Swedish Tango : A Novel

by Alyson Richman

• ISBN13: 9780743476423
• ISBN10: 0743476425
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-28
• Publisher: Atria Books

Summary

Octavio Ribeiro is a rising movie star in Chile when, at the request of his literary hero, Pablo Neruda, he agrees to serve as a media trainer in the presidential campaign of Salvador Allende. This involvement exposes Octavio and his family -- especial

Excerpts

Chapter One Vesteras, SwedenNovember 1998 More than twenty-three years had passed before Salome could listen to music without being reminded of the terror it had once caused her. It seemed ironic, then, that on the afternoon that the letter arrived, her old Victrola was humming in the background, the needle skipping over Satie's lonely notes.After carefully reading the words, she folded the letter neatly into thirds and placed it in her desk drawer. Her skin was cold and her body shivered.She went over to the gramophone, rested her hand on the shiny black horn, and released the arm. The music ceased as the record slowed its spin. Salome was soothed by the silence that followed, relieved that the only sounds the music masked were the icy gusts rattling a half-opened window.Inside there was darkness and outside it was dusk. It was only 3 P.M., but night had already arrived in the Swedish sky.Aside from the cold air that penetrated the apartment, Salome's apartment appeared tropical. When her children visited, they knew that, no matter where their mother lived, she possessed a divine ability to re-create their Santiago childhood home. The rooms smelled of dried geranium leaves, eucalyptus, and wild mint, for she had hidden tiny sachets filled with these fragrant leaves throughout the house, and had covered the walls with old cinema posters of their father, from when he had been famous. She had created small collections from things she had found -- things that people had disposed of thinking they were of no value. But she treasured them, those displaced things, and amongst the shelves lined with beach glass and dried lemons and pears, she gave them a home.She had been the same way back in Chile. A collector. Their home in Santiago was enormous, many times the size of her present apartment, but still she had covered every open wall with a painting or drawing and every shelf with something she had found. She took the skins of hollowed-out avocados and strung them over her tiled stove. She filled jars with colored sand and kept a basket filled with seashells by the bathtub, scattering them into the water so the children could pretend, even in wintertime, that they were swimming in the sea.They could not bring most of these items with them when they left. Time -- and the Chilean authorities -- had not been generous with them, leaving Salome only a few days to pack their belongings. So when they closed the iron gate of the house for the last time, Salome left it in very much the way she and her family had lived. Often, she wondered what the renters had done when they'd arrived. Whether they had slipped into her house, worn the clothes hanging in the closets, or used the soap that had been left in her grandmother's dish. She often pondered if the family who sent her a check each month ever thought about her family, all that had happened to them and why they had been forced to leave. Or whether they had purposefully chosen not to think of them and, instead, only to marvel at their great fortune to be able to live in such a big, beautiful house.She had finally unpacked the Victrola a few months before, deciding it was time to go through some of the boxes she had left packed for so many years. She had screwed the black horn to the wooden base and replaced the worn diamond needle with one she found at a secondhand shop. The children, now grown, came over, as did her ex-husband, Octavio. And in her modest apartment, with the smell of eucalyptus fragrant around them, they all danced. They put Pablo Ziegler on, and Rafael danced the tango with one of his sisters, Blanca."Do you remember when we found that old thing?" Octavio asked his ex-wife, nestling a glass of wine in his hand. He wondered if now, with so many years having passed, his wife finally appreciated that he had packed the Victrola.

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