The Charango
January 16, 2025 at 02:30PM
Thoughtful stories for thoughtless times.
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Valerie Argentina Calvo | Longreads | January 16, 2025 | 2,289 words (12 minutes)
I can see him. He stands proud, with his shoulders back; he’s short and stocky like a pitbull. His voice is just as proud as his posture, loud and deep, with a thick, warm, Andean accent. His wide jaw and square head make him look stern when his face is resting. But my dad is a performer, so his face is not often resting. Most of the time it is in a wide, amicable grin. He holds the neck of the charango in his left hand, and his right hand strokes it, smoothing down the hair, as though it were still living. His big hand covers almost its entire body.
In my earliest memories my family had only one charango. It was the traditional kind, formed from the shell of an armadillo, the hair on the back still growing. When he introduced the instrument to someone new, my father always joked, When the hair gets too long I have to give the charango a haircut! The charango lived above the piano, right by the front door, hung by the neck so my father could easily play it. It was part of a sort-of mural my dad had created by hanging his instruments on the wall. I remember him arranging the quenas and zampoñas at pleasing angles, tracing them, and tapping little nails so they fit into the corners between the pipes of the zampoña, or precisely into the holes of the quenas. My dad tried to teach me to play the quena, but my fingers were too small to stop air from leaking out and I struggled to purse my lips precisely enough to direct air through the notch, so I stuck to the recorder. That wall, the piano with the mural of instruments above, served as a hearth for my family. During summer, hot air poured in through the screen door beside it—my parents stubbornly refused to turn on the AC—and my father took shirtless naps in his leather recliner. I remember the sweat made his dark skin glisten like smooth river stones and his soft snores sounded like the low rumbles of an incoming heat storm.
He holds the neck of the charango in his left hand, and his right hand strokes it, smoothing down the hair, as though it were still living. His big hand covers almost its entire body.
Once, when my little brother Sebastian was acting up, my dad snatched a quena from above the piano and beat him with it. Afterward, out of breath and exasperated, my father plopped down on the piano bench, tossing the quena on the top of the upright. It was splintered and broken. I remember feeling shock, not that my father had beaten Seby, but that he had destroyed an instrument. My dad had flown 16 hours round-trip to buy that quena. I see him in Tarija, Bolivia: He shares pan and queso de cabra with his dying mother in the morning, kisses her goodbye, and takes the bus into town. He saunters into a music store and strikes up a rapport with the shopkeeper, a friend of a friend of a cousin. He plays the quena before he buys it—right there in the shop. The flute is cool and clear as the wind. He’ll take it.
Back in the states, my parents wrangled Seby and I into the family minivan every Sunday and drove 20 minutes across town to the gated retirement community where Mrs. Dobson, our piano teacher, lived. On this Sunday, Mrs. Dobson had organized a recital. She’d asked everyone to perform—even the parents. I played some tunes, along with the other awkward children. But then it was my father’s turn. He played the story of the charango; it is a story that must be played, and my father knew it well. He sat on the edge of Mrs. Dobson’s plastic-covered sofa, resting the charango on his knee. My father narrated the story while the charango sang it.
He began, as he always does, with the young Incan man and the armadillo. They are friends, and spend their days together exploring the jungle, foraging for food, and singing.
His hands moved quickly, the left switching between frets, the right strumming. He played several chords one after the other, weaving them together like strips of color in a cloth. Red, yellow, orange—major and primary and bright—and even a couple more lines—green and blue and minor—to create depth. The music was warm like a quilt, like a Christmas tree filled with strings of colored lights, like the rainbow parachutes we used to throw in the air in elementary school. I remember sitting underneath as the fabric slowly descended toward me—then too, I was awestruck and unmoving.
As my dad described the man and the armadillo, the fingers on his right hand alternated between plucking melodies and strumming chords. Or, they must’ve alternated, but his transitions were so quick that all I heard was simultaneous, ringing melody supported by strumming. The charango looked secure in his sure grasp. Incredibly, he didn’t even need to look at it. He narrated and played. His fingers always knew where the next string was; his hand around the neck of the instrument shifted to reach different frets, but never faltered.
The music was warm like a quilt, like a Christmas tree filled with strings of colored lights, like the rainbow parachutes we used to throw in the air in elementary school.
The armadillo was in love with the moon, he said. He longed for her. At night he would call out and serenade her. My father’s deft hands shifted with turns in the story. He described the armadillo’s sadness when the moon was covered by clouds and the charango wept. It sobbed in blue and gray. My father squeezed high-pitched cries from the strings, bright white and trembling.
I always admired how my father could play so delicately with such brutal hands. They were rough, mired with patches of psoriasis, calloused from playing the charango and the guitar, and scarred, scarred all over. My father has only shared with me the origins of a few. On the back of his left hand, a horizontal line: My father’s first job in the US was building mattresses in a factory. Meeting a certain quota earned him a bonus, so he stapled fabric together quickly and one day he stapled his palm to the foam. When my father closes his right fist the knuckles crunch like a car driving over gravel.
He used to joke that our music teachers never believed that he could play with such ugly hands. They don’t know what I can do. And they didn’t. On the piano my father’s heavy hands were light, carefree and jolly, like a carousel. On the guitar they were precise and intricate. On the charango they were gentle. It never perplexed me, how quickly my father could switch roles between singer, lover, and musician, fighter and disciplinarian. He performed each with dedication and good humor. Before a fight, he used to say, I give the other guy a choice. He holds up his fists. The right is weaker, but fast. The left is slow, but hits harder.
