Tango
by Luisa Valenzuela
Translated by FTS
I was told:
in this dance hall you have to sit close to
the bar, on the left near the cash register; order a glass of wine, nothing
stronger because it's not becoming for women, don't drink beer because beer
makes you want to piss and pissing isn't for ladies either. They talk about a
kid from this neighborhood who ditched his girlfriend when he caught her
leaving the ladies room: I thought she was pure spirit, a fairy, it seems the
kid said. The girlfriend was left flat, which in this neighborhood still has
connotations of loneliness and spinsterhood, something frowned upon. For women,
that is. So I was told.
I'm alone and during the week I don't care,
but Saturdays I like to be with someone and be held tight. That's why I dance
the tango.
I learned with much dedication and effort, in
high-heeled shoes and a tight skirt slit up the side. Now I go around with the
classic elastic straps in my bag, equivalent to always having my racquet with
me if I were a tennis player, but less bother. I carry the straps in my bag and
sometimes, when waiting on line at the bank or in front of some window when
they make me wait, I fondle them, carelessly, without thinking and maybe, I
don't know, I console myself with the idea that at that very moment I could be
dancing the tango instead of waiting for some inconsiderate flunky to attend to
me.
I know that somewhere in the city, no matter
what time it is, there will be a salon where they're dancing in the shadows.
You can't know whether it's night or day there, nobody cares whether it's night
or day, and the elastics straps can be wrapped around the instep of your street
shoes, stretched as they are from so much tramping around looking for work.
Saturday nights you're looking for anything
except work. So sitting at a table close to the bar, as recommended, I wait.
The key spot in this salon is the bar, I was insistently told, that way the men
can give you the once-over on their way to the men's room. They can
allow themselves that luxury. They push open the swinging doors bloated ready
to burst, we're blasted by a gust of ammonia, and they come out much relieved
and ready to dance again.
I know now when I'm going to dance with one
of them. And which one. I detect that very slight head movement which indicates
that I am the chosen one, I recognize the invitation and if I want to accept I
smile very slightly, meaning that I accept but I don't move; he will come to
me, will offer his hand, we will stand facing each other on the edge of the
dance floor waiting for the tension to build, for the sound of the bandoneon to
swell until we're ready to explode and then, on some unforeseen chord, he'll
put his arm around my waist and we'll cast off.
We navigate at full sail if it's a milonga,
for the tango we list. And our feet don't get tangled because he's wise and
signals the maneuvers by strumming on my back. If there's some new step or
figure I don't know, I improvise and sometimes I come up smelling like roses. I
let fly a foot, list to starboard, don't separate my legs more than necessary,
he steps along with elegance and I follow. At times I stop when his middle
finger lightly touches my spine. Put yourself in neutral, woman, the maestro had
told me -- and you should stay frozen in mid-step so he can do his gyrations.
I really learned it, I was suckled on it, so
to speak. All the posturing by the men that alludes to something else. That's
the tango. And it's so beautiful that you end up accepting.
My name is Sandra but in these places I like
to be called Sonia, so as to endure beyond waking. Here, however, very few ask
or give names, few speak. Some do smile to themselves though, listening to that
inner music they are dancing to and which isn't always a product of nostalgia.
We, the women, also laugh and smile. I laugh when they ask me to dance an encore
(and we stand silently, sometimes smiling, on the dance floor waiting for the
next number), I laugh because this tango music oozes out of the floor and
penetrates the soles of our feet and makes us vibrate and drags us with it.
I love it. The tango. And eventually the man
who, transmitting the keys of the movements with his fingers, dances with me.
I don't mind walking the thirty-odd blocks to
get back home. Some Saturdays I even spend my bus fare on the milonga and
I don't care. Some Saturdays a sound of celestial trumpets runs through the bandoneons and
I elevate. I fly. Some Saturdays I'm in my shoes without needing the elastic
straps, they stay on by themselves. It's worth it. The week passes banally by
and I hear the idiotic street flirtations, those direct phrases, so petty when
compared to the obliquity of the tango.
Here and now, almost glued to the bar in
order to master the view, I gaze somewhat fixedly at some handsome mature guys
and smile. They're the best dancers. Let's see which one decides to move. The
nod comes from the one on the left, half hidden behind the column. A tilting
nod so delicate that he could be trying to listen to his own shoulder. I like
it. I like the man. I smile openly and only then does he stand up and approach.
You can't expect reckless haste. No one here would risk being rejected face to
face, none is prepared to return fuming to his seat under the mocking gaze of
the others. This one knows that he has me and he moves in striding quickly, and
I don't like him as much close up with his years and his air of indifference.
The ruling ethics don't allow me to play
innocent. I stand up, he leads me to a somewhat distant part of the dance floor
and there -- he speaks to me! And not like that one a while back who only spoke
to excuse himself for not answering me, because I come here to dance and not to
chat, he told me, and that was the last time he opened his mouth. No. This one
is conversing, and it's exciting. He says do you see, doña, what the crisis is
like, and I say yes, I see, I damn well do see although I don't say it in those
words, I become refined, I am Sonia: Sí, señor, how frightful, I say, but he
doesn't let me elaborate the idea because he's already holding me tight, ready
to cast off at the next beat. This one won't let me drown, I console myself,
surrendering, silenced.
It turns out to be a tango of pure
concentration, of cosmic comprehension. I can do the steps as I saw the one in
the crochet dress do them, the plump lady who enjoys herself so much, who
wields her shapely calves so well that one forgets the rest of her opulent
anatomy. I dance thinking of the plump lady, in her green crochet dress -- the
color of hope, they say--, in the pleasure she takes in dancing, replica or
maybe a reflection of the pleasure she must feel while knitting; a vast dress
for her vast body and the happiness to dream of the moment when she can show it
off, dancing. I don't knit, nor do I dance as well as the plump lady, although
at this moment I do, because the miracle has happened.
And when the number ends and my companion
comments on the crisis again, I listen unctuously, I don't answer him, I give
him time to add:
"And did you see the prices they're
charging for hotel rooms? I'm a widower and live with my two sons. Before I
could invite a lady to a restaurant and foot the bill and take her later to a
hotel. Now I can only ask a lady if she has an apartment downtown. Because a
chicken and a bottle of wine is about the limit for me."
I remember those flying feet --mine--, the
filigreed steps. I think of the plump lady so happy with her happy man, I even
sense a sincere vocation for knitting.
"I don't have an apartment," I
explain, "but I do have a room in a well situated pensión,
that's clean. And I have plates, knives and forks, and two green glasses, those
tall thin ones."
"Green? They're for white wine."
"White, yes."
"Sorry, but I never touch white
wine."
And we separate without even one more dance.
Luisa Valenzuela is one of Argentina's foremost writers.
She was born and resides now in Buenos Aires, after many years abroad. From
1979 to 1989 she lived in New York, where she was Writer in Residence at
Columbia and New York Universities. She received a Guggenheim scholarship and
was a Fullbright Fellow (International Writers Workshop), Iowa. She has
published six novels and eight short story collections, which have been
translated into various languages -- all into English. Her work is studied in
universities in the United States, England and Australia. She has just
completed her latest novel, entitled "La Travesía".