The Tango Singer

by Tomás Eloy Martínez

  The doorman babbled some hurried phrases of which I only understood a few words. He mentioned a threatening speech by the President of the Republic. We’re violent gangs? You hear that, Míster Cogan: violent groups? That’s what that jerk said. Enemies of public order, he said. He’s more of an enemy of order, I’d say.

  The agitation in the streets woke me up. I felt thirsty. I went to the little bathroom by the entrance, washed my face and drank water from my cupped hands.

  When I came out, the doorman was bounding up the hotel’s deceptive stairway, the loose steps of which had tripped me more that once, while calling me excitedly: Come see this, Míster Cogan! Look at all the people, mamma mía, this is getting out of hand!

  We went out on a tiny balcony on the third floor. The waves of humanity were advancing towards the Congress brandishing pot lids and enameled platters, and banging them in a rhythm that never lost a beat, as if they were all reading from the same score. They were chanting an indignant slogan in an angry voice: Out with them all! / Every single one of them!

  A young guy with moist black eyes like El Tucumano’s was walking at the front of a group of fifteen or twenty people: most of them women with babes in arms or small children hanging on the backs of their necks. One of them shouted up, when she saw us on the balcony: Get down here and be counted! Don’t just sit there watching TV!

  I felt a pang of nostalgia for my friend, who I hadn’t seen since they closed the boarding house on Garay Street, and I had a feeling I’d find him in the effervescence down below. I imagined that he’d hear me, wherever he might be, if I called him with all the desire I was carrying around inside. So I shouted too: I’m coming! I’m coming! Where are you going to meet up? At the Congress, in Plaza de Mayo, everywhere, they answered. We’re going everywhere.

  I tried to convince the doorman to join the crowd, but he didn’t want to leave the hotel undefended and he didn’t want to get dressed. He accompanied me to the door, warning me not to talk too much. Your accent really sticks out, he said. Yankee to the core. Be careful. He gave me a white and sky blue striped shirt like the Argentine national soccer team’s, and I merged into the crowd.

  Everybody now knows what happened during the following days, because the papers talked of nothing else: the victims of a vicious police force, leaving more than thirty people dead, and the pots and pans banging nonstop. I didn’t sleep or go back to the hotel. I saw the president flee in a helicopter that rose above a fist-waving crowd, and that same night I saw a man bleed to death on the steps of the Congress building while pushing away with his arms the tragedy coming upon him, going through his pockets and memories to make sure everything was in order, his identity and his past in order. Don’t leave us, I shouted at him, hang on, don’t leave us, but I knew that it wasn’t him I was saying it to. I was saying it to El Tucumano, to Buenos Aires, and to myself, once more.

  I walked around the Plaza de Mayo, up Diagonal Norte, where the crowds were smashing in the fronts of the banks, and I even walked as far as the Británico, where I had a coffee and sandwich without any chess players around, or any actors on their way home from the theater. Everything seemed so still, so subdued, and nonetheless no one was sleeping. The clamor of life flowed along the sidewalks and plazas as if the day were beginning. And the day was always beginning whether it was four in the afternoon, midnight or six in the morning.

  I’d be lying if I said I thought of Martel while I was wandering from place to place. I thought of Alcira every once in a while, I did think of her, and when I saw the wreckage of flowers strewn around the kiosks on the avenues, I thought of picking up a bouquet for her.

  I went back to the hotel on Friday morning, thirty-five hours after going down in search of the demonstrator with the moist eyes – whom I never saw again – and, as I thought it was all over, slept until nightfall. During those days there was a succession of presidents, five in total counting the one I’d seen fleeing in the helicopter, and all of them, except the last, were left alone and abandoned, hiding from the public’s fury. The third lasted a week, got as far as sending out Christmas cards and was on the verge of printing a new currency, to replace the eleven or twelve that were circulating out there. He smiled, untiringly, before the tide of misfortune, perhaps because he saw flames where the rest saw only ashes.

