Carpe noctem

We are deep, deep in the porteño night. An intense Pugliese number is sounding. I coil and uncoil with Toothpick´s dynamic twists and turns, cozy and safe in a sustained close embrace. It is surprisingly comfortable to roll my body across his bony chest as he leads back ochos, like lying belly-down on the wooden boards of a boat rocking in the gentlest of swells. It´s wonderful late-night drama. Pugliese milonguero style. Heavy on the oxytocin; heavy on the bandoneons. The smooth, shiny floor of Salón Canning flows silkily under my grateful feet: after several hours on the hard surfaces at Milonga 10 it was like moving from a plastic lecture hall chair to a cushioned ottoman. Toothpick strides happily out into the inviting space, padding lightly to the strong beats of this gorgeous Pugliese. We walk in beauty, like the night. The orangey light at Canning is soft on my tired eyes; the floor a lovely square mirrored pool, a Zen garden, but one we can stroll in, swirling up the gravel. It is our playground, just for us, les paumés du petit matin argentin.

But it is not just Salón Canning that holds these hidden delights tucked deep down in the early morning hours. There is also El Yeite. Tucked into an upstairs room above an empty salsa bar is a jewel-box, a small dark rectangular space. All that’s best of dark and bright. We are snugly enclosed on three sides. Leather booths fill one wall. Along another side, a barman is handing out large green beaded bottles of cold Stella Artois and pouring slightly flat diet Cokes into slender highball glasses. (And at one point I spot Toothpick slicing up a greasy pizza which has miraculously been conjured from some discreet kitchen). Next to the bar, the DJ stands behind his bank-teller like booth. A video screen — which later sports an ancient tango video, all fuzzy pixels and almost unbearably crackly sound — hangs draped in front of the windows, completing the sense of enclosure.

We share a mellow, mildly somnolent state; conversations are few. Some people watch, leaning back lazily against the leather banquettes or (mostly in the case of the men) hovering eagerly at the edge of the floor, waiting for the start of a new tanda, a new shot of tangotonin, the drug of choice in this strange, topsy-turvy twilight world. This place is a wunderkabinett of beautiful dancing, a tango Tardis, modestly proportioned from outside, but, inside, filled with so much dancing. The faces express deep, blissful concentration. The bodies twist and pivot in the lovely subtle contortions of our dance.

I´m not sure if elegance is the word I would use. I want something stronger, more visceral, weirder and kinkier even, more highly charged. This tango may be elegant, but it is also deeply nocturnal.

And soon I am on the floor with the dancers, experiencing the strange way that time is stretched and compressed here. A single tango, in the arms of a good leader, seems to last for days. A luxurious pause in a parada takes an entire week. And yet the tandas rush by at breakneck speed. And the whole evening is over, seemingly, in seconds. The place is a strange, capricious time machine.

My vampiric lifestyle leads me to miss some things, it´s true. My daylight hours are scant. Outside, the trees are frothing with blossoms – sweet and chalky purple as the Parma violets I loved as a child; dogs are trotting along happily in front of their walkers, a starburst of leashes radiating out from the paseador´s right hand; people pick daintily at gravity-defying pyramids of toffee-brown ice cream with tiny flat plastic shovels; old men sit at outdoor tables, La Nación in their hands, slurping cups of the watery, sour, bitter brew that passes for coffee here. The spring days are beautiful in this southern city. But the nights are unmissable.

PS For another late-night milonga, see Another Night at La Viruta.