Cherie Magnus - The Church of Tango - A Memoir

TheChurch o f T a n g o a M e m o i r C h e r i e M a g n u s Los Angeles Buenos Aires Acknowledgments Thanks to the Buenos Aires English WritersGroup who encouraged me when thegoing got tough. I always felt they had my back.Thanks to Helen Coyle who did a painstakingprofessional edit that inspired therewrite.Thanks to Robin Tara (of Tara Tango Shoes) for Copyright Cherie Magnus 2012 all of her fabulous cover and book design workalong with her patience working with me. All rights reserved. No part of this publication my be repro duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any Thanks to Katy Metz de Martinez for the back form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, cover photo of me she shot during recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission lunch at Las Violetas. of the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews Thanks to the readers, who will be in my per-sonal Hall of Fame forever: Elizabeth All of the following events are true, but several names have Brinton, Roland Vasin, Patrice Wynne, Nancy been changed.. Ingle, Dee Schwartz. Printed in the United States of America Thanks to my friends in L.A. who held me upwhen I was falling down. https:/createspace.com/3733773 tangocherie@gmail.com ISBN-13: 978-0615573540 ISBN-10: 0615573541 For Ruben,The journey brought me to you.Para Ruben,El viaje me llev a vos.I have the soul of a suitcase,but of a suitcase that returns...my life, really, was always that:a going and a returningLike the criminals, like the fiancesand like the bill collectors:I always return ... ~ E. S.

Discepolo, writer of tangos Foreword Home is Where the Cat Is I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. ~ Albert Einstein It was finally obvious how to follow my bliss. And so I packed up Phoebe the Cat and moved to Buenos Aires, leaving Mex ico, Los Angeles, and France above the Equator and in my heart. I felt so Argentine, what with the nostalgia for my past, the longing for my lost loved ones, and the healing joy of dancing tango in the present. After so many international moves, my money box was empty. Now I must depend on my monthly pension.

When Argentinas terrible inflation rose higher and higher, I started to panic. But one year after arriving in Buenos Aires, I met a milonguero who became my dance partner and my partner in life. When I first saw him dance, I knew he expressed the music the way I felt it in my heart. Together we competed and were finalists in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Tango Cham pionships of 2006. After that we became in demand for teach ing classes, and so now several years later it is our joy and our job, as well as extra income. In 2011 TripAdvisor.com listed us as the #2 attraction of Buenos Aires, so the students keep on coming.

What a surprise to be teaching the tango in Argentina! Perhaps twenty years ago I wished for and imag

Am I completely crazy after a year of widowhood? But just then a woman wearing a bright silk scarf over her dark winter coat opened the courtyard door, saying pleasantly, Bonjour! Alors, entrez! before setting off down the street toward the pealing bells of the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. I propped open the heavy green door with one bag, hauled the rest of my gear over the threshold, and entered the courtyard as Alice must have entered Wonderland. I had always wondered what was behind those huge doors I saw in French films that hid Parisians private lives Cherie Magnus The Church of Tango from the curious tourist on the street, and now as I lugged To me the apartment was very French and therefore my baggage across the court I took a good look. Large and charming, over two hundred years old with high ceilings and square, completely enclosed on all four sides by the six-storied marble fireplaces in each room. Madame ushered me round on building, the courtyards only items of interest were the gray a guided tour, and I gaped at the exposed pipes and conduits cobblestones and a metal fountain for, I supposed, watering that ran every which way, the laundry draping from clotheslines horses a hundred years ago. knew-what in every niche and corner. knew-what in every niche and corner.

I didnt care that the Madame de Chardon waited in her open doorway as I two towels Madame handed me were threadbare, or that the got off the minuscule cage elevator on the third floor. Madame, bureau drawers were full of things belonging to people long small-boned and elegant, dun certain ge, with a pink since departed, or that all of the fancy cornices and moldings artificial flower already pinned to her chignon, surveyed my in my room were painted a hideous bright pink. Or even that a abundant American belongings now filling up the small entry thin layer of grime covered everything. I was in Paris. hall of her apartment. Bienvenue, Madame Magnus.

Je suis Madame indicated that I shouldnt make myself at enchante de faire votre connaissance. We shook hands firmly home in the rest of the apartment. I noticed the telephone in up and down exactly twice in the prescribed French way. the dining room had a padlock on it, not that I had anyone to Would you like a cup of tea? she asked in French, call. The stale cookies had left a dusty taste in my mouth, and opening the curtained glass parlor doors. (Five other doors led so I went across the street to sit over a crme on the sidewalk off the tiny foyer.) While she clanged pots in the kitchen, I of the Caf de lEsprance, now open and filling up with perched on the drab flowered sofa and studied the portraits after-Mass and instead-of-Mass habitus.

My ears ached with hanging from picture rails and porcelain boxes balanced on listening to them all speaking French as I stirred my coffee lace doilies on Directoire marble tables. Madame brought in and looked around with amazement. Here I was, at age forty teabag tea and packaged cookies with panache on a tarnished eight, suddenly on my own in Paris, transported as if by magic. silver tray. There was no place on earth I would rather be, nothing else I was able to keep my large apartment in this good I would rather be doing. had a moment like this. had a moment like this.

Los Angeles was far away, so was the At this she peered over her glasses at me as if to ascertain I despair and depression I had lived with for so long. wasnt too old to study French. Furthermore, Madame Last year Jack had been in a cancer clinic in Tijuana, continued, I enjoy meeting people from around the world the hospital of last resorts. The Mexican doctors took him off and occasionally practicing the English. morphine so that the organic herbal treatments they prescribed Cherie Magnus The Church of Tango would be more effective. He suffered agonies of withdrawal over.