Free What We Become by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

“became slower, less disjointed, although the compadritos from the poor neighborhoods adopted some of the African mannerisms. . . . When a couple were dancing in a straight line, so to speak, the man would stop in midflow, to show off or to perform a quebrada , halting his movement and that of his partner”—Max glanced at Mecha, who was still listening attentively—“the famous corte , the respectable version of which you are so good at in the tangos we dance currently.”
    Mecha Inzunza honored the compliment with a smile. She was wearing a delightfully diaphanous, champagne-colored dress, and the light from the window set off her hair, bobbed at the nape of her neck, whose slender shape had filled Max’s thoughts ever since the silent tango they had danced in the palm court of the ocean liner. The only jewels she had worn then were the pearls in a double string around her neck and her wedding band.
    â€œWhat are compadritos ?” she asked now.
    â€œWhat were they, you mean.”
    â€œDo they no longer exist?”
    â€œThings have changed a lot in the last ten to fifteen years . . . When I was a child, compadritos were young men of humble background, the sons or grandsons of the gauchos who rode in with the cattle and dismounted in the working-class suburbs of Buenos Aires.”
    â€œThey sound dangerous,” remarked de Troeye.
    Max made a dismissive gesture. They were relatively harmless, he explained, unlike the compadres and compadrones, who were much rougher characters: some were real villains, others only appeared to be. Politicians would employ them as bodyguards, or during elections, and so on. But the authentic compadres, who often had Spanish surnames, were being replaced by the sons of immigrants who tried to emulate them: petty criminals who still adopted the old ways of the knife-fighting gauchos, but without possessing their code of honor or their courage.
    â€œAnd is authentic tango a dance of compadritos and compadres?” asked Armando de Troeye.
    â€œIt used to be. Those early tangos were openly lewd, with couples bringing their bodies together, entwining their legs and thrusting with their hips, like I said before. Remember that the first female tango dancers were camp followers and women from the brothels.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, Max could see Mecha Inzunza’s smile, scornful yet fascinated. He had seen that same smile before in other women of her class, when topics like this were mentioned.
    â€œHence its bad reputation, naturally,” she said.
    â€œOf course,” Max went on, still addressing her husband out of politeness. “Imagine, one of the earliest tangos was called ‘Give Me the Tin . . .’ ”
    â€œThe tin ?”
    Another sidelong glance. Max paused, searching for how best to put it.
    â€œThe token,” he said at last, “which the madam gave each client, and which the whore in turn gave to her mack, who cashed them in.”
    â€œMack, that sounds foreign,” said Mecha Inzunza.
    â€œIt comes from maquereau ,” de Troeye explained. “The French word for pimp .”
    â€œI understood that perfectly, my dear.”
    Even when tango became popular and was danced at family gatherings, cortes were banned on grounds of indecency. When he was a child, tango was only danced at afternoon shindigs in the Spanish or Italian social clubs, in brothels, or in the garçonnières of well-to-do young men. And even now, when tango had taken the dance halls and theaters by storm, the ban on cortes and quebradas remained in place in some circles. The “leg thrust,” as it was crudely termed. Once the tango became socially acceptable, it lost its character, Max concluded. It became slow, calculated, less lewd. This was the tame version that had traveled to Paris and become famous.
    â€œIt was transformed into that dull routine we see in dance halls, or