  The night before that Joker assumed power, a Saturday, I walked to the edge of the river, crossing the tracks of a railway line that no longer existed and defying the dense darkness of the south. An enormous ship, with all its lights on, moved forward on my right, beyond the Fountain of the Nereids, whose impassioned figures had consumed Gabriele D’Annunzio with desire. I had the impression that the ship was slowly cleaving the city’s streets, although I knew it was impossible. It moved between the buildings with the rhythm of a ghostly camel, while the night opened its palm and revealed the density of the stars. When the ship disappeared and the darkness returned to close around me, I stretched out on the stone balustrade that rose in front of the riverside bushes and stared at the sky. I discovered that, along with the labyrinth of constellations, between Orion and Taurus, and beyond, between Canopus and the Chameleon, another labyrinth opened up of even more unfathomable empty corridors, spaces clear of celestial bodies, and I understood, or thought I understood, what Bonorino had said to me in the boarding house the night he’d asked for the Prestel book: that the shape of a labyrinth is not in the lines that form it but in the spaces between those lines. Making my way through the vastness of the firmament, I tried to find aisles connecting together the black seams but, as soon as I advanced a tiny bit, a constellation or solitary star would block my path. In the Middle Ages they believed that the figures in the sky mirrored the figures on earth, and so too now, in Buenos Aires, if I walked in one direction history would recede in another, hopes would turn hopeless and the afternoon’s joys would become heartaches when night fell. The life of the city was a labyrinth.

  I began to suffer blasts of humid heat. The frogs croaked among the reeds of the river. I had to go, because I was being eaten alive by mosquitos.

  At noon the next day, the doorman knocked on my door to invite me to sip maté and watch the swearing in of the ministers chosen by the Joker.

  I would have woken you earlier, Míster Cogan, but I didn’t know if I should. An apotheosis, see, we got us a gem of a president now. You wouldn’t believe the speech he came out with.

  On the television they paraded a couple of political analysts who defined the Joker as a ‘whirlwind of work, someone who will do in three months what hasn’t been done in ten years.’ And so it seemed. When the cameras focused on him, he looked restless, youthful, and he kept repeating: ‘Let’s see if you’ve understood me once and for all. I’m the president, got it? Pre-si-dent.’

  Wherever he went he was followed by an entourage of functionaries with tape recorders and file folders. On a couple of occasions he asked them to leave him alone to meditate. Through the half-closed door you could see him raise his eyes to the ceiling with his palms together. One of his acolytes caught my attention when I saw him disappearing down one of the corridors in the Presidential Palace. He swayed a little as he walked like El Tucumano. From behind, it could have been him: he was tall, with a strong neck, broad shoulders and thick black hair, but for days I’d been seeing El Tucumano everywhere and didn’t know how to get the mirage out of my head.

  The Joker’s waiting room was full of priests. Some of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were still there, with their white kerchiefs on their heads, after the president had promised them justice in an unexpected interview. I saw a couple of television personalities and the ministers who were preparing to be sworn in. I was starting to get bored when the cameras swung around to a function room where a bust of the Republic could be seen at the front. On the dais set up for the oaths, hundreds of people were trying to make room for themselves and, at the same time, leave a path free for the Joker. They were very stiff in their Sunday suits, not yet believin
g in the importance that had rained down upon them like sudden manna. They wore ties so flashy they disorientated the cameramen, moccasins with episcopal tassels, silky steam that the electromagnetic television waves could not contain, heavy rings that corrected the beam of the spotlights: such attire could only augur a banquet, although what they were going to devour was nowhere to be seen. I would have enjoyed hearing their conversations, because I would never have the opportunity to see the ostentation of power except in fleeting news bulletins, and what we saw on that afternoon was a power that strutted with neither modesty nor fear, sure of the eternity the Joker had achieved. But the microphones only registered the wave of voices, the redoubled applause for a large crooked crow-like figure, and the cries of the small children who’d been dragged along for the Joker to kiss, in their stiff-fronted shirts and frilly lace skirts.

