Letter from Casablanca (2 page)

Mar del Plata was a bizarre and fascinating city, deserted in the cold season and crowded in the vacation months, with
huge white hotels, twentieth-century style, that in the off season emitted sadness. In that period it was a city of exotic seamen and of old people who had chosen to spend their last years of life there and who tried to keep each other company by taking turns at making appointments for tea on the terraces of the hotels or at the coffee-concerts, where shabby little orchestras caterwauled popular songs and tangos.

I stayed two years at the Salesian conservatory. With Father Matteo, an old man, half-blind, with deathly pale hands, I studied Bach, Monteverdi, and Palestrina at the organ. The classes of general culture were held by Father Simone for the scientific part and Father Anselmo for the classical part, in which I was particularly gifted. I studied Latin willingly, but I preferred history, the lives of the saints, and the lives of illustrious men. Among those particularly dear to me were Leonardo da Vinci and Ludovico Antonio Muratori, who had gotten his education by eavesdropping under the window of a school, until one day the teacher had discovered him and told him, “Come into the classroom, poor boy!”

In the evening I returned to the Pensione Albano. Work awaited me because the monthly allowance that Uncle Alfredo sent me was not enough. I slipped on a jacket that Señora Pepa made me wash twice a week and stationed myself in the dining room, a room painted pale blue with around thirty tables and pictures of Italy on the walls. Our clients were pensioners, business agents, an occasional Italian immigrant to Buenos Aires who could permit himself the luxury of spending fifteen days at Mar del Plata. Signor Albano ran the kitchen. He knew how to make
pansoti
with walnuts and
trenette al pesto
: he was Ligurian, from Camogli. He was a follower of Peron. He said that he had lifted up a nation of lice. And then Eva was enchanting.

When I found steady work at the “Bichinho” I wrote Uncle Alfredo not to send me my allowance anymore. It wasn’t that I was earning enough salary to fritter it away, but, well, it was
enough for me, and it didn’t seem fair that Uncle Alfredo was fixing tractors in order to send me a few
pesos
every month. “O Bichinho” was a restaurant-nightclub run by a plump, cheerful Brazilian, Senhor Joño Paiva, where you could have supper at midnight and listen to native music. It was a place with pretensions of respectability and considered itself to be different from the other shady night clubs, even if whoever went there to look for company found it easily, but with discretion and with the complicity of the waiters, because the prostitution was not so exposed. Everything had a respectable appearance—forty tables with candles. At two tables in the rear of the room, near the coatroom, there were two young women sitting in front of a plate that was always empty, sipping an aperitif as if waiting for their order to arrive. And if a gentleman entered, the waiter guided him skillfully and asked him discreetly, “Do you prefer to dine alone or would you like the companionship of a lady?” I was an expert at these games because my job was at the rear of the room, while Ramón attended to the tables near the platform for the show. To make those propositions you needed tact, good manners. It was necessary to understand the client in order not to offend him. And who knows why by intuition I immediately understood the client? In short, I had a flair for it, and at the end of the month my tips were greater than my salary. Besides, Anita and Pilar were two generous girls.

The high point of the show was Carmen del Rio. Her voice was no longer what it had been, of course, yet she still constituted an attraction. With the passing of the years the hoarse timbre that gave charm to her more desperate tangos had weakened, had become more limpid, and she tried in vain to regain it by smoking two cigars before her performance. But what was spectacular about her and what she knew would send the public into a frenzy was not so much her voice as a combination of resources: her repertory, her movements, her make-up, her costumes. Behind the curtains of the platform
she had a little room crammed with rubbish and a majestic wardrobe with all the clothes she had used in the Forties when she was the great Carmen del Rio. There were long chiffon dresses, marvelous white sandals with very high cork heels, feather boas, tango singers’ shawls, one blonde wig, one red one, and two raven black ones parted in the middle and with large chignons with white combs, as in Andalusia. The secret of Carmen del Rio was her make-up. She knew it. She spent hours making herself up. She did not neglect the smallest detail: the tinted base, the long false eyelashes, on her lips the glittering lipstick she had used in earlier days, the very long fatal fingernails painted vermillion.

