Confessions of a Librarian

by Barbara Foster

  We barely spoke driving back to Manhattan. I could only utter monosyllables, so silence was a relief that continued throughout a bacon and egg breakfast at a Village restaurant. As we kissed good-bye, Roberto’s smooth hand brushed my cheek. I sighed because he refused to make definite plans to meet again, or give me his phone number in New Jersey. It was more sexy and mysterious that way, he insisted. How could he make our passionate dance conform to a normal routine? His walk, as he headed to his car, reminded me of a prowling animal.

  I bought the Sunday New York Times, checking by rote that all the sections were included. From the moment Roberto drove off, I waited for his phone call. Slow, slow quick, quick slow—this tango refrain resounded in my head at inconvenient moments—in the library answering a student’s reference question, checking out my groceries in the supermarket, or paying my mortgage.

  I played the melancholy songs of tango composer Astor Piazzolla until I could hum them by heart. In my imagination, I danced with Roberto to yearning, tragic melodies of lost love. Crossing the street my feet, to the amusement of passers-by, broke into tango patterns.

  At times, I contemplated writing an ode to Roberto’s tongue, but there were not enough superlatives in my vocabulary to do it justice. Meanwhile, I wondered if boys in Argentina were born with such learned tongues? Or, were there special schools that gave lessons?

  For two years, Roberto called at regular intervals. Immediately, with the expectation of losing myself in the mists of tango, I canceled all appointments. Once we had a definite date, I rummaged through my multitude of lingerie and clinging, black outfits for just the right choice. Our appointments were elevated to sacred rituals, each gesture an offering to Eros.

  One evening, in rapid mixed Spanish and English, an exhausted Roberto called to say that he was supervising an emergency crew at some island. He said they had worked round the clock. There was not even time to shower, and there was no knowing when it would be over. His voice on the line crackled as though far away. I begged for more information, but he hung up abruptly and did not call back.

  Oh Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, I prayed: Make Roberto call! Perhaps this capricious goddess was on vacation, or indifferent to a Jewish girl’s prayers? The next day, March 28th, newspapers and TV blared the Three Mile Island nuclear nightmare. Not once had Roberto mentioned Three Mile Island, nor gone into detail about his job. I had never asked. When would he call to explain what happened?

  Roberto’s absence catapulted me out of my rigid routine. My thoughts, puppies chasing their tail, spun round and round. Taking a week’s vacation from my university job, I slept all day, had breakfast at midnight. Fortunately, my husband, visiting San Francisco, was not on hand to witness my devolution. Our open marriage allowed both of us freedom. At all costs, I wanted to avoid a crisis that would test its boundaries.

  Back at work, the meticulous research librarian ferreted out more information via tools of her trade. I found out that the reactor’s core had a partial meltdown, that hydrogen bubbles were discovered in its dome. An enormous bubble of pain formed in my heart inflicting severe emotional damage, the extent of which surprised me. Supposedly, despite the massive escape of radioactivity, there were no human casualties. So what had happened to Roberto?

  Persistent, I consulted a popular astrologer at a New Age Center. He answered my questions with other questions while staring at the clock, impatient for me to plunk down his stiff fee. Would that I lived in ancient Greece to avail myself of a soothsayer able to divine the future via flying birds, flames, the wind, smoke.

  For months, I haunted the milonga on Fourteenth Street, in addition to others up and downtown. Enviously, I peered at couples pressed tight together, legs curled round each other like snakes, brushing, twisting. Once in a while, a Roberto look-alike caught my attention. When I rushed over, he would stare at me, befuddled. By now I had grown rusty at the steps that my Argentine master so painstakingly taught me.

  Still obsessed at spring break, I made a pilgrimage to Buenos Aires. By now Borges, Roberto and tango—phantoms indistinguishable from one another—swirled in my mind. Daytimes were consecrated to exploring the northern suburb of Palermo, where the bard of the obscure spent his youth. Borges’ neighborhood was once the haunt of gauchos and criminals who drank and fought with knives in pulperias (taverns).

  Although part of Palermo now reminded me of New York’s Soho, full of chic shops and restaurants, I wandered in the more traditional section where Borges’ home had become a tourist attraction. Paying my respects, I met a female German doctoral candidate, another votary of the blind Argentine. She launched into a dissertation about his poetry, reciting an early one in mixed English and German about the founding of BA.

