Heart of Tango (14 page)

They stopped under a street lamp to roll a cigarette. I waited, too, trying to hear what they were saying.

“Urías is amazing,” said the other guy, a stranger to me. “I think what he's doing is a little outdated now, but you almost expect his figures to start breathing. That girl is a real beauty.”

“Indeed. Natalia is the best of La Boca. Her father wanted to commission her portrait, but he didn't have the cash. Now it's done. It's the tango in the form of a woman.”

“And a man, Quinquela. That couple would be the rage of Europe. And the painting is … tragic, don't you think? Gives you the shivers.”

Quinquela patted the other fellow, who had just lit his cigarette, on the shoulder.

“Don't go philosophical on me, Montero. It's a good painting, a very good one, to be sure, but it's just a piece of canvas, like our own.”

Hearing them mention Natalia, I made up my mind. It had to be my Natalia: few women in the district shared that name.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching them, cap in hand. “I happened to overhear you, and, since I've been away at sea for months and just got back . . .”

Both turned to look at me, curious.

“My name is Berstein. Natalia is my wife.”

We shook hands, and I saw them exchange a glance I didn't like.

“I'd like to take a peek at that portrait,” I said, trying to keep them from noticing the rage that was welling up in me. They had said something about a man being with Natalia.

“It is not a typical portrait. It's a painting in which Nicanor Urías depicted a couple dancing the tango. He has it in his
atelier
,
right here, number 13. If you knock now, you might still find him.” Quinquela was looking me over thoroughly, as if to examine me. “You're a sailor, aren't you?”

“Boatswain on a freighter.”

“Come see me some day. I'd like to paint your portrait.”

I quickly took my leave and looked for the number he had mentioned. I clacked the knocker and, to my surprise, the door opened immediately. A small man with a smile on his face, perhaps mulatto, was handing me a blue scarf.

“Excuse me,” he said when he saw me, changing his expression. “Some friends just left and I thought they were coming back for something they forgot.”

“I want to see the painting,” I said, not greeting him.

“The painting?”

“That tango painting, the one your friends are talking about.”

His expression hardened and he tried to close the door on me.

“It's after hours, and the painting's not for sale.”

I shoved the door open with my shoulder, took out my dagger and pushed the painter inside.

“I said I want to see it. Now.”

His dark face lost its color. Never taking his eyes off me, he backed down the hall to a large, well-lit room that held only one painting, in the middle of the room, on an easel.

I didn't have to ask him if that was the one.

On the cloth, Natalia, eyes half closed with pleasure, a smile on
her lips that I'd never seen her wear, was embracing that
compadrito
from the wedding, who, with his eyes also half closed, was resting his hand on her waist in a possessive gesture.

It was true. I almost expected them to breathe.

There, before my very eyes, that man was embracing my wife, and she gave herself over to him as she never had to me. Just the two of them, and the damn tango, ignoring the whole world around them.

I sprang at the canvas, dagger in hand, but the painter stepped in and, hardly realizing what I was doing, I plunged the blade into his chest.

“No!” he cried. “No!”

I don't know if he meant I shouldn't destroy his painting or if he was talking about himself.

“Natalia is mine!” I shouted, so he'd understand. “She's my wife!”

The room was spinning around me, blood was pounding in my ears. I felt it throb through me, like the machine room of the
Star
, and gush to my right hand, which had just pulled the dagger from the painter's chest. The painting lay on the floor. Urías had fallen on top of it, and now he was trying to roll aside so that the blood oozing out of him wouldn't stain his work.

“It's the best I've ever done,” he groaned. “Don't hurt it. Natalia hasn't done anything wrong. She didn't even pose with Diego for the painting. I painted them from memory, I swear.” His voice was losing strength and he had started to sob.

“Where is she?”

“Help me. Find a doctor. I won't turn you in, you have my word.”

“Where is she?”

Seeing that he didn't want to answer me, I grabbed the painting.

