The Tango Singer

by Tomás Eloy Martínez

  I opened the newspaper she’d left forgotten on the table and I too turned the pages dispiritedly, glancing at the gloomy, bloodstained news. A long article caught my attention, illustrated with photos of barely-dressed children and men among heaps of garbage. ‘I turned around and saw they were bullets,’ said the defiant headline. There was a more explanatory caption above: ‘Fuerte Apache, two days later.’ It was a detailed description of the neighborhood where Bonorino and my other neighbors from the boarding house had ended up. It seemed that the first supermarket looters had come from there and now they were holding wakes for their dead.

  According to what I read, Fuerte Apache must be a fortress: three ten-story tower blocks joined together on a ten-hectare lot, six blocks west of General Paz Avenue, on the very edge of Buenos Aires. Around the tower blocks they’d been building long three-story houses they called ‘strips.’ I thought of the librarian moving from one shack to the next with his string of index cards, like a mole. ‘At all hours,’ the article said, ‘music boomed. Cumbia, salsa: the kids dance on the mud sidewalks with litronas of beer in hand.’ I wondered what litronas were. Perhaps the young kids’ slang was infiltrating the newspapers. ‘Fuerte Apache was planned for twenty-two thousand inhabitants but at the end of the year 2000 there were already more than seventy thousand living there. It’s impossible to get an accurate figure. Neither census takers nor police would venture through those hallways. Yesterday, at the entrance to the strips, there were ten makeshift funeral chapels. In some of them they were holding wakes for slum-dwellers shot down by the police or supermarket owners during the looting; in others, for victims of stray bullets or fights between rival gangs in the tower blocks.’

  At the bottom of the article there was a list of the dead in a succinct inset. I was astonished to discover the name Sesostris Bonorino, municipal employee. A series of memories flashed through my head like a reproach. I remembered the rap the librarian had sung to hand claps, before we’d said goodbye in the boarding house: In the Fort there’s no place to run / Life gets blown to kingdom come / If I live, it’s where it smells like dung / If I die, it’s a bullet from a stranger’s gun. I should have realized at the time that such an extravagant scene could not have been a coincidence. Bonorino was alerting me to the fact that he’d seen his own finale, that he couldn’t avoid it and it didn’t matter to him either. Against my clumsy suppositions, it was possible, then, to read the future in the small iridescent sphere of blinding light. The aleph existed. It existed. I regretted that the newspaper’s epitaph was so unjust. Bonorino had been one of the few privileged people – if not the only one – who, contemplating the aleph, had come face to face with the shape of God.

  I had an urge to go to Fuerte Apache to find out what had happened. I couldn’t understand how such an innocent being had met such a brutal death. I contained myself. Even if I managed to get into the funeral chapels, there would be no point now. I gradually resigned myself to the idea that the librarian had been able to see everything: my night with El Tucumano in the Hotel Plaza Francia, the treacherous letter I wrote and the useless consequences of my betrayal. I was disconcerted that, even knowing that, he had trusted me with the accounts ledger with the notes for the National Encyclopedia, which was his life’s work. What good could it do him that I or anyone else had it? Why had he trusted me?

  The only thing that made any sense now was to recover the aleph. If I found it, not only could I see both the foundations of Buenos Aires, the muddy village with its stinking saltery, the revolution of May 1810, the Mazorka’s crimes then and again a hundred and forty years later, the arrival of the immigrants, the Centenary celebrations17, the Zeppelin flying over the proud city. I could also hear Martel in all the places where he’d sung and know the precise moment when he’d be lucid enough for us to speak.

  I got onto the first southbound bus I saw, then walked, almost breathlessly, towards the boarding house on Garay Street. If anyone was still living there, I’d go down to the cellar on whatever pretext I could come up with and lie flat on my back, raising my eyes up toward the nineteenth step. I would see a whole universe in a single point, the torrent of history in an infinitesimal fraction of a second. And if the place was shut up, I’d break down the door or open the old lock. I’d taken the precaution of keeping my keys.

