The Gods of Tango: A Novel

by Carolina de Robertis

  When she went out, which was not often, she ventured no further than the butcher shop two blocks down, where she made her purchases in accordance with Francesca’s precise instructions. The butcher spoke perfect Italian with a Northern accent. He was polite, but he cut meat with a vehemence that made her nervous. She never lingered in the shop. On the way back home, however, she did linger to talk with the bread vendor who peddled his wares from a ramshackle handcart laden with loaves. His name was Alfonso Di Bacco. He wore a frayed sailor’s cap at a slant. He was wiry, with weathered skin, and he presided over his post as though keeping the only lighthouse on a rocky shore. The first time Leda approached him, she asked for three round loaves, and, even though Francesca had assured her that morning that the vendor was Italian and would understand her perfectly, she found herself holding up three fingers and pointing at the bread.

  The man tipped his cap at Leda. “You honor me with your purchase. I cannot see for so much beauty!”

  Leda handed him her pesos, scuffed coins donated by Dante’s fellow workers, and the old man stroked them with callused fingers.

  “Francesca sent you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must be Dante’s widow.”

  Leda nodded. Her chest ached. How many people on this street knew her story?

  “Terrible, what happened.” He clucked his tongue. “I knew Dante. He was a good man. He died for all of us.”

  Her husband, the anarchist Jesus. She wished the man would hand her the loaves and set her free.

  “Well? Go on and pick the ones you want!”

  She examined the bread and selected three loaves. They were fresh, the crust just the right balance of crisp and smooth. “Does your wife bake these?”

  “My daughter. My wife is dead too.”

  “I’m sorry.” Embarrassed, she rushed to place the last loaf in her basket. The man reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  “Signora,” he said, “let me give you some advice.” He leaned in so close that she could smell his breath, sour milk and stale tobacco. “Be careful in this city. There are many, many men here, not all of them as kind as I am.” His mouth smiled but his eyes did not. “A girl like you, pretty and clean, will get many offers. But watch out. Not all onions are sweet once you cut them open.”

  His gaze was too sharp, Leda could not hold it. She looked down at the brown, bare humps of bread.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, signore.”

  “Well then! Welcome to Argentina. Here, take this loaf too, a gift from me—no, no, take it. For your new home.”

  As she walked away she couldn’t help but see, in her mind’s eye, a man being sliced in half like an onion. Ribs and heart and clockwork parts exposed for all to see. The image made a laugh rise up inside her. She turned to look back at the bread vendor, who was watching her and who touched the brim of his sailor’s cap, smiling to bare the dark holes where his teeth had been.

  On her second day in Buenos Aires, Leda began sewing with the women of the Di Camillo family. They made clothing for a store in a fashionable neighborhood across town that sold shirts for gentlemen. Francesca insisted that Leda join them, and that no, don’t be ridiculous, it didn’t take work away from them, there was plenty of work to be done.

  “Getting enough work isn’t the problem.” Francesca pursed her lips as though referring to an impossibly behaved child. “The problem is living off the pittance they give you in return.”

  The three Di Camillo daughters set up their sewing station in the central courtyard six days a week, as soon as the men left for the factories or the port. The men were gone at dawn, all except Carlo, scarred Carlo, who slept during the day and worked at night (Francesca wouldn’t say what kind of work the old man did, but she said work as though she feared the word would dirty her mouth if it stayed too long, which, of course, made Leda follow Carlo with her gaze—though she studiously pretended not to do so—in those rare moments when he came out of the Camera di Scapolo during the day for a bit of water and then slunk back to his room without saying a thing). Once all the men except Carlo were gone, two sisters cleaned up breakfast (if there had been breakfast; on some days there was nothing, on better days a bit of yesterday’s bread or coffee with milk for the men, on good days enough for the women and children too) while the third sister brought out chairs, a slab of wood they placed over two cinder blocks to serve as a table, and burlap sacks filled with fabric, scissors, threads, and the patterns assigned by their employers, designed to help them cut fabric into shapes they’d assemble into shirts and trousers. They spread their supplies over the table and a couple of extra chairs. They set up in a corner that started in the shade and later bore the brutal lacerations of the sun, but there was no moving to follow the shade because the rest of the courtyard burst with running children, wailing babies, sharp-tongued mothers, the endless cooking and washing and piecemeal work of a horde of women and girls from the adjoining rooms. By day the courtyard hummed with women’s labor, overrun with it, a fleeting factory that disappeared at night when the men came home.

  Within hours of working with the Di Camillo girls, Leda felt enshrouded by their collective concentration. They did all the work by hand as they could not afford a sewing machine. Francesca reigned over her three daughters with prescience. She knew when a stitch was going awry, even if it occurred beyond her peripheral vision. She sensed when a pot in the kitchen needed a girl to run in and stir. She punished her daughters with a slap when they made a mistake or got distracted, but this was seldom necessary, as the girls were already thoroughly trained. They were allowed to talk as long as they kept up the pace of their work.

