Edizioni Clandestine

Novel

english version by Dulut

Format 12,5 x 19,2
Pages 183
Euro 9,50
ISBN code 88-87899-92-4
Gasoline series
Year of publication: 2004

graffito click's

Foreword: words, definitions, or phrases reported in spanish tongue (or, to say the least, in tongue from "lunfardo" dialect), in the original version imprinted and published, are all equipped with relative footnotes. Therefore, in this regard, the mentioned below passage, not adhering to the original make-up, will appear devoid of possible notes.

To master Julián Plaza
and to the memory I have of him, like of a tango,
on the stage of El Viejo Almacén,
on a night in Febbruary,
in San Telmo , Buenos Aires.

(P.B.)

(from Nothing about Tango)

Paolito got to town in the morning. From the province of Tucumán. He was knockin'on thirty. On Monday at noon. And it was Spring. Not many things packed in his case and a past of no account. He had set in his mind on doing an improvement, on realizin' his dreams. The so-called Personal Legend. To be free. For love or instinct. To dance. To sharpen the sense of tango and life.

He struggled along in La Boca. Found a bedroom with kitchen en subarriendo, that is on sublease. Necochea row. Every day, at nine o'clock he went down the staircase of the conventillo, or rather of palomár. His fast steps touched the ground and he whistled down the road as he was breathing luck. All day long he worked as waiter in a restaurant at Puerto Madero. By night he danced round cantinas and milongas. He burned energy for tango. Changed girls every week. He had always done it. Knew girls everywhere. He had the key with them. He just needed to gaze them straight in their eyes. Attracted them like a scent. Girls were suited for him. But they couldn't stand up so much to his stubborn passion. One evening he had a stab at Los Angelitos de Caminito Café. Suddenly he volunteered to dance in place of somebody. Somebody blessed hitch-bound elsewhere, yes. He had to seize that chance. The real twist of luck. Not yet the same fleeting train to clutch at. The girl he danced with was swept off his feet by and became his sweetheart for a short time. Aurelia Debizet was her name. After the show, the art director called him to his office. He told him to be back the next day. And the followin' next day too and every night and each time he had wanted. Paolito agreed and laughed and said no words. He thought his life was a fate coming true. People were enthusiastic about him. He had something unlike all others. What he acted you could see. What he acted on the stage everybody was able to see. Every weekend he went to Los Angelitos'. Went there and asked no money. He just delighted in dancing tango in his way. But in this way the thing became binding, as a kind of tacit obligation. He made show, and so it became binding. Then they began to pay him really well. Paolito hung up his waiter jacket and grew a thin moustache. Picked up to walk and starin' straight ahead of him. He thought everything was much easier than he had never supposed. Thought at this rate he could be able to arrive who knows where. Felt free and concentrated. Tranquil like a philosopher and on the ball like a son of a bitch. By day he tried and tried again the minimum space and the improvisation. By night he stayed up until the wee small hours. Patronized 'the basements'. Twirled after any bit of skirt he saw. Spent money. In falling to sleep, now and then, with Aurelia Debizet, he had lead-heavy breathings. So, sometimes by chance he happened to dream a new step of tango in depth. Stammered in his sleep and without a break slipped out and beneath the sheets. When it happened, she stayed awake in silence all night long, absorbed by red and black thoughts and jealousy of love. Paolito turned over, dreamed. Busy sounding the a thousand-chances depths. Then, the morning after, he had a new step of tango in his pocket. Figment of his unconscious and his imagination at the same time. Grabbed shrouded in the nocturnal membrane and dragged to the docks of mind. He had it well engraved on the choreographic light of his eyes and ready-made on his mind to be performed. Therefore, as soon as he woke up, lest he could forget it, Paolito felt an immediate exigency of burning it with her, tender and throbbing plunder. To brush his shapes, to help himself, to taste his genuine lesson before the centrality of idea could fade away. "There's no time! My goodness, what a short time!..." he jumped lookin' for the first connections. Cluckin' with his tongue on the palate, he addressed her: "Are you sleepin'?... Tell me, are you hearin' me?"... Otherwise sometimes he didn't say any word. He only clapped her on the bottom, put his hands and his arms under her buttocks fastenin' her into his chest. And although Aurelia Debizet floundered still half asleep and grumbled and bellowed clutching at sheets, well, Paolito Palermo picked her up in his arms and took her in the middle of the room and dropped her standing there. "Bailámos..." he invited her petting her ankles and it was always almost noon. Then he took her hands. "I beg you, I don't do it out of spite!" he raised his bid. So they tried in their underclothes, as two figures fellows of the same reality; or naked, but rigorously with their dance shoes. Aurelia drowsy and absent-minded. Paolito hazy and rugged. However in the meantime, now and then, she was as wooden as a dummy and so, there, he got angry. Otherwise everything ran smoothly like a cat hair. But at heart this had never been essential. In fact, even though they had a lot of things in common, Aurelia Debizet often glimpsed, beyond every wordless gliding, and with more and more great violence, a lag between her and him, during the trials and certain times on the stage too and in front of audience.Yes, quite. As if Paolito Palermo was a separate entity, a side of harmony, an innovatory, global, and itself complete gesture. Whenever he looked at her his eyes pierced straight to the submerged top. She tried to record his steps. She was dominated by him and head over heels in love with him and followed him just as you would follow a dancin' god. On this account he was Aurelia Debizet's great passion and great yearning indeed.

