The Tango Singer by Tomás Eloy Martínez

Author:Tomás Eloy Martínez [Martínez, Tomás Eloy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781408857496
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

December 2001

My missed encounter with Martel in the Plazoleta del Resero disturbed me. I lost track of what I was writing and I lost track of myself. I spent several nights in the Británico observing the desolate landscape of the Parque Lezama. When I returned to the boarding house and managed to sleep, the slightest unexpected noise would wake me. I didn’t know what to do about the insomnia and, in dismay, I went out walking through Buenos Aires. Sometimes I strayed off from the ruined Constitución Station, about which Borges had written so much, towards the neighborhoods of San Cristóbal and Balvanera. The streets all looked the same and, although the newspapers called attention to the constant attacks, I didn’t feel in danger. Gangs of boys no more than ten years old roamed around Constitución. They came out of their shelters looking for food, protecting each other, and asking for spare change. You could see them sleeping in the hollow buildings, covering their faces with newspapers and bags of leftovers. Many people were sleeping rough and, where I saw two one night, I’d find three or four the next. From Constitución I’d walk down San José or Virrey Cevallos to Avenida de Mayo, and then cross the Plaza de los Dos Congresos, with its benches occupied by destitute families. More than once I spent hours of wakefulness at the corner of Rincón and México, spying on Martel’s house, but always in vain. Only once did I see him leave with Alcira Villar at midday – although I didn’t know who she was until weeks later – and, when I tried to follow him in a taxi, a group of demonstrating pensioners blocked my way.

Even though the city was a flat grid, I couldn’t manage to get my bearings, due to the monotony of the buildings. Nothing is more difficult than noticing the subtle changes in something unchanging, like in a desert or on the sea. Confusion sometimes paralyzed me on any given street corner and, when I emerged from the shock, it was to circle round in search of a café. Fortunately, there were cafés open at all hours, and I’d sit in them and wait until, with the first light of dawn, the houses recovered profiles that allowed me to recognize them. Only then would I return to the boarding house by taxi.

Insomnia weakened me. I had hallucinations in which photos of early twentieth-century Buenos Aires would superimpose themselves on images of reality. I would lean out the balcony of my room and, instead of the vulgar buildings across the street, I’d see the terrace of Gath & Chaves, a shop that had disappeared from Florida Street forty years ago, where gentlemen in straw hats and ladies in starched collars drank cups of hot chocolate before a horizon bristling with spires and empty balconies, some of them crowned with Hellenic statues. Or I’d see the absurd dolls that used to advertise analgesics and aperitifs in the 1920s. The

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