Authors: Tomás Eloy Martínez
Although he was allergic to cats and pollen, suffered frequent bouts of diarrhea and headaches, the child grew normally up to the age of six. He loved playing soccer and seemed to have a gift
for quick attacks from the wings. Every afternoon, while Señora Olivia toiled away at her sewing machine, Estéfano ran around the patio behind the ball, dodging imaginary opponents.
On one of those occasions he tripped on a loose brick and fell. An enormous contusion immediately formed on his left leg. The pain was atrocious, but the incident seemed so trivial his mother
didn’t think it was significant. The next day the bruise had spread and turned a threatening purple.
At the hospital they diagnosed Estéfano as a hemophiliac. It took him a month to recover. When he got up, brushing against a chair caused another hemorrhage. They had to put him in a
plaster cast. He was thus condemned to such constant stillness that his muscles wasted away. Since then – if there is such a thing as then for something endless – he’s had
continuous misfortune. The child developed a huge torso, out of proportion to his stunted legs. He couldn’t go to school and saw only one friend, Mocho Andrade, who lent him books and
resigned himself to playing innumerable games of cards. He learned to read fluently from private teachers who taught him as a favor. When he was eleven or twelve he’d spend hours listening to
tangos on the radio and, when one interested him, he’d copy the lyrics down in a notebook. Sometimes, he wrote down the melodies, too. Since he couldn’t read music, he invented a system
of lines with dots of ten or twelve different colours and circumferences that enabled him to remember chords and rhythms.
The day one of Señora Olivia’s clients brought him a copy of
20th Century Songbirds
, Estéfano was struck by an epiphany. The magazine contained tangos withdrawn from
the repertoires at the beginning of the twentieth century, songs recounting the raunchy goings-on in brothels. Estéfano didn’t know the meanings of the words he was reading. His mother
and her clients were no help either, because the language of those tangos had been invented to allude to the intimate behavior of people who had died many years earlier. The sounds, however, were
eloquent. Since the original scores had been lost, Estéfano imagined melodies that imitated the style of
El entrerriano (The Man from Entre Ríos)
or
La morocha (The
Brunette)
, and applied them to lines like these:
As soon as I snap your snuggle / my blangle starts to blong / inside you’ve so much tuggle / that if I waloop, I’ll
walong.
By the age of fifteen, he could repeat more than one hundred songs reciting them backwards, with the imaginary music reversed as well, but he only did it when his mother left the house to
deliver her sewing work. He’d lock himself in the bathroom, where the neighbours couldn’t hear him, and unleash an intense, sweet soprano voice. The beauty of his own singing moved him
to such an extent that unnoticed tears would spill down his cheeks. He so scorned and mistrusted himself that he found it incredible this voice could belong to him, rather than to Carlos Gardel, to
whom all voices belonged. He looked at his weedy body in the mirror and offered to God all that he was and all that he might one day become in exchange for a glimpse of the slightest gesture
reminiscent of his idol. For hours he stood in front of the mirror, with his mother’s white scarf wrapped around his neck, pronouncing a few phrases he’d heard the great singer say in
his Hollywood movies: ‘Ciao, chickeeadee,’ ‘Look, what a luvally dawn.’
Estéfano had thick lips and curly, wiry hair. Any physical resemblance to Gardel was out of the question. He imitated the smile then, slightly twisting the corners of his lips and
stretching the skin across his forehead, with his teeth shining brightly. ‘Good morning, my good fellellow,’ he’d say. ‘How’s life terreating you?’
By the time they removed the cast, when he was sixteen, his legs were stiff and weak. A physiotherapist helped him to strengthen the muscles in exchange for clothes for his entire family.
Estéfano took six months to learn how to walk with crutches and a further six to learn how to get around with walking sticks, terrified at the thought of another fall and being laid up again
for a prolonged period.
