Heart of Tango Read Free Page B

Spain I could imagine that on the high seas you might think things that you would never have thoughtin your own home, on land, where the ground doesn’t swell and the walls don’t sway and the view out of the window never changes.
    But we had few such afternoons, because, even though Rojo tried to arrange short voyages during the period of our engagement, there were times when we did not see one another for weeks on end and I could even go out on a stroll with some Italian girlfriends who lived nearby and also had seafaring fiancés. We couldn’t go dancing, though that was what we loved best, because it wasn’t decent to go out dancing when you were betrothed; nor could we go to the cinema hall, because it was too expensive and too dark; but we would get together to sew and chat, or to walk about and listen to the music that filtered out of the cafés, the music of the tango, for which we were all mad.
    I remember the first time I heard it. Just one song. I was fifteen, at the ball in the Teatro Principal in Valencia, wearing a pale pink dress and holding an ivory fan that had belonged to my mother. I heard that music there, and all at once I felt as if all my bones had gone soft.
    A short, very dark man, costumed with a poncho, spurs, and high-heeled boots, played a kind of accordion that was almost larger than he was, accompanying a couple who danced alone on the dance floor under the astonished gazes of the best Valencian society. One passionate song. A dance of closed eyes and shadows and tobacco smoke in that huge theater of marble columns and crystal chandeliers. One woman, swaying like a flower in the wind,and one man with the proud bearing of a bullfighter, lifting her, cleaving to her as if bound by a curse.
    After that song, the little swell accompanying me took me immediately to the confectioner’s shop to have refreshments while he apologized for the spectacle I had just witnessed. That night my dreams were filled with the rhythms of the tango, and when Papá broached the subject of Argentina, the first thing I thought was: “That’s where they dance the tango,” and I told him I would go.
    Later came Rojo and the afternoons spent embroidering in the sitting room and waiting to get married so that I could go out to dance in some café.
    I had been taught the tango by María Esther, a girl my own age who was born in Buenos Aires. She was the daughter of the bookkeeper for an important shipping company, and they had a Victrola at home. We often got together there, just us girls, to practice dancing with each other, dying of laughter when we had to play the man’s role, imagining with our eyes closed that we were in the grip of impossible passions like the ones you read about in serialized stories in the Sunday papers. We’d talk about fiancés and trousseaus, drink maté and, taking turns to crank the Victrola, play gramophone records over and over again that made us feel all pins and needles without our understanding why, as if tiny burning insects were crawling through our veins.
    â€œAnd you, do you love El Rojo?” María Esther asked me one day when it was just the two of us alone. She was betrothed to arich farmer she scarcely ever saw, so rarely did he come to Buenos Aires.
    â€œHe’s my fiancé,” I recall answering her, almost feeling offended, because for the moment I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Do you love Luis Alfonso?”
    She broke out laughing. “He’s my fiancé!” She tossed my own answer back at me.
    Then we both had a good laugh. Afterward a silence fell, until my friend finally broke it. “You know what, Natalia? Mamá says that men
do
, and women
are
. Okay, so you and I
are
.”
    â€œI don’t understand what you mean.”
    â€œMen work, move around, come and go, play, drink, some of them kill. They shave in the morning, so they scrape off the skin they had the day