What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  The Ferroviaria stank of cigar smoke, cheap gin, hair oil, and human bodies. Like other tango dives near the Riachuelo, during the day it was a large corner store selling foodstuffs and beverages, and by night a venue for music and dancing. It had a wooden floor that creaked underfoot, cast-iron columns, and tables and chairs where men and women sat. Opposite them, bare lightbulbs lit a zinc counter, on which several sinister-looking individuals were hunched or sprawled.

  On the wall behind the bartender, who was assisted by a lanky waitress moving lazily between the tables, hung a large, dusty mirror advertising Cafés Torrados Águila and a poster from the Franco-Argentina Insurance Company with a picture of a gaucho drinking maté. To the right of the bar, next to a doorway, through which barrels of sardines in brine and boxes of noodles were visible, was a tiny podium nestled between an unlit kerosene stove and a battered-looking Olimpo pianola. On it three musicians (bandoneon, violin, and piano with left-hand keys dotted with cigarette burns) were playing a tune that sounded like a nostalgic lament, and among whose notes Max thought he recognized the tango song. “Old Rooster.”

  “Marvelous,” breathed Armando de Troeye, in awe. “Better than I expected, perfect . . . another world.”

  He would have to keep an eye on him, thought Max resignedly. De Troeye had left his hat and cane on a chair, a pair of yellow gloves was sticking out of his left-hand jacket pocket, and he had crossed his legs to reveal buttoned gaiters beneath perfectly pressed trousers. Needless to say, the Ferroviaria was a different type of world from the one he and his wife were accustomed to, and was frequented by a decidedly different clientele. There were about a dozen women, nearly all of them young, either sitting with a man or dancing with one in an area cleared of tables. They were not exactly prostitutes, Max explained in a whisper, but more like hostesses, hired to encourage men to dance with them (they received a token for each dance, which the landlord cashed in for a few cents) and to consume as much as alcohol as possible. Some of them had boyfriends, some did not. A few of the men there were in charge of the latter.

  “Macs?” de Troeye ventured, repeating the word he had heard Max use on the Cap Polonio.

  “More or less,” affirmed Max. “Although not all the women here have one . . . Some are simply employed to dance, and make a living out of it the way others work in local factories or workshops. . . . Respectable tango dancers, all things considered . . .”

  “Well, they don’t look respectable when they dance,” said de Troeye, looking around him. “Or even when they are seated.”

  Max gestured toward the couples entwined on the dance floor. The men, stern, solemn, exaggeratedly masculine, halted their movement in the middle of the dance (which was faster than the average modern tango) to force the woman to circle around them, without letting go, brushing against them or pressing themselves close. And whenever that happened, the woman would twist her hips furiously, sliding one leg to either side of those of the man. Tremendously sensual.

  “As you can see, this is another kind of tango. Another ambience.”

  The waitress came over to the table carrying a pitcher of gin and three glasses. She looked Mecha Inzunza up and down, glanced indifferently at the two men, and went away again, wiping her hands on her apron. After the sudden awkward silence when they had entered (twenty pairs of eyes following them from the doorway), conversations resumed at the tables, although the blatant stares and furtive glances continued. This seemed reasonable enough to Max, who had expected it. There was nothing unusual about members of the Buenos Aires high society conducting nighttime excursions in search of some local color and low life, making the rounds of cheap cabarets or working-class cafés, but Barracas and La Ferroviaria were not part of those seedy itineraries. Nearly all of the customers here lived in the surrounding neighborhood, apart from a handful of sailors from the tugs and barges moored at the Riachuelo docks.

  “What about the men?” asked de Troeye.

  Max sipped his glass of gin, without looking at anyone.

  “Typical, local compadritos, or still playing that role. Faithful to it.”

  “They sound almost simpatico.”

  “They aren’t. As I told you, a compadrito is a working-class youngster from the suburbs, a tough guy spoiling for a fight. . . . A few are for real, the others are just trying to be or to give that impression.”