One Sunday in the summer, Señora Olivia and two friends took him to the funfair on Libertador Avenue. Since they wouldn’t let him go on any of the rides, for fear he’d hurt
himself or dislocate his fragile little bones, the adolescent was bored all afternoon, licking at the cotton candy Mocho Andrade bought for him. While he was waiting beside the ghost train tent, he
discovered an electroacoustic kiosk where they recorded voices onto acetate discs for the modest sum of three pesos. Estéfano convinced the women to go around at least twice on the ghost
train and, as soon as he saw them disappear into the darkness, slipped into the kiosk and recorded
El bulín de la calle Ayacucho (Our little Room on Ayacucho)
, trying to imitate the
version Gardel sang with José Ricardo accompanying him on guitar.
When he finished, the technician in the booth asked him to sing it again, because the acetate looked scratched. Estéfano repeated the tango, nervously, at a quicker pace. He feared his
mother would have finished the ride by then and might be looking for him.
What’s your name, lad? the technician asked.
Estéfano. But I’m thinking of finding one that sounds more artistic.
With that voice you needn’t bother. You’ve got sunlight in your throat.
The boy hid the record under his shirt. It was the second version, which had come out worse, but he was lucky enough to get back before his mother reappeared from her third trip round on the
ghost train.
For a while he went around looking for a gramophone where he could hear his recording in secret, but he didn’t know anyone who had one, especially for 45 rpm discs like the one
they’d sold him at the kiosk. The acetate was affected by heat, humidity and the dust that accumulated between the issues of
20th Century Songbirds.
Estéfano thought his
recorded voice must have disappeared forever, but one Saturday night, while he was in the kitchen with his mother listening to the popular program
Stairway to Fame
on the radio, one of the
announcers said that the revelation of the moment was an anonymous singer who had recorded an a cappella version of
Our little room on Ayacucho
in some unknown studio. Thanks to the miracle
of magnetic tapes, he said, the voice was now backed up by a violin and bandoneón accompaniment. Estéfano immediately recognized the first recording, which the technician had
pretended to discard, and he went pale. Separated from his own voice, he found himself still connected to it by a thread of the kind of admiration it was only possible to feel towards something we
don’t possess. It wasn’t a voice he would have wanted or sought but something that had alighted in his throat. Since it was alien to his body, it could be removed when he least expected
it. Who knew how many times it had been around in the past and how many other voices fit within it. To Estéfano it mattered only that it resembled one voice: Carlos Gardel’s. So he was
flattered by his mother’s comment as they listened to
Stairway to Fame
:
Hey, isn’t that strange? They’re saying it’s an unknown singer but it’s not. If he was accompanied by José Ricardo’s guitar, you’d swear it was
Gardel.
At that spur to his pride, the voice slipped out:
That little room on Ayacucho / now feels uninviting and shoddy . . .
Estéfano stopped himself before going on to the next line, but it was too late. His mother said:
You sound just like him.
It’s not me, Estéfano defended himself.
I know it’s not you. How are you going to be on the radio if you’re here? But you could be there if you wanted. Why don’t you sing in the clubs? All this sewing’s ruining
my eyes.
Estéfano went to one or two trattorias in Villa Urquiza, but he didn’t even get an audition. He wasn’t accompanied by a guitarist, like most singers, and the owners feared his
appearance would scare off the clientele. Since he didn’t dare go home without having earned a bit of money, he made use of his faultless memory to take bets on the pools. He was hired by a
funeral director who ran a gambling den, connected to the race tracks and the lotteries, in offices adjacent to the chapels of rest. From there Estéfano answered telephone queries about the
prices of burials at the same time as he took the wagers. He remembered how much money a certain client had bet on the three final numbers of the lottery grand prize and how much someone else had
placed on the last figure, as well as knowing where to find each gambler at different times of day. When the police raided the funeral parlor after an anonymous tip-off, they couldn’t find
the slightest evidence against Estéfano because all the details of every stake were in his head.
He spent several years at these mnemotechnical activities and would perhaps have kept at it all his life if the owner of the funeral parlor hadn’t rewarded him by giving in to his pleas
that he enter him in the singing competition at the Sunderland Club. The prizes were decided by popular vote: each ticket holder got one vote, which turned the atmosphere in the hall into that of
an electoral campaign. Estéfano had little chance and he knew it. The only thing that mattered to him, however, was that the voice, hidden for so many years, should finally flow out into the
light of the world.