  At night, I showed up religiously to pay my respects to Borges at the Cafe Tortoni, an Art Nouveau gem where waiters preened as though about to sing an opera aria. Sipping a cafecito and munching a churro, I conjured up Borges. Since his photo—alongside Lorca, Arthur Rubinstein and Pirandello—decorated the walls he seemed to be in the room. Adeptly, I maneuvered myself into a chair near the table occupied by two wax figures side by side: Borges and the great singer Carlos Gardel. Very life-like, they became companions, which made it less sad to dine alone.

  After the Tortoni, I pursued the shadow of Roberto among cobblestone streets of the San Telmo district, seduced by its faded elegance. Entranced, I watched couples of all ages tango on the street outside restaurants while cars honked. Some were accompanied by live musicians, a CD player, or even creaky Victrolas that dated back to the Forties. Would I discover Roberto among dancers who looked as though they were about to make love? My feet made feeble attempts to copy their movements. No one asked me to dance, nor paid attention to a lurking foreigner.

  On Sunday San Telmo became car free owing to the weekly market that happened in the Plaza Dorrega, the oldest square in BA. Portenos and foreigners gave in to a fiesta mood, demonstrating the lighter side of the Argentine character. I bought a small painting of a tango dancer who resembled Roberto. If romance was nowhere in sight, at least I could indulge another of my grand passions: shopping.

  A voyeur, I went on to explore of a few choice neighborhoods among BA’s forty some. I watched Robertos who belonged to other women attend the Colon Theatre, patronize stores in Recoleta, sail on the Tigre River, or walk by without noticing me on their way to pick up girlfriends. Had I faded into the background like a lamppost on a busy boulevard? Why had I come here to wander this mystifying metropolis like a ghost? To prove that I wasn’t invisible, I went to bed with a jewelry store salesman. The experiment made my heart emptier.

  Now years later, if the mood comes upon me, I walk down Fourteenth Street past Roberto’s favorite tango club. Peering inside, I marvel at the intent crowd who, as they execute variation upon variation with amazing dexterity, never appear to tire. They look as though they would die if they did not do the tango.

  It was another lifetime when I moved among them in my black slit dress, tottering round the floor long nights in stiletto heels without screaming “Ouch.” Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow! I’ve got the rhythm, if not the partner. I’m certain Roberto is dancing in a milonga somewhere—but where and with whom? Perhaps the enigmatic Borges knows the answer.

  TEN: JULY 2004, THE FIGARO CAFE, BLEECKER STREET

  The Game’s afoot. Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

  Late, I hurried through Washington Square to the Confession Club’s last meeting before our summer adjournment. Slowed by the dank air, I lingered briefly to catch snatches of “California Dreaming” sung by a preppy-looking band. If the song transported me back to the wide-open Sixties, the current mood bore no resemblance to the heyday of pitched battles when “off the pig” acted as a rallying cry to disaffected youth. Now this music, which had heralded liberation, sounded quaint. As usual, in hot weather the streets teemed with outlanders hoping for a whiff of pre-Starbucks bohemianism.

  Since the belly dancing show at Cafe Fig
aro began at eight PM., during the last meeting we had agreed to arrive early to have dinner. Chloe had arranged with the manager to reserve a sizable table where we could chat and or read to each other. The last one there, I found every sailor on deck. The Figaro was once a favorite haunt of Jack Kerouac and the Beats. In their heyday, he delighted cheering fans by leaping on a table to improvise verses. What a delicious irony! A bunch of mature bacchantes were about to stir things up in the same hallowed space.

  The Figaro was nearly empty, except for a couple speaking what I recognized as Hebrew at a nearby table. They oohed and aahed over pictures on the walls of the cafe in its earlier incarnation in between consulting a guidebook to New York. The composer David Amram, a buddy of Kerouac’s, summed up that period as a “time when people showed off the brilliance of their intellect rather than the sparkle of their jewelry.”