  De Troeye swept an arm around the room. “What about these fellows, are they for real or trying to be?”

  “A mixture.”

  “Fascinating, isn’t it, Mecha?”

  De Troeye was keenly studying the men at the tables or at the bar, all of whom seemed ready for anything provided it was illegal, with their hat brims cocked over their eyes, slicked-back hair glistening down to their collars, which were turned up gangster-style, and bolero jackets with vents. Each had a glass of grappa, brandy, or gin in front of him and a lighted cheroot in his mouth, as well as the telltale bulge of a knife tucked into his waistband or down the arm of his vest.

  “They look fairly dangerous,” concluded de Troeye.

  “Some of them might be. Which is why I advise you not to stare at them for too long, or at the women when they dance with them.”

  “And yet they aren’t shy about staring at me,” said Mecha Inzunza, amused.

  Max turned to look at her. Those honey-colored eyes were exploring the room, at once curious and challenging.

  “You can’t expect not to be looked at in a place like this. Let’s hope that’s all they do.”

  She gave a soft, almost disagreeable laugh. A moment later she turned toward him.

  “Don’t scare me, Max,” she said coldly.

  “I don’t think I am.” He held her gaze with absolute calm. “I already said I doubt this kind of thing scares you.”

  He took out his cigarette case, offering it to the couple. De Troeye shook his head, lighting one of his own. Mecha Inzunza accepted an Abdul Pasha and inserted it into her cigarette holder, leaning over so that Max could give her a light with a match. Leaning back in his chair, Max crossed his legs and exhaled the first puff of smoke as he watched the couples dance.

  “How do you tell which are prostitutes and which aren’t?” Mecha Inzunza asked.

  She let the ash from her cigarette drop onto the wooden floor as she observed a woman who was dancing with a stocky yet surprisingly agile man. She was young, of Slavic appearance, with blonde hair the color of old gold. She had coiled it into a bun, and her blue eyes were accentuated by mascara. She had on a red-and-white rose print blouse with skimpy undergarments beneath. Her very short skirt flapped about as she danced, occasionally revealing an extra inch of black-stockinged thigh.

  “It’s not always easy,” replied Max, without taking his eyes off the woman. “I suppose it’s a question of experience.”

  “Are you very experienced at telling them apart?”

  “Reasonably.”

  The music having paused, the fat man and the blonde had stopped dancing. He was wiping the perspiration from his brow with a handkerchief, and she, without exchanging a word, sat down at a table where another couple was sitting.

  “Her, for example.” Mecha Inzunza gestured toward the blonde. “Is she a prostitute or a dancer, like you were on the Cap Polonio?”

  “I don’t know.” Max felt a twinge of irritation. “I would have to get a little closer.”

  “Why don’t you, then?”

  He examined the tip of his cigarette as though making sure it was lit. Then he raised it to his mouth and inhaled a precise amount of smoke, exhaling it slowly.

  “Later, perhaps.”

  The band was playing another tango, and more couples had taken the floor. A few of the men kept their left hand, the one they held their cigarette in, behind their back so that the smoke wouldn’t bother their partner. Smiling contentedly, Armando de Troeye took in every detail. Twice,
Max saw him take out a small pencil and jot down something in tiny, cramped writing on his starched shirt cuff.

  “You were right,” he said. “They dance more quickly. The movements are looser. And the music is different.”

  “This is the Old School Tango.” Max was glad to change the subject. “They dance the way the music is played: faster and with more cortes. And notice the style.”

  “I already have. It’s delightfully sluttish.”

  Mecha Inzunza stubbed out her cigarette fiercely in the ashtray. She seemed suddenly vexed.

  “Don’t be so coarse.”

  “I am afraid that is the word for it, my dear. Look . . . they are almost titillating to watch.”

  De Troeye’s smile broadened into a fascinated leer. Max noticed something in the air. An unspoken language between the de Troeyes that he couldn’t read, intimations and references that eluded him. Alarmingly, he seemed somehow to be included. Vaguely uneasy, and with a measure of curiosity, he wondered in what way. To what extent.

