The Gods of Tango: A Novel

by Carolina de Robertis

  “You’re beautiful, Rosa,” Dante ventured one night, in one of those moments.

  “Shut up.”

  She didn’t push it any further—didn’t dare.

  The world seemed too small for them, for her and Rosa. If they weren’t careful they might make it explode.

  She buried her desire but couldn’t kill it. The urge sat beneath her skin, like the urge to tear a scab off and damn how it heals, damn the scar it leaves, better to let the broken flesh hit air, to tell the truth of your life no matter the cost so that even if it kills you, at least, after you die, the story of your days won’t completely disappear from the earth. Just one person can do that, can, by listening, make your story exist beyond your skin. The power of it thrilled her, terrified her. At night she dreamed of riding horseback in Joan of Arc’s armor, through a forest in the dark, tearing branches as she went, following a voice that sang tangos with the immanence of a ghost, Rosa’s voice, and she searched for her in tree after tree but couldn’t find her; the voice seemed to come from one direction, then another, then from nowhere and everywhere, and as she rode the armor rusted and broke off in slabs that took her skin with it, leaving chunks of flesh along the forest floor, she was almost there, but where?—she reached a river where a body lay, bloated, the face mangled, it was her own face.

  She woke from that dream and decided to do it. To tell Rosa the truth, open her world to her. As she dressed for work, she gathered her courage.

  But before she got her chance, that very same night, Carmen returned.

  She stood at her small table, in the back of the great hall. She wore red again, and she looked radiant, freshly scrubbed somehow, though there was also something brutal about her, in the set of her jaw and her general’s stance. Incredibly, the ruby necklace draped her throat.

  They were performing “El Terrible,” which had become one of Rosa’s specialties, and never failed to shock and delight the crowd. Rosa sang with one hand slung in her pocket, the other raised toward the chandelier. Her curved backside in those men’s trousers, her voice rippling into the hall—she, too, was beautiful, and more than that: a miracle, a creature that, like dragons or unicorns, could exist only in realms of invention like the stage. In that moment, the stage, that rectangle of illuminated space on which Dante stood, felt like the only safe place in the world. She could not believe the ruby necklace. It could not possibly be for her. She looked past Rosa, past the elegant couples dancing and sipping wine, at Carmen, straining to read her expression across the hall. Carmen gazed back, unwavering, ferocious.

  Dante didn’t know what to do. She was terrified to go upstairs, and terrified not to.

  She still wasn’t sure five hours later, at the end of her shift, in the Lair, as she closed her violin into its case and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves. When Rosa emerged from behind the curtain in her dress, she glanced a question her way: coming?

  It had become their routine, to leave together.

  Dante found herself shaking her head.

  The other men were busy putting away their instruments and didn’t seem to notice. Only Amato, smoking on the sofa, watched out of the corner of his eye. The look on his face was not unkind.

  Rosa nodded quickly—did she look stung? did she know? but even then why would it sting her?—and ducked out of the Lair.

  Dante went upstairs. It was five in the morning. Carmen stood behind her desk at the window, her back to the door, looking out at baroque roofs and balconies. This woman, fearsome, larger than life, how did Dante ever imagine that she knew her?

  Carmen did not turn. Dante stared at her exquisite back, framed by the red V of her dress. She shuffled to make her presence known. Waited. “You lied to me.”

  “Carmen,” Dante said.

  Carmen stood still, impassive.

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I never said I was a man.”

  Carmen laughed, quick, sharp, almost a bark.

  “You never asked.”

  “Then I should ask now.”

  “You know the answer.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “No one.”

  “Only me?”

  “Only you.”

  “Well, then. I am asking.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Carmen turned. Such hard elegance, it hurt to look at her. “What are you?”

  Dante had no answer. The question was a door into madness.

  “The things you did. How could you possibly have fooled me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not the first one?”

  “No.”

  Carmen flinched. “What kind of woman does those things?”

  “A woman like me.”

  “So you’re a woman?”

  “I don’t know.” The purity of madness, the limpid air. “I’m a tanguero.”

  “That’s why you do it? To play tango?”

  “That’s why I started.” That, and to survive, she thought—but that second part exposed another gulf between her and Carmen, as wide as the first one, wider than words could reach across.

  “I can’t imagine you in a dress.” Carmen’s face contorted. “I’ve tried to imagine, and it disgusts me.” She walked to the front of her desk and lit a cigarette without offering one to Dante. “I don’t—I’m not one of—those women. You know what I am saying?”

  “Yes,” Dante said, though she’d never heard it spoken in her life.

  “Maybe you’re one of them. But I’m not. Understand?”

  Dante didn’t. She took out her own cigarettes and lit one.

  They stood smoking together, quiet for a moment. Lust brightened the air between them, it couldn’t be but there it was, an electric pulse that urged them closer together, resist, resist. Carmen would not look at Dante. She took a drag of her cigarette and studied her fingernails with intensity. Dante had never imagined that she’d see this brazen woman in such a state, unsure, at war with herself.