She often called me because I helped her. She said that I had a very light touch and exquisite taste, I was the only person in the night club whom she trusted. She opened her wardrobe and wanted me to advise her. I went over the repertory for the evening. For the tangos she knew what to wear, but the makeup for the sentimental songs I chose. Usually I went for the light, filmy, pastel dresses—I don’t know, apricot, for example, which was enchanting on her, or a pale indigo that seemed to me unbeatable for
Ramona
. And then I did her nails and eyelashes. She closed her eyes and stretched out in the easy-chair, surrendered her head to the head-rest, and whispered to me as if in a dream, “Once I had a sensitive lover like you. … He spoiled me like a baby. … His name was Daniel…. He was from Quebec…. Who knows what became of him….” Close up and without cosmetics Carmen looked her age, but under the spotlight and after my make-up she was still a queen. I overdid the base and the grease-paint, naturally, and for face powder I insisted on a very pink Guerlain, instead of the too-white Argentine brands which gave prominence to her wrinkles. And the result was sensational. She was most grateful to me. She said that I pushed back the clock. And for her perfume I converted her to violet—much, very much, violet—and on principle she had protested,
because violet is a vulgar perfume for schoolgirls. And she didn’t know that on the other hand it was this contrast that fascinated the public: an old defeated beauty who sang the tango made up like a pink doll. It was this that created the pathos and brought tears to the eyes.

Then I went to do my work at the rear of the room. I circulated among the tables with a light step. “More
carabine-ros a la plancha, señor
?” “Do you like the rose wine,
señorita
?” I knew that while she was singing, Carmen was searching for me with her eyes. When with the boss’s gold cigar lighter I lit the cigarette which some client had just finished inserting between his lips, I made the light shine a minute at heart level. It was an agreed-upon signal between Carmen and me. It meant that she was singing divinely, that she went right to the heart. And I observed that her voice vibrated even more and gained warmth. She needed to be encouraged, the splendid old Carmen. Without her, “O Bichinho” would have been nothing.

The night Carmen stopped singing there was panic. She did not give up of her own accord, obviously. We were in her dressing room, I was doing her make-up, she was stretched out in the armchair in front of the mirror. She was smoking her cigar, keeping her eyes closed, and all of a sudden the powder began to get sticky on her forehead. I realized that she was sweating. I touched her: it was a cold sweat. “I feel bad,” she murmured, and said nothing else. I put my hand on her chest, took her pulse, and couldn’t feel it any longer. I went to call the manager. Carmen was trembling as if she had a fever, but she did not have a fever. She was icy. We called a taxi to take her to the hospital. I helped her to the back entrance so the public wouldn’t see her. “
Ciao
, Carmen,” I said to her. “It’s nothing. I’ll come to see you tomorrow,” and she attempted a smile.

It was eleven o’clock. The clients were having supper. On the platform the spotlight made a circle of empty light. The pianist
played softly in order to fill the void. Then from the room came a little impatient applause. They were demanding Carmen. Senhor Paiva, behind the curtain, was very nervous. He sucked his cigarette anxiously, called the manager and told him to serve some champagne gratis. Probably the idea was to keep the public in a good mood. But at that moment a little chorus chanted, “Car-men! Car-men!”

And then I don’t know what came over me. It wasn’t something I thought about. I felt a force that drove me into the dressing room. I turned on the make-up lights around the mirror. I chose a very tight-fitting sequined dress with a slit up the side, of the deliberately showy sort, some white shoes with very high heels, black elbow-length evening gloves, a red wig with long curls. I made up my eyes heavily, with silver, but for my lips I chose a light lipstick, an opaque apricot. When I went out on the platform the spotlight struck me in full force. The public stopped eating. I saw many faces staring at me, many forks remaining suspended in the air. I knew that public, but I had never seen it from up front, arranged in a semi-circle like this. It was like a siege.

