"Let her go. Your twin sister is not leaving because you are the one holding her back.
Talk to her and ask her to go in peace," they recommended on October 9, 2011, while her sister was dying.
Noemí Serantes approached the palliative care bed,
as complicit as when they were playing in Mariano Acosta's game at his birthplace, and said what she didn't want to say:
'Lili, I'm going to go down for a minute. It's time for you to leave, I let you go.
We will always be together
.' Immediately afterwards, she went to take the elevator to the clinic and a nurse stopped her:
'Her sister stopped breathing.'
Now
he lives - metaphorically - without an arm
. She feels fragmented, ever since
mediastinal cancer stole Liliana from her.
Liliana had breastfed Noemí's firstborn. Noemí had discovered that her twin was pregnant before the pregnant woman herself did
. They were born 20 minutes apart and the lives of one were woven in relation to the other. Nobody prepared them for
"amputation."
He says that this feeling of strangeness, of mutilation,
can only be understood in all its dimensions by a twin.
That others pat her, comfort her without understanding what is happening inside her.
"It's like walking around without your personal diary, without your story,"
he tries to explain, while a man asks if it's Nu or it's Eve, "Nine's little girls."
Few remember in detail
the "Paleozoic era of influencers", a time when "Nu and Eve", an invention by Alejandro Romay prior to the Golden Triplets boom, was an Argentine phenomenon. The blonde duo was even sought after to pose naked
and fulfill the fantasies of a certain audience.
The little twins of Nine, actually twins. (Photo: Clarín Archive)
"Penthouse magazine had offered us, when we were older, to go out as God brought us into the world, but with transparencies,
and we said no.
We would have bought an apartment each!"
Noemí smiles melancholy. "It wasn't our way, so we were proud of the decision."
In 1966,
at the age of six, they signed up for the program
Sábados continuados
, despite the fact that their mother saw them as "very rural, without mischief." After a year of traveling from their Buenos Aires neighborhood of Mariano Acosta to the old Channel 9,
they won the contest among "millions of pairs of twins" in the country. They were a machine to appear on camera for the following decades, but hundreds of records of their work were lost.
"Do you know what hurts me the most? I've been working since I was seven. At six I started the contest, but I can't retire. Don't pay me since I was 16, but pay me since I was 18! I did theater, film, television and
it's as if all this didn't exist
," he says indignantly. "Now they are deducting my monotax.
At 70 maybe I can retire, when I have one foot in the box. It's very unfair."
Noemí Serantes, at 64 years old.
From 2012 to 2023 he did not celebrate his birthday, which was "the birthday" of his "other self."
Only last February, pushed by her daughter Melody, she gathered her cousins and was able to raise the cup for the one that was "a duet" and for the one that is solo, without the "double" that accompanied her since the maternal uterus.
"Everyone asks me now:
'Aren't you afraid of dying from the same thing as your sister?'
As if it were a sentence for being twins... And no, I'm not afraid."
Memories of a desperate fame
"Nu and Eve" were born on February 6, 1960 at the Marcos Paz Hospital.
Her mother did not know that there were two
, so in the middle of labor, dizzy, after giving birth to Liliana Beatriz at 5:40 p.m., she heard the doctor say
"another baby is coming."
Noemí Nélida arrived at 6:00 p.m.
One weighed two kilos six hundred, the other 50 grams more
. The family was later expanded with two more girls.
The little Serantes.
At five years old, Liliana was discovered a lump on the left side of her groin. The next day, there was the same diagnosis for Noemí, hernia.
"They operated on us together
.
That's what it means to be a twin
," deduces Serantes.
"Liliana was pregnant with her first child and I told her when she was still menstruating.
Lili told me the joke: '
Do you feel like vomiting?'.
Don't ask me how, but I knew she was in the sweet expectation."
At first,
the mother differentiated them "by a little lump of fat" with which Naomi was born.
Her father, on the other hand, lived by calling them "Twins", without individualizing them. The man was only able to distinguish them when they became brides and each one arrived with a boy he recognized.
They were studying Spanish dance when the teacher encouraged their mother to take them to television. From the town of Mariano Acosta, Uncle Bernardo sometimes reached them as far as Channel 9 in a stubble field. But
the great sacrifice was the trip of more than three hours by public transport.