  “You, as a woman—I hate you. You, as a man—I need you. I tried to stop thinking of you. Believe me, I tried. But I can’t do it. I don’t know what you are, but if you say that you’re a man, you’ll stay.”

  “And if I don’t want to stay?”

  “Don’t test me.”

  Dante swayed a little, against her own will.

  “Don’t worry.” Carmen flicked ash into a small brass tray. “I’ll tire of you one day.” She took a last drag from her cigarette, put it out, and looked up. “Well? Are you a man?”

  She should say no, escape while she could, avert disaster. But it was already too late to come out unharmed. She was trapped, a moth before the lamp of this woman, transfixed, drawn in, forgetting all reason in her urge to touch the fire. “Yes.”

  “Then come over here,” Carmen purred, “and show me.”

  Carmen closed her eyes this time, and did not use her hands; Dante’s clothes stayed on, she stayed intact, he stayed intact, the ravenous man, the ravaging man, an animal from the dirty conventillos, words that rang through her mind as she spread Carmen’s thighs, roughly, and for the first time she turned Carmen around and pushed her to her hands and knees and Carmen’s pleasure went savage then, and Dante wondered what it was, this roar in her own body, this aching force, how much of it pleasure and how much of it pain.

  Rosa knew without being told, searched Dante’s face for what she wanted to know and then turned away and, for the rest of the night, wouldn’t look at Dante, not in the Lair, not onstage, not when the work was done and it was time for her to leave, which she did without saying goodbye. She shut the door of the Lair behind her and Dante stood staring at it with an empty feeling in her chest.

  “Here, Chico.” El Loro handed her a shot glass and filled it with a smile.

  The liquor stung on its way down. The air roared around her. Rosa. Before she could think about what to do, Dante was running out of the great hall and through the kitchen to the
service entrance, out into the alley and to the boulevard, where Rosa had almost disappeared into the crowd. There she was, a lone woman with an incongruous briefcase, weaving past revelers on their way home. Dante ran.

  “Rosa!”

  A wealthy couple at the door of a motorcar turned their gray heads, but Rosa didn’t slow. Even when Dante reached her side, Rosa kept walking, briskly, eyes straight ahead.

  “Rosa.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To walk with you.”

  “Why don’t you walk with Carmen?”

  The bite of her tone. Dante felt shamed. The truth was that Carmen had not worn her ruby necklace that night, and that, if she had, Dante might well be in the upstairs office by now. “She won’t be seen with me.”

  “Then why should I?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m not, why would I care?”

  She fell into step beside Rosa, a familiar rhythm, now tense with words unspoken. Their footsteps were drowned out by the song of the city, the growl of cars, the clop of horseshoes, a fight between three drunks too tired to do more than shout, a whore’s thorny laughter, the last tango sets at cafés loath to end the night, the cries of babies through conventillo windows, which were swinging open one by one, it was a new day, after all. At Rosa’s door, Dante tried to think of something to say, but wasn’t fast enough. Rosa stepped inside and closed the door without a word.

  For the entire day that followed, Dante thought about Rosa’s face as she closed the door. It haunted her. She wanted that face to open to her again. She wanted it more than she’d imagined, more than she’d ever dared admit to herself. But she could not allow these thoughts, could she? They were dangerous. She was not free. She was trapped in the penumbra of Carmen’s power. She went out for a walk alone and the city growled at her, hostile, who do you think you are? She was nobody. She had nothing. She’ll never see you, Rosa had said. The ruby necklace hovered in front of her eyes, on the street, in the courtyard with her neighbors, in the Lair when she arrived for work: not a necklace but a chain, oversize and garish, a collar for a well-groomed dog. By the time she got onstage and played and saw Carmen in the back, wearing the necklace, she felt repulsed by it. Meanwhile, here was Rosa, the woman who strode in front of Pedro and Santiago, where they sat playing their bandoneóns to hold up her rebel songs. A woman whom the world should never have allowed to be. And if she can be? and I? Too many thoughts to hold inside one skin. Dante’s violin spun them all into a fine thread of sound. Horsehairs burst from her bow and danced around her as she played, they were true to themselves, to the air around them, completely wild, free, broken. She, too, would break. She would not obey the ruby necklace. She would go where she needed to go, whatever the cost.

  When the night’s work was done she ran after Rosa, sooner this time, and caught her at the service door. “Rosa, wait.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk to you.”

  “There’s nothing for us to talk about.”

  “There is.” Dante took a deep breath. “I owe you a story.”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  They were out of the alley now, on the boulevard. Dante fell into step beside Rosa, who did not slow her walk, not even to cross the street, not even when a carriage almost hit her and the driver swore and yanked his horse aside.

  “I don’t love her,” Dante said, catching up to Rosa.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I want to tell you about me. Please, stop, let’s smoke a cigarette.”

  They stopped at a corner. Rosa took a cigarette from Dante, accepted a light. “Well?”

  Dante put her violin case on the ground and lit her own cigarette. Her hands shook so hard that she burned her fingers with the flame. The pain felt good to her, a spike of life. “Carmen knows my secret, that’s her power over me. She found out the night before she left. She’s threatened to destroy me if I don’t do as she says.”

