A Japanese Tango Dream

Anna Kazumi Stahl

Translated from the Spanish by Anna Kazumi Stahl with Alice Whitmore

Toshi Matsushiro arrived in Buenos Aires in 1947, aboard an enormous empty cargo ship. He’d made the journey—at a very good price—in an unused refrigeration chamber of the Southern Star, which supplied the largest beef-exporting country in the world.

When he disembarked, Toshi went wandering around the city. He was a small, skinny person, almost invisible amid the robust, well-fed physiques that crowded the avenues. The large, dignified buildings of Buenos Aires impressed him, with their stately windows, long and brightly lit, and the elaborate ironwork adorning their marble fronts. Toshi felt a flush of optimism: his new home seemed a rich country indeed, much more so than the starving, ashamed Japan he’d left behind.

Finding a job turned out to be easy. He was looking for a boarding house when he heard Japanese voices speaking to him from the doorway of a nearby dry cleaners. They were Okinawans; Toshi was from Nagoya. Very different places, and the relationship between them wasn’t exactly friendly. But the Okinawans offered him a job and a little room out the back of the dry cleaners, and their terms seemed quite reasonable. Though the hours were long and the dry-cleaning chemicals were unpleasant, the work was simple and repetitive. Toshi earned enough money to pay his board in full with a little to spare, which he could save or spend as he pleased.

It might have been the regional differences between them, or some other dissimilitude, but Toshi didn’t develop friendships with his employers, nor with any of the other Japanese who worked at Oki Dry Cleaners. At the end of their shift, while the others gathered to chat, settle the day’s accounts and prepare the evening meal, Toshi would disappear for hours, only returning late at night to sleep. He would go to the port. Every afternoon he would walk the banks of the Riachuelo and look into the water, his mind placid and at ease.

Unlike his compatriots and co-workers, Toshi Matsushiro had chosen Buenos Aires long before he’d even left Japan. Most of the others had gone first to Brazil, or Peru, jumping on the bandwagons of international labour agreements. Later, driven by desperation or madness from the cruel work conditions, they had abandoned their contracts and fled, clandestinely, to Argentina. Toshi, on the other hand, had his papers in order. He had taken all the necessary steps to obtain legal residency ahead of time, bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires, and, during the long, solitary sea voyage, he had pored over all thirty-five chapters of an elementary Spanish language textbook.

It was not by accident or chance that Toshi had come to this distant city. He’d sensed the place from afar, the way a karate novice senses the enemy: always absent, yet always before one’s eyes.

In the autumn of 1946, when the heavy air of national defeat had overwhelmed Nagoya, Toshi had left his hometown for the capital, Tokyo, in search of paid work.

But there was no work. There was no pay, no food, no housing. Moreover, the nation’s capital had new owners; big, strapping figures with bright faces and rosy cheeks, who rambled big-footed and commandeering through the streets. These were the Americans, wide-mouthed and yellow-haired; the Occupation Forces.

Their presence was unbearable to Toshi. In a little bar, amid rising curls of cigarette smoke and the murmurs of other defeated men, he listened to the low strains of a music that was always foreign but, prudently, never North American. It was here that he first heard the song that was to accompany him until his death, at the age of 71, in his small but pleasant home on the southern side of Buenos Aires.

From a speaker hidden behind the bar came the hoarse, hazy sound of a man’s voice: it was a moving song, sung in a strange tongue. This was a voice that knew the meaning of a solitary existence. Hearing it, Toshi was filled with a sadness so deep and fragile, yet at once so virile and heroic, that he felt something take root in him, something firm and clear: a decision, a will to act.

He asked the bartender what the music was. The latter, busily collecting used glasses from the countertop, simply replied, ‘Tango,’ and continued working.

Toshi waited until the man had time to pay him a little more attention, and when the opportunity arose he fired off all his questions at once:

‘Where is this music from? Who is singing? What is he singing?’

The bartender eyed Toshi for a long moment. Perhaps he noted his provincial accent; perhaps he felt disdain for lowbrow Nagoyans. Finally, he reached down and set the record jacket on the bar. Toshi examined it with enthusiasm, but all he saw were printed Western letters, spelling out tiny and unintelligible words. The bartender pointed out a line of text with his finger:

‘This one,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow a Ship Sets Sail.’

Toshi stared at the incomprehensible lyrics. He had studied the Roman alphabet at school, like everyone else, but he’d never paid it much attention. Until this moment, that strange set of symbols had seemed absolutely irrelevant to him. Now, with great concentration, Toshi began to follow the words to the song, letter by letter. He mouthed the sounds of the syllables, which held no meaning for him at all.