To get there they took a bus to Merlo, then the Sarmiento train to Once station, later the bus 118 (or 41) and the final stretch was a six-block walk to Castex Street.
The twins Nu and Eve during their communion.
Under the slogan "The smallest presenters in the country", their faces fascinated even neighboring countries.
They got to participate in a televised circus, with elephants, monkeys, and tigers included in the study.
Additionally,
they accompanied little Ricardo Darín in
The Tram Gang
.
With fame, also came setbacks.
In Mariano Acosta's family pantry, the neighbors stopped buying from the Serantes.
"Small town, big hell".
Changes of schools by half a dozen, moving to Palermo to live
"six people in two rooms"
... Doña Serantes, the mother, used some advice that Hugo del Carril gave her in the middle of filming. “
You accompany them everywhere.
Do not give them a representative and always be with them
.”
Noemí Serantes is waiting for a call to work.
Their marriage came in 1982.
The magazines covered the event with five, six pages.
"As the husbands were friends, Lili's husband proposed a wedding for four to save us a party
, but I didn't want such a special day to be a circus, so they got married in April and I got married in September, to give them time to the family to raise a little money," he details.
By then, one went to live in Olivos, the other in Villa Urquiza. Liliana was hired by Puerto Rican producers for a soap opera, and
in a "secret agreement" before another "exclusive" job call for Liliana, Noemí posed as her.
She was listed in the credits under the name of her sister.
A desperate request to Romay
At the age of nine, when they were constantly out of work and their parents were experiencing financial hardship, "Las melli"
executed a plan to prevent their mother from crying secretly: they went to face "Tsar" Romay with the conviction of two adults
. After three days, he received them in his office.
"We need to work, sir!"
they told him simultaneously, through tears, and they touched Romay's heart. "
But what do I put them in?"
, the Tsar asked himself worriedly. He picked up the tube and called the news station. '
I want them to do a test on the twins for meteorological data
.' Tomorrow at ten they are here in studio five for a proof".
"The test was a disaster," laughs Noemí, who remembers that they were given a piece of paper with the number 15 and a circle. They didn't explain to us that we had to read '15 degrees', or tenths.
We trembled. It was a novelty. The smallest women in the world giving weather data. They assigned us a hairdresser and
we were trained by the Meteorological Service itself, we have a diploma. "A decade, but none of that is in the files."
The duo that hypnotized the country.
In 1981 they signed one of their best contracts, for the Galería cycle, on ATC, with Claudia Lapacó, Susú Pecoraro, Gianni Lunadei and the cast.
They were able to buy a Honda Civic and years later his father established himself as the driver of Channel 9.
"Romay needed someone very trustworthy to take the money to the bank and all those things, and he ended up taking his children and grandchildren to school. he".
-Taking advantage of the fact that they were identical: Did they pretend to be one another in different situations?
-Yes, with the boys. We liked the same ones. At a bowling alley, for example, Lili told me "
I think Carlitos is going to throw himself at me
. "
So we went to the bathroom, we changed, I put on his clothes and when Carlitos wanted to jump, I, who was the one with the most character, told him “
no, I'm not interested for now
.” We both knew how to imitate each other very well. And we each did half of the secondary school.
-How is that?
-We studied one subject each. We studied the news at night. The one from History would call Liliana one hour and the next hour we knew that she was going to call me. She performed the same.
-And in work situations?
-I was better at comedy, she was better at drama. The directors knew us. I once rehearsed a novel for her, and she was going to record it after it and no one noticed her. With our children too. Once she had gone skiing with her husband to the United States and so that the two and a half year old boy wouldn't miss it so much, I went early in the morning, she made him upa and played with him for half a day. The kid thought I was the mother.
Two drops of water, when they were just rising to fame.
-How is it that she came to breastfeed your son?
-As soon as my first child was born, I immediately got the soap opera
Tramposa
, with Mariana Karr. I was recording in Olivos and I didn't arrive. I left my son with Lili and she breastfed him after giving hers. Beautiful. We agreed to get pregnant. Our husbands didn't know.
-As? To get pregnant together?