  While the original Beat groupies wore black head to toe, we glowed in brilliant rainbow colors, not a pastel among us other than Sarah in beige. Initiated rebels, we were proud to add our creations to the canon—reading, writing, gabbing, and confessing. If the Beats were a boy’s club, we were post-Beat females with flair to spare, primed to celebrate Chloe’s “somewhere over forty” birthday.

  Chloe refused any candles on the multi-layered cake Marilyn had ordered. Tall and thin, wearing a V-necked blue silk outfit, not a bulge showed on Chloe’s bare midriff. Just above her hip-hugger harem pants, a triangular blue stone sparkled in her belly button. And her arms, covered with golden bangles, moved to an inner music. The fire in Chloe’s eyes could have melted ice on a windshield.

  If Chloe shone like a constellation of stars, Sarah, seated next to her, did not even twinkle. Running back and forth to the bathroom, she drank cup after cup of tea. “I’m a vegan now,” announced Sarah. “Remember at our last meeting, I brought the vegan jiffy cookbook, actually a non-cook book. Does anybody want a copy?” Nobody answered.

  “Aren’t you hungry, Sarah?” inquired a solicitous Candy, her plate stacked with shish kebabs, whipped potatoes, and a spinach pie. Following Candy’s example, I ordered dishes aplenty from the menu of Middle Eastern house specialties.

  “Don’t eat just yet,” requested Chloe. “Wait till Dan, the manager, brings a couple bottles of Mavro Daphne wine. The grapes are grown in my native island.” The wine arrived and we all toasted Chloe’s numberless birthday. Sarah, doing her best to be convivial, joined in with club soda. “Tonight I’m proud to be among dirty old women in a Confessions Club. Dancing till I drop, that’s how I want to celebrate my birthday.” Chloe stood up to rotate her narrow hips. As they revolved round and round, her shoulders and belly joined the action, a coordinated whirligig. Light-headed from the heat, we savored our own private floor- show.

  Rosiness spread over Chloe’s bone-white, powdered face, a dramatic contrast to ebony hair, now brushing her shoulders again. After she sat down, we applauded as did the couple at the next table, who snapped pictures of us as well as the Figaro’s decor. They were both tall with wide shoulders. Now and again, they kissed and fondled each other. Their loud voices disrupted the subdued atmosphere.

  “I want to study belly dancing too,” cried Marilyn, whipping out her notebook to write down the address. “It’s so seductive, aside from great exercise.”

  “On Wednesdays Shamira dances at the Mogador, a funky cafe in the East Village. Go by and ask if she’s still teaching. Tonight, forgot my finger cymbals, rhythm’s off.”

  Tiffany, hair styled in ringlets redder than polished copper, wore a black silk suit with red lapels more appropriate for the Four Seasons. Absent from our reunion meeting, she attended every one thereafter to make our discussions hop. Mostly she was off the beam, but occasionally her insights were profound. The Maoist monster scrunched her face as though smelling a stinky pickle at the noisy couple, then she lashed out at Chloe.

  “Sure, you’ve something to celebrate, why not?” sneered Tiffany. Indignation streamed from her Katherine Hepburn-high cheekbones. As she spoke, I noticed her lower lip bulge as though an overripe grape were stuck there. Deep maroon lipstick made her lips even more prominent.

  “With a new condo on the upper east side and a job promotion—aren’t you the happy camper, Chloe?” As she spoke, Tiffany’s eyes flashed. “What about women in the third world with their clitorises cut? Should they celebrate after their promiscuous husbands give them AIDS? That gold snake necklace round your neck could feed an entire village for a year!” She waved her hands and I noticed that Tiffany wore a diamond as big as the Ritz on her middle finger.

  Chloe now occupied the position of Tiffany’s public enemy number one. Candy twirled one finger next to her ear, the universal sign language for crazy. Then she and Marilyn, in cahoots as usual, smirked. I overheard Candy whisper that the monster should do standup at the Village Comedy Club. But her act was not funny. Long ago I had realized that Tiffany’s behavior was a kind of guerilla performance art: Attacking old friends helped her to forget that she lived among rich people she despised. Glaring at the Israeli couple, she put her finger to her lips, signaling them to quiet down.

  That evening I was dressed to party in a short red, cotton vintage dress, sling-back heels to match, and a load of clunky jewelry. Black fishnet stockings completed my naughty, up-for-anything mood. I had tucked in my library persona for the night.