  Not on the dais but in the front row of the audience, among the dignitaries, I caught sight of El Tucumano. The camera gave a quick glimpse of him and I was left doubting whether it was him or not, but a few seconds later, in another shot, I was able to admire his transformation. He had his hair slicked back, was wearing a mustard-colored suit I’d never seen, a tie printed with Bulgarian bacteria and a briefcase between his feet. Black sunglasses, as well. The photographers’ flashes sparkled above his pure Hollywood indifference. He’s walked along the edge and now he’s setting himself up in the center, I thought. Did he owe it to the aleph? I silently sang the praises of the Joker, who was able to produce such miracles. One of the soon to be ministers declared solemnly that the president had gathered together a handful of brilliant men to bring the country back from the abyss. The camera cast a glance at the saviors and left, overwhelmed by the glitter. They were small suns dressed in silks of ivory, mustard, sky blue and lime green. They were all protected by dark sunglasses, perhaps from their own phosphorescence. I sighed. With a quick gesture I severed El Tucumano from my heart forever. Power put him out of my reach, and I didn’t want to let myself be blown away by the gale his life had turned into.

  I’d called the hospital several times to see how Martel was doing. I did so as soon as I returned from my long wakefulness to the beat of the pots and pans, and then tenaciously every two hours from the very moment I woke up on Friday night. I always got the same answer: no change in the patient’s condition.

  I thought it sounded discouraging, ominous. What was, for that voice, the dividing line between health and death? A couple of times I dared to ask for Alcira, but I never managed to get them to pass on my messages.

  On Sunday I returned to the places where the disturbances had occurred. They still looked like battlegrounds. What am I saying: the memory of the battle hadn’t moved. It would remain levitating above the city for who knows how long. The shards of glass, the blood, the steel shutters dented by blows, the lids of the saucepans, the placards wrecked by the police horses and the vile hydrant tanks, the remains of the same clamor everywhere. Out with them all! Out with them all!

  The disasters carried on, and so did all of them. The days went by and they stayed on, in the shadow of the Joker.

  On the corner of Diagonal Norte and Florida there were two groups with sticks that had not yet sated their eagerness to punish the banks. They wanted to demolish them with their bare hands, brick by brick. I heard a man repeat in despair: This country is finished. If they don’t leave, we’ll have to go. But where. If only I knew where.

  I walked through the Bajo as far as Callao and turned onto Las Heras. The sun was fierce, but I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I can’t remember ever feeling as lonely as on that afternoon, a solitude that singed me and hurt so much.

  I want to see Alcira Villar, I said at the hospital entrance.

  Villar Alcira, Villar, we don’t have a listing. She’s not on staff, the woman at reception informed me. Is she a patient? There are no more visiting hours until tomorrow.

  Any news on Martel, Julio Martel? Intensive care unit. Bed fourteen, I think.

  I watched her check on the computer, diligent, affable. No change specified, she answered. No change. I’m sure he must be better, or in the same condition.

  I went to the café across the street and sat in a corner. Soon it would be New Year, I thought. 2002. A year of arched eyebrows. In the previous three months everything that could happen had happened: the planes crashing into the Twin Towers a few days after my departure from JFK, Buenos Aires aging before my eyes hour by hour, me stupefying myself with the emptiness of never doing anything. Go home. How many times was I going to tell myself? Go home, go home. What was I waiting for? For Martel to die, I thought. I’m the raven croaking over the greatest singer in this moribund nation. I remembered Truman Capote waiting for Perry and Dick, the murderers from In Cold Blood, to be hanged, so he could finish his book. I was also flying over the dying embers of a ghost. Quoth the Raven, I recited. Leave my loneliness unbroken!

  Something else, however, could still happen. Alcira came into the café. She sat down by the window, ordered a beer and lit a cigarette. No one was the same during those days, and she wasn’t either. I’d imagined her drinking only tea and mineral water, avoiding tobacco. My intuitions crashed to the floor.

  She was distracted. She glanced at the news in the paper she had with her, but didn’t read it. Discouraged, she pushed the pages away. The people we saw pass by didn’t seem overwhelmed but rather incredulous. The country had gone to hell, they all said, but there it was. Can a nation die, by any chance? So many have died and others have come back to breathe among the ashes.

