by private thoughts of homes far away.

After lunch, the men pushed the tables back into the rooms while the women made coffee. All the chairs and crates remained on the patio. Carlo went out and returned a few minutes later with a neighbor, the same old man Leda had seen on the first day, playing the violin on the street. They were walking arm in arm, like brothers. The old man had his instrument.

As soon as they arrived, the chant began.

“Mu-si-
ca
! Mu-si-
ca
!”

Other bachelors joined in, then Diana, then Palmira, until all sixty-three residents of the conventillo were clapping and chanting, Leda among them, caught up in the collective sound.

Carlo disappeared into his room and returned with his guitar. The chant rose into a cheer, the rhythmic claps into applause, then silence. Carlo sat beside the old man, by the door to the kitchen.

He counted to four.

And then it happened.

Music. It surged out of string and finger in harsh communion, weeping from the terrible pleasure of the bow. Guitar strings shook and deepened the well of sorrow.

Carlo sang. Something about the night clutching his heart, something about a woman, a bad woman, she couldn’t quite make out the Spanish.
The sound ensnared her. It invaded her bones, urged her blood. She didn’t know herself; it now occurred to her that she knew nothing, nothing, nothing about the world, could not have known a thing when she didn’t know the world contained this sensation, such sound, such wakefulness, a melody as rich as night.

A tap on her shoulder. Arturo. “Would you like to dance?”