The Mirror of Sway

The colgadas are difficult to learn, and the balance of the forces between the man and woman as they move does not come. They stumble and fall apart.

'Ah, yes,' says La Luna and stops the practice to show. 'The woman follows the man, eh?, but the man also follows the woman.'

She calls for music, and her partner settles them into place as the strains of the instruments fill the tiny milonga and take hold. The eyes of La Luna close in a patient ecstasy, and her arm molds itself to her partner's shoulders. As the body of La Luna sways, her partner echoes and opposes the movement in his own body. They are a perfect counterbalance.

They make each other antigravitational.

The Sidewalk Memory of Cumparsita

It is late in this night of remembrance, and Dark Eyes commands the stereo. Only a few couples still dance in this early morning of tango, and their tastes delightedly devolve into the scratchy wavering of the Vieja cumparsita.

At the first notes, someone laughs at the abundant familiarity of the song. The dancers show off, and shadows of quick boleos and sweeping colgadas are thrown onto the walls of the tiny dim ballroom.

'This was the first song I ever danced to,' says Dark Eyes. 'Buenos Aires. The woman was generous. With her, I could do anything.' The song comes to its end ... también me dejó He sighs. 'Sometimes I am compelled to play this song.'

The Passing Life of the Abandoned Bandoneón

The yard sale is in the stony drive beside a trailer. The weeds are breaking through, and everything that was once inside the trailer is emptied onto the hard, bright gravel. Broken figures of courtiers, old license plates, dark clothes of wool, bits of paper, things with too many sequins crowd the card tables. Three old men sit under a tree, and in the only shade of a 90-degree day lies one object by itself.

The case is worn, and the ivory on the buttons is nearly worn away. The folds of its body are like parchment, but inside are still imprisoned the cries of so many La que murió en París.

The bandoneón is ignored by the people walking by, and the old men only say that they used to hear it late at night when everyone had gone to bed, and the old man who lived in the trailer used to get it out.

"He said playing it was like holding a woman in his arms - jumping, lively and noisy," says one of the men, and all three laugh.

The Tectonics of Lightning

When the rains come, we are soaked, but the urgent sounds of El choclo float off the porch through the drops, and we laugh at ourselves. We have no shoes, and the sand lets us pivot effortlessly. Our bodies become slick against each other, and the thunder makes the very air shake.

The threads of lightning strike again and again a place on the tiny island just beyond the reef. The daggers of light tear open the black of the night. It is as though two tectonic plates of the night sky move apart in a blink to show the light of day that is just behind the darkness. Instantly, as though showing us something we shouldn't see, the plates move back together, and it is night once more.

As the song fades away, we hear a crackling coming from the water. Lightning makes daylight for an instant. It is not crackling; it is the applause of six surfers who have been watching us dance.

'They are crazy,' says La Porteña. 'They are floating between two metal jetties.'

I look at her, and we both laugh. We are ourselves standing exposed to the weather, the only upright beings on the long white shore. We are like lightning rods, and the electricity in the air makes my hair light even though it is soaked.

I call to El Suave, who is at the phonograph, and he knows instinctively what we need.

And as the quick step of the milonga Baldosa floja rolls down through the tempest to us, we clasp each other close and feel the heat of each other's body through our wet clothes.

Lightning? It only expresses what we all feel.

mi vida está en la milonga

my life is in the milonga

The Unspoken Rings

El Generoso gathers La Fidele into his close embrace, and they silently glide into Julio Sosa's En este tarde gris. The milonga this evening seems to be taking a break, and they are alone on the dance floor. Light catches on a lifted glass from the tiny bar in the corner. Laughter from the dark fringes of the small room buffs the lonely edges of the song.

... apiádate de mi dolor,

que estoy cansada de llorarte,

sufrir y esperarte

y hablar siempre a solas

con mi corazón.

... take pity on my sadness,

I am tired of crying for you,

suffering and waiting for you

and always talking all by myself

with my heart.

La Fidele accepts the invitation to the deep volcada and the little space that is between them melts, flesh on flesh, and she turns her eyes as he looks down at her, and their glance is a net. El Generoso looks quickly away at their outstretched arms, following her black silk all the way to her pale hand. On her third finger is a set of wedding rings.

