I had a dream, last night... about tango. I never dream but this one was distinct. I was at a conference, something work related. During the noon hour break I sneak out to get a quick tango lesson. In this dream, the old woman at the local eatery around the corner also doubled as a tango professora, or instructor - highly unlikely, but it was a dream. In addition to a review of the eight basic steps, I learn how to kick my leg, first out and then up - holding it suspended, high above my head. Then, with poignant force, to wiggle it around like a dancing snake head - almost like some capoiera fighting move.
Last night over a four-cheese pasta in the center of downtown, Samantha tells me several of her more memorable dreams... all bad. She says that when she was younger, she suffered from sleep walking and nightmares. Listening intently, I ask her to put her hand out on the table. Her hand is so small, like Elton John´s `Tiny Dancer´. I take a stab in the dark, starring deeply into her dark brown, almost black and beautiful eyes...
Maybe you´re a bruja, a witch?
I´m not a witch!she slowly responds, a bit surprised but amused at the same time. Then she starts to blush, telling me that actually... there is a bit of truth to what I have just said. Her parents used to tell her when she was younger that she was like a witch, always running around the house causing trouble. I take ahold of her one hand, smothering it between both of mine. She blushes even more saying only,
Aye... que energia!
The first time I actually danced with her was at the train station - Constitución, earlier that evening. The same train station that the taxi drivers in Buenos Aires have repeatedly warned me not to go into, especially at night. Waiting for her to come into the city from the barrio, I finally see all of the cartoneros, or recyclers, lined up with their make-shift carts piled high with scraps of cardboard, wood, plastic and I don´t know what else. I arrive twenty five minutes early and just wait... and watch. Street kids, tattered in rags play a rudimentary game of soccer with a shiny, empty litre bottle of Pepsi. You don´t see a lot of Pepsi down here as almost everything in Latin America is sponsored by Coca Cola. They race around the dirty but placially old station built by the Brits more than a hundered years ago, kicking and screaming at the bottle, nearly missing the passengers that are scurrying between the ticket counter and the arriving trains.
I ask about their train, El Trén Blanco, of which I´ve heard many stories.
The first one leaves at 10:55 PM and the next one at 2:30 AM,says the clean cut young man behind the bullet proof glass. The white train has been gutted of all its seats to make room for all of the carts and bikes that carry their hard-found wares of the day. All of the windows have also been removed.
They would just smash them if they left them in,one taxi driver tells me. I have to return to ride the white train, to take pictures of this modern day third world spectacle of poverty and industrious labor.
Then I see her, walking briskly towards me, wrapped up in another stylish coat, nestling her chin beneath her hand made black woven scarf. We talk and laugh and I feel just as I did before I left her, standing out on the street in El Caminito, shouting out to the tourists,
Take a picture with me...Happy.
I grab her hand and ask her to dance. I get the last three steps wrong but it doesn´t matter. It feels so good, to be dancing with the world´s ninth best tanguera, here in this decrepit station in the heart of poor Buenos Aires.
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