That snake, the knife

o veo los rasgos. Veo,
bajo el farol amarillo,
el choque de hombres o sombras
y esa víbora, el cuchillo.
Jorge Luis Borges

In its lyrics tango captures a reddish chronicle about daggers. To settle offenses, to put an end to pending things, to avenge a betrayal or, simply, for boasting being courageous, in fact, the presence of a bladed weapon represents a vast symbol of our culture, and the history of tango faithfully certifies it. Let us revise some texts.

The duel as confirmation of manliness
Mario López Osornio in his brainy work Esgrima Criolla points out that a knife in the hands of a man who knows how to handle it gives him courage even though he lacks it, or brings it back from his guts despite he does not want it. Likewise, Borges used to regard the criollo duel not as an incident but as a misfortune, not as a “dispute” but as the mere intention of plainly testing “who is braver”. The poems that belong to his work Para las seis cuerdas (1965) illustrate this proposal.

Jorge Luis Borges asked himself in his poem “El Tango” (in El otro, el mismo, 1964):

…¿Dónde estarán aquellos que pasaron,
dejando a la epopeya un episodio,
una fábula al tiempo, y que sin odio,
lucro o pasión de amor se acuchillaron?...

In this play of testing manliness, the encounter of steel with the body of the opponent meant all. «It goes deep up to your fist; the index finger and the thumb touch his body. This contact which would be enough to forgive somebody indicates that what is consummated has no remedy» says Martínez Estrada in Radiografía de la pampa (1933). However, this kind of duel has not been the one which abounds in police chronicles, especially in the cities. On the contrary, knife battles “with a reason”, have been the most frequent and the ones which have had a wide development in our national literature and, more specifically, in tango lyrics. Even more, knife fights because of women flood tango poetry as you will see later on.

Knife and betrayal in tango
Let us revise some titles in which this knife duel has not been as Borges liked: «with no reason at all» and «only for the sake of it» but its reason was one of the most frequent: an affair of skirts. Julio Navarrine describes in “A la luz del candil”, the unfortunate scene of a treachery that ended up in a double murder and a repentant man who gives himself up to the law authorities and pleads for God’s pardon. The sharp blade has in this piece a role of special importance: it kills and brings forth «the evidence of dishonor» with which the murderer gives himself up.

... Mi china fue malvada,
mi amigo era un sotreta;
cuando me fui a otro pago
me basureó la infiel.
Las pruebas de la infamia
las traigo en la maleta:
¡las trenzas de mi china
y el corazón de él!

“Brindis de sangre”, with lyrics by José Suárez, is a sample of how fighting was, according to Borges, «a feast».

Soy el novio de María.
Sirva dos cañas pulpero".
Alza su copa colmada
y dice al rival de un día:
"¡Brindo por la puñalada
que va a dejar estirada
o tu osamenta o la mía!"
Y sobre el pucho, bravía,
la topada.

Later the dagger plays its part:

Hay un revuelo de tira y ataja.
A poncho y cimbra, ninguno se toca.
El tallador del destino baraja:
da vuelta el mazo y la muerte está en boca.

Widely known, the tango “Duelo criollo”, with words by Lito Bayardo, might as well perfectly be a Shakespeare’s or a Greek tragedy plot. Three people, a betrayal and three deaths.

pero otro amor por aquella mujer,
nació en el corazón del taura más mentao
que un farol, en duelo criollo vio,
bajo su débil luz, morir los dos.

… De pena la linda piba
abrió bien anchas sus alas
y con su virtud y sus galas
hasta el cielo se voló.

“El ciruja” with words belonging to Alfredo Marino says in a witty stanza:

Frente a frente, dando muestras de coraje,
los dos guapos se trenzaron en el bajo,
y el ciruja, que era listo para el tajo,
al cafiolo le cobró caro su amor.

“Ladrillo” (written by Juan Andrés Caruso) adds up to the long listing of stabbings because of love:

El día que con un baile
su compromiso sellaba
un compadrón molestaba
a la que era su amor.
Jugando entonces su vida,
en duelo criollo, Ladrillo,
le sepultó su cuchillo
partiéndole el corazón.

In “Por una mala mujer”, Carlos Bahr replaces the poetic brilliance of the duel for a rarely common lesson of politeness:

Deje a un lado el cuchillo y conversemos,
que las cosas se aclaran con razones,
la violencia no arregla nunca pleitos
y el que sabe entender no es menos hombre.

The thing is that, besides honor, there is place for a more trivial reasoning, a rational speculation that is not at all negligible:

Pa' que hacer tanto alarde de coraje
disputando un amor que es de cualquiera,
si el final es morir o ir a la cárcel
a llorar por olvido de mala hembra.

Knife against woman
Tango was not exempted from this terrible ending. Edmundo Rivero in his milonga “Amablemente”, with lyrics by Iván Diez ,—which so well sounded in that deep, gloomy voice of his— tells us about a quite wicked scenery with an ending in which cruelty and premeditation stand out. As for treachery, Diez poses an ethical scheme: man “is not guilty in these cases” and woman deserves death. After finding his wife in somebody else’s arms he threatens the other guy to leave and asks his wife, naturally, to bring him «some mates», as if nothing had happened. «Talked to her about trivial things…», smoked a cigar…

Y luego, besuqueándole la frente,
con gran tranquilidad, amablemente,
le fajó treinta y cuatro puñaladas.
(And thereafter stabbed her with thirty-four wounds.)

“Contramarca” (1930), by Francisco Brancatti, hints a similar abomination:

…y esa flor que mi cuchillo
te marcó bien merecida,
la yevarás, luciendo en el carriyo
pa' que nunca en la vida
olvidés tu traición.

Knife and suicide
The knife at the service of suicide has not been quite frequent in tango poetry but has not been completely absent. Let us see, for example, the Jacinto Font’s tango “Ofrenda maleva”:

El sudario de la muerta
de blanco se ha hecho punzó,
por la sangre del malevo
que, en duelo de fiera,
se abrió el corazón.

“Te llaman Malevo”, with lyrics by Homero Expósito, places suicide in a genial metaphor which presents us the knife as something almighty, facing time, making it shorter… «plucking the petals of a waiting time».

Dicen que dicen que una noche zurda
con el cuchillo deshojó la espera
y entonces solo, como flor de orilla,
largó el cansancio y se mató por ella.

The knife has been, in sum, a mute character, a magical object in the history of our culture. With a phallic connotation at sight, the knife explores our blood and hides our wish. It has been defense, revenge, pride, courage, but above all it has represented a key and an improbable spell to that mystery that is mentioned in a low voice, respectfully: the knife has been an advance, a lightning, a reddish flash of death which we had better to favor in time than be hurt by carelessness. And tango is, once more, a summary of these stories, a mirror of these wishes, of these fears, so criollo… and so dearly ours.