  The oldest sister, Palmira, looked about Leda’s age, only she was much more beautiful, with a voluptuous figure, an easy laugh, and eyelashes long enough to whip you when she blinked. Silvana, the youngest, worked quietly to the side, and seemed shrouded in a world of her own, beyond the bounds of chatter. She was the one assigned to the scissors: whenever there was a need for more fabric to be cut, it was she who laid out the patterns, sliced exacting lines, and piled identically shaped pieces on the makeshift table. Diana, the middle girl, seemed about twelve. She was skinny and restless and hated sewing, as she readily proclaimed to Leda within the first hour of work.

  “There’s nothing duller, is there?” she said, in a low enough voice for her mother not to hear. “Stitch after stitch, they’re all the same and by the end of the day your hands are so sore you want to peel your palms off. Honestly, I’d rather do anything else—laundry, cooking, run down to the market for bread.”

  “And if she doesn’t get picked to go on an errand—how she complains!” said Palmira.

  Diana looked ready to protest.

  “Come on,” Palmira said, “you know it’s true.”

  “Maybe it’s true,” Diana said, grudgingly. “But I have my rights.”

  “What rights? You’ve been reading too many anarchist pamphlets.”

  “I wish,” Diana said, and she laughed.

  Palmira laughed with her.

  “You don’t read anarchist pamphlets, then?” Leda asked, eyes on her sewing. This anarchy. The strikes, the riots, the bullet in Dante’s chest. There was so much for her to understand about Buenos Aires.

  The sisters didn’t respond. She looked up; they were staring.

  “You can read?” said Diana.

  “I can.”

  “My God.”

  “Who taught you?” Palmira said.

  “My father.” And Cora, she thought, but her cousin’s name stuck in her throat.

  “And you can write too?”

  “Yes.”

  An amazed silence settled over the girls. They sewed on. Finally, Diana said, “Well then, you can help me write my own anarchist pamphlet. On the rights of middle daughters.”

  Palmira smiled. “And the eldest daughters?”

  “You’ll have to ask her for another one.”

  “What do you think, L
eda?”

  “Why not?” Leda said. The smell of shit rose up behind her. It must have been one of the little children; a cluster of them was playing with sticks in a bucket, squealing, enraptured with their invented toy. The girls either didn’t notice the smell or were inured to it, focused on their work. Leda felt embarrassed, though she wasn’t sure why—there was no shame, was there, in knowing how to read and write, she certainly didn’t want it to be otherwise. And yet it bit at her, this difference between them. These girls had not grown up the way she had, a landowning family, meat on the table, books in the house. She tried to lose herself in the stitches, taking shelter from her thoughts in the repetitive rhythms of the needle. She made it through several hours without having to speak. However, in the afternoon, when the light began to deepen to a heavy gold and her hands ached with each stitch, right after Francesca announced that in an hour they would put their supplies away and cook dinner, Palmira said, “Leda, tell us about your village.”

  “Please,” said Diana. “We’re so bored with each other’s stories.”

  Stitch, stitch. Leda didn’t look up. “I don’t have any interesting stories.”

  “There must be something,” Palmira insisted. “What is the village called again?”

  “Alazzano.”

  “And how big is it?”

  “Not big.”

  “How many people?”

  “About a hundred.”

  “What! No more than that! You must know everyone.”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet that’s wonderful.”

  Stitch, stitch. Light flashed on Leda’s needle.

  “Not at all like here,” Palmira continued. “It’s impossible to know everyone in Buenos Aires.”

  “Especially since we’re never allowed to go out,” said Diana.

  “That’s for our own good,” said Palmira, “and you know it! Really, Diana.”

  “Oh, come on. You yourself just said—”

  “Let’s get back to Leda’s story—”

  “—that you wish you could go out and meet more men.”

  “I said no such thing!”

  “But it’s what you meant.”

  Palmira poked Diana with her needle, drawing a pinhead of blood.

  “Ouch!” said Diana. “Mamma!”

  Francesca came out of the kitchen and slapped Diana across the cheek. The cluster of children behind them, who now squatted in a circle shelling beans into a bowl, looked up in unison at the sound of the slap. They watched, faces expressionless. “Stop distracting your sister and get back to work.”

  “But—”

  Francesca raised her hand again. Diana flinched and bowed over her sewing. The children resumed their shelling.

  After a few minutes, Palmira said in a low voice, “What about fruits? What grows in your village?”

  “Figs,” said Leda. “White and purple ones. Hazelnuts. Lemons. Olives, of course, all over the hills.”

  “I’ve never even heard of a white fig,” said Palmira.

  “It’s sad,” Diana blurted, “what happened to your husband. Shot in the head like that.”

  Head. Not chest. Leda felt sick, faint, the courtyard tilted dangerously.

  Francesca returned, hand raised to strike Diana again.

  “No, don’t,” said Leda. “Please. It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right, she’s a rude girl.”

  “I’m not offended,” Leda said.

  Francesca looked torn between maternal discipline and the laws of hospitality. She hovered for a moment, then disappeared to the kitchen.

  The three sisters sewed in silence for a while.

  Leda stared at the white cloth in her hands, now a canvas for broken shards of her cousin’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Diana said under her breath.

  “It’s all right,” said Leda.