-No! We took turns so that one was always available to work, once one got pregnant, then the other. This way we could stay current.
Noemí on the radio, her great refuge. (Photo Clarín Archive)
With Perón, the Pope and Maradona
The fantastic, hypnotic twins were the sacred photo or autograph for thousands of spectators. In fifty years of career they did not deprive themselves of anything,
they presented or accompanied Nino Bravo, Camilo Sesto, José Luis Perales. "We were even with Juan Domingo Perón
," said Noemí, impressed.
"Romay brought him, who was a friend of Ricardo Balbín. They had a conference on Channel 9 and all the Peronist youth were there.
He recognized us.
For me it was like giving a kiss to San Martin."
Diego Maradona, who was born just eight months after "Nu and Eve", grew up watching them on TV and crossing them in the media. "Sometimes he showed up in Mar del Plata when we were doing the season and sat next to me and was honest: 'Noemí, I can't get out of this hell (drugs) not even because of what I love most, which are my daughters
.
'
That's why the criticism of those who can't imagine what happened with their addiction bothers me."
In the seventies, when the country was talking about them. (Clarin Archive)
With Pope Francis there is also a juicy chapter, but without Liliana. A few years ago, on a trip through Europe to visit her daughter who was studying in Almería, Noemí
arranged a visit to St. Peter's Square, in the Vatican, to try to see Bergoglio.
"I wanted to make something of such a trip, and I wrote to a close journalist who helped me.
I spent eight minutes with the Pope!
When I started to cry, the Pope, who was speaking in all languages, told me: 'I know you.' We grew up together.' I had brought a little card that belonged to my sister and I left it with him. It was wonderful."
"
We didn't live off fame, we were workers, workers.
I have had a lot of fame with Velasco Ferrero in
Come Dance
.
Taxis and restaurants didn't charge you, and I never believed it.
I knew well that it was a job and it was just a moment. And a theater is not successful because of such an artist, it is successful because of the product. That is why they get so dizzy, there are many little starlets."
Noemí Serantes on On Radio with her daughter Melody, her producer.
A difficult present
After losing first her twin and two years later her father, Noemí was widowed. "It was a big blow, because
what happened to my husband was malpractice
," she clarifies, twisting a knot. Married since 1982, on her almost silver wedding anniversary her husband -Ricardo Leggire- suffered a cardiac decompensation. They delayed placing two stents and he died.
"My pillars were gone. My sister and my husband were my support.
I went out for my three children, but
my body took its toll. I had a very bad time. Arthritis, osteoarthritis.
I am undergoing treatment. I am no longer a walking gazelle, but I'm carrying it," he says a few hours before hosting his program Escenarios, on On Radio.
You have to go back to 2006 to remember some of Noemí's television work.
She participated in
Married with Children
and had no more calls.
In cinema she participated in the film
Olaf,
by Cristina Agüero and July Massaccesi. "I don't have a representative. And I need to work, to get this sadness out of my soul. I was never exquisite."
Naomi, yesterday and today
Noemí confesses that she is "Eve." She wanted to be "Nu", after the blonde doll designed by García Ferré, but she gave Liliana the coveted place.
"Everything my sister wanted, I granted her, because she was my great weakness."
Survivor's guilt.
That seems to be happening, according to psychologist Adriana Guraieb, who belongs to the Argentine and International Psychoanalytic Association. "There is talk of a special connection that seems to exist between twins, but
there is certainly not all the scientific evidence to prove it, although there are many cases that would confirm the theory that the death of a twin causes the survivor to have a guilt process for having survived and an enormous confusion in which he does not know how to live without the other
. There are characteristics of a common grief, but much more exacerbated by the tremendous intrauterine connection."
-Did you do therapy after your sister's death?
-I should, but no. My daughter insists on me. I never did in my life. Nobody can imagine what I went through. All this that caught me, osteoarthritis, arthritis, somehow had to surface. Twelve years passed and the other day I woke up and my eyes were burning. She was full of tears.
-Why this anguish?
-It was like Lili was with me. I felt her and I told her: "
You're a girl, you left me alone."
I would have preferred to have the disease and not see her suffer as I saw her. Being a twin is wanting to take away the pain from the other and having the pain from you.