On this gray evening, the song ends, and the voice trails off, the bandoneon quiets. El Generoso takes the left hand of La Fidele to lead her back to her chair. He feels the set of wedding rings that is also on this hand.

As she turns to thank him, El Generoso raises both of her hands and kisses each to let her know that he knows. She smiles and is glad.

In the way of tango, he will never ask, and she will never explain.

The Joyous Birth of Sorrow

Tango is the only dance that began in pain, not in joy.

Waltz of Hearts

The DJ is playing still another tango waltz, and I am suddenly interested in pouring water into my plastic cup. I am so tired of Dos corazones that I eye the door of the milonga, open to the night and the only haven from this endlessly old-fashioned music.

El Perdido moves so quickly that I don't see him until he cuts me off at the door.

'Dance with me,' he says with his melting smile, and I put my cup of water down and turn my back on the door. I put my young hand in his, and he leads me to the edge of the floor where dancers are already swaying with the rhythm of this vals. He is 70 but strong and experienced. And, in the usual way of tango, that is all I know about him.

I follow his first step, and I am instantly lost in the hypnotic swing of this song.

When he asks for close embrace, it is natural to move my arm up his. Our chests meet, and we dance as one.

Como el fuego que envuelve el estío,

como nube que abraza otra nube,

así son tu cariño y el mío

que se funden en un solo ideal.

As the fire that wraps the summertime,

As the cloud that embraces another cloud,

Thus is your affection and mine

that fuses itself in one single ideal.

The gentle voice of Rosanna Falasca dies away, and El Perdido and I stop in the middle of the floor. He does not draw away, and I feel his chest shake. I pull away, and his eyes are closed.

My hand is at his cheek, and it comes away wet.

'My wife and I loved to waltz,' says El Perdido. 'We were married 52 years, and I loved every day of it, and I miss her.'

He is loosening his embrace and about to retreat to the shadows beyond reach of the fairy lights of the dance floor. I put the hands of El Perdido back into place.

'Ask them to play it again,' I say.

The Mid-Game of Tango

'The aggression of the white side in chess,' El Generoso is saying, 'is balanced by the patience of the black side.'

He leads me in a quick forward ocho that he adorns with a rapid kick and a tiny sacada as Mony Lopez' Alaridos en silencio accelerates into its own divisions into extremes.

La migaja y el banquete

la quietud y el huracán

Soy un hueco en pleno cielo

soy el sueño y el desvelo

soy el hambre y soy el pan.

(I am) the crumbs and the banquet

the quiet and the hurricane

I am emptiness in the middle of the sky

I am the dream and the wakefulness

I am hunger and I am bread.

'There is only tango when there are opposites,' says El Generoso, and I want to melt into his beautiful eyes. Instead, at the top of his salida, I stop him with my foot and look into his eyes.

He laughs out loud at the challenge, at the pleasure he takes in my boldness. I am asking him to release his control and let the initiative fall to me. I am asking him to allow me to move his body wherever I please.

'Chess,' says El Generoso, 'only becomes interesting at the mid-game when black sees an opening and pursues it.'

He consents to the pleasure of the journey I propose to him.

Never to Forget

La Argentina sits outside the milonga. It is 1 a.m., and her feet are bare. Her worn shoes are collapsed at her feet. The moan of Pugliese's Y no puedo olvidarte leaks from the heavy wood door, thrown open for the cool breeze. Inside, the shadows of dancers undulate in the stop and start of this torment of a tango.

cuanto más lo intento más quiero recordar.

however much I try to forget you, the more I want to remember

She smokes a cigarette and looks into the white curls and moving tendrils that pass in front of her face, creating a living mask that changes with every breath. Her eyes are gazing into the distance of a thousand miles, and she whispers one line of the song as Maria Graña sings it ...

porque te quiero, hoy más que ayer

because I love you, today more than yesterday

And she tells me, a stranger, her wish. 'I want to meet another man who can make me cry again.'

A Woman's Intention To Play

La Argentina arches her body into her partner as he takes the first salida of the dance.
She winks at the dancers surrounding her and gives a huge shrug. 'For this I give you Pugliese. Hah! Emancipación will slow you down, give you time.'

