Blood Tango Read online

  Tulio’s friends had looked at him in horror. Many of them were cowed by the threat—present though not certain—that a person who spoke such thoughts could disappear and not be seen again. But Tulio’s family had resisted intimidation in Italy, and right here in Argentina during the war, they had stood up to the fascists who with their Nazi counterparts had prowled immigrant neighborhoods, trying to force Germans and Italians to support their dictator-heroes. He was his father’s son and no coward. What was it to be a leader if you refused to take a risk for what you believed?

  The pro-Perón so-called unionists at that meeting had given him smug looks, as if they had his number. They countered his arguments with a laundry list of Perón’s “gifts” to the workers: better wages and working conditions, paid vacations, free health insurance. True, the colonel had arranged those benefits, but with only one purpose—to enthrall the most ignorant among the union members.

  “This is our moment to stop the fascist,” Puglisi had declared, “while Perón is weakened. If we don’t seal his fate now, he will make sure we never get another chance.” The men around the table had looked away from him.

  Finally, in desperation, he told them a secret he was not supposed to divulge. “My sister-in-law works for Bishop Coggiano. Perón is bringing in Nazis. She has seen them in the bishop’s palace. They are moving here in droves. It’s all controlled from the Vatican. German and Croat war criminals, using gold from the teeth of people they murdered to buy into our country. The bishop says we need them because they are anti-communist. Before we know it, the Fourth Reich will be ruling Argentina.”

  A hush fell on the proceedings after that, but he could not change their minds. The more he begged, the less they listened.

  After the meeting, Tulio’s cronies tried to gloss over the fact that he had said things that could get a man thrown in prison or worse. They slapped him on the back. “Oh, come on, Tulio,” they said. “Tomorrow is his farewell rally. You should be glad to say good-bye to him if you believe he is such a dangerous character.” Then they all disappeared, and he realized that even his closest allies were too afraid of what he had said even to drink a coffee with him.

  Defiant in the face of intimidation, Puglisi had put on his best suit and shoes and come to this Perónist circus.

  The platform his nemesis now mounted was festooned with blue and white bunting and Argentine flags flapping in the breeze on each corner, the colors of a country Tulio saw as doomed. Then he saw in the crowd Perón’s lady friend. She had been praising him on the airwaves as if he were some sort of deity. Puglisi believed she could become a key player in this real-life drama, but he knew what his fellow unionists would say if he brought up that subject—that no one would take a soap opera actress seriously.

  But Tulio Puglisi knew in his bones that stopping Eva Duarte could very well be the key to saving Argentina from fascism. He felt as if he were the only person in the country who knew that.

  * * *

  Near that platform in the center of the intersection, Jorge Webber, Perón’s chauffeur, shadowed Evita. She was nervous today. She had spoken sharply to Perón in the backseat while Webber drove them. The colonel had left them in the car, saying Evita should stay inside the vehicle and telling Webber to keep her there with him. But as soon as Perón walked away, Evita got out of the car and ordered Webber not to accompany her. She spoke in that demanding way of hers. He held his tongue and followed her without her realizing it. He wondered how she could bear the stares of the people around her. Cranky as she was with him, he felt compelled to protect her. A few feet away from him now, she tapped her foot and looked at her red fingernails. He could tell she was trying not to bite her cuticles.

  Over and over, people nearby recognized her and insisted on trying to talk to her. Their voices were mercifully drowned out by the sloganeering. Webber feared there were people here who hated her. He had heard what they called her behind her back. Sometimes he wondered that she seemed not to notice. It was his job to make sure they did not insult her.

  * * *

  Across the jammed street, near the cheering employees of the Secretariat of Labor, Luz Garmendia was delighted to have people try to talk to her. She smiled coyly at them and basked in their admiring glances, because they mistook her for the actress Eva Duarte. That she could pass for Evita had changed her life. Pride shone in the girl’s dark eyes. Today, more than any other of her life, she felt whole and happy. She had always tried to act cheerful, but until she met Evita she had been sad for as long as she could remember.