  Rosa’s lips were tightly pursed, but she was listening. “Your secret.”

  How beautiful she looked in the pale morning light, a creature between worlds. Soon the sun would rise and pour its light over the streets of this city, bright and harsh, revealing what the night had shielded, what Buenos Aires had lost, stolen, perhaps never wanted to see. If she could only freeze time, she would stop it here, right here in this moment, standing with Rosa in the dusty light of dawn just before the telling, the smoke from their cigarettes twining and vanishing with the dark.

  “Rosa,” she said, “I’m a woman.”

  Rosa stared at her for a long time. Confusion first. Then shock and understanding warred for her face. She took a slow drag of her cigarette. It was her turn, now, for her fingers to shake. “My God.”

  Dante tried to speak but had no words or too many words to say. “How long have you been—?”

  “Four years. Almost five.”

  “And no one else knows?”

  “No.”

  She studied Dante’s face as if remapping it, as if giving it new form with her gaze. “I’m listening.”

  “I have to walk.”

  “Let’s walk.”

  They began down the block, and Dante told her, slowly, elliptically—as she could tell it no other way—about the ship from Italy, the nervous bride on deck, the cousin-husband whom a bullet made a hero in the eyes of workers; the ache of hands that sewed from dawn to dusk; the violin that, if her nonno could be believed, and perhaps he could, once belonged to the King of Naples; the blind man in the courtyard who played like a demon and the armoire full of a dead man’s clothes; the transformation of a village girl into a rootless city boy who poured his soul into the tango as if music could save his soul or at least stave off hell with a few hours of joy, and then a few hours more, a few more; the constant possibility of death. Somewhere in the telling they reached their neighborhood of San Telmo, already awake with factory workers on their way to another day’s grind and wives sweeping the bad spirits out along with the grime, the way their grandmothers had done in distant lands now lost to them. Rosa said nothing until Dante’s voice trailed off.

  “You’re brave,” she finally said.

  Not disgusting, evil, shameful. Dante found it difficult to breathe.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Me neither.”

  “But you can’t be the first.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And … with Carmen …”

  “I kept it from her, too, for a long time.”

  “Even when—?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe it.” They arrived at the corner of Rosa’s street and, by mutual and unspoken agreement, did not turn there, continued on. “And then she found you out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she still wants you back?”

  “I’m her toy.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  Dante stopped and placed her hand on Rosa’s face.

  They stared at each other in the broadening light of day. There were passersby, the street was not theirs alone, but perhaps it belonged to them as much as to anyone. The ornate run-down buildings flanked them like quiet sentinels, keeping watch, it seemed, just for them. The kiss began gently, a brushing of lips, and then, to her shock, grew strong; still no disgust; Rosa leaned in with surprising force. The world tore open along a hidden seam. It was not the same street, not the same San Telmo, but a much larger place, raw, aching, alive with possibility.

  “What is this?” Dante whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “Shut up, Dante.”

  She shut up. More touch, more kissing, up against the wall, in the doorway of a conventillo whose door could be opened any moment by a disapproving matron ready to sweep them away. Her violin and Rosa’s briefcase had both fallen to the ground to free their hands, which ran along each other’s bodies, each plane and curve a revelation. “Rosa.”

  “Mmmmm?”

&nbs
p; “Come home with me.”

  They were lucky: as they slid into Dante’s room, no one spied them from the courtyard except the French wife, who returned calmly to her sewing, absorbed as she no doubt was in a conversation with her village dead. They kept the shutters closed. Slats of morning light fell across Rosa’s blue dress and across Dante’s hands as she unzipped the dress, slowly, as though unwrapping an infinitely precious work of art. They took their time. There it was, Rosa’s body, rich heavy breasts, delirious curves, thighs fierce enough to sink a thousand ships. So much wonder. So much to rove. And then, finally, after a long sweet time, the hot sublime place that could swallow a lover whole, secret axis of the world. Rosa’s pleasure spiked and crashed and surged again and you, father of five, in your Montevideo room, you did not break her, go rot in the hell of your own nightmare, this woman is flagrantly alive.

  She fell against Rosa’s soft belly, catching her breath. They had tried to keep quiet, had they been quiet? The neighbor women’s chatter bled through her door, on the rise with the day, while, outside her window, a horse cart creaked and clopped. Rosa’s hands were in her hair, tracing delicate paths across her scalp, almost too tender to bear.

  Rosa sat up languorously and reached for Dante’s trouser buttons.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve never done that before.”

  “Well, here’s your start.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can.” The trousers were open now, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal the binding below. “I want to see you. Take them off.”

  Dante complied with trembling hands. Rosa watched intently as though memorizing every move, every centimeter of flesh as it unfurled. She touched the sheet binding Dante’s breasts with the gentle curiosity of a child. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little. You get used to it.”

  Rosa nodded. Dante unwound her binding and sat naked and exposed. They looked at each other in the dim light of the closed room, two women in the wilds without a map or compass. Rosa pushed Dante back on the bed.