The Tango Singer Read Free

tips and a free
meal. El Tucumano thought it strange he’d never heard that story, especially in a city abounding in experts on all sorts of music – from rock and shanty-town
cumbias
to bossa
nova and John Cage sonatas – but especially in tango experts, able to distinguish the subtlest nuance between a 1958 quintet and one from 1962. For him not to have heard of Martel was
ridiculous. For a moment I thought he might not exist, maybe Jean Franco had merely dreamed him.
    On the top floor of El Rufián there was a dance practice going on. The women had slim waists and understanding eyes, and the guys, though they wore their sleepless nights on their
worn-out sleeves, moved with a marvelous delicacy and corrected partners’ errors by whispering in their ears. Downstairs, the bookstore was full of people, like almost every bookstore
we’d seen. Thirty years earlier, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez had been surprised that Buenos Aires housewives would buy
Hopscotch
and
One Hundred
Years of Solitude
as if they were noodles or lettuceand take the books home in their grocery bags. I noticed that
porteños
3 still read as avidly as they
had back then. Their habits, however, had changed. They didn’t buy books any more. They’d begin a book in one shop and continue reading it in another, ten pages in one, ten pages in the
next, or a chapter in each, until they finished it. They’d spend days or weeks on a single book.
    The owner of El Rufián, Mario Virgili, was at the bar on the top floor when we arrived. While keeping an eye on everything that was going on, he moved outside of events, looking both
contemplative and agitated. I’d never imagined those two qualities could blend in the same person. When I sat down beside him nothing seemed to move but I could tell that everything was in
motion. I heard my friend call him Tano and I also heard him ask if I planned on staying in Buenos Aires for very long. I answered that I wouldn’t leave until I’d found Julio Martel,
but his attention was already elsewhere.
    One dance finished and the couples separated as if they had nothing to do with each other. I’d found that ritual disconcerting when I saw it in films, but in reality it was stranger still.
Between one tango and the next, a man would invite a woman to dance with a nod that seemed indifferent. It wasn’t. The disdain was feigned to protect their pride from any slight. If the woman
accepted, she would do so with a distant smile and stand up, so the man would come over to her. When the music began, the couple would stand waiting for some seconds, one in front of the other,
making small talk without looking at each other. Then the dance began with a somewhat brutal embrace. The man’s arm encircled the woman’s waist and from that moment she began to back
away. She was always on the retreat. Sometimes, he arched his chest forward or turned sideways, cheek to cheek, while his legs sketched tangled figures that the woman would have to repeat in
reverse. The dance demanded great precision and, most of all, a certain talent for divination, because the steps didn’t follow a predictable order but were either up to the one who was
leading to improvise or choreographed from infinite combinations. With couples who understood each other best, some of the dance’s movements mimicked copulation. It looked like athletic sex,
tending towards perfection but with no interest in love. I thought it would be useful to incorporate some of these observations into my doctoral thesis, because they confirmed the brothel origins
Borges attributed to the tango in
Evaristo Carriego.
    One of the dance instructors came over and asked me if I’d like to try out a few figures.
    Go on, give it a try, Tano said. Everyone learns with Valeria.
    I hesitated. Valeria aroused an instinctive trust, a desire to protect her, and tenderness. Her face resembled my maternal grandmother’s. She had a clear, high forehead and