  I decided to approach her table. I felt empty. When she looked up at me I noticed in her face the ravages of the last few days. She had lipstick on and a touch of rouge, but the disasters were etched in the circles under her eyes that made her look older. I told her I’d been calling the hospital insistently for news of Martel. I wanted to come and keep her company, I told her, but they wouldn’t let me. Over and over again they told me that visitors were forbidden and that the patient’s condition was unchanged.

  Unchanged? I don’t know how to lift his spirits anymore, Bruno. His spleen’s distended, he hasn’t passed water for days, he’s all swollen. Three days ago he seemed to have revived. Around six in the evening he wanted me to sit down beside him. We were talking for an hour, maybe more. He taught me how to memorize numbers and combine them. Three is a bird, thirty-three is two birds, zero three is all the birds in the world. It’s an ancient art, he told me. He combined ten or twelve numbers in different ways and then shuffled them backwards. He was speaking in that monotonous rhythm that croupiers use in casinos. As if he were performing. I didn’t understand why he was doing it and I didn’t want to ask.

  Maybe to feel alive. To remember who Martel had once been.

  Yes, that must’ve been it. He wants to get up soon, and sing again. He asked me to book Sabadell for a recital on the Costanera Sur. It’s an illusion, you realize. He doesn’t even know when he’ll be able to stand. What happened on the Costanera? I asked him. That place is a desert now. What do you mean, Alcirita, he answered. Didn’t you see it in the paper? I remembered finding a clipping in the pocket of the pants he was wearing when we brought him to the hospital, but I only managed to see the headline. Something about a naked corpse among the reeds.

  Has he gone downhill since then? Did you say he’s worse?

  That very night he took a turn for the worse. He’s having trouble breathing. I think they’re going to open up his airway. I don’t want them to torment him further, but I don’t have the right to say so either. I’ve spent years by Martel’s side but I’m still nobody to him.

  Tell them how you feel anyway.

  What I feel.

  Yes, doctors always try to keep people alive, here and everywhere. It’s something to do with pride.

  I feel that there’s no reason for him to die now. Should I tell them? They’ll laugh behind my back. I’m not thinking about death. If they want to cut his throat to stick a tube in, how can
I explain to them that the voice would disappear, and without the voice, Martel would be another person? He’d let himself die as soon as he found out what had happened. That afternoon, three days ago, I told him about you, I told you, didn’t I?

  No, you didn’t tell me.

  I told him that you’d spent months searching for him. Now he knows where I am, he said. So, let him come and talk to me. Bruno can come whenever he wants.

  They wouldn’t let me see him.

  Not now. You have to wait for another resurrection. If you were there all the time you would have seen him come back sometimes so strongly that you’d think: That’s it, he’s not going to have any more relapses.

  If only I could always be at the hospital. But you know it’s not up to me.

  I looked at her for a long time as if I didn’t want to part with her. The tiredness in her eyes kept me there, her smooth skin, her dark hair disordered by the hurricanes of her soul. It seemed to me that those marks of identity summed up those of the human race. Sometimes I stared at her so intensely that Alcira looked away. I would have liked to explain that it wasn’t her who attracted me but the lights that Martel had left on her face that I could half make out, the reverberations of the dying voice that were inscribed on her body. Suddenly, Alcira bent over to tie up the laces of her flat, white nurse’s shoes. When she sat up she looked at her watch, as if she had just woken up.

  Look how late it is, she said. Martel’s going to be asking for me.

  You’ve only been here for five minutes, I said. You used to stay longer before.

  None of what’s happened had happened before. Now we’re all walking on broken glass. Five minutes is a whole lifetime.

  I watched her go and realized that I had nothing to do away from her. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel through bonfires and beggars. At least I now knew Martel had indicated another point on his hypothetical map: the Southern Shore, where I’d been wandering unknowingly on Saturday night. A naked body in the reeds. Perhaps I could find the facts in the archives. I remembered they were all closed and the fires had even reached the doors of one of them. The incident that Martel mentioned, however, probably wasn’t so distant. The clipping was still in his pocket. For a moment I hoped that Alcira might let me see it, though I knew her incapable of such disloyalty.