  I was prepared for any eventuality, except the one I found. The boarding house had been reduced to rubble. In the space that corresponded to the reception desk sat a sinister-looking digger. The first flight of stairs that used to lead to my room was still standing. At the edge of the street yawned one of those dump trucks used to cart away demolition wreckage. It was late at night by now and the site was unguarded by lights or men. I crawled blindly through the beams and chunks of masonry, knowing that here and there would be holes and if I fell into one I would fracture something fatally. I wanted to get to the cellar no matter what.

  I dodged a couple of bricks that fell from the skeleton of the wall. Even in that desolation with all points of references obliterated, I was sure of being able to find my way around. The counter, I told myself, the remains of the banister, Enriqueta’s little cubicle. Ten or twelve steps to the west should be the rectangle through which I’d seen Bonorino’s bald head peek out so many times. I jumped over some boards with nails and jagged glass sticking out of them. Then I stumbled into a wooden frame, beyond which opened a pit. The darkness was so dense that I intuited more than I saw. Was it really a pit? I thought I should go down and explore, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I picked up a piece of rubble, tossed it in, and heard it echo off other stones almost immediately. So it wasn’t very deep. Perhaps with the help of a flashlight, I might be able to get down there, no matter how precarious it was. I didn’t even have a damn match with me. The moon had gone behind a heavy swell of clouds long ago. It was waxing, almost full. I decided to wait until the sky cleared. I touched the fence and my hands felt a crumpled, sticky piece of paper. I tried to get rid of it but it was stuck to me. It had a thick, rough consistency like a cement bag or cheap cardboard. The fleeting light from the headlights of a passing car enabled me to glimpse what it was. It was one of Bonorino’s index cards that had survived the demolition, dust and mechanical diggers. I could make out three letters: I A O. Maybe they didn’t mean anything. Maybe, if they hadn’t been etched there by chance, they referred to the idea of the Absolute found in Pistis Sophia, the sacred books of the Gnostics. I didn’t even have time to ponder it. At that instant a break appeared in the clouds and the pit appeared, unmistakable, in front of me. From its dimensions and position I could see that the excavation occupied the same place as the old cellar. Where the nineteen-step staircase had been I could now make out a vertical railing. Just when no one would consider building anything in a crumbling Buenos Aires, my boarding house had been pulled down by bad luck. The aleph, the aleph, I said. I tried to see if there was any trace left. I desolately contemplated the mounds of turned earth, blocks of cement, the indifferent wind. I spent a long time among the ruins, incredulous. A few weeks earlier, when we were saying goodbye in the boarding house, Bonorino had defied me to lie down under the nineteenth step, flat on my back, sure I wouldn’t do it. Since he knew everything, he also knew I wouldn’t take him up on it. He’d seen the hustle and bustle of the diggers over the rubble of the boarding house, the void, the building that hadn’t yet been constructed and the one they’d put up a hundred years later. He’d seen how the small sphere that contained the universe would disappear forever beneath a mountain of garbage. That night in the boarding house I’d wasted my only opportunity. I’d never have another. I screamed, I sat down to cry, I don’t even remember what I did anymore. I wandered aimlessly through the Buenos Aires night until, shortly before dawn, I returned to the hotel. I faced, like Borges, intolerable nights of insomnia, and only now can forgetfulness begin to seep in.

  The day following this misfortune was New Year’s Eve. I got up early, had a quick shower and just a cup of cof
fee for breakfast. I was in a hurry to get to the hospital. I left a message at the intensive care unit telling Alcira that I’d be waiting for Martel’s summons on the steps by the entrance or in the waiting room. I was determined to stay right there. Messages, services, everything seemed to have gone back to normal. The previous night, however, the pots and pans had resounded once again. The umpteenth explosion of popular rage had removed the Joker from power, along with his string of collaborators and ministers. I wondered whether El Tucumano would have returned to his unstable job at Ezeiza, but immediately discarded the idea. A sun that has shone so brightly won’t be dragged down.

