The Gods of Tango by Carolina de Robertis Read Free Book Online

the opposite direction, ahead of her. She wore a gray, loose-cut dress, and her stout body slouched forward slightly. Leda waved and smiled, and Fausta nodded back, but tightly, sternly, as though this were a dangerous time for pleasantries. Her face was closed, formal, nothing like the openness of that one night halfway through the trip when they lay and talked for hours, in the dark, because neither of them could sleep, sharing hopes for the next chapter of their lives—their hopes more than their fears: Fausta’s hope that she would be able to find the thyme, coriander, basil, and oregano she needed to cook properly, Leda’s hope that her new house would have a window overlooking a tree by which she could sit and sew (or read, she thought, but all she said was sew ), her hope that Dante would not have changed too much.
    And if he has? Fausta said.
    Then—I don’t know.
    He’s still your husband, Fausta said firmly. You owe him your respect.
    No matter what?
    No matter what.
    Leda stirred in the darkness, adjusting her body in a vain attempt to get comfortable on the lumpy bed. Are you worried about whether Bruno has changed?
    No.
    Leda wondered at the confidence in Fausta’s voice. Ten years is a long time, she said.
    You were seven years old ten years ago.
    Yes.
    So what can you possibly understand?
    Leda shrank from the thorn in those words. You must love him very much, she said more softly.
    Of course I do.
    Fausta said this with a vehemence that bordered on a warning. Leda thought it best to change the subject. Tell me more about how you’ll use the basil, she said.
    The New World basil will be sweet and tart and plentiful, I will grow it on the windowsill the way we did at home, it will brighten my sauces and sing in my salads and if we’re ever sad I’ll pass a sprig under our noses, we’ll be cured. Listen, Leda, there are bound to be demons in this city: if they ever arrive at your house, use basil. Eat it. Smell it. Cover bad things with it. Dip a sprig in water and sprinkle it into every corner, and sing a song, any song, the happier the better, so the evil eye will go away. Will you remember?
    I will.
    Now, as they stood in the blazing sun waiting for their test, Leda envied Fausta the strength of her conviction, her unwavering love, her trust that even if her husband had changed, her own formidable devotion would dissolve the intervening years like salt in a cup of water. Perhaps marriage could contain such magic.
    Though even dissolved salt, for all that it vanished from sight, still left traces that stabbed the tongue.
    There she goes, thought Fausta, that girl like a steel rod hiding in the skin of a rabbit, who jumps at the slightest knock on the door and yet can vomit all night and rise up the next day with vigor, and not only that, but also help a stranger through her sickness the way she did for me on the very first night, she cleaned up the mess on the floor as though it were nothing, as though it were her own. It was kind of her. A kind girl. Astrange girl. Look at her, standing there with that expression of amazement on her face, as though she doesn’t know how she got here to the deck of this ship, or perhaps how she arrived to live inside her own skin, a question to which no one knows the answer except perhaps the priests, and even if they do, who’s to say it’s right?
    Blasphemy. I didn’t think that!
    The girl. She’s so young. How will she fare here? And me, me, what will happen to me? Ten years, the girl said to me the night that I came dangerously close to spilling out the secret, as we lay near each other in the dark, ten years is a long time. And what I wanted to say back to her, but didn’t say, was this: ten years in the course of a young woman’s life is everything—absolutely everything—her one chance at passion and fertility and grasping at some fistful of the happiness in the world and if you misuse those years they’ll either wither like a putrefying rose or