  After her mother died, when she was four years old, she had lived alone with her father and his mother. If she had been strong like Evita, she would have told her grandmother how bad it was to constantly remind a child what a burden she was to her father. And if Luz really were Evita now, she would have her father arrested for the beatings he had given his little girl anytime she showed any spirit.

  At fifteen, she had run away to live with Lázaro, a man she met in the market who smiled and promised to marry her. For the first month, he had petted her and told her she was beautiful. Then, he, too, began coming home drunk and smacking her around. One night he choked her while she slept; she woke up unable to scream. Not even her father had done anything that bad, but she had had nowhere else to go. If she really were Evita, she would have him arrested, too, for breaking his promise.

  Luz’s life had been miserable until Señora Claudia, a dressmaker who lived in the apartment building where Lázaro worked as a gardener, had rescued her. That wonderful lady had found little Luz a room in a good woman’s house and had given her a job in her elegant shop on Florida Street. Luz had begun by cleaning, but before long she was taking out basting stitches and ironing dresses. The workshop was a paradise of colors and textures: blue, white, and silver brocade, soft fuchsia cashmere, thick tan English tweed, gossamer turquoise silk.

  One day, Luz was unable to resist a black sheath gown she was pressing. It had a square neckline and slender skirt with a cunning slit at the front of the hemline that curved apart to reveal the lady’s shoes. The dress was lined with cream-colored satin. Alone in the shop, Luz had taken the garment into the dressing room and slipped it on. It felt like water on her skin. She put on the high heels that were kept for customers to use when trying on long dresses. The shoes were several sizes too big for Luz’s tiny feet. She shuffled out to the carpeted pedestal to see herself in the triple mirror. The gown looked as if it had been made for her. She had stared at her reflection and wondered what a girl would have to do for a man to catch one rich enough to buy her a dress like that.

  At that moment Claudia Robles had opened the door and stepped into the fitting area. Luz let out a yelp, but she was frozen. She could not get off the pedestal and run away in the narrow skirt and flopping shoes. She burst into tears.

  “No don’t,” Claudia called out. “Don’t let your tears drop onto the silk.” She grabbed a cloth from the bin where they threw the scraps and ran over to dry Luz’s eyes. Then she stepped back and appraised the girl in the splendid gown. “It fits perfectly,” she said. “You don’t have her face or hair, but your bodies are identical. Look how that gown fits you. Even the length is just right.”

  “Who is it for?” Luz had asked.

  “Evita.”

  Like a word in a magic spell, the speaking of that name began Luz’s real life. For nearly five months now, rather than on a manikin, Señora Claudia had fitted all the actress’s clothing on Luz’s body. And she asked Luz to model for Evita and her sister and their friends when they came into the shop to pick up suits, day dresses, ball gowns, all the beautiful things an important woman needed. Evita said that rather than trying on the outfits herself, she preferred to watch Luz move in them. It gave her a better idea of the impression she made.

  Evita was so kind. She taught Luz to walk and to sit like a lady in a play. And she gave Luz a large tip on each visit. Just a few days ago, she had given Luz the beautiful dress she had on at th
e rally today, an afternoon dress of spring-green lawn, with a narrow waist and a dirndl skirt that came just to the bottom of her knee, so that it showed the curve of her calf, but still looked demure. The buttons in a double row down the front were mother-of-pearl, the size of a one-peso coin. The short sleeves turned up in a cuff. Luz loved the way she looked in that dress here today with her now-blond hair, fixed in a style she had seen on the actress. Even her makeup—penciled eyebrows and bright red lipstick—matched what Evita always wore. Luz felt wonderful.

  Earlier that morning, when she had met her friend Pilar, who worked with her in the dressmaker’s shop, Pilar had said, “You look like the daughter of one of those dandies who arrives on the Calle Florida in a chauffeur-driven car to shop at Harrods for riding boots.” But Luz knew better. She looked like Evita. And the glances of people around her confirmed that. She glowed with the conviction that many of those who stared at her thought she really was the lover of the man whose name they chanted, the beloved leader they were about to lose.