Well, in a little time, Paolito Palermo arrived to the Tulipás Danzarín Club. His show extended over several weeks. Things fared wonderfully. But out of the blue, on a not particularly lively evening for her, Aurelia Debizet unveiled a fit of nerves, and racking her breath with sobs, went away leaving him in the lurch and screeching with a violent tone of irremediable loneliness. Many people, in the wings, both musicians and organizers, saw her going away, recalled her, kept her, but she, at all, broke dozen arms intent on stopping her and wrenched herself free. All came out and watched. Taxis were passing by, but the street was empty. It was raining. She wasn't there any longer. That was a crazy gesture. It left a great regret in everyone. Afterward, it was very hard for Paolito to think Aurelia had ever been mindful of her role and her talent and she nurtured enough respect for what they were creating together. Only she had caught in her hand their future, familiarization, practical theories, wasted time in refining figures, suspension exercise, inestimable creation of tango, variegated step and every day and every instant, in one stroke she had caught everything in her hand and she was getting rid of it down the drain. There you are. By sheer idiocy, but what right by? By sheer emptiness, but what power by? By sheer tantrum, but what pretext on? Here what she had been capable of, Paolito thought, biting his nails. He moved along the poky corridor opposite dressing rooms, walking up and down and shooting around wild glances, will to believe everything was going to end well. "Who gives a damn, what's the problem?, anyway, they are all the same!". Just that moment the dull voice of presenter who, sweaty and steady, rushed to the microphone, resonated and from the stage he was announcing the main show would have delayed a little, there you are, because of a not clearly specified snag. "But nothing heavy" he clarified with an air of temporariness, "Tenémos una de las mejores orquéstas de Baires, y por suerte… los mejores tangueros y las tanguitas más hermosas!... Hélos aquí!..." he shouted above his voice, laughing and backing up with a grimace raddled and slapped by audience's clapping. "Buen Tango a todo el mundo y muchas gracias!" he concluded accompanied on chords of a bandonéon and of a contrabass, of a piano, of a viola and so on. Five dancing couples entered on stage perky and scampered of misery, of jealousy and of routine administration as in a real supernumerary story. Half-hour later Paolito Palermo, bursting with acclamations, came on stage without happiness and started dancing with a sticky and lively sixteen years old girl who displayed at a glance an admirable sang-froid and made the best of a bad job. Yes, because, almost out of all recognition, he had put into effect the repertory of vanity. Dammit he got flustered and that one was a tangled up in showiness tango. It was a bitter tango but after all it made him feel good. But most of audience perceived it and began to boo yet before the end. In the wings, the dance hall manager ate his hat and he wondered if he wasn't going mad. Paolito indulged in rambling moves as he was faced with a pip-squeak. There was not starting. Not good brainwave. He caught and bent her like a drunken pipe. He induced that wisp of girl to make long dramatic strides and too licentious steps, clumsy and debased steps. Finally only few applauded. They lowered the curtain. They turned off lights. It was a sorry sight. The manager disappeared into a rage. Somebody recounted that he had met el jefe in the corridor with a long cigar in his mouth and that he had seen him seething with anger. On the other hand, he knew Paolito's worth and his difficult character too. On this he preferred to go away, in order that he avoided hurling on his face unpleasant words, which maybe the morrow he could have repented for. Anyhow, the little girl looked satisfied and was over the moon. She held Palermo round his waist and asked him: " How have I gone, how have I gone?". Answering he took her his own home and stripped away her clothes by biting. On that night he got drunk and fell asleep with his head between her legs. The following morning he woke up, looked at her and without saying anything they made love again. At a certain point she asked him:" Do you love me?", in the greenish light of his eyes. "Don't say it by any stretch of imagination" Paolito answered back "What's got into your head, babe?". So she dressed again and got the hell out. Paolito threw open the shutters of the window and the sky was blue again and the sun was sun again.

