You walk down a sidewalk in Buenos Aires at your peril. Potholes, immense cracks in the cement, deteriorating curbs, and sudden whole absences of pavement can plague every footstep. This is worsened by the fact that sidewalks in this city are often very narrow as well. You must walk with your head down, watching, which is perhaps why so many Buenos Aires citizens appear lost in thought, a bit resentful, and put upon. They’re afraid they’ll trip and fall.
It’s the same in tango, which of course was born in Buenos Aires. Dancers of tango very frequently look as though they’re angry with someone, which cloaks them in an ambiance of dismissive arrogance. When women in tango have such a disdainful veneer, they appear to be implying to their partners “Okay chico, show me what you can do.” This look has as much to do with concentration as it does with dramatics. The difficulties of dancing tango well make it imperative that you pay attention. Otherwise you’ll look like a fool as you stumble in your partner’s arms, and one thing you learn quickly about the citizens of Buenos Aires, men and women alike, is that they do not want to look like fools.
Bad weather makes the sidewalks even more perilous. Buenos Aires is often subject to violent hailstorms and heavy rain. When this happens at night, the sidewalks become simply un-navigable because you can’t see anything, you’re usually hurrying in order to get out of the tempest, and your concentration is being scattered by hailstones that are like globules of cement. During such storms, the rain really seems more like a driven cataract. It bangs against the ground and soaks you coming down and going back up. Sometimes it makes you feel like a rat in a sewer.
This may sound like an exaggeration—and it is—but not much of one, and there are saviors in this city who, for a slight fee, will help you through just such torment.
A few years ago, Beatrice Bowles and I had been dancing tango one night in Buenos Aires. We’d begun around 11:00 PM, and we came out of the club at about 3:00 in the morning. Sweaty, heated, and exhausted, all we wanted was a taxi and bed. It had been drizzling lightly when we’d gone into the club, bringing to mind a famous tango titled “Garúa” (“Light Rain”), with its finely-rhymed lyrics of dark solitude:
¡Garúa!
Solo y triste por la acera,
va este corazón transido
con tristeza de tapera,
sintiendo tu hielo.
Light rain!
Alone and sad up the sidewalk
Goes this spent heart
With the sadness of an abandoned shack,
Feeling your icy cold.
But coming back out onto the sidewalk, we found that the very awning over our heads was groaning beneath the weight of the water now coming down. A more or less slick sheet of it cascaded from each side of the convex canvas. I felt we were inside a constantly descending giant wave at some famous Hawaiian surfing spot.
Outside the club, on the Avenida Díaz Vélez, rain battled the pavement, lit by the headlamps of the heavy traffic. There were, as always in this city, numerous taxis, but they all seemed occupied or traveling so quickly that it would be impossible for their drivers to see the blur of an imploring hand waving for attention in the midst of the storm. I knew I’d be soaked in seconds if I moved further into the avenue to make my presence known. There was a flash of lightning, an immediate bang of thunder and, like shrapnel falling from heaven, hail. I glanced at Beatrice. She smiled. I could tell she was as intimidated as I.
It was then that Narigón came to our aid.
The doorman had noticed our plight and whistled for Narigón. He came out of the dark. About 23, he was an over-the-hill street urchin. His name is Buenos Aires slang for “Big Nose,” and there was an Italianate heaviness to his. Narigón’s nose was actually muscular. In twenty years, it would have the look of a much-used doorstop. He looked like a laborer, his broad face shaded with the beginnings of a dark beard. His hands were very large, as were his teeth, and both hands and teeth were similarly soiled. He had been out in the rain and, although his clothing appeared for the most part only damp, his shoulder-length black hair was pasted to his skull and cheeks.
At first I was intimidated by him because, though he was only of average height, there was a severe, even angered look in his eyes that made me think he could take a swipe at me with a club when my back was turned, in order to get to my wallet. He’d been waiting outside the club for someone such as us, lost gringo tangueros intent on a cab, but not so intent that we would ourselves run out into the flood to flag one down.
“Che, man, ¿taxi?” he said.
He was wearing an old coat, old pants, and running shoes without socks. His voice was arrabalero, a word that in Buenos Aires means “a rough guy from a rough neighborhood,” as though he’d already smoked way too many cigarettes and drunk a good deal too much whiskey. It’s a voice you hear everywhere on the streets of Buenos Aires, and frequently in tango.
I assented, and Narigón ran out into the street. He had to contend with two elements: the tempest and the taxis, both of which seemed to want to run him down. He pulled his coat over his head and raised his right arm, his hand like a splayed flag over his head, waving back and forth. He was able to whistle very loudly at the same moment. While water pelted the street and ricocheted from it, the rain that pummeled Narigón sunk into the shoulders and the back of his coat, rendering them immediately soaked. He jumped back and forth, dodging taxis and other cars, his shoulders hunched beneath his jacket, his shoes splashing in the puddles. The water whelmed over them so that his feet must have been badly inundated within seconds.
After a few moments, an errant taxi pulled across a couple lanes of traffic to answer Narigón’s request, and as soon as it stopped in front of the club, he was there, at our side, with an umbrella. Where he had gotten it was beyond me, but he sheltered Beatrice as she got into the taxi, and then me as I fumbled in my pants pocket for a tip. It took me a while because I had been watching him and his dance-like movements in all that rain and traffic. He’d been jumping around, bringing his fingers to his lips for loud whistles, waving his arms, all the while intent on the search for an empty cab.
As I searched my pockets, I considered my own admiration of this man. Of course, the effort he was making was for himself. Perhaps he had a family, maybe some children, but even if he had only himself, he was indigent and trying to make a peso. I myself have encountered have-not moments when a few extra dollars meant a great deal, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never had the problems that Narigón has had. He was a very poor man, but standing beneath that umbrella (underneath which, by the way, Narigón was not standing) I felt I was in the company of a man of intense values, who was living a hard life, who had found me a taxi under circumstances very threatening to his own health.
I pulled the bills from my pocket…more than a few bills…and handed them to him.
“Chau, señor,” he said, clapping me on the back as I got into the taxi. “Suerte.” This last is a Buenos Aires salutation. It means “Good luck.”
(Note: to hear the tango “Garúa,” click here. The singer is the great Roberto Goyeneche.)
Copyright ©2024 Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
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thank you for this - wonderful writing
Not just beautifully written, Terence, a flood of excitement too. Maurice