After finishing the mourning song, my dad removed his hands from the charango to gesticulate to the crowd. His hands and voice flow over Mrs. Dobson’s crystal punch bowl, filled with Mountain Dew and sherbert, flow over the coffee table in the center of the room, over the children on the floor around it, parents behind in chairs. He narrates how the man and the armadillo looked out for one another, protected each other, among all the creatures in the jungle.
My dad grew up fighting. His first job was shining shoes, which doesn’t immediately conjure up visions of violence, but a prerequisite to shining shoes in la plaza was securing a spot to set up your stand. My dad told me the other boys were bigger, and every day he lost to them. He’d stumble home, have his brothers fix him up, then go back every morning for weeks. Even though he always lost, eventually he grew so tiresome that the bigger boys just let him have the corner. He brought every boliviano he made to his single mother. She cried, but took the money. The coins rattled in his gnarled hands.
On the piano my father’s heavy hands were light, carefree and jolly, like a carousel. On the guitar they were precise and intricate. On the charango they were gentle.
My father’s hands go back to the charango. He describes the moon’s slow return, and the armadillo’s exuberant joy. The tune shifts back to bright colors. The man and the armadillo begin serenading the moon, nightly. They prepare duets to her beauty, design instruments in her honor.
I also had scars on my hands, even then, when I was a child still learning piano. I can trace them with my fingertips. First, the thick white lightning bolt along the knuckle of my right middle finger from sticking my hand through a fence to pet a pitbull I thought looked friendly (I almost fainted when I saw my bone), and second, the almost imperceptible slice across the tip of my left pointer finger. When I was 6, left at home with only my oldest brother’s supervision, I nearly cut the tip of my finger off. I remember it hanging, by less than a millimeter of skin, as I waited for my parents to come home.
Finally, my fingertips trace the white circle on the base of my left wrist, about a centimeter in diameter. When I was about 7 or so, a wart grew on my wrist, and eventually it got on my father’s nerves enough that he decided to remove it. He used toenail cutters and a knife to excise the wart, all while I screamed bloody murder. I remember him shouting. Why are you screaming? I’m helping you! He kept digging in the wound, even after the wart was gone, to make sure it would never come back. He twisted the pliers inside me like he was removing the bridge pins of a guitar, replacing the strings.
To my father, pain was simply a fact of life, another color woven into the fabric. He met his with unwavering stoicism. Once, while building a wooden pergola, he accidentally smashed his thumb with a hammer, so hard that it burst from the pressure. I watched him come inside, clean his split thumb and tape it back together, then quickly return to his work. If pain was a note, then our bodies were instruments, coaxed and manipulated by force of will to perform whatever song was necessary. My father taught me to make 14-hour shifts and three jobs appear effortless. At home, he let down the stage presence, and stitched himself back together with ACE bandages and ibuprofen. Repaired and retuned for the next performance.
I never properly learned to play the charango. My father tried to teach me—told me to press on the strings so hard that it hurt, in order to develop the proper calluses. I never practiced, though, and my fingers remain soft. I fear I will never play the story as he did. But I can describe it.
My dad reaches the climax of the story. His hands pause, and the charango is quiet. One night, the armadillo is walking without the man. Singing to the full moon, he strolls to the shore of Lake Titicaca, and sees the moon’s reflection in the calm dark water. The armadillo is astonished. How can the moon be so close? He jumps into the water to join her.
Oddly enough, my dad chooses this moment to incorporate some humor into the story. Everyone knows, armadillos cannot swim. I can see the armadillo: sputtering, wide-eyed, and panicked. The inky black water is unforgiving as it enters his windpipe, then his lungs. I wonder if the armadillo still loved the moon at that moment, as he was drowning.
I remember the night my father choked me. I spoke back at him, and he grabbed my thin neck, pushed me up against a bookcase, and lifted me until my toes were reaching for the carpet. A vase fell off the bookcase and shattered; the next day at school my best friend would ask me about the cuts on my feet. I remember his eyes looked so hard, like black marbles, and his firm, calloused fingers closed off my air like pressing down on a fret. I wonder what strained, high-pitched cries he squeezed out of me.
When the man discovers the body of the armadillo by the lakeside on the following day, he decides to create something out of his friend, so he can continue to serenade the moon forever. This is the story of the charango.
When my dad is finished, I sit in silence. He is still on my piano teacher’s couch, a disgusting explosion of pastel flower print and uncomfortable curves. He perches there for a moment, takes a breath, and packs up the instrument.
In the decade between 7 and 17, I only grew less malleable, less obedient. In response, his hands grew firmer, faster, and harder. I ran away a year before I turned 18, cut off all communication by 20. Today, I have not spoken to my father in months. It may be many months, perhaps years or longer before I do so again. I still wonder what he was thinking when he had me there, hanging by the neck and firmly in his grasp. Did he want to break me? Glue me back together into some more favorable configuration? He must’ve known I would be too stubborn to shatter. The best he could do was scar me, to thicken my skin and strengthen my resolve.
My dad had to get through three boys before his first girl. I see him after I was born. I am so small he can hold me with one arm, my head in his calloused hand. He cradles me against his sturdy stomach and sings Spanish lullabies to lull me to sleep. I was born with a full head of thick, black hair. He smooths it, gently, against my soft head.
Mi hija.
Valerie Argentina Calvo is a social media manager/in-house graphic designer living in Chapel Hill, NC. A first-generation American with Bolivian heritage, her writing often struggles with themes of identity, place, and assimilation. When she is not writing, Valerie enjoys walking on the greenway and misidentifying birds.
Editor: Krista Stevens
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/16/the-charango/
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