She chooses Dark Eyes as her partner, and as he is about to collect, surprise flashes across his face.

'Intention,' says La Argentina and quickly places her delicate left foot next to the sole of Dark Eyes. 'Let him feel it,' she says. 'But you must have intention. He must feel that you are asking him a question.' La Argentina turns her merry eyes on all of us. 'And what is the question.'

She turns her face full to Dark Eyes. He has not moved since she has interrupted his step. 'The question is: Do you want me to take you on a journey?'

She raises her brows, and Dark Eyes has an eager smile.

The answer is yes, yes, yes.

La Argentina arches forward and puts her weight full on the foot beside that of Dark Eyes. He leans back even further, and then she starts the journey. It is one of sensual discovery. Her foot caresses his calf, her leg insinuates itself between his, catches him behind his knee and asks the leg to collapse a little into her caress.

'Play,' says La Argentina. 'Play. There is no hurry in tango. Play with your partner. Discover each other. That is the purpose of tango.'

The Thieving Harpist

Languid red shoes with an embrace of webbing, soft black suede shoes with insistent stilettos, shoes like spiders' webs, shoes like love ... nothing is satisfying the woman. The patient shopgirl, who knows the size and shape of a foot with just a glance, endures the woman's sharp tongue and lets a smile play about her mouth.

'You have nothing,' the woman complains and throws a brown shoe to the floor and kicks the box so that it overturns. "Nothing!' She goes to a place inside her where she and her angry thoughts keep company. I've seen her many times at milongas, and she is beautiful. But as beautiful as she is, men do not ask her to dance much. Her dancing leads to love, but her love leads to nothing, and men can only break their hearts once.

The stereo in the back of the shop skips onto the next song, and El gordo triste makes the woman's mouth tighten.

'A sad fat man,' she translates. Her voice is scornful, and the shopgirl and I look at each other. The woman does not know that in the gangster dialect of Buenos Aires, the title means a man who is not the affectionate creature he seems on the outside.

'I've been saving one shoe for last,' says the shopgirl.

'Hummph,' says the woman. 'I knew it.'

The shopgirl kneels at the woman's feet and unwraps the shoes with care. They are made of a meltingly supple black leather. The stitching is exquisite, and the straps wrap and fold like an embrace. I know before she tries them, they will be perfect.
'This is the Arpista style,' says the shopgirl, and I wonder that she can contain herself.

'Harpist. Pista,' says the woman, tasting the word. 'Arpista. It means one who plays the harp. One who pulls the strings and makes them dance. Pista. It means step.' The meanings bring her pleasure, and it shines from her face. The shoes are perfect, and even she is satisfied, at last. 'My feet will be quick in these.'

As she leaves, she takes the tension in the air of the little shop with her, and the shopgirl and I are left with our thoughts.

Arpista in lunfardo means pickpocket, a petty thief who steals on the run the trinkets, the joy, in someone else's pocket.

La Fea and El Gordo

Across the high counter of the coffee bar, La Fea hands me a cup every morning. Her teeth make her smile crooked, and her glasses are thick. Her wit is quick, and she makes the early hour a pleasure. Handsome men look only at the coffee cup she offers, and they move swiftly away before she finishes speaking. She doesn't come from behind the counter and bribes others to clean the tables for her.

On this day she is alone, and when I enter she is skittering around the tables, grabbing cups, wiping furiously, running as though the floor is hot and it burns her feet. She dumps the stained cups and sticky spoons into a bin and returns to the cover of the counter. I see her secret, and I smile. Her spine is curved, and from the side she is a question mark.

She is perfect.

She looks at me and bites her lip. Her eyes are wide, and she hopes there is no pity in my eyes.

'Come to the milonga tonight,' I say, and she shakes her head quickly and hands me my paper cup of coffee.

'Come,' I say, and there is something in my voice that makes her look up. 'I know something you don't know.' She blinks once and I see the intake of breath. 'I know something you don't know.'

***

The milonga is full of the usual people. El Gordo sits in the corner as he always does. Kind and generous, a tango with him is always surprising. But women don't like to dance with him, and he spends many evenings like this, behind a table, looking with longing at the floor and the darting feet of the tangueros.

