Russell Hoban: My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

Over the road the Three Kings pub glowed cosily. The church was dark; the iron gates on the steps were open. Barbara Strozzi had been with me in the Underground and she was with me even more strongly now. The air is full of all kinds of signals, from the ghostly voices and laughter in Turnmill Street to the more powerful Strozzi presence; the people may be gone but some essence of them remains to travel where it will, unfettered by limitations of time and space. Certainly it’s a long time and a long way from Strozzi’s Venice to London, but if Venice can reach London by short wave and satellite, why shouldn’t the Barbara Strozzi signal also bounce off the ionosphere and the atmosphere to get here?

I went a little way up the main stairs, then down the well-lit steps to the crypt. The door stood open, brightness inside. Please, I said to myself, let it happen. What? I didn’t know. A smiling Japanese woman was sitting at a table collecting the admission fee. I paid my eight pounds and crossed the floor to where there were tables and chairs.

The crypt looked festive. The vaulted brick ceiling was partly yellow and partly red in the lighting from below. Other lights were garlanded around the walls and a large round clock hung over the centre of the dance floor. There was a table for tea, coffee, biscuits and soft drinks, with a price list and a tin for collecting coins. The place was gradually filling up with people, a murmur of voices and a quiet party atmosphere. I bought myself a tea and a couple of biscuits, sat down at a table and looked around.

I saw a woman bringing a cup of tea or coffee to a nearby table; she was about five foot nine, very well setup, and of a commanding presence. Early, maybe midthirties I thought. Black T-shirt under a green velvet jacket, short denim skirt, purple tights, black boots, exemplary legs. Before sitting down she stared directly at me. What are you looking at? said her eyes. A long oval face with a sullen mouth and an up-yours expression. But attractive, a face that pulled the eye. Dark hair piled up in a way that was defiantly out of date. A Barbara Strozzi, yes, a Barbara Strozzi kind of look. I didn’t get where I am today by refraining from making a fool of myself, so I went over to her and said, ‘Hi.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘You sound suspicious,’ I said.

‘I am. That’s what happens after a certain number of Saturday nights.’

‘Should I try again on Monday?’

‘Give up easily, do you?’

‘Not ordinarily but I’m full of uncertainty; tonight isn’t like other nights.’

‘What, is it Passover or something?’

‘I’ll explain later. I’m Phil Ockerman.’

‘Bertha Strunk.’

‘Is Bertha’s trunk anything like Pandora’s box?’

‘That isn’t something you can find out in five minutes.’

‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘People say that but you never really do know how much time you have. Anyhow, Phil, it takes two to tango.’

‘Well, Bertha, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’ My desire was inflamed by her use of my name.

She reached for the book that was sticking out of my pocket. ‘What’s a dybbuk?’ she said. She pronounced it correctly.

‘A dybbuk,’ I said, ‘is the soul of a dead person that, “finding neither rest nor harbour”, enters the body of a living person and takes control.’

‘Why?’

‘Various kinds of unfinished business. In this play it was love.’

She gave me a serious look. ‘Do you believe in dybbuks?’

‘I believe more things all the time, so right now I’d say that I do believe in dybbuks. Do you?’

‘I’ll have to wait and see.’

The room was filling up, there were at least fifty people here by now, young, middle-aged and old in all shapes and sizes. In a few minutes the class would start but I didn’t want our conversation to stop. ‘Bertha,’ I said, ‘what kind of work do you do?’

‘I paint artificial eyes.’

‘You do paintings of them?’

‘No, I paint the actual plastic eye that goes into the eye socket.’

‘Unusual occupation. How did you get into it?’

‘I had a friend who lost an eye and the making of his artificial eye got me interested in that kind of work.’

I imagined a man with his real eye looking to the left or right and his artificial one looking straight ahead and I asked Bertha about that.

‘Both eyes move together,’ she said. ‘The artificial one is attached to the muscles of the eye socket. That’s enough about me for now. What about you? What do you do?’

‘I’m a writer.’

‘What do you write?’

‘Novels.’

‘What’s the most recent one?’

‘ Hope of a Tree , just out two months ago.’

‘It’s not one I’ve heard of.’

‘What’s the last thing you’ve read?’

‘ The Da Vinci Code .’

‘Sorry I asked.’

‘Actually the writing wasn’t very good.’

‘Thanks, it’s kind of you to say so.’

‘Do you make a living with your novels?’

‘No, I have to teach as well.’

She nodded as if she hadn’t expected me to be a commercial success. Was my unsuccessfulness so apparent?

‘Why do you want to learn the tango?’ she asked with her head a little to one side.

‘I came here looking for someone.’

Again she nodded. ‘Who?’

‘That’s a long story.’

‘I haven’t got all the time in the world but I’ll listen if you want to tell me about it.’ Was she just being polite?

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ I said. ‘It could be that we have a lot to talk about.’

‘Maybe.’ With a half-smile.

By now people were making their way to the dance floor for the beginners’ class. Michiko Okasaki, the woman who’d been taking the money at the door, and her partner Paul Lange now came to the centre of the floor to start the lesson. She was short, he was tall. All of us beginners stood around them while they demonstrated and explained the embrace, which they called the hold. Next they showed us how the leader walks forward and the follower walks backwards. We learners, without music, took our partners and tried this.

Feeling for the first time Bertha’s right hand in my left and the warmth and solidity of her body under my right I could hardly believe what was happening: I was leading this woman and she was following me. Then she led and I followed, meeting her eyes with mine.

There was a CD player on a table in a corner of the floor, and Paul Lange went to it and started ‘La Cumparsita’. It was the same recording I had at home, Juan D’Arienzo y su Orquesta Tipica . Surely a sign, surely a good omen, that? The lesson continued with music and moved on to side steps for which we briefly exchanged partners. Instead of holding Bertha I had a chic executive type and we both smiled but I was relieved when I was holding Bertha again for steps outside the partner. The teaching was marvellous, everything was made so easy that I thought I might eventually be capable of real tango dancing. I tried to take my mind back to Barbara Strozzi but all I could think of was Bertha; it was as if an electric current connected the centre of me to the centre of her. As each step was shown us we learners stood and watched and while watching I still held Bertha’s hand.

‘You’ve still got my hand,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said, but I didn’t let go and she smiled. High above us the spire aimed itself at the night sky and the restless planets; in the church we stepped forward and back. Under us flowed unseen springs and rivers. I sent my thoughts to Bertha without speaking. I squeezed her hand and she sqeezed back.

We left at the end of the beginners’ class. When we turned into Turnmill Street we looked down towards Cowcross. High up we were, looking down on distant lights: a moment that is still with me, flickering always in the changing colours of my mind. We didn’t speak at all but there was no ghostly silence this time; there were the voices of other pedestrians and the sound of taxis passing us as we came down came down Turnmill. There was a hotdog vendor at the corner by the station. The smell became an unforgettable tune, ‘When My Hot Dog Smiles at Me’ or whatever, and we hungered for the rolls, the mustard, and the steaming sausages on the cart. ‘ Bon appetit ,’ said the hot-dog man and we ate them standing on the pavement like two detectives in a cop film.