  * * *

  Pilar Borelli, Luz’s co-worker, scanned the people around them for a different reason. Her wary eyes sought signs of danger. As they left the Subte and made their way to the intersection of Alsina and Perú, Pilar had caught sight of Miguel Garmendia, Luz’s father, a man Pilar knew to be a threat to his sweet, star-struck daughter. Just the week before, Garmendia had come to the Club Gardel, where Pilar went to dance the tango. That night he had threatened to kill Luz.

  By midnight on that Saturday, the Club Gardel had just gotten into full swing. The bar was packed with single guys eyeing the girls along the wall opposite. Though the dance floor took up most of the club’s space, it was inadequate for the number of couples. The denizens of the troubled city seemed to have turned to their music and their dance as the only possible comfort in the face of imminent chaos. The longing in the melodies, the nostalgic, sometimes bitter lyrics matched the mood of the moment in Buenos Aires.

  As the strains of “Caminito” ended, the seamstress Pilar Borelli let go of the hand of Mariano, the singer everyone thought was her boyfriend. Often Mariano thought so himself, and sometimes she let him. Whenever he was not at the microphone he danced with her, and she seldom danced with anyone else though she hated the smell of the carnation he always wore in his buttonhole. He said it was his homage to the great tango singer, Carlos Gardel, but it reminded Pilar of her mother’s funeral.

  Mariano climbed onto the bandstand, whispered into the ear of Luis, the bandoneón player, and adjusted the big round microphone. Pilar turned toward the bar and immediately caught the eye of a heavyset man of about fifty making his way toward her with a look that seemed to say he wanted to dance with her. He was unsteady on his feet, had had too much to drink. She turned away, toward the sanctuary of the ladies’ room, but before she could fight her way there, his heavy hand on her shoulder arrested her progress. The next thing she knew, he was slobbering a bunch of slurred words at her.

  “I am sorry, I don’t want to dance this one,” she said and tried to continue on her way.

  The man moved in front of her and gave a menacing look. “I am looking for my daughter,” he said with a breath of gin.

  Pilar, who had never met her own father, went chill. Surely this goon could not be him. “Do you know me?” she asked with trepidation.

  “No,” he growled, “but the bartender sent me to you.” He poked his thumb over his shoulder.

  Mariano’s velvet voice sang out, “La Canción de Buenos Aires.”

  “Who are you, señor?” Pilar’s voice shook. Her mother had told her her father’s name before she died.

  “Miguel Garmendia,” he said.

  Pilar’s heart did not know whether to lift or sink. This brute was not her father, but he was the father who had brutalized her friend Luz.

  He pointed his thumb at the bar again. “He told me you know my Luz. I want to know where she is.”

  “I don’t know, señor,” Pilar said.

  He jutted his chin. “The bartender told me she has been in here with you. More than once.” His eyes burned into hers.

  Pilar looked down at the black-and-white checkerboard tile beneath her feet. Behind Luz’s father, on the little stage, Mariano went on with his song. “I know her, but only slightly,” she lied. She made her voice sweet. “I will tell her you are trying to reach her the next time I see her, if that will help. Does she know where to find you?”

  Garmendia grabbed Pilar’s elbow and squeezed it, sending a pulse of pain to her shoulder. “You tell her to come home, or else. Tell her I will kill her if she doesn’t, and I will kill anyone who keeps her away.” He let go of Pilar’s arm and lurched to the door. She did not take her eyes off him until he disappeared up the steps and out into the street.

  She went to the bar and berated Lorenzo, the bartender, for pointing Garmendia toward her. “Don’t you ever let that animal in this club again,” she said, as if she had the right to command him.

  She could not bring herself to dance any more that night. She stayed at the bar, with her elbows on the white marble and her hands holding up her head. She drank more than was her habit and listened to the longing in the songs written by displaced people like her mother, who had forever left behind her loved ones in Italy to look for a life without the threat of starvation. In the new world, she had found food for her body, but also awful loneliness. In the end she had died young and left only a barely grown-up daughter behind.

