The Gods of Tango Read Free

Spanish rule, which left him suddenly on the wrong side of the law—and settled here in Alazzano, a tiny village in a valley of figs and ghosts and olive groves. Now the Mazzoni family owned half the land around the village, and yet was crushed by debt and other demons that were making the youngest generation slowly disappear, some overseas, some into oblivion. Although it was not accurate to say the Mazzoni family owned the land. It was one single member who owned it. Zio Mateo. Leda’s fatherwas the younger brother, Ugo, owner of nothing, not even of the house he lived in by the grace and generosity of the brother who had inherited everything and thanks to whom her family, Ugo’s family, could eat and farm and breathe.
    What experts we are at hiding poison, she thought as the wedding party reached the door of Mateo’s house, Palazzo Mazzoni, the largest house in the village. His wife, Crocifissa, had set out the tablecloths, plates, and silverware hours before, and now she and the other women vanished into the kitchen. Leda tried to join them but her aunts glared at her and blocked the door.
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “Not today.”
    “Not in that dress, you don’t.”
    The living room smelled of rosemary chicken, tomato sauce, and freshly baked sweet cakes. The men settled down to smoke, the children went outside to play, and Leda found a chair in a corner, though she would have liked to join the children in the dirt. She fixed her gaze on the oil painting that hung over the fireplace, of a vineyard beneath a clear blue sky. At one edge of the vineyard, an unusually tall fig tree caught sunlight in its leaves. She remembered that tree. It used to stand at the edge of Zio Mateo’s land, at its border with that of a neighbor, Don Paolo. They had disputed over their property line, a fight they’d inherited from their grandfathers. In particular, Don Paolo had wanted the rights to the fig tree, whose fruits were his mother’s favorite. After a long battle, a local judge had decided in Zio Mateo’s favor, though Don Paolo’s mother would spread the rumor that the judge had been bribed. Once he’d won the settlement, Mateo had taken an ax and cut down that fig tree with his own hands, because he wanted to, because he could. And then nobody in the entire village could enjoy its fruits ever again. In the painting, however, the tree’s broad leaves continued to reach upward, their five sections resembling fingers splayed open to the air.
    Leda shifted her weight restlessly. This living room made her think,how could it not, of Cora, who used to live here, who used to call this home. How could there be a wedding day without her?—especially since it was Cora’s brother she was marrying. Cora her soul-cousin, her almost-sister who’d opened the world to her when they were very small, before the nightmare, when their spirits were so large they could have eaten the whole sky and called it breakfast, licked their fingers and been ready for more, Cora who’d seemed to understand the world from the inside in a secret way that Leda was hungry to know also, who’d brushed Leda’s hair and warmed her milk when Mamma was too tired to notice, who’d sung her the lullabies that mothers sing for girls, who’d taken her to the river to fetch water and shown her how to brave the shallows, ankle-deep, calf-deep, even thigh, she was so bold, Cora, bright as hellblaze on a Lenten night, skirts hitched up in heedless fists, and laughing. Leda, two years younger, stood at the shore, scared to wade too deep, staring at her feet through the cold translucent river as it ran and ran and kissed her skin and Cora splashed her and said Go on, go on, what’s a little water in your skirts? Cora teacher of secrets, such as how to pluck a chicken (soften its skin, she said, so the feathers are glad to slide out; they don’t fight you if they’re warm enough; dip the bird in boiling water and let heat work its magic, then