Then, a few days later, on a rainy afternoon, bloodshot eyes and weak knees, Aurelia came back to him, apologizin', beggin' his pardon. "Do you want I belong to it? Do you want I belong to your life?..." she asked him, lookin' at him from the threshold of that en subarriendo room with kitchen. But Paolito had got already another girl and she was by his side, rigid and voluptuous in the act of a veiled and lewd leg, skilfully digged back in a posture of tango. Her name was Eládia Teresa: great bearing and slender ankles. In a flash of automatism the two women's adverse eyes met. Music dashed out of a CD player and flooded the room as far as the ceiling and kept on sheddin' 'Melancólico', of master Julián Plaza. Synchronism of details was really too awkward. Copiously scattered round, the rhythm grew on the notes of an acid bandoneón and landed on the tops of an implacable piano. Without averting her gaze, with her bended back and her exposed neck, as if she was celebrating a kind of jealous spite, Eládia challenged the Debized with an expression of icy superiority and slumped licentious and scanty in Paolito Palermo's arms. Circle of music became enormous, unbearable, completely pathetic. Do you want I belong to it?..., ribbons of voice hung, when Aurelia, takin' it badly, tried to raise a smile, but it remained cold, bitter, tentative. Eládia gazed at her again in a wordless language of slight and she was able to do nothing other than to look down. The tremble of her lips gave all her face a value of a pip-squeak. Do you want I belong to your life?... In the following instant of astonishment, timid repercussions of that words rebounded nonsensical, jarring, drowned out. On this account there was neither mercy nor solace. Paolito, half indignant and half amazed, scrutinized her unwillingly, gazed the Debizet with the same naked bother of who observes an unpleasant face and as if the unexpected randomness of her presence had crippled the course of his movements. Inspired by Jorge Louis Borges, deeply emotional, he answered her: " There 's a concept, which corrupts and perverts all others, mío amor, I don't mean minimum space of tango, I mean your foolishness…". Afterwards, Paolito lowered reflexes for some mysterious reasons and, without realizing, dropped with a thud Eládia Teresa on the floor. Off the cuff he felt a sharp indifference. An insidious unease, a sense of emptiness. Then, stunned and hastily, he crouched over her, picked up her with perplexity and with bare minimum of savoir-faire. He curtly kissed her on the lips and made her raise again, shifting her hair and holding her face in his hands, without she being able to say anything, to weep or in the least to complain about the received blow. Her eyes were all black and bottomless like doll's eyes. He pushed his palm behind her back, by the other hand lifted in hers, he forced her a chain of clumsy and meaningless steps of tango: now Paolito couldn't certainly recognize any more the gesture, the step, the twist which they had got before the sharp break. Well, at all events, from stereo music began to rattle off a right and incontestable like course of time 'Cumparsita'. The unrelenting rhythm of melodic key chanted little blows of bandoneón as if they were little hammer-blows. Blow by blow, harmonic breath by breath, a not very normal suspension of stifling air formed in the room. Aurelia Debizet agreed, approving of cold sense and lovely rhythm of those lines which she knew well, and as if she had had to regret for something in that unique arranged moment. He shot a glance at the girl with troubled look, she was stunned and all alone at the Paolito's mercy; he abandoned himself to a joyous and cynical laughter, a pitiless on that poor unfortunate, erasing every hint of redemption from his eyes. "Tango has got an only sense for you, so it seems…" she said addressing Paolito in an even and ruthless voice, a not altogether hostile voice. She addressed Paolito but she stared at the girl. Then, all at once, she threw a furious and admiring glance at him. She took a step back. Aurelia made a simultaneous move of weariness and then went away, with her hands at her ears, as if that pot-pourri of sounds which tormented the ceiling was giving her unbearable trouble. She closed the door again forever and walked down the stairs at a run, writhing in her folded arms; going despairing but pride out in the patio of palomár that faced Necochea row.

Fuck you!, Paolito thought as soon as the door had been closed again. He went near the window with a kind of willies. He took up a tight expression loaded of incredulity. He glanced at her while she was going away in the ineludible greyness. "Nobody can waste my life… no one in the world!", he protested shambling in his pair of training shoes. Eládia leant out biside him and looked down below. Outside, in the rain. " You didn't care so much about her, isn't it? She pleased asked, without even realizing it. She rested four tapering fingers on his shoulder with good slowness. Then five on his back. Paolito took a deep breath and felt his blood boiling. "Not at all!" he replied deafened by the music, "Do you know what I see?". "No", she said kneading his loins. "I see time flying. And running away, With a plunder in his mouth".

(Moreover, he had a feeling that he had within himself a sort of vacuum and of plenitude too, as if he had to feel a deep bent for freedom of instinct and also for changeable scheme of things. Therefore, he thought he himself was a tango. And, anyway, all the town realized quickly he was a special fellow)...