  Now, amid the cheering mob at the rally, Pilar’s skin prickled with fear. Garmendia was here. If he found Luz, both girls would be in danger. Pilar could only hope the density of the crowd would protect them.

  Suddenly the animated press of people around the girls went wild as Juan Perón, behind the microphones, raised his hands over his head and smiled warmly, nodding his approval at the adulation of the thousands surrounding him.

  With a great flourish, he removed his jacket and slowly rolled up his sleeves. The crowd stamped, clapped rhythmically, and chanted the name of their jacketless hero. “Perón. Perón.”

  * * *

  Many of the men near Ramón Ybarra took off their jackets, too, and twirled them over their heads, shouting, “Viva Perón!” Anxious that he not be spotted as an interloper, Ybarra pasted on an approving smile and attempted to subdue his outrage. Wherever men went in Buenos Aires, they were required to show respect by wearing jackets and ties. No restaurant or movie house in this elegant city would admit a man dressed in the disgraceful way Perón chose to appear before this crowd of lowlifes. Ybarra swallowed the spittle he would have preferred to spray on the cheering monkeys around him.

  On the platform, the idol of the scum loosened his tie and held his hands aloft. The noise of the crowd swelled again and then finally subsided to near silence as he began to speak. The voice that came over the loudspeakers was deep and warm and entirely confident, the smile he beamed at them sunny and sincere. There was nothing about the man that would indicate that he had just been stripped of power. Surrounded by flying flags and the adulation of thousands, he spoke of liberty and the glory of their nation, of the power of the workers. His amplified voice echoed off the surrounding buildings, whose stately facades and refined appointments lent an air of importance to his fine words.

  Ybarra winced when Perón’s final gift to his sycophants elicited the wildest applause of the afternoon. Perón announced, in that irresistible voice, increases in wages for workers and an index tied to the cost of living, so that, according to Perón, the laborers who were ultimately responsible for the prosperity of the nation would not lose the gains they had made in the last three years. The bastard was reminding this mob, and anyone listening on the radio, of exactly what they owed to him, and only to him. “Perón. Perón.”

  * * *

  General Fárrell, the president of Argentina, listened to the radio broadcast in the Casa Rosada three blocks away, as did General Avalos, commander of the garrison, in his office north of the ci
ty at Campo de Mayo, and the heads of oligarchic families in their marble halls of power and luxury. All realized that Perón had scored an enormously powerful parting shot. What he had just said had been heard by millions all across Argentina and could not be rescinded without unleashing mass revolt.

  * * *

  On the edge of the crowd, near the car, Evita Duarte placed her hands over her heart when she heard her colonel’s words. He had not told her beforehand what he was going to say. Her whole being burned with pride and admiration. This man on the stage, her man, was the savior of the poor. And he was rubbing the noses of the bourgeoisie in their own shit and frustrating their attempts to destroy him. He was the most important, most valuable man in the country, perhaps in all of South America, and instead of being feted for the great leader he was, he was being tortured by a nest of snakes who had not an ounce of vision or leadership. Behind her admiration prickled a fear: this bold act of Perón’s could be political suicide. She wanted to save him. She had more balls than any of his enemies. Someday she would make them feel her wrath. Whatever their treachery and lies did to him, she would never leave his side.

  Perón made a brave show of enjoying the festivities, flashing his sunshine smile, but Evita saw anxiety in his body, like a caged animal’s. He was an athlete, and when a fight was upon him, it showed in his gait: he moved swiftly with focus and intention, like the fencing champion he was, intending the épée for his opponent’s heart. Now he clasped the hands of his supporters, but as a conciliatory man. There was no edge of threat in his demeanor. She knew he trusted the army’s officers to follow their code of gentlemanly conduct and leave him to make a new future for himself. But she trusted none of them. Powerful people made up their rules as they went along, whatever worked for them, the way her brother used to declare different rules for boys and girls when he played games with her and her sisters. People who had the nerve to make up their own rules were the ones who won.