He asked the bartender for a pen and paper. He studied the lyrics meticulously, working with dedication and care, and in no less than two hours he had copied down every single word of ‘Tomorrow a Ship Sets Sail’. He copied out the strange, foreign names of the author and singer, then all the other words he found on the front cover of the record. He folded up the piece of paper and placed it in his trouser pocket. From that day on, he carried it with him everywhere he went.

During those three long months at sea, with the help of the glossary at the end of his Spanish textbook, Toshi eked out a tenuous but sincere understanding of the song. From time to time, he tried singing a line or two. ‘Cien puertos nos regalan la música del mar,’ he murmured in the empty meat chambers, clothed in their residual, acrid odour. One hundred ports present us with the music of the sea. Then: ‘Cien puertos…Riachuelo, Riachuelo…El tango es puerto amigo donde ancla la ilusión.’ Tango is our port and friend, where hope can lay its anchor. As he sang, something inside Toshi began to take shape and meaning, while something else in him waited, cheerfully, for the Southern Star to finally put in.

Every evening, after finishing his duties at the dry cleaners, Toshi would head for the river of the song. He would stand and watch its flow, its rhythm, its burden of ships from all over the world. He would take himself to that river and wait next to it and watch. He was vigilant for a kind of satori, a movement that would come to him from the water. He went to the river in summer and in winter, beneath the rain and the sun. There he would wait, patiently abiding, on the banks of the Riachuelo. But enlightenment did not come.

One particularly cold day, Toshi Matsushiro decided to drink something warm before embarking on the long walk back to the dry cleaners. Opposite the riverbank he saw a café. He went in and, somewhat timidly, raised his hand, making a large letter C with his index finger and thumb. He’d seen locals do this, and receive steaming hot coffee in large, thick cups. Now, like magic, before Toshi had even had time to manifest his surprise, the waiter set the coffee before him—in a large, thick cup, no less, and steaming hot.

‘Cold out, eh?’ said the waiter to the Japanese fellow, who understood nothing but the ‘eh?’

Toshi smiled regardless, and nodded.

‘Yep,’ continued the waiter. He had strong, rough-hewn features, but there was a basic goodness to his face. ‘We haven’t seen this kind of cold in a long time, no sir.’

Toshi nodded once more, as he tried to capture in that flow of sounds some word, some fragment of a phrase that he could recognise or deduce. He’d understood the ‘yep’ and the ‘no’, and he thought he’d caught a ‘long’ in there too, but…in relation to what? A number of grammatical rules flashed through his mind, along with scattered bits of vocabulary from the textbook. That Spanish textbook occupied the greater part of Toshi’s brain, in a sweeping but somehow impractical way.

The waiter leaned in closer.

‘Say, you’re not from around here, are you?’ he said in a suddenly softer tone. ‘Where you from? Japanese?’

‘Yes!’ said Toshi, finding the word much easier than he’d expected. So he said it again, ‘Yes,’ and the waiter gave him a kind look.

‘I know a lot of Japanese,’ said the waiter, leaving Toshi behind in a blur of incomprehension. ‘Nice people. Real hard-working.’

Toshi gave up on the words. But he continued nodding. He felt ashamed. Unexpectedly, the waiter pulled up a chair and sat down across from him.

‘Listen. I noticed you come down here a lot. I see you walking over by the river, standing there looking down at nothing. Why do you do that? Something wrong? Something bad happen to you? Why don’t you tell me, get it off your chest? Maybe I can lend a hand. With the best of intentions, I mean. I don’t want to stick my nose where it’s not wanted, you know. But I see you out there by the river, and it’s cold out…’

Toshi looked back at the man. He made a slight gesture with his shoulders indicating that he didn’t understand.

The Argentine went on: ‘It’s cold,’ he repeated, more loudly now. ‘You’re by yourself out there.’ He pointed, through the window, to the river. He said again: ‘Out in the cold.’

Toshi seized upon that gesture like a light in the dark, and he too began to point at the river through the window. The two of them then signalled to the river with eager, repeated motions, like two kids or two monkeys poking at a pane of glass. Toshi reached into his pocket and removed a worn piece of paper, folded into a small square. He spread it out in the centre of the tabletop, then hit it firmly, meaningfully, with his fist. When the waiter read what was written on the paper, and realised what it was, his face lit up.