  “As I explained on the ship,” he said, “tango was originally a black dance. Only they danced it separated. Even in the most restrained version, when couples embrace doing those moves, it changes things a lot. . . . Ballroom tango tidied them all up, made them respectable. But, as you can see, respectability doesn’t count for much here.”

  “Interesting,” said de Troeye, listening intently to everything Max said. “Is this the true, authentic tango music?”

  It wasn’t the music itself that was authentic, but rather the style of playing, Max explained. These people couldn’t even read a score. They played in their own way, the old way, fast and furious. As he spoke he pointed at the diminutive orchestra: three scrawny-­looking men with graying hair and bushy, nicotine-stained mustaches. The youngest was the bandoneon player, who looked in his fifties. His teeth were as worn and yellow as the buttons of his instrument. At that instant, he was glancing at his fellow musicians, conferring about which piece to perform next. The fellow playing the fiddle nodded, stamped his foot several times to set the beat, the pianist began thumping the keys, the bandoneon stuttered to life with a wheeze, and they started playing “The Brush-off.” The dance floor immediately filled with couples.

  “There you have them,” Max smiled. “The boys from the old days.”

  In fact, he was smiling at himself, at his own memories of the neighborhood. At the long-gone days when he would hear that music at open-air dances on Sunday mornings, or on summer nights while he played with other kids on the sidewalks, beneath street lamps still lit by gas. Seeing couples dance from a distance, and spying jeeringly on those embracing in dark doorways (“drop that bone, doggie”), and running off sniggering, listening daily to those tunes sung by men coming back from the factory, by women from the tenements huddled over laundry basins splashing soapy water. The same tunes that thugs whistled, hats pulled low to hide their faces, as they approached in pairs a lone, unwary nighttime stroller, knives glinting in the dark.

  “I’d like to talk to the musicians,” de Troeye proposed. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I don’t see why not. When they finish playing, buy them a round of drinks. Or, better still, give them a tip. . . . Only don’t flash a lot of money around. We’ve attracted enough attention as it is.”

  Couples were shuffling around the area set aside for dancing. The blonde Slavic-looking woman had taken to the floor again, this time with the man from the table she had been sitting at. Challenging, aloof, eyes fixed on the distant haze of tobacco smoke, he was making her move to the music, guiding her with subtle gestures, applying pressure with his hand resting lightly on her back, or sometimes with simple looks. Or by coming to a sudden, apparently unexpected halt, at which the woman, eyes fixed impassively on his face, would start switching her legs from side to side, at once disdainful and lascivious, pressing herself against the man as though trying to arouse his desire, twisting her hips and legs this way and that, in obedient surrender, as though accepting the intimate ritual of tango with absolute naturalness.

  “If the bandoneon weren’t acting as a brake,” Max explained, “the rhythm would be even faster. Even looser. Bear in mind that the Old School Tango players had a flute and a guitar.”

  Fascinated, Armando de Troeye took notes. Mecha Inzunza was silent, transfixed by the blonde tango dancer and her partner. Several times, as they swept by, the man’s eye met hers. He was a swarthy fellow in his forties, Max noted, hat tipped forward, a Spaniard or Italian with a somewhat threatening air about him. De Troeye, for his part, was nodding, thoughtful and contented. His mood was one of excitement as he began following the music with his fingers on the table, as though playing on invisible keys.

  “I get it now,” he said, delighted. “I understand what you mean, Max, about pure tango.”

