When Héctor got “pissed off” in the middle of an interview, there was a magic name that made him change his mood: Eduardo Alterio.
I spoke about it “Pibona” Alterio, his uncleand the smile rose to the temple, but immediately turned into tears.
The actor said that this hero of the Chacarita Arch was paid for his parades in underwear. What was that? the first goalkeeper to score a goal professionally (1931) and that so much love for football ended in tragedy: He tried to stop a penalty and had his eardrums kicked on a rebound. “Pibona” went deaf.
This bittersweet anecdote describes a little of the ups and downs that Héctor’s life also brought with it. ““My story is a tango,” is how he described the nostalgia that exile had triggered in him.
I lived as if divided, as if a part of the soul remained on one side of the ocean and could not connect with the body. In Spain he missed Argentina, but every time he returned to Buenos Aires he felt that his place was no longer here. Everything I missed no longer existedthe old Forest Avenue, the cobblestone streets, “el escolazo”, the orchestra-filled nightclubs, the first girlfriend, Onelia.
“My life is like a tango. Chan Chan. Funeral music, the good and the bad”he said a few years ago Clarion in the pavilions of an institution where the film Fermín was filmed. “Sometimes it feels like this all happened to someone else. What choice is there but to settle down,” he pointed out with blue eyes that looked like flooded seas.
There was so much suburbia running through its veins that it was more than the sound of the orchestras of Aníbal Troilo, Osvaldo Pugliese and Juan D’Arienzo. Yes, he also chose a special identity for his daughter. He called her Malena Grisel.
As the son of Italians, I understood this immigration syndrome well: “Me and my two halves”He joked about “this temporal-spatial separation,” this divided heart: “When you have nothing, you want more. I’m here and I have to go there, I’m here and my head comes back here.”
Growing up among sweet Neapolitan songs sung by his mother Elvira Onorato, the son of the tailor Giovanni Alterio listened to the stories of arriving by boat on the ship Principessa Mafalda and thought that the departure from home happened only to his parents. The threats from Triple A forced him to take a similar path.
At the age of 12, Héctor lost his father and became a man “by force”.with melancholy as an involuntary flag. He was a pharmacist cadet, blacksmith’s assistant, street vendor and runner in Terrabusi. All these steps towards the theater strengthened his armor and brought him closer to humor.
His nose was an “object of ridicule” in his younger years. Then he learned to laugh at what he could not change and even take advantage of imitating his “enemies”: “You don’t have a naso, you have a handle, a toucan, a siphon, a periscope.” He laughed in interviews recalling these neighborhood villains.
For his last performance in Buenos Aires, Alterio chose tangos by Cátulo Castillo, Ástor Piazzolla and Enrique Cadícamo. Tango was his skin, his wardrobe. Or better: Alterio was a tango.
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