Then, Canaro's orchestra begins, and Tita Merello's voice speaks to us from 1954. Se dice de mí plays, and I see La Fea come through the door, lost, alone. I take her hand and lead her to El Gordo, who stands to greet her, and a light comes to both of them.

'I don't know ...' she protests, but El Gordo leads her to the dance floor.

'You don't have to know,' he says. 'I know.' And he takes her in an embrace that is magical.

El Gordo is short and fat as a pumpkin, and La Fea's curved body fits into his like the missing piece of a puzzle.

La fealdad que dios me dio

mucha mujer me la envidió.

The homeliness that God gave me

Many women have envied me.

And as they sweep their way through the line of dance, turning, twisting, their faces catch the light. How have I missed La Fea's beauty? El Gordo's sensuality?

Precious Center

La Porteña stops in elegant suspension, her weight on her delicate left foot. Her partner knows how to take his time. He is testing her weight with feathery touches as Libertad Lamarque cries out over the decades that crying over the harshness of bought love has created such songs ... such songs ....

And Tristezas de la calle Correntes goes down into painful intimacy.

Triste. ¡Si,
porque sueñas!

You are sad because you dream

And as the last note dies away, and the dancers settle into that quick stillness just before they break apart, a woman screams, and La Porteña lies on the worn wooden floor of the milonga.

Friends fold in like a night flower protecting its precious center. Ice is on the wrists, caresses on her pale cheek. Eyes flutter, her hand is to her forehead, and she opens her mouth, but only her partner can hear her whisper. He shakes his head slowly, but she implores him with a finger to his lip. He undoes the straps on her shoes, her favorite shoes, the black dense suede whose sparkles catch the dim light and make her feet flash.

He lifts her, and as they leave, he drops the shoes into the box of waste near the door. La Porteña's face is hidden in the shoulder of her partner, and they are gone into the lonely night. Her feet are bare, and she disappears into the darkness.

She thought the headaches would allow her this one pleasure, the first in months.

I take the shoes out of the garbage and brush off the bits of paper that have clung to them.

They still sparkle; they still love the light. They are still warm from the foot of La Porteña. She will need these again one day, and I will have them to give her.

Too Much Is Not Enough

La Aventura throws her head back and laughs out loud in the middle of El choclo, and her partner lightly leads her in a delighted molinete, turning her quickly, her legs flashing.

And as Tita Merello sings ...

y un ansia fiera en la manera de querer ...
a fierce longing in the manner of love ...

La Aventura smiles, and she lights the milonga. And as the song burns, burns, burns to an end in knives, cuts and the explosiveness of Buenos Aires of 1954, she stretches on the last note and comes to sit by me. She is chubby, she is in her 60s, and she is wearing a skirt of clinging black that is slit to the hip. Spaghetti straps hold up a see-through lace top. Skin under her arms shakes as she slaps her knees and laughs some more.

I think that she doesn't see herself, but hurting her feelings is beyond thought.

'Long sleeves take off years,' I comment.

La Aventura lets her smile freeze for a second, then slaps my knee hard and laughs out loud.

'Listen to the words of this song if you want to stay young,' she says. 'Take your life in both of your hands and shake the living daylights out of it.'

She crosses her legs, and the length of flesh shows white in the light of the milonga, and even in this light I can see the sparkle in her eye.

'I was going for the she-should-be-ashamed-of-herself-she's-dressing-too-young look,' she says. A handsome man sitting in front of a Campari nods his head at La Aventura, and she answers his unspoken request with a huge smile that is her invitation. 'So glad when a look really comes together.'

I was wrong. La Aventura is the one who truly sees herself. I was the one who thought mirrors and birthday cakes important.

The Body Never Lies

In another life, La Condesa had been a theater critic. Her red hair is framed in the fairy lights of the milonga, and she fingers a glass of white wine. It is 3 a.m., and the dancing shadows of our friends move like swift amoebas along the walls as La mentirosa leaks from the old stereo.

'In the Theater of the Absurd the essential message is that communication between people is impossible,' she says. Her eyes watch a bead of water that sweats and runs lazily down the side of her glass. She no longer watches the dancers. It is a dangerous time of the morning for her. 'Words are inadequate. They are misunderstood. No one listens. Words lie and mislead.'

