It Takes Two to Tango the Night Away

It Takes Two to Tango the Night Away

By John Sherman

Idon’t think I ever got his name. Or, if I did, I couldn’t pronounce it.

We met in a cafe in Santiago, Chile in early 1970. I arrived on a Time magazine newspaper fellowship. Given the choice to study anywhere in Latin America, I chose Chile because of its upcoming presidential election. It was a fortuitous choice, as the election was won by Salvador Allende, the first freely elected Marxist anywhere in the Americas.

I preceded my family, taking a room with the Figueroa family to get a sense of the country. My enduring snapshot was finding a couple of branches of eucalyptus under my bed. The grandmother, who put them there, explained that they were guaranteed to increase your sex drive. Noted.

Every afternoon I would take the #42 bus into the city’s center, buy three newspapers and settle into a sidewalk table with a local pilsner. On this afternoon, I heard a man behind me struggling to order. I turned, and as he saw me, he asked in English if I could help him.

He was Asian, slight, with black hair slicked back, wearing a wool suit in the middle of summer. He asked me to join him. He was on his way back to Japan, having covered the failing Vietnam peace talks in Paris. He was ending a long career as a foreign correspondent for one of Tokyo’s major papers, the Asahi Shimbun. We clinked glasses to newspapering and the pathetic wages it paid. He said he was being recalled to work on the editorial desk—his days as a world traveler over.

I finally asked him what brought him to Chile, a remarkable detour on the route back to Japan.

He explained that he spent World War II on a Japanese destroyer—one of the very few sailors who survived. He described the leeway between his bunk and the one above as eighteen inches. He was allowed two photographs. One was of his family. The other was a tango dancer with a high slit up her red dress.

“I promised myself if I ever survived, I would dance the tango,” he said.

Whoa.

How you tell a man on his final trip that the tango was danced on the other side of the Andes? He had mistaken Chile for Argentina. He left for Tokyo the next morning.

We talked deep into evening. His war, living through the battles of Midway and Leyte. The wreckage of the Far East and the deep shame and guilt that followed. And on to cover Korea, then apartheid and the American civil rights movement.

I suggested we have a late dinner at one of two Chinese restaurants in the city. Cheek by jowl, one was owned by a Communist and the other who backed Chiang Kai-shek. He chose the latter. I remember beer and a lot of noodles.

It was nearing 11 p.m. when I suggested we end the evening at a night club, called the Bim-BangIt hid down a long alley in an unsavory part It was quiet inside; the night had not yet come alive with its local denizens. The bar, with its coterie of B-girls, ran from the front entrance to an ample dance floor, surrounded by empty tables. He lit up as he entered. This was not his first night spot. We were certainly on the early side. The orchestra was taking its final smoke. The trap lights sent the mirrored ball’s spangles across the empty dance floor. There was the odd practice notes from a trumpet.

I suggested that my friend take a table and I would join him shortly. I headed for the bar and gathered three or four girls. According to nightclub hierarchy, a B-girl fit somewhere between a hooker and a stripper. Peel away the blond wigs, deep mascara, red lipstick and tight shimmering dresses, and you have a sales girl. They sold glasses of Champagne for two all the way up to a bottle of Johnnie Walker—for a cut. They would cuddle up, stroke a knee, stoke fantasies, then, like bees, move on to the next lonely customer.

I put some honest money on the bar, enough to get their attention. In my best broken Spanish, I told the tale of the tango dancer, and how tragic it would be to send this poor Japanese man back—failed in his dream. I explained that he was ready to dance and drink into the morning.

Three girls sashayed over to his table, following the pollen. He stood up with his arms wide, a welcoming, if seasoned, grin. The night held enormous promise.

Another girl walked over to the band, nodding toward the table while she obviously explained the plot. They got it. It took a couple minutes of shuffling through sheet music before one of them found a tango.

The opening riff brought one of the girls tugging my friend to the floor. She led him about with a dance step that fell somewhere between a foxtrot and the twist. He somehow managed to pick up her moves—-until the next girl brought her own rendition of the tango. The alternations, as the three ladies took turns, in the end, produced a dance step born to that night.

It didn’t help that the band only knew about three tangos, which didn’t go over well with the rest of the patrons. They played on, knowing who was paying the fiddler.

I made it into the second bottle of scotch, with the pledge of a third, before giving way. It may not have been quite what his bunk photo beckoned, but the enthusiasm and liquor made tango their own.

I assume he made his flight. And smiled behind his hangover. Tango. Check.