The Gods of Tango (16 page)

There was no going back to Naples; nothing waited for him there. He worked at whatever jobs he could. He hauled stones and tanned leather and slashed cows’ throats in the slaughterhouses at the edges of the city. He spent what little money he had on liquor and women, to hell with bread. Even when there was no money for drinks or sex, there was music, and sometimes music was enough, especially in Buenos Aires, where music rapped and hummed and pulsed on every corner—you didn’t need to go to a bar, in those days: men appeared in alleys, spilled onto sidewalks, and played. Music on the night streets to terrorize the cobblestones. You had to be alert, you had to have your knife and wits
about you, but what music:
payadas
, sung by pairs of country men who knew the life of gauchos and horses and lassos and dirt, who battled each other through song, caught up in a duel of wits, brandishing guitars and verses spit from their mouths as drunken crowds cheered them on;
habaneras
, sparked by sailors freshly arrived from Cuba who swarmed the whorehouses and drummed their blood-quickening beats with their knuckles on every surface they could find;
milongas
, those fast joyful songs that could fill a filthy alley with dancers more quickly than honey could draw flies; and
candombe
, the music of black people whose ancestors had come in ships from Africa, shackled, enslaved, and who now lived among the immigrants, as poor as they were, often poorer, with the most incredible music, unlike anything Nestore had ever heard, music played on drums built with cast-off barrels, whose rhythms interlocked to form a tight vast sound. There was no melody. In Europe it would have been called noise. But candombe had a potency that hit him in his belly, and in depths he hadn’t known about. And to dance to it. It woke you up. It made you want to be awake again, made you want to live, if not another day, at least another hour, here, like this, right now, inside the drums’ collective voice.

The first time he took up a violin and joined the music—some neighbors had gathered in a conventillo courtyard, it was four in the morning, and, drunk, he saw these men as, if not friends, the closest things to friends he’d found—he thought he saw a ghostly decapitated head in the shadows and felt that it was not San Gennaro but Il Magnifico, watching his son with wild bright eyes.

How much had changed since then, since those days when the tango was fresh and young and had a percussive drive and vibrancy, before it passed through the hands of hordes of immigrants, before it got slowed down by the
bandoneón
and the spirit of lament. The bandoneón, that boxy German instrument, accordion-like, made for voluptuous mourning. But the percussive bones of the tango were not entirely gone. They hovered under the surface, stepping, pulsing, tak-tak-takking in this
music that was, along with a perfume vial, the only thing that had stayed with him all these years in which he’d lost so many things, even his sight, but not his life. Somehow, to his own surprise, he’d lived and lived, even as the men and music of yesterday kept disappearing in the grind of time. The cataracts had likely helped him live more years; people pitied a blind old man. Without sight, the realm of sound became vivid to the point of piercing. He was one of the few musicians left who recalled the old days of tango, and he shut them up inside himself, shared his memories with no one except through the sound of his violin.

Now, getting ready for work, he called out for the boy, his
lazarillo
, his guide, his surrogate eyes. The boy arrived without delay, touching Nestore’s arm lightly to let him know. Reliable, the boy, and he never complained; no doubt he loved his job of escorting an old man to a brothel, and not only for the coin he got to palm for it. That widow-child, she’d never be able to play in the places where he, Nestore, had played. What did she think she was doing? She was a puzzle he couldn’t decipher. He wondered whether she was beautiful. Whether she would let him bed her if he was very nice and very helpful. It had been at least thirty years since he’d been with a woman whom he hadn’t paid. Nobody wanted a blind old man, not even María, the kindest of all whores, who stroked his brow afterward in a way that made him think of his mamma and almost weep with a blend of gratitude and relief. But even María wanted her pesos just like everybody else.

But he sensed this girl was not as easily swayed. There was something desperate about her, and desperation, he knew, always went one of two ways. It could either make you pliable as water or make you a living weapon. This girl was not pliable. Already the city was honing her into a blade.