  On the trusty 102 bus there was talk only of the Joker, who had also fled – like the president in the helicopter – from the country in ruins. No one thought it could rise out of such prostration. Those who still had anything to sell refused to do so, because no one knew the value of things. I felt outside of reality now, or rather plunged into that alien reality of the fading life of a tango singer.

  I walked through the hospital corridors without being stopped by anyone. When I entered the second-floor waiting room, I recognized the shaven-headed doctor I’d come across a few days before. He was speaking quietly to two old men who were crying with their faces in their hands, ashamed of their grief. As he had done with Alcira, the doctor patted them on the back. When I saw he was going back to work, I caught up to him and asked if I could see Martel.

  We have to be careful, he said. Today the patient seems a little down. Are you a relative?

  I didn’t know how to answer. I’m nobody, I said. Then I hesitantly rectified: I’m a friend of Alcira’s.

  Let the lady decide, then. The patient has been taking strong painkillers. I assume you’ve been informed of the latest complication. Advanced necrosis of the liver cells.

  Alcira told me that sometimes he recovers for a while and seems to be healthy. One of those times he asked for me. He said I could come in to see him.

  When did she say that?

  Yesterday, but it was because of something that happened three days ago, or more.

  This morning he couldn’t breathe. The solution was a tracheotomy, but as soon as he heard that word, he gathered strength from nowhere and shouted that he’d rather die. I think the lady has been awake for days.

  It was obvious that Alcira had spoken of the issue with Martel, and that they’d taken the decision together to resist. I said thank you to the doctor. I didn’t know what else to say. My singer, then, had reached the end and I would now never have the chance to hear him. Bad luck was pursuing me. Since they’d closed the boarding house on Garay Street, I felt I was arriving late to all of life’s opportunities. To distract myself from despondency, I’d spent weeks reading The Count of Monte Cristo in the Laffont edition. Every time I opened the novel I forgot the misfortunes all around. Not this time: this time I felt that nothing could take me away from the curse that circled like a crow and sooner or later would feed on our carrion.

  I asked one of the nurses to call Alcira.

  I watched her come in five minutes later, carrying a century’s worth of tiredness. I’d already noticed, the day before, in the café, that Martel’s tragedy had begun to transform her. She moved slowly, as if dragging all the suffering of the human condition in her wake. She asked me:

  Can you stay, Bruno? I’m all alone and Julio’s in a bad way, I don’t know how to raise his spirits. So much struggle, poor thing. Twice he stopped breathing, with such a pained expression, which I never want to see again. A while ago he said: I can’t take any more, honey. What do you mean you can’t take it? I answered him. And the recitals you’ve got coming up? I already told Sabadell that the next one is on the Southern Shore. We’re not going to stand him up, are we? For a moment, I thought he was going to smile. But he closed his eyes again. He has no strength. You won’t leave me alone, will you, Bruno? Please don’t leave me. If you stay here reading, waiting for me, I’ll feel we’re less defenseless. Please.

  What was I going to say to her? If she hadn’t asked I would have stayed anyway. I offered to buy her something to eat. Who knew how long she’d been there without anything. No, she stopped me. I’m not hungry. The more empty and pure my body is inside, the more awake I’m going to feel. You’re not going to believe it but I haven’t been home for three days. Three days without a shower. I don’t think I’ve ever gone so long, maybe when I was little. And the strangest thing is I don’t feel dirty. I must smell awful, no? I do mind, but at the same time I don’t. It’s as if all that’s happening to me were purifying me, as if I were preparing to not have life.