Brillante! Brillante!’ he shouted, slapping Toshi on the shoulder. Then: ‘Stay here, alright? Just stay put for a sec. Shit, can you understand a word I’m saying? Stay, just stay!’ And he rushed out of the café.

Toshi stayed. He looked at the Riachuelo through the window. He sensed the cold, held at bay by the pane of glass and the warmth in his belly. The waiter soon returned, with another man in tow. This man also had rough features, and a shock of jet-black hair, shiny and slicked back. His chest was broad and prominent. He wasn’t tall, and didn’t seem particularly refined, but his eyes were gentle, as though he held a small sadness or weakness inside him.

‘You’re going to love this!’ the waiter boomed at Toshi. Then he turned to the other man, and repeated: ‘You’re going to love this! See that paper? This Japanese guy has your song, man!’

The other man was Homero Manzi, and the tango was his.

Manzi invited Toshi to his house, a few blocks from the café. Toshi walked like a drunkard, like someone overwhelmed. He tripped over the uneven cobblestones, eyes set on the wide, powerful shoulders and shining black hair of Homero Manzi. The words of the song floated before him; its rhythm and melody rang in his ears, and, for the first time in his life, his mind was emptied of his native tongue. He thought no thoughts; he only followed Manzi to a modest little door, painted green. It stood ajar, and a bare lightbulb above it illuminated the narrow threshold. It was already late; night had fallen.

Manzi pushed open the door with a sweeping movement that was almost brusque. The gesture might have struck a Japanese person as gross or violent, but to Toshi it seemed like an illustration of pure joy. Beyond the door there was a small patio, and even in the dark Toshi could see that it was crowded with plants and empty bottles. Manzi was exultant, overjoyed to welcome this visitor to his home, but Toshi felt undeserving and abashed. He proceeded with cautious, hesitating steps, since it was not customary in his culture to enter so boldly into a stranger’s home, much less if the stranger should happen to be a man of fame and honour.

It was a wonderful night—the fullest of Toshi’s life. Manzi sang and talked and laughed, all the while slicing peppered salami and thick bread for his guest to taste. What flavours! What a voice! On a piece of butcher’s paper, Manzi scribbled out a few variations; his thick hands moved expressively, and his wife, a robust, generous woman with extremely black hair, served plates of spaghetti with a spicy tomato and anchovy sauce. ‘Puttanesca,’ she said to Toshi, and the three of them burst into spontaneous laughter. Toshi was overcome with happiness.

That night, language went unneeded and unnoticed, because, even aside from the laughter and the wine, they had song. By now, Toshi knew the lyrics to almost all of Manzi’s tangos. And, though he had only a scant understanding of their meanings, he sang them—with emotion and vigour—and won the admiration of his audience. ‘Well!’ murmured Manzi’s wife, and Manzi himself sat beaming, his whole face a smile.

Of course, the event was recounted the next day in the local café. It rapidly became the talk of the neighbourhood; a legend, almost, or a fable. A little miracle. Of the many people who heard the tale, the one who loved it the most was the waiter, for on that day, he had been the good soul, the guardian angel of the lonely port.

For a moment, the waiter allowed himself to believe that he had saved the Japanese fellow’s life, perhaps (he thought) from an act of suicide, brought on by loneliness and the cold. Maybe, just maybe, it was so. He had saved Toshi from a dark and nasty end, with the simple act of introducing him to the protagonist—the hero, even—of his strange Japanese tango dream.

The next day, the waiter arrived at the café in time for his afternoon shift. He wiped the tabletops, straightened the chairs. When he glanced out the window, he saw walking along the river’s edge a small figure that could only be Toshi Matsushiro. There he was, looking down at the currents, the ships, the mud, and nothing else. A sense of foreboding settled over the waiter.

‘What is he doing out there again?’ he wondered. He wanted to run outside and catch up with Toshi, have a word with him, perhaps talk him into coming inside. But he hesitated, remembering that Toshi didn’t speak a word of Spanish. The waiter felt his chest tighten with dread and pity; he was paralysed, but he had to do something. He couldn’t bear to see the little fellow out there, so small and skinny, so dangerously close to the river, so recklessly sad and all alone.

‘What should I do?’ the waiter wondered, frantic, and then, at that very moment, Toshi’s figure stopped and turned in the distance. He looked back in the direction of the café, and, with a very gentle motion, not raising his arm too high, waved a greeting to the waiter. Then, quietly, he walked on.