The celebrated baritone Antonio Rossi had a string of ten Saturday night triumphs at the Sunderland, and he’d announced he would be participating again. His repertoire was predictable: he
only sang tangos that were currently fashionable and easy to dance to. Estéfano, on the other hand, had decided to compete with a tango from 1920, avoiding lyrics with double entendres to
keep from offending the ladies.
The funeral parlor was frequently closed due to a lack of the deceased. Estéfano took advantage of those times to practice
Mano a mano (Now We’re Even)
, a tango by Celedonio
Flores which ended on a note of unexpected generosity. After wavering between others by Pascual Contursi and Ángel Villoldo, he’d decided on his mother’s favorite. For hours
among the empty coffins he imitated Gardel’s poses, with the rolled-up scarf around his neck. He learned that he could appear more elegant if he did without his stick and held the microphone
while sitting on a stool.
The night before the contest, in the funeral parlor waiting room, he found an old supplement from the newspaper
La Nación
devoted to the author of a single novel who had died very
young of tuberculosis. The novelist’s real name, José María Miró, meant nothing to him. His pseudonym, however, had such assonance with the phonemes of Carlos Gardel,
that he decided to appropriate it. Calling himself Julián Martel, like the unfortunate writer the supplement was about, might cause confusion; choosing Carlos Martel would practically be
plagiarism. So, he opted to be Julio Martel. When he entered the competition he’d left off his ridiculous surname, calling himself simply Estéfano. Now he asked to be introduced under
his new identity.
At seven in the evening one Saturday in November, the master of ceremonies introduced the young tenor for the first time. He’d been preceded by seven singers with mediocre voices. The
hall’s attention was suspended in anticipation of Antonio Rossi, who was going to repeat, by popular request,
En esta tarde gris (On This Grey Evening)
, by Mores and Contursi. The
dance floor was a basketball court they’d taken the hoops out of, which would be used the next day for a children’s soccer tournament. It had a platform at the back with music stands
for the two accompanying violinists. The singers usually sang too close to the microphone and their interpretations were interrupted by screeches of discouraging static. Some impatient fans
preferred to chat or wait out on the sidewalk. Most of them were only interested in Rossi’s entry, the invariable result of the competition, and the dance that would follow, with recorded
music by the big orchestras.
Before going on stage, Estéfano, who was now definitively Julio Martel, knew he was going to lose. Standing in the corridor, looking at his shiny suit, the oversized collar of his shirt
and the clumsy bow tie in a mirror, he grew disheartened. His brilliantined hairstyle, which had gleamed at four o’clock in the afternoon, had dissolved into a fog of dandruff by seven. In
the hall he was greeted by the timid clapping of Señora Olivia and three neighbors. As he walked towards the stool, he thought he could discern a murmur of pity. When the violins struck up
Mano a mano
, he took courage by imagining himself on the prow of a ship, irresistible like Gardel.
Perhaps his gestures were a parody of those seen in the immortal singer’s films. But the voice was unique. It took off by itself, unfurling more emotions than fit into an entire lifetime
and, of course, far more than Celedonio Flores’ tango modestly hinted at.
Mano a mano
told the story of a woman who left the man she loved for a life of riches and pleasure. Martel
turned it into a mystic lament on mortal flesh and the solitude of the soul without God.
The violins were out of tune and out of time, but they were masked by the density of the singing that advanced like a fury, transforming everything it touched into gold. Estéfano’s
diction was defective: he left off the final s’s of the words and simplified the sound of the x’s in exuberance and examine. Gardel, in the version of
Mano a mano
with
José Ricardo on guitar, says
carta
instead of
canta
and
conesejo
instead of
consejo.
Martel caressed the syllables as if they were glass and poured them out
intact over an enchanted audience, silent since the first verse.
They gave him a standing ovation. Some enthusiastic women, breaking the rules of the competition, shouted for an encore. Martel left the stage in a state of confusion and had to lean on his
stick. From a bench in the corridor, he listened to another singer imitating the neighing of Alberto Castillo. Then he shuddered at the round of applause that greeted Rossi as he took the stage.
The first lines of
En esta tarde gris
, which his rival let fall with his colorless voice, convinced him that something worse than defeat would happen that night. He would be forgotten. The
vote confirmed, as usual, Rossi’s overwhelming supremacy.