  That torrent of words surprised me. And the confession I wouldn’t have thought her capable of. We’d only met a little over two weeks ago. We barely knew anything about each other and, suddenly, we were standing there talking about her body odor. I was taken aback, like so many other times. I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t stop thinking that the true labyrinth of Buenos Aires is its people. So near and at the same time so distant. So similar on the outside and so diverse within. Such reserve, which Borges tried to assert as the essence of the Argentine, and at the same time such shamelessness. Alcira also seemed unfathomable to me. I think she was the only woman I ever wanted to sleep with in my whole life. Not out of curiosity but love. And not for physical love but something deeper: out of need, a craving to contemplate her abyss. And now I didn’t know what to do seeing her like this, so desolate. I would have liked to console her, hold her against my chest, but I stood frozen, I dropped my arms and watched her walk away towards Martel’s bedside.

  I don’t know how many hours I stayed in that hospital chair. Some of the time I was on tenterhooks, reading Dumas, attentive to the subtle intrigues of revenge that Monte Cristo was spinning. I knew them already and, nevertheless, the perfect architecture of the tale always surprised me. At dusk, shortly before the poisoning of Valentine de Villefort, I fell asleep. Hunger woke me and I went to buy a sandwich from the café on the corner. They were just about to close and reluctant to serve me. People were in a hurry to get home and the shops’ shutters rolled closed almost in unison. The reality of the hospital, however, seemed to belong elsewhere, as if what it contained was too big for its shape. I mean that there were too many emotions in that place than could ever fit in one evening.

  I went back to the novel and, when I raised my eyes, everything that I saw out the window was tinted with a golden light. The sun was setting over the city with a magnificence as invincible as on that dawn seen from the Hotel Plaza Francia. With surprise, I noticed that now too I felt an irremediable anguish. I fell asleep again for a while, maybe a couple of hours. I was startled awake by the firecrackers that tore through the night and the tumult of fireworks. I’d never enjoyed new year festivities and more than once, after hearing the crowds count down the seconds on television and watching the invariable annual ball of light drop into its time capsule in Times Square, I’d turned off the bedside lamp and rolled over to go to sleep.

  Was it midnight already? No, it couldn’t even be ten yet. The nurses were leaving one by one, like the musicians in Joseph Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, and, in the waiting room, under the fluorescent lights, I was entirely alone. In the distance I heard a sob and the monotony of a prayer. I hadn’t even noticed that Alcira had come into the room and was smiling at me. Taking me by the arm, she said:

  Martel’s waiting for you, Bruno. For a long while now he’s been breathing without problems. The doctor on call says not to get our hopes up, it could be a passing improvement, but I’m sure he’s out of danger. He’s put so much will into it that he’s finally won the fight.

  I let her lead me. We went through two swinging doors and entered a large ward, with rows of small rooms separated by panels. Although the place was isolated and in semi-darkness, the sounds of illness, echoing at each step, hurt my ears. Wherever I turned, I saw patients connected to respirators, intravenous drips and cardiac monitors. The last cubicle on the right was M
artel’s.

  I could barely make out his shape among those indirect lights the machines gave off, so my first impression was one I already had in my memory: that of a small man with a short neck and thick black hair who I’d seen, months before, getting into a taxi near Congreso. I don’t know why I’d imagined him to look like Gardel. Not a bit: his lips were thick, his nose wide, and in his large dark eyes an anxious expression, of someone running to try to keep up with time. The roots of his hair, which hadn’t been dyed since who knows when, were ashen, and here and there were balding patches.

  With a slight gesture he pointed me to a chair beside the bed. Up close, the wrinkles formed soft webs in the skin, and his breathing was asthmatic, labored. I had no way of comparing his present condition to that morning when the doctor had found him ‘a little down,’ but what I saw was enough not to share Alcira’s optimism. His body was shutting down faster than the year.

  Cogan, he said, with a thread of a voice. I’ve heard you’re writing a book about me.

  I didn’t want to offend him.

  About you, I answered, and about what the tango was like at the beginning of the last century. I heard that there were many of those works in your repertoire and I traveled here to see you. When I arrived, at the end of August, I found out you weren’t singing anymore.

  What I said seemed to upset him, and he made signs to Alcira to put me right.

  Martel never stopped singing, she said obediently. He declined to give recitals for people who didn’t understand.