I began with
Caminito verde
. The pianist was an intelligent type. He immediately understood the timbre of my voice, provided me with a very discreet accompaniment, all in low notes. And then I nodded to the electrician. He put on a blue disc. I grasped the microphone and began to whisper into it. I let the pianist do two intermezzzos to prolong the song because the public didn’t take its eyes off me. And while he played I moved slowly on the platform and the cone of blue light followed me. Now and then I moved my arms as if I were swimming in that light and stroked my shoulders, with my legs slowly spreading apart and my head swaying so that my curls caressed my shoulders, as I had seen Rita Hayworth do in
Gilda
. And then the public began to applaud excitedly. I understood that it had gone well and I took the counteroffensive. In order not to let the enthusiasm die down, I
attacked another song before the applause ended. This time it was
Lola Lolita la Piquetera
, and then a Buenos Aires tango of the Thirties,
Pregunto
, that sent them into delirium. It was applause that Carmen had had only when she was at her best. And then an inspiration came to me, a whim. I went to the pianist and made him give me his jacket. I put it on over my dress and as a joke, but with much sadness, I began to sing the ballad of Beniamino Gigli,
Oh begli occhi di fata
, as if it were addressed to an imaginary woman for whom I was pining for love. And little by little, while I was singing, that woman whom I was evoking came to me, recalled by my song. At the same time I slowly took off the jacket. And while I was whispering into the microphone the last line, “
della mia gioventú cogliete il fiore
,” I was abandoned by my lover, but my lover was the public, who stared at me with rapture. And I was myself once more, and with my feet I pushed away the jacket that I had let fall to the platform. And then, before the enchantment ended, rubbing the microphone on my lips, I began to sing
Acércate más
. An indescribable thing happened. The men got up on their feet and applauded, an old man in a white jacket threw me a carnation, an English officer at a table in the first row came up on the platform and tried to kiss me. I escaped to the dressing room. I felt I was going crazy with excitement and joy. I fell a kind of shock all over my body. I shut myself inside, I panted, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful, I was young, I was happy. And then I was overtaken by a whim. I put on the blonde wig, I put around my neck the blue feather boa, letting it drag on the floor behind me, and I returned to the platform in little elflike skipping steps.

First I did
Que será será
in the Doris Day manner, and then I attacked
Volare
with a chá-chá rhythm. Wiggling, I invited the public to accompany me by beating time to the rhythm with their hands. And when I sang “Vo-la-re!” a chorus answered me “Oh-oh,” and I “Can-ta-re,” and they “Oh-oh-oh-oh.”
It was like the end of the world. When I returned to the dressing room, I left behind me excitement and noise. I was there, in Carmen’s easy-chair, crying with happiness, and I heard the public chant, “Name! Name!” Senhor Paiva came in, speechless, beaming, his eyes shining. “You have to go out and tell them your name,” he said. “We can’t calm them down.” And I went out again. The electrician had put in a pink disc that flooded me with a warm light. I took the microphone. I had two songs that surged in my throat. I sang
Luna rossa
and
All’alba se ne parte il marinaro
. And when the long applause died away, I whispered into the microphone a name that came spontaneously to my lips. “Josephine,” I said. “Josephine.”

Lena, many years have passed since that night, and I have lived my life as I felt I had to live it. During my travels around the world I have often thought of writing to you and never had the courage to do it. I don’t know if you have ever known what happened when we were children. Perhaps our aunt and uncle weren’t able to tell you anything. There are things that cannot be told. Anyway, if you already know or if you come to know, remember that Papa was not bad. Forgive him as I have forgiven him.

From here, from this hospital in this far-away city, I ask you a favor. If what I am willingly about to face should turn out badly, I beg you to claim my body. I have left precise instructions with a notary and the Italian Embassy so that my body may be returned home. In such a case you’ll receive a sum of money sufficient to execute this and an extra sum as recompense, because in my life I’ve earned enough money. The world is stupid, Lena, nature is vile, and I don’t believe in the resurrection of the flesh. I believe in memories, however, and I ask you to let me satisfy them.

About two kilometers from the signal house where we spent our childhood, between the farm where Signor Quintilio worked and the town, if you take a little road between the
fields that once had a sign saying “Turbines” because it led to the suction pump for the reclaimed land, after the locks, a few hundred meters from a group of red houses, you come to a little cemetery. Mama rests there. I want to be buried next to her and to have on the tombstone an enlarged photograph of me when I was six years old. It’s a photograph that remained with aunt and uncle. You must have seen it who knows how many times. It’s of you and me. You are very small, a baby lying on a blanket, I am sitting beside you and holding your hand. They dressed me in a pinafore and I have curls tied with a bow. I don’t want any dates. Don’t have an inscription put on the stone, I beg you, only the name. But not Hector. Put the name with which I sign this letter, with the brotherly affection which binds me to you, your