And just as well, he thought as he left his conventillo on his lazarillo’s arm—because if that widow-child kept going the way she was, pushing edges in a city that contained more edges than anything else, a blade was exactly what she’d need to be.

Six weeks after arriving in Buenos Aires, Leda received her first letter from her parents. It was written in her father’s hand.

Cara Leda
,

What a tragedy. We are all wearing black and Dante’s mother has not stopped weeping. We are glad that you, at least, are safe and that there have been people to help you
.

You must come home as soon as you can. A strange nation is no place for a young unmarried woman. Leda, anything could happen to you. We are gathering money and will send it dispatched on a boat as soon as possible. Use it for your ticket back to Naples. We are waiting for you here
.

Embracing you
,

Papà and Mamma

She held the letter in her hands for a very long time, staring at her father’s tight and tidy script. It was dusk, and the day’s heat still oppressed the air, though outside her half-open door the women were starting to murmur about taking laundry down from the lines, because look at the clouds, just look. Leda still couldn’t fathom how a day this hot could end in showers, but she’d seen them happen now, quick hot summer rains, and, in fact, one of them had caught her on the day Arturo took her to visit Dante’s burial site, a humble workers’ tomb on which her carnations lay damp and sad and fragile, like soiled girls. She felt torn. Part of her was tempted to obey her parents, go home, be wrapped in their embrace. But another, stronger part of her searched for a way out of the letter’s confines, as though the sentences formed the bars of a cage and she were a trapped animal stalking for a loose chink through which she might flee.

If she went back, she’d have to be the same girl as before.

It was too late for that. She had tasted small scraps of freedom. She had lived with strangers and carved herself a home. She had worked
all day and kept the pay for herself, not handed it to her father, and the money, however paltry, was hers. She had heard the great cacophony of a South American city, walked its streets, felt its infinite anonymity and muscle. She had even worn men’s trousers and survived.

She had played the violin.

For four Sundays now, Nestore had called her over and walked her through a few tangos. Not many. Just two or three. His manner was harsh but she didn’t care. Her attention was absorbed by those hands. The demonstrations, broken down line by line, would always be of different melodies than the week before. After that, perhaps as a test, he would strike up one he’d already taught her and she played along, Carlo joining in on the guitar. That was when she felt his skill, the bright confidence of his notes, their rich timbre. She made sure to play softly, so that her sound could hover underneath his, shaping itself to it. It was more than just technique that he was giving her. There was something larger, a kind of inheritance, and though she didn’t fully know what it was, she felt it ripple out from him to her and absorbed it greedily. There was a gap between what her ear heard and what her fingers could manage, and she found this maddening, but each week that gap seemed to narrow just a little. The sounds she made were on their way to beautiful. Her hands were learning to make a wooden body sing.

Her neighbors had taken to dancing again, despite the unusual sight of a teenage widow playing with men. There was still disapproval, especially from Francesca. And Leda understood: she had broken the delicate equilibrium of good behavior, an equilibrium without which daughters were in danger of receiving the wrong impression and being led astray, perhaps into those worlds where music played all night and girls were torn beyond repair. Francesca had stopped speaking to her, except to discuss errands or plans for dinner, which made their long sewing days feel tense and even more interminable. The Di Camillo daughters did not follow their mother’s lead. Palmira seemed to admire her all the more for breaking unspoken rules. She glowed at Leda as they stitched, continued with their banter and stories. Diana wavered between admiration and a
kind of caution, which must, Leda thought, be born from a reluctance to receive her mother’s wrath. Silvana was as gentle and ethereal with her as ever. Of course, once money ran out, she might be forced to move into the Di Camillos’ room, if the invitation still stood (and it might not). Would she then have to capitulate to Francesca, obey her rules, stop bringing out her instrument?

She would rather go back to Italy.

No. That was not true. She would lose much more if she went home.

