Read Online The Tango Singer by Tomás Eloy Martínez - Free Book Online

Belgian, Norwegian and English architects. The exterior design was by Olaf Boye – she told me – a friend of Ibsen’s who met him every afternoon in the Grand
Café in Christiania to play chess. They would sit there for hours without speaking, and in the intervals between one move and the next, Boye completed the arabesques for his ambitious
project while Ibsen was writing
The Master Builder.
    At that time, engineering works located in residential areas of cities would have the outsides of the buildings wrapped in sculpted designs to hide the ugliness of the machines. The more complex
and utilitarian the inside, the more elaborate the exterior should be. Boye had been entrusted with encasing the pipes, tanks and siphons that would supply Buenos Aires with water in limestone
mosaics, cast iron caryatids, marble plaques, terracotta tiled roofs, doors and windows with so many carved folds and glazes that each of the details was rendered invisible in the jungle of colours
and shapes that overwhelmed the façade. The function of the building was to cover what was inside behind so many scrolls that it disappeared, but also the sight from outside was so
unbelievable that the inhabitants of the city had finally forgotten that the palace, intact for more than a century, still existed.
    Alcira took Martel in his wheelchair to the corner of Córdoba and Ayacucho, where he could see that one of the attic roofs, the southeastern one, had a slight lean, just a couple of
centimeters, perhaps due to the architect’s momentary distraction or because the angle of the street produced this optical illusion. The sky, which had been crystalline all morning, turned a
leaden grey at two in the afternoon. A thin fog drifted up from the sidewalk, warning of the drizzle that was ready to start falling at any moment, and it was impossible to know – Alcira told
me – if it was cold or hot, because the humidity created a deceptive temperature, which sometimes felt suffocating and then, a few minutes later, chilled you to the bone. This obliged the
inhabitants of Buenos Aires to dress not according to what the thermometers revealed but to what the radio and television stations mentioned all the time as the ‘thermosensation
factor,’ which depended on the barometric pressure and wind direction.
    Even at the risk of the impending rain, Martel insisted on observing the palace from the sidewalk and stayed there, absorbed, for ten or fifteen minutes, turning to Alcira every once in a while
to ask: Are you sure this marvel is only a shell to hide the water? To which she replied: There is no water anymore. Only the tanks and pipes for long-departed water are left.
    Boye had altered the plans hundreds of times, Alcira told me, because as the capital grew, the government ordered tanks and pools of greater capacity, which required sounder metal structures and
deeper cement foundations. The more water that was to be distributed, the more pressure was needed, which meant the tanks had to be raised in a perfectly flat city whose only slope was the banks of
the Río de la Plata. More than once it was suggested to Boye that he neglect the harmony of style and resign himself to an eclectic palace, like so many other buildings in Buenos Aires, but
the architect demanded that the rigorous French Renaissance symmetry of the original plans be respected.
    The associates of the firm Bateman, Parsons & Bateman, in charge of the work, were still dismantling and reassembling the iron skeleton of the plumbing, in a frenzied race with the voracious
expansion of the city, when Boye decided to return to Christiania. From the table he shared with Ibsen in the Grand Café he sent the drawings of the pieces that would make up the
façade by post, which took a week to get to London, where they were approved, before traveling on to Buenos Aires. Since almost every piece was drawn to scale, and placing one anywhere other
than its specified destination could have