My Tango With Barbara Strozzi (2 page)

My Underground book was
The Dybbuk
, a play by S. Ansky. In it Leah says, ‘If one of us dies before his time, his soul returns to the world to complete its span, to do the things left undone and experience the happiness and griefs he would have known.’ Barbara Strozzi died at fifty-eight in Padua in 1677. Had she left things undone, had she had enough happiness and griefs? In Google I found a Barbara Strozzi site where I learned that, although some have theorised that she was a courtesan, this, despite the look of the portrait, seems unlikely. She had four children, three of them with Giovanni Paolo Vidman. They never married but he provided dowries for two of their daughters to enter a convent and an inheritance for one son; the other became a monk. Barbara Strozzi left a body of work that is widely performed by recording artists but I have never seen notices for a live concert. She never gained the patronage she hoped for. And yet! such is the aura of this woman that something of her travelled with me on the Circle Line.

At Victoria three young women got on the train and began to speak Swedish to one another. One of them, a blonde with long straight hair, was a beauty; she couldn’t help knowing it and her awareness of it showed in the beautiful way she turned to speak to her companions or inclined her head to listen. They got off the train at Westminster, the beauty leaving a phantom self behind.

I was going to EC1, to St James’s Church, Clerkenwell. I’d never been to that part of town before, it
seemed remote and dangerous. Might I fall off the edge of the world? Might there be wyverns, cockatrices, anthropophagi, muggers? Was it wise to go there with Pluto coming over my Sagittarian ascendant?

From Liverpool Street onward I was alone in the carriage. Why was no one else going where I was going? Moorgate appeared, Barbican, then there was Farringdon. The station, which was also a main line station, was glass-roofed, like the old Fulham Broadway. Through the glass came dimnesses of yellow light. I looked for a sign of some kind, a favouring omen however modest. FOUND, said a Yahoo ad on the wall opposite. OK, I could work with that.

Outside the station stood a newsvendor at his kiosk. OCKERMAN UNDER INVESTIGATION was the headline on display. I’m used to this; I looked away, then looked again and the word was DONORS. Clerkenwell was full of darkness; the street lamps did what they could but were overwhelmed. Behind the newsvendor, on the opposite side of the street, a cluster of lights and colour offered FOOD & WINE, also Fruit & Veg, which were arrayed under little canopies out on the pavement. To the right was the Bagel Factory: The American Original. To the left, a doorway called Chariots displayed a telephone number and was evidently a minicab stand. Four young men stood waiting there as when the curtain goes up on the first act of a play. I was in Cowcross Street but there were no cows crossing.

Going left, I reached the corner of Turnmill Street. golden gleamings in the dark. Next to it as I entered Turnmill was Pret A Manger with sushi and espresso, then Ember, looking warm and with a large menu on the pavement.

Leaving the zone of conviviality I was on the left-hand side of the street. Below me on my left was the long shape of the main-line station showing dim blind lights as I was swallowed up in the visible darkness. ‘The moon’s my constant Mistrisse,’ I sang tunelessly to the colours in my mind,

And the lowlie owle my morrowe,
The flaming Drake and the Nightcrowe make
Mee musicke to my sorrowe
.

There was no moon.

Turnmill Street was tumultuous with silence, as if only a moment ago there had been voices, laughter and music not of this time. On the opposite side was Benjamin Street but I saw no left-handed slingers. Turk’s Head Yard was knot a problem. Brown leaves always. Slightly downhill on Turnmill became slightly uphill as I neared Clerkenwell Road. Turned right into Clerkenwell Road, then crossed into Clerkenwell Close where the Crown Tavern beckoned but I carried on and around a dark corner and there was St James’s Church, high above the rest of London, its spire aimed at the night sky where planets were approaching new alignments.

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.

Bertha lived in Fulham, in the North End Road. My flat was also in Fulham, in Basuto Road, so we both took the Circle Line westbound. We sat down and looked at each other for a few moments as the train left Farringdon. I was expecting the usual exchange of personal histories and provenances, but no: ‘How tall are you?’ said Bertha.

‘How tall am I?’ I said, sitting up straighter.

‘That’s what I said,’ said Bertha.

‘Five seven,’ I said, stretching my neck.

‘I’m five nine,’ said Bertha.

‘So do you want to throw me back or what?’

‘I don’t know – I’m kind of old-fashioned,’ she said after a pause.

‘Meaning?’

She blushed, half-shrugged, half-smiled, looked apologetic. ‘I want a man who can protect me.’

It was my turn to blush. ‘Should I forget tango and take up karate?’

She didn’t laugh. ‘I’ll have to think about this,’ she said.

‘I’m really confused, Bertha.’

‘Me too.’

‘I thought there was something happening between us.’

Again the apologetic look, the half-shrug and a little shake of the head. ‘Yes and no,’ she said.

‘Is there some particular thing or person you want protection from?’

‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Pennsylvania,’ I said lamely. As we travelled west the metaphor of the Circle Line was closing its loop and I felt myself on the outside looking in. She was from Exeter and we pushed these and other counters towards each other while long silences sprang up like brambles. At Paddington we sat saying nothing and looking at the people waiting on the opposite platform until a Wimbledon train arrived. We sat among Saturday-night faces and voices until Fulham Broadway appeared and we got out. I walked her to the North End Road which was full of Saturday-night noise, people, and rubbish. She opened her street door and I followed her up a flight of stairs to her flat. At her door I didn’t feel free to kiss her or even take her hand; by then the colours had gone out of the night and everything was like a not-very-good print of a black-and-white film. I just stood there and waited for her to say something. Only a little while ago I had held her, felt the weight and warmth of her body under my hands!