She drinks, drains the glass, and her hand comes away wet, but she doesn't notice.

The man she once loved is dancing with a blonde whose feet are quick and whose look has the sting of a whip.

'The body never lies,' she says and puts her hand to her cheek. 'Why didn't I believe him?'

Her hand drops to the table. Her cheek is glistening.

A Tear in Suspension

Dark Eyes calls for Pugliese's Una lágrima and takes La Argentina by the hand, wordlessly leading her to the floor of the milonga. He knows that this song, with its lazy rhythm and story of a ruined innocent, will speak to her heart in a way that he never will be able to.

Cuando rodó, cual gota cristalina, sobre su faz, la lágrima de amor, me pareció su cara tan divina - un lirio azul besado por el sol.

When that crystal tear rolled down your face, that tear of love, your face seemed so divine - a blue iris kissed by the sun.

They never speak on the milonga floor, observing the rule of silent conversation that is at the heart of tango. Pugliese reaches across a continent and 40 years and speaks to Dark Eyes and La Argentina, pouring from his heart this story of a young girl whom love left in a veil of tears, never to return to the love that took her innocence.

La Argentina asks Dark Eyes for surrender at the apex of his salida, and he consents. They dance as though there is no one else in the world, and as the song tapers off in its bitter sadness, their steps slow to a stop, and for the first time, La Argentina gives her face fully to Dark Eyes. He releases her from his embrace and touches the gentle back of his hand to her cheek.

It comes away wet. She is smiling.

Lost in Pugliese

La Argentina's hands flutter to her heart, and her head, resplendent in carmine curls, tilts to the right.

'Pugliese,' she says and moves her head as though she is nestling in the composer's arms, 'when I hear him, it is my heart I hear. When I dance, he fills me. I lose myself when I hear his music.' Her fingers, clenched, unfurl like the petals of a flower, giving the music that she feels to all of us.

The Farol, the streetlight in the slums, is our illumination.

Haiku Tango

Haiku is all of one's life compressed into seventeen syllables.

Tango fits life into eight beats.

The Silent Goodbye

El Hermoso is asking why I didn't say goodbye last night. A wrinkle forms on his intelligent forehead, and his soft eyes search mine. The milonga was a perfect confusion of dancers and soft light and the cries of Tito Reyes' Frente al espejo.

Me pregunto vida mía, alma mía, qué ha pasado
que ya no estás más a mi lado y no sé encontrarte más.

And while he held me in our old close embrace, I thought of all the things that used to mean something to us. We used to speak of all the things in this song, and all we talked about last night was placement of feet and offers of cold encouragement. I would never allow myself to cry again in his presence.

Luego, a solas, y de pie frente al espejo
yo no sé a quién desprecio
si a mí mismo, si al alcohol... o a la vida

Later, by myself right in front of the mirror
I don't know whom I despise
if it's myself, if it's the alcohol ... or life

Last night El Hermoso let the music soak through his skin until it flowed into mine, and our skins melted together. It was too much pain; it was too much pleasure.

I look into El Hermoso's kind eyes, and his hand trails down mine, uncalculated comfort.

'I had a headache,' I say. 'Forgive me.' And, as always, he does.

Stepping Stone

Maybe it is the world weariness of Adriana Varela's Cambalache that makes the woman edgy. The lesson is going badly, the teacher has little experience, and people are just learning steps and not learning tango. The woman stands alone, watching the others who are partnered, and I offer to lead, apologizing for my red heels and the awkwardness of what I will do. She smiles, and I press into the open embrace.
I don't care that the song is half over, and I begin to move when Varela talks about how the world has flattened into sameness.

¡Ignorante, sabio o chorro,

generoso o estafador!

¡Todo es igual!

¡Nada es mejor!

I begin to feel the music and lead her to a bright cruzada, and she stops when I try to lead into a molinete. Her grip is tight, and she looks up at me with a grumpy face.
'You're not leading the steps,' she scolds.
I drop my arms and realize why she was standing alone, being ignored. There is nothing I can do.
'I need some water,' I say. 'Excuse me.' And I know she is watching me, puzzled, as I leave the dance floor.