  The man dancing with the blonde woman continued to ogle Mecha Inzunza each time he went by, and more insistently than before. He was a typical local compadre, or looked the part: thick mustache, tight-fitting jacket, ankle boots that moved nimbly across the wooden floor, tracing slow arabesques in between the clack of his partner’s shoes. Everything about him was phony, even his mannerisms; a knucklehead with pretensions of being a tough guy. Max’s experienced eye spotted the incongruous bulge of the knife on his left side, between his jacket and vest, on top of which dangled the two long ends of a white silk scarf tied with deliberate flamboyance around his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, Max also saw that Mecha Inzunza was playing along with him, holding the fellow’s gaze, and his old streetwise instinct smelled trouble. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to stay much longer, he told himself, uneasily. It seemed Señora de Troeye had mistaken La Ferroviaria for the first-class ballroom on the Cap Polonio.

  “Calling it pure tango is an exaggeration,” he said to de Troeye, forcing himself to think about the composer’s last remark. “Let’s just say they play in the traditional way. The old way . . . you hear the difference in rhythm and style?”

  De Troeye nodded again, complacently.

  “Of course. That wonderful 2/4 time, the keyboard thumping out four beats and then the countermelody . . . the initial phrases, with bass notes from the bandoneon.”

  They played that way because they were elderly, Max explained, and the Ferroviaria was a traditional dance venue. The nighttime crowd in Barracas was rough, ironic; they liked cortes and quebradas. Brutal embraces, leg thrusts, and provocation, like that blonde woman and her partner. If they played tango that way at a popular Sunday gathering for families or young people, almost no one would take to the dance floor. Out of prudishness or preference.

  “Fashion,” Max concluded, “is moving further and further away from all this. Soon people will only dance that other tame, dull, soporific tango you find in ballrooms and in the cinema.”

  De Troeye gave a mocking laugh. The music had stopped and the orchestra was striking up another tune.

  “Effeminate, you mean,” he said.

  “Possibly.” Max took a swig of gin. “You could put it that way.”

  “There is certainly nothing effeminate about that fellow making his way over here.”

  Max followed de Troeye’s gaze. The knucklehead had left the blonde woman sitting at the table next to the other woman, and was walking toward them with the traditional swagger of the Buenos Aires tough: slow, sure, measured. Stepping across the floor with calculated grace. All that was missing, thought Max, was the tap of cues and billiard balls in the background.

  “If there’s any trouble, don’t stand around gaping,” Max whispered hastily to the couple. “Make for the door and get in the car.”

  “What kind of trouble?” asked de Troeye.

  There was no time for a reply. The fellow was standing before them, motionless and serious-looking, his left hand tucked into his jacket pocket with roguish elegance. He was staring at Mecha Inzunza as if she were
alone.

  “Would you care to dance, Madam?”

  Max eyed the glass pitcher of gin. In an emergency, he could turn it into a viable weapon by smashing the lip against the table. Only to gain time, or try to, while they made a getaway.

  “I don’t think . . .” he started to say in a low voice.

  He was speaking to Mecha Inzunza, not the fellow who stood waiting. But she rose to her feet with complete calm.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She removed her gloves unhurriedly, leaving them on the table. The entire room was looking at her and her partner, who was waiting without showing the slightest impatience. When she was ready, he took her by the waist, placing his right hand on the gentle curve above her hips. She slipped her left hand over his shoulders, and without looking at each other they started to move among the other couples, heads closer than in a conventional tango, bodies acceptably far apart. Anyone would think they had danced together before, Max thought, and yet remembering the ease with which he and Mecha Inzunza had adapted to each other on the Cap Polonio lessened his surprise. She was certainly a very intuitive, intelligent dancer, capable of following anyone who danced well. The fellow moved with manly assuredness as he led the woman skillfully, tracing agile figures on an invisible musical stave. The couple swayed gently as she followed the rhythm of the music and the silent commands transmitted by the man’s hands and gestures. All at once, the man performed a corte, lifting his right heel off the floor almost casually, tracing a semicircle with the tip of his shoe, at which Mecha Inzunza completed the turn with consummate ease, moving one way then the other, twice drawing closer to the man, only to pull away before becoming entangled with him once more, sliding her leg to either side of his with remarkable aplomb. She added a touch of classic lowlife elegance that was so convincing it drew gestures of approval from the onlookers at the tables.