  “I heard he was very brave. On that day, I mean.”

  “Of course he was,” said Palmira.

  “But you didn’t even get to see him once he was your husband.” Diana’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You didn’t get to, you know, sl——”

  “Diana,” Palmira said, needle threatening her sister’s arm.

  Diana hushed.

  “At least you still have time,” said Palmira. “You’re so young, you can marry again.”

  “There are many men here looking for wives. Palmira’s gotten several offers,” Diana said proudly.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Palmira said quickly.

  “Yes it does,” Diana said. She lowered her voice again. “They won’t let her marry until our brother finishes school. We’re all working so he can study.”

  “And for the family.”

  “Always for the family.”

  Stitch, stitch. Blinded by white cloth.

  “Almost time to pack up,” said Palmira.

  Leda nodded. Her fingers throbbed and her back ached from crouching over her needle. She wondered how much money this labor would yield, whether it would be enough to purchase her own bread each day, once the money from the collection had run out. She didn’t know what to do with the sympathy the girls had extended to her. Suddenly she longed for Alazzano, where every tree and face was familiar, absurd when she’d been so desperate to leave but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t help picturing the orange groves, the river, the crush of hazelnuts under her shoe, baring their treasure. And yet she didn’t want to go back. What did she want, then? Another husband, as these girls were suggesting? The thought made her cringe. Her first task, she thought, was to survive. Her second task: to learn to live with the low buzz of her grief. And after that, to recover her appetite, which had dissolved at Dante’s death.

  To be hungry again.

  She could see no further into the future than that.

  That night—after helping cook dinner and eating two bites in her room despite the Di Camillo family’s entreaties that she join them, and after Arturo’s alarmingly eager attempt to start a conversation when she crossed the courtyard to empty her chamber pot before bed, too much longing in his eyes, as if there were some aching hole in him she was supposed to fill—she lay in the dark, listening to the creaks and murmurs of the conventillo, her neighbors’ chatter, the constant stream of life in the surrounding rooms, and let her thoughts transport her back to Alazzano, with its glorious white figs that not everyone in Argentina had ever tasted, just hanging from the branch, wild, beckoning. How she would take them down to dry on long slabs of wood so they could be enjoyed through the long winter, the sweetness of them speaking of the summer just past, honey captured on your tongue.

  Her mattress was hard as stone. She turned uneasily and thought of Palmira. There she was under a white fig tree, gazing at the leaves cascading all around her like a crowd of wide green hands. Let me show you, Palmira: see how I reach up and find the ripest figs, the soft ones that are begging for your mouth. She watched Palmira eat the sweet and unfamiliar fruit, watched startled pleasure spread across her face, lips open, eyes wide—but then the air rushed around them and Leda turned and saw Cora, skin blue, hair wet from the river, watching them with a terrible expression on her face.

  Cora, Cora, come closer!

  What do you think you’re doing?

  Palmira vanished. Shame a warm brick in Leda’s belly. She’d been caught doing something wrong, but what? Stealing fruit? Wandering too far in the night?

  She asked to taste the figs. Although this, Leda realized, was not exactly true.

  Cora shook her dripping head, like a mother saddened by a wayward child. Leda. This place is not what you think.

  Leda sat up in bed, covered in sweat. Hot thick air pressed at her from all sides. She felt both thrilled and afraid, though she couldn’t have said why. It was hard to breathe and she longed for ventilation, but it would surely be indecent, if not dangerous, to sleep with the door open. She kept it shut and lay awake until sleep rose to maul her in the darkness.

  On Saturday night,
the men took their baths in a great clatter of metal and hot water, each patiently waiting his turn to scrub and cleanse himself in one of three large tubs behind closed doors. They emerged looking refreshed and slightly bewildered. When the men were done, the women took their turns. By the time Leda’s turn arrived the water was gray and clouded, almost as dirty as the floors. Silvana had just stepped out and was drying herself off discreetly in the corner. Leda knew by now to avert her eyes, the best form of privacy in conventillo life. In the tub, she scrubbed as quickly as she could, fighting her revulsion. Afterward, she felt more refreshed than she’d expected. Around one a.m., the men went out together, combed and groomed and buoyant. On Sunday morning, some of them were still straggling home as Leda and the Di Camillo girls rolled out thin sheets of pasta and cut them into precise rows—these Northerners made their linguini thicker than she did, it took getting used to, and there were also the breaks she took to kill roaches in the futile and eternal war against them—and children yelped in protest from the patio as their turn came in the tubs. At nine, Leda and the Di Camillo girls put aside the pasta, changed into their best dresses, and pinned back their hair. The church was just a half block beyond the butcher. It was larger than the village church back home; Leda had never seen so many people in one room in her life. Like the crowd at the port in Naples, only waiting for God rather than for a ship. She fidgeted during mass. She tried to stop. The nape of Arturo’s neck was right in front of her, exposed and somehow pure. He was a sweet man, really. Earnest. His prayers were probably sincere and full of hope. Why couldn’t she be like that? To keep still she counted the tiny hairs on Arturo’s nape, black, delicate, more vulnerable than anything on a man should be.