The Gods of Tango Read Online Free PDF Page B

they were going, how they found space between the bodies of others to move their own. Would she ever learn to walk like that? A man was hawking fish, he had the best catches from the morning, his fish, his fish, you should buy it now, if your husband died with this fish in his belly he’d die happy. Milk, milk, another man had milk, and if you had it any fresher you’d be sucking from the teat. The people on the street walked without slowing down, their eyes focused far ahead as though they could see the future and were striding right toward it.
    The carriage paused at an intersection. At the corner stood a woman in a dress of that bright red color women were never allowed to wear, or so Leda had believed for as long as she could remember. Could this color possibly be considered decent in Naples? But it was not only the color. The cut of the dress dipped dangerously and bared the woman’s pale, freckled shoulders. If flesh itself could laugh. A terrible sight. Leda could not wrench her eyes away. The woman was standing still, and,when a man slowed to look at her, she smiled and let him look. Leda was looking, too, although the woman could not see her, and for an instant she pictured opening the carriage door and stepping out without a goodbye to her father, without retrieving her belongings, out toward the red woman and into the great river of Napoletanos, an insane act since it could only lead to the gutter and even worse things that awaited young women who abandoned their trunks and patient faraway grooms to dive alone into the large and dangerous arms of a city. What a shocking thought, where had it come from? Behave yourself , her own mind said in her mother’s voice; and then, right after it, Cora’s voice, Go on, go on, what’s a little water in your skirts —and then she could not think anymore, she was in the river with Cora and Cora was screaming, dying, she was going to drown right along with her but she had to live, she had to live, she would not go in, she would not dive out of this carriage into the river of Napoletanos or get close to the red woman; the man on the street who’d looked at the woman had now walked off and the woman was alone again, her dress a bloody stain on the crowd, and the carriage drove on with Leda still inside it, still a good wife, a sane girl, a lady. The red woman disappeared, and Leda expunged the hazards and sharp edges from her mind.
    “We’re almost there,” her father said.
    They spent two hours at the port, waiting for the steamship, watching the throng of people grow around them, more people than Leda had ever seen gathered in one place, several villages’ worth of people crushed onto the platform. How could so much of Italy leave its own land for the Américas? Who would be left? Of course, some of the people in the port, like her father, were not leaving but were here to bid their loved ones a last goodbye: there was the close-clasping mother, the last-chance-to-give-instructions father, the relatives clustered like human fortresses about to crumble, the men smoking and all talking atonce, the women weeping lavish tears, the milling, the cold, the patting of backs again and again, the undercurrents of dread and longing for the parting moment when the goodbyes would finally be done. Her father must feel that way too. Their conversation had petered out. He must be tired. He was standing because the few benches on the platform were occupied by elders, and he’d insisted on letting her sit on her trunk. She unwrapped the brown paper packets of bread, cheese, and olives she’d packed that morning.
    “Come, Papà, sit down with me to eat.”
    “I am fine standing.”
    “No—there’s room for both of us here.”
    “You sit, Leda.”
    She stood up. “I won’t sit unless you sit with me.”
    He did not look her in the eye. “You’ve always been stubborn.”
    They sat beside each other on the trunk, eating slowly, looking out at the boats and ships, the city