  A clack, clack sound indicated that Sarah was knitting again. Since 9/11, Sarah and her knitting needles were inseparable. Wearing a short-sleeved dress, her arms were getting as thin as the incessantly moving needles. She smiled in an attempt to be a cheerful member of the Club, and she tried her best to share its zany spirit.

  “For you, Chloe.” Marilyn produced a blue (Chloe’s favorite color) cardigan sweater. Knowing Marilyn’s generosity I guessed it was cashmere with a designer label. Each of us made contributions to the loot piling up in the center of the table: perfume, a book, a Tibetan scarf.

  Put out at the attention lavished on Chloe, Tiffany drank more wine than usual. She became restless, checking her makeup, rearranging curls that cascaded over her forehead. Suddenly, she popped up and weaved over to the Israeli couple, absorbed in eating huge hummus appetizers, preparatory to launching into plates stacked up with food.

  “Let her go,” muttered Chloe, tapping her glass with a spoon to get our attention. “She’s on one of her rampages. Later on, I hope, everybody will join the belly dancing in the back room. Let your bodies vibrate as though Orpheus were playing them as his lyre. Watching Serena, an old timer, perform at a restaurant on the Upper East Side, I wrote this poem,” said Chloe. The poem described a raucous restaurant crowd and a dancer who compensated for her advanced age with masterful technique.

  “Okay, folks, that’s all I brought along,” said Chloe. “Anybody else got work about dancing or whatever? The floor show doesn’t start for another hour.”

  As Tiffany’s voice grew louder, it became impossible to concentrate on anything else. “No boundaries, that’s your game,” she barked. “What do you guys care if the Palestinians starve. Let them have their own state. They deserve it. No wonder their young men become terrorists.” Astounded that an intruder would be so vehement, the female diner, as though to defend herself, reached forward. Her elbow landed in the humus.

  Before Tiffany could continue her diatribe, Marilyn rushed over, apologized to the Israelis and pulled a sputtering Tiffany back to our table. “Someone has to tell those bullies the truth,” announced a self- righteous Tiffany.

  “You don’t have to ruin Chloe’s birthday doing it,” countered Marilyn. “Why waste time before the belly dancing starts? “Right,” seconded Chloe. “ I’d like somebody to read work in honor of my birthday.” Prodding, Chloe glanced around.

  I decided that her request was directed at me. Ruffling through a folder I brought along in hopes of this opportunity, I responded: “Hey, I’ve got a piece set in Jerusalem where I spent several months on a research leave. My Arab lover taught me about
the culture. And some erotic lessons too.” I grinned.

  “Do read,” said Sarah, “I’m fascinated by that part he world. Hope your story has some political overtones.”

  “No way,” sneered. Tiffany. “Bella’s a political dunce. Anyway, I’m leaving. The Brecht Forum has a debate tonight on the decline of Capitalism with scholars from the London School of Economics.” Tiffany threw a fifty- dollar bill on the table and flounced out.

  Tiffany off to the cohorts she respected, the girls settled down. “This one’s got a belly dancing episode, plus my Jerusalem off the tourist path. It was peaceful then but what exciting nights!”

  “Happy birthday, Chloe, dear.” I smiled and blew her a kiss. What fun, to be reading at the Figaro café, redolent with Beat literary ghosts! I suspected they would approve of a Jewish female with enough chutzpah to explore the holiest of lands, where intrigue apt to entrap the unsuspecting visitor lurks in its dark alleys.

  ELEVEN: JERUSALEM BETWEEN THE WARS, PART ONE

  Better a day in the land of God than a thousand on foreign soil. Judah Halevy

  Jerusalem reeked of hashish and so did Hadj and I. Arab and Jew, on the Nepal Cafe’s terrace, we gabbed away in between smoking and drinking barrels of mint tea. What did I care if the sugary tea made my teeth fall out, if hash melted my brain to farina! The owner, Mustapha, stuffing pungent tobacco into ornate water pipes, ignored us. So did Arab card players absorbed in the local version of gin rummy. From the kitchen, perfumes of Jericho oranges, sesame rolls, and freshly brewed Turkish coffee drifted past.