She could not bear the thought of stuffing herself back into the cloister of home, much less as a seventeen-year-old widow, constrained by black clothes and the most stringent expectations. The village gossips were vicious with widows who failed to seem sufficiently mournful,
Look at her, it’s only been two years and my neighbor saw her laugh—out loud!—at the village well, can you imagine?
She did not want to be that kind of widow. She did not want to be a widow at all. Perhaps this made her despicable, but all she wanted was to be the person she became when she was locked up in her room, in Dante’s clothes, playing soundless music. This strange new music, this tango, which could sing parts of her soul she’d never spoken. In those late-night moments alone in her room, she was freer than she’d ever been, freer than she’d ever thought a woman could become.

If only, she thought, I could trade music for bread. Then I could survive here without becoming a whore.

But even here in this América, this place of broken rules, such a thing was not possible. Only men played the tango. And she could not.

Unless.

And that is when the thought surged to the surface of her mind. Unless she lived as a man. She could not breathe. Outside, it had begun to rain, though she hadn’t realized it until now. The air rushed and sighed as if releasing a dream. In the courtyard, the women were scrambling to take down their laundry; she should help them, she knew, even though the linens weren’t hers. But she sat frozen by the thought, a dangerous thought, as dangerous as suicide, perhaps more so.

Water snaked across the threshold of her room, a dark wet guest.

Cora, my almost-sister, tell me, what would you do?

The first stage of Cora’s change came on suddenly, and with such quiet that at first the village gossips didn’t notice anything, certainly not enough yet to attach the word
Matta
—Crazy—to her name. She was thirteen years old then, Leda almost twelve. Cora stopped leaving her home. At first that was all. Leda waited for her, by the river, in the patio outside her back door where they’d always met to shell beans or stir cream into stubborn butter, but Cora didn’t come.

Where is Cora, Mamma? Leda asked.

I don’t know.

Can I take the eggs to her house this afternoon?

When Leda went on the errand, Cora’s mother stood at the door and reached for the basket of eggs without a word, transferring them brusquely into a wooden bowl. She did not invite Leda in, and though Leda had always entered this house as easily as her own, something in her aunt’s bearing kept her at the threshold. She craned her neck in an effort to spy Cora in the kitchen, but her aunt’s formidable body blocked the light.

How is Cora?

She doesn’t feel well, her mother said. Her voice was like the whip of a horse’s tail, batting flies. It was then that Leda realized that Zia Crocifissa had not yet looked her in the face.

Does she have a fever? Can I bring her anything?

She’ll be fine. Go home, Leda. She’ll come out when she’s better.

But Cora did not come out the rest of that week, not even for church or the Sunday family meal that followed. She did not come out for three weeks. When she finally emerged, it was for Sunday mass, where she sat in the front pew, the one with the brass plaque that read
LA FAMIGLIA MAZZONI
. Leda sat in the pew behind hers, as she was also a Mazzoni but not of the most important branch, and there was not enough room for all
of them in the most honored seats. Throughout mass, as they stood and sat and kneeled to the familiar Latin prompts of the priest, Leda stared at the back of Cora’s head, covered in white cloth, and willed her to turn around and meet her eyes, but she did not. Even when the time came to leave the pew and line up for communion, Cora kept her gaze down, a picture of piousness that was nothing like the vibrant girl Leda knew her to be, too bigmouthed for her own good, or so some said of her, full of song and protest and tall tales. After mass, at the family meal, Leda tried and failed to catch Cora’s gaze. Cora kept her eyes on her plate. She did not laugh at any of the jokes that Dante or Tommaso told. She did not rise to help her mother when it came time to gather dishes from the table, retreat to the kitchen, and leave the men and boys to smoke and talk. Leda, hands freighted with dishes, looked over at the table in surprise. Cora was the only girl still there.

Cora’s father, Mateo, glared at her. Get up and take my plate.

Cora did not move. She stared at the tablecloth.

Cora, Mateo said. Take. My. Plate.

Now all the men and boys were silent. The plates were heavy in Leda’s arms, but she could not move. Even the clang of pots in the kitchen had stopped, and the only sound was the sharp plea of birds in the olive trees.