Free Heart of Tango by Elia Barceló

he said, “but I’m ashamed of it.”
    â€œCome on, tell it to me. After all, it’s probably German, and I won’t be able to pronounce it.”
    He put his mouth close to my ear and said, “Heini. My Christian name is Heinrich, but they always called me Heini, until I went off to sea.”
    â€œWhat’s that in Spanish?”
    â€œEnrique.”
    â€œWell, that’s not so bad.”
    â€œBut in German, Heini also means clod, simpleton, you know? Here I’m El Rojo. For you, too.”
    Then he stopped talking, but he kept on caressing me. He didn’t limit himself to touching my hair and face any more. It was as if he had suddenly realized that he was my husband, that I belonged to him. And he seemed in a great hurry to make me understand it.
    He turned me around, pressed me against the mattress, and kissed me on the mouth, thrusting a tongue that tasted of beer and cigar smoke between my teeth. I felt like vomiting.
    A rosy glow spread across the sky, but it was still dark in the courtyard. I heard a cock crow and I burst into tears. It was my birthday, the day when Grandfather Francesc used to take me by the hand before breakfast and stroll with me, just the two of us, first to Mass and to take communion in the cathedral, then to have churros and hot chocolate across the street from the church of Santa Catalina. I’d wear my best dress and my Sunday coat, and he’d have his frock coat and silk hat, along with his cape and walking stick. Afterward he’d take me to the old toy store on San Vicente street and let me choose whatever I wanted: a blond doll, a globe, a box of puppets.
    On my last birthday before he died, he offered me his arm after we had our breakfast and, on our usual way to the toy store, he suddenly turned a different corner and stopped in front of a jeweler’s. He opened the door for me.
    â€œYou’re nearly a woman now, Natalia,” he said. “I think you’re too grown up for toys.”
    And he bought me a ring. The first piece of jewelery I ever owned. The only piece.
    Now I had just turned twenty. My present was the pain I felt between my legs. And another ache, much more intense: that of knowing I had made a mistake. And that this error would last forever.
    By the time I realized there was someone else in the courtyard it was too late. Whoever it was, he had to have heard me crying. I shrank into the rocking chair, cocooning myself in the sheet in case it was El Rojo.
    But it was my father.
    He hugged me clumsily. Then he helped me to my feet, dried my tears with his palm, sat on the rocking chair and took me in his arms, as he used to do when I was very little and he sang songs to help me sleep. And he, the man from Navarre who had never wanted to learn the Valencian language, started whispering into my ear.
    Perleta, perleta meva, no ploris, perleta, no ploris.
    Don’t cry,
perleta meva
. My little pearl. Mamá’s pet name for me.

THREE

    I met him at a milonga one Saturday in November, just past midnight. The streets lay dark and deserted under a snowfall that had lightly sugared the cars and roofs, creating the ghost-city illusion I knew so well from so many other nights in so many other towns in central Europe, when, leaving the theater or the concert hall, I would walk to my hotel to change my clothes, grab my dancing shoes and head back outside to look for the dance floor that would once more give meaning to my existence. My nocturnal existence, of which my colleagues knew nothing, thinking me unsociable and excessively conscientious about my responsibilities as first violin.
    As I walked along I wondered, with half of my mind, how it was possible that a woman of my age could let herself be carried away like this by her passion for the tango, instead of retiring to her room to wake refreshed and relaxed for the concert in Salzburg the next day. But the other half of my mind simply kept my feet moving along the