Heart of Tango Read Online Free PDF Page A

climb out of it all someday. Overhead, the open sky, the world I had always dreamed of, which day by day seemed to move further off but to shine all the brighter. And here in the middle, today’s grind, the newspaper I worked at, changing my name from Giacomo to Diego (soundsbetter for a tanguero), my bachelor flat, the tango I danced every night in the best cafés. My friends were all musicians, instrumentalists, singers, composers, songwriters—or dancers, like me.
    But it wasn’t enough. And though I had always known that it wasn’t enough, in one instant the girl had made me understand that the sky was still clear—far away, but clear, for anyone who had the will to fly.
    For that alone, she deserved a present, so I walked back in and proposed, “We could play at her wedding.”
    â€œWhat wedding?” asked Flaco Martínez, who never noticed what was going on but was a tolerably good piano player.
    â€œThe girl’s. Natalia’s.”
    â€œThey already signed up Firpo’s orchestra,” said the Gallego from behind the bar.
    â€œOf course they did,” Canaro smiled. “They want the clod-hoppers who can’t follow our beat to be able to dance. But they must have some cash if they could hire Firpo.”
    Firpo and Canaro were night and day, especially in the rhythms they used, and a rivalry was slowly but surely growing between them. We professionals danced “à la Canaro”; everyone else, “à la Firpo”.
    â€œWhat if you went and serenaded the doll on Saturday night?” the Gallego suggested. “That’s what girls in Spain love best of all.”
    I glanced around at everyone there.
    â€œWho’s game?”
    â€œCount on my violin,” said Canaro. “Right about midnight, during our break at the Royal.”
    â€œYou coming, Yuyo? No squeezebox, no tango,” I said, knowing that Yuyo would play awake or asleep, paid or unpaid.
    â€œYou bet!”
    â€œFlaco?”
    â€œNot with the piano . . .”
    â€œBut you can also play flute.”
    â€œBring your guitar and I’ll give the flute a whirl,” he answered.
    â€œHow about second fiddle?” asked De Bassi.
    By now we were all smiling, as if all of a sudden playing music, the way we earned our bread, was some kind of mischievous prank.
    â€œDo you know where the kid lives, Gallego?”
    â€œOn Necochea, in a one-story house, painted blue.”
    â€œOK then, gents. Tomorrow, midnight, at the Royal. We’ll leave together from there. I’ll be dancing at La Marina—I’ll catch up with you during the break.”
    I draped my coat over my shoulder and walked out, though I didn’t need to be at the newspaper office until later that afternoon. Letting my feet wander, I found myself standing on Necochea street in front of a blue house where I hadn’t lost anything. Except, perhaps, a bit of my heart.
    I arrived at our house dizzy from the heat, and from something else that I had no word for, that I wished to have no word for. The cool air in the entrance hall felt like my mother’s hand on a feverish night, and I couldn’t help my eyes filling with tears at the thought of her, of how she had left me so alone, so young, right when a girl needs someone to talk to. I didn’t even have the comfort of going to see María Esther and telling her what had happened to me at the grocer’s, just as she couldn’t tell me what had happened to her after her wedding when everyone left her alone with the fellow who had just become her husband.
    My loneliness weighed on me like a marble tombstone, so I headed toward the sitting room, where I thought I could hear a rumbling of voices, in search of company that would pull my thoughts in a different direction.
    The door was ajar, and from the hallway I could see the tip of a man’s boot—El Rojo’s boot.
    I stood stock-still, holding my breath without