“No!” he cried again.

With the dagger I ripped the canvas in half, cutting Natalia away from the embrace that was burning me up inside.

The painter was moaning like a little girl and trying to close his wound with his open hands.

“Where is she?” I asked again, holding the blade to his throat.

He opened his eyes wide and suddenly gave in.

“At El Divino, on Alegría, like every night.”

I grabbed the two halves of the canvas, folded them up and stuck them in the waistband of my trousers.

“Don't hurt Natalia,” I heard when I was nearly at the door.

I don't know why, but that made me laugh, and when I reached the door of the dance hall I was still cackling with laughter.

D
oña Práxedes was complaining that it was a slow night. I heard her mention it to the other girls when I let go of my partner for a moment to drink a glass of water; I even heard her send Ignacio and Sebastián outside to talk up the dance hall to the men who were standing undecided around the door or strolling from café to café trying to choose between them.

I hadn't stopped dancing all night long. I couldn't even remember how many tangos I'd danced already, constantly changing partners, because if there was anything Doña Práxedes wouldn't stand for, it was a guy who “manopolized” a girl, as she put it. My feet had started to hurt and a sweet pain was also spreading from my legs up to my waist. I would have loved to sit down for a bit and drink something cool, but as soon as one song ended, even before my partner let go of me, another man would be standing there, token in hand, eager to embrace me and give himself over to the tango.

Sometimes I felt sorry for them, so lonely, squeezing a few minutes of happiness from their hard and hopeless lives, or a few
minutes of oblivion, which was what almost all of them sought.

When I first started working in the dance hall, I had feared that they just wanted to touch a woman's body, that they'd try stepping over the line until Ignacio and Sebastián would have to rudely toss them out, leaving me feeling dirty and guilty; but later on, night by night, I came to realize that the only thing most of them wanted to do was dance: to feel protected, sheltered, to have someone to embrace them while they thought about their distant girlfriends or mothers or nothing at all, simply letting themselves go, feeling the music, the warmth, the companionship, before they had to go home to their poor solitary rooms and wretched jobs in one of the richest countries in the world, to which they, like my father, had immigrated in the hope that luck would smile on them.

This night, despite being hot and exhausted, I felt good. Ridiculously, I felt a bit like a sister of mercy, an angel descended to earth to comfort them; a wingless black angel who could still offer them a hint of paradise.

Then I saw him, and everything stood still, even though I kept dancing.

My heart sank when I saw Diego talking to Doña Práxedes, lavishing on her one of his nice-boy smiles that lit up the whole dance hall, as if they had turned up all the lamps.

Dazzled, she smiled too, showing her gold tooth and nervously patting the curls of her dyed hair. The girls who were sitting around the bar without partners also started straightening their dresses,
lighting cigarettes, and fluttering their eyelashes at him, hoping to be picked.

I wanted to die, and when he finally parted from Doña Práxedes and walked toward us, I had to hold tight to my partner to keep from falling down. At that very moment, with a final flourish, the squeezebox stopped and the song was over. My partner stuck his hand in his waistcoat pocket to offer me another token, but Diego interrupted.

“It's my turn, friend,” he said without taking his eyes off me. The man walked away and I was left there, face to face with Diego, trembling.

“May I have this dance?” In his outstretched hand lay a fistful of red tokens; on his lips, a tense smile.

I glanced at Doña Práxedes, who assented with a nod, and the tokens disappeared into my bag.

A moment later, as soon as the violin struck a chord and the bandoneón began to wail, everything else disappeared. We were dancing. Dancing in a fog. I felt his body so close to mine, his warmth, his manly scent like a sudden fragrance of red geraniums after it rains. We were one, and nothing else mattered. We were the tango, Diego and I. And then I thanked God for having brought us to this land, and I felt everything had been worth it—the deaths of María Esther, my father and Rojo; the poverty, the shame, the sorrow—for it had all led me to this moment, and life could never bring me anything better than this.

