The Gods of Tango Read Free Page A

get a good grip, strip it bare) and also how to read. She read aloud to Leda on winter evenings in this very living room, in that dark-honey voice of hers that made each syllable sound delicious. She loved the books that chronicled journeys most of all. The Odyssey . The Inferno. A History of Joan of Arc . In the end she’d put the volumes down and started to tell the stories in her own words, a mix of telling them from memory and embellishing the bones. Odysseus unlashed himself and swam out to the sirens. Joan escaped from prison before she could be burned. The road through the inferno became riddled with the dead of their own village, the grocer’s wife, the long-gone priest, their ancestors whose names still bristled on the pages of records in the church. Even hell could seem appealing to a village girl itching for adventure, a village girl like Cora. Listen, Leda, she’d said, imagine traveling to places where you recognize nothing, not even yourown face. Just imagine. And Leda did imagine. When Cora was nine, at the stone washing tubs on the village plaza, she learned about the bleeding of women. Leda was seven then. They say it hurts, Cora whispered, and Leda was terrified. Don’t worry, Cora said. It’ll happen to me first, and by the time it’s your turn I’ll know how to help you. But it didn’t happen that way. By the time Leda’s blood came, Cora was gone.
    Within an hour, the wedding party had swelled with guests. The entire 107-person population of the village seemed to have come, as well as a few guests from the two nearest villages up the mountain, Monte Rosso and Trinità. As there was no groom to speak to, everybody wanted to talk to Leda, congratulate her, and ask questions about Argentina that she could not begin to answer. The married women formed a knot around her that refused to be undone.
    “Are you ready? You’ve packed everything?”
    “She’d better have. The carriage comes at dawn.”
    “At dawn!”
    “Your trunk must be full to the brim.”
    “Is it cold there in winter?”
    “No no, Giovanna, it’s summer there now—incredible, no?—so when she gets there it’ll be warm.”
    “Ah!”
    “Even if it isn’t warm, Dante will soon get the heat going for her.”
    Laughter.
    “Poor bride, already married but she still has to wait.”
    “It’ll be worth it.”
    “Oh yes. Don’t worry, Leda.”
    “Take it from us: you’ll be just fine.”
    More laughter.
    “Leda, I brought you hazelnuts from my orchard. For you and Dante to eat together when you arrive.”
    “How romantic. He can crack them open for you.”
    “Heh, heh, heh.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way.”
    “But he’ll still do it.”
    “Do what?”
    “I have to explain it to you?”
    “Don’t you know anything?”
    “That’s not funny.”
    “Now, ladies.”
    “Well, she’s always—”
    “No fighting, now.”
    “Leda, here, I have something for you too: olives from last year’s harvest. For your Dante.”
    “Our Dante.”
    “Yes, our Dante, he’ll always be our Dante. Remember when he got caught stealing your oranges? What was he, five?”
    “Four.”
    “Santa María. What a precocious boy.”
    “Unstoppable, that one. Even when he was up to no good.”
    “Especially then.”
    “Well, he never gave me any trouble. He always had a pleasant word when he came to the bakery. ‘Sì, signora. Per favore, signora.’ A little gentleman.”
    “Until he became a very tall gentleman.”
    “Nothing little about him now, I’ll bet. Heh, heh.”
    “That’s not for you to know, you crow.”
    “You’re lucky, Leda.”
    “You’ll be just fine, Leda.”
    “You two will build quite a kingdom for yourselves in Argentina.”
    “Not for nothing that the country’s named after silver.”
    “Just don’t forget us.”
    “You will write, won’t you?”
    “Of course she will.”
    She didn’t say a word and no one asked her to. Night had fallen and the women’s faces flickered in the light of