W
hen I felt Natalia in my arms, after all those months of loneliness and anger, everything immediately vanished. I made my peace with the world the moment the tango started up, and I, who had been coming to terms for so long with the fact that my dreams would never come true, suddenly began making plans for the future.

While we danced, I, clinging to an angel who elevated me above the misery of this life, was dreaming of Europe. We'd go to Finland, that beautiful, faraway country of blue lakes and ice flowers, and dance there forever, spreading the tango like an incurable disease throughout the dancers of the land. As soon as I felt sure my voice wouldn't tremble, I would tell Natalia about it, whispering into her ear, like a good-luck spell. Now that we were together, nothing could separate us.

With my eyes closed, feeling her trembling body against mine, everything seemed possible, and I let myself be carried away by the magic of the tango, forgetting the poverty of the dance hall, the
immigrant district that surrounded us, the dashed hopes of all those who looked on us with envy. We'd earned the right to be happy, after all we'd been through.

No-one interrupted us when the song ended. We waited, in our embrace, looking at one another eye to eye, for the music to start up again, then went on dancing, until at last, stopping by a column, she suddenly raised her face, and I kissed her.

We kissed each other.

My entire life's purpose had been to get me to this moment. My entire life would end there, at her lips, at her scent, at this woman who was now part of me, who was me, but purified, elevated, perfect, the person I never knew I could aspire to be.

We kissed for so long that I finally noticed the silence that had fallen on the dance hall and lifted my gaze.

At the door, with his hand in his waistcoat pocket and something tucked into his trousers, the red-haired German was looking at us, wild-eyed.

Natalia had her back turned to the entrance and couldn't see him, but she noticed how I stiffened, and she looked into my eyes in fear.

I kissed her again, in desperation, almost in fury.

Then she cried out, her eyes opened wide in surprise, and her body went limp in my arms.

I
saw them as soon as I entered the dance hall. I hardly had time to notice the filth all over the place, the whores leaning their elbows on the bar, the crowd of sailors, washed and combed, still stinking of ship fuel and man-sweat, the old madam with the red hair who hunkered behind the till, looking around for the thugs who could toss me out of there, not knowing that even God Himself on high, with all his angels and devils, couldn't have done anything to stop me now.

Because they were kissing each other. Right there in front of everyone.

The painter had been lying when he told me they hadn't posed together. The whole district must have known by now that Natalia was a whore, that this guy fondling her here in public was her pimp, that there was nothing else I could do but kill the two of them, or else I'd never be able to let anyone look me in the face again.

But I thought all that later. At that moment, I believe I didn't think anything. The slick-haired
compadrito
looked up and went
pale. Natalia never saw me. I saw them kissing, crossed the dance floor in two bounds, like an eagle swooping down to rend its prey, and buried the dagger in her back.

I didn't want to see her eyes. I didn't want to see the shining black eyes, so sweet, that had been my perdition. I didn't want to hear her plead for mercy for herself or for him either. I didn't want to be weak and forgive her. All I wanted was to rid myself of the grief that was growing and growing inside me, leaving me deaf and blind, rending me like the claws of a wild beast.

He took her in his arms, leaned against the column, and slowly slid down to the floor, never glancing my way, looking only at her, caressing her hair, whispering into her ear.

I started stomping and kicking him while sobs and wails rose around me. I knew my time was up, that the house thugs would be back any second, that they'd call the police, that the whores would fall on me and try to scratch out my eyes with their nails. But I was hoping that this guy would be man enough to stand up and draw his dagger, fight for his life, maybe even kill me.

But he wasn't.

I had to stab him lots of times. Even so, he never let go of Natalia.

I threw the two pieces of painting on top of them, then turned around, expecting to see the sheen of a blade. But everybody was just staring at me, frightened, shrinking into the nooks and crannies of the hall.

“Cowards! Fairies!” I think I shouted.