My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

by Russell Hoban

  I needed a holiday from thoughts about Phil. If I went to Cheyne Walk Brian would be glad to see me and I was sure he’d put Cheryl on hold for as long as I stayed. So I left the flat, went to Fulham Broadway, caught an 11 bus, then walked from the King’s Road.

  I rang the bell, Brian buzzed me in and I went up to the studio. The floor was littered with Conté crayon sketches of Cheryl and she was on the model stand when I came into the room. ‘Hi,’ said Brian. To Cheryl he said, ‘That’s it for today. I’m not sure how I’m fixed for next week – I’ll call you.’ Cheryl nodded, got dressed, kissed him goodbye, and left. ‘Old friends are the best friends,’ said Brian as he grabbed my arse.

  Later, with our clothes scattered on the floor, we sat in the studio without turning on the lights and watched the evening on the river. The lights on the Albert Bridge, the lights on passing boats and the look of the darkening sky all seemed as if I’d seen them before from this window. ‘“Some things that happen for the first time, Seem to be happening again…”’ I sang softly.

  Brian took my hand and kissed it, then he ordered up pizza and we drank almost two bottles of Chianti and fell asleep feeling well satisfied. No heavy thinking, just good clean fun.

  Sunday, after a late breakfast and a lazy time with the papers, Brian got me out of my clothes again for some serious work. He tore off a large sheet from a big roll of brown wrapping paper and pinned it to a cork board which he put up on the easel.

  ‘I haven’t seen that before,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to work with brush and ink and casein paint,’ he said. ‘It helps me to loosen up.’

  I did twenty-minute poses and we worked for an hour before I rested. Brian had put up a new sheet of brown paper for each pose, so there were three of them lying on the floor. They were nothing like the Conté sketches he’d done of Cheryl; they were big and free but at the same time quite delicate. Full of tenderness, really, and the most sensitive nudes he’d ever done. ‘These are beautiful,’ I said. ‘They’re so different from your drawings of Cheryl.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ he said, looking at me with his good eye foremost. Hearing what was in his voice I backed away a little and said, ‘Better not.’

  ‘Better not what?’ he said.

  ‘Get serious.’

  ‘Why not? My feelings can’t be that much of a surprise to you.’

  Those were almost the same words he’d used when he’d tried to rape me the first time I posed for him. ‘Stop right there,’ I said. ‘Put your heart back in your pants or I’m out of here.’

  Brian found it hard to believe that I was rejecting his love. ‘Can you do better?’ he said. Always the pragmatist.

  ‘Maybe I already have,’ I said. I gathered up my clothes, got dressed and left.

  7

  Phil Ockerman

  I hadn’t done anything but talk to Constanze – although I’d have liked to do more – and I’d no reason at all to feel guilty; in any case Barbara was shacked up with another man and for all I knew I might never see her again. But I did feel guilty, I felt that I had betrayed my density woman. Destiny woman. Both words are formed with the same letters and density is a big part of destiny. Your mind takes hold of something and it can feel whether the fabric is dense or thin: books, movies, music – anything. People.

  Troy Wallis was much in my mind. In my youth I’d walked away from more fights than I’d taken on but I couldn’t walk away from this one indefinitely. There was the Louisville Slugger leaning in the corner, tangible proof of my commitment – to myself as much as to Barbara. What if I’d never see her again? It seems I didn’t really believe that. Courage was wanted from me, heroism even. Had I ever in my life done anything heroic? I’d once confronted three teenage louts who were making very noisy lewd remarks in the Chelsea Odeon while Mimi and I were there to see Interview with the Vampire. When I told them they were spoiling the film for the rest of us I got a blast of four-letter words and threats. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’re so tough, let me have your names so I’ll know who you are.’

  More verbal abuse followed this. ‘We’ll see you outside later,’ said the senior lout. But they were quiet after that and they left before the end of the film. ‘What are you going to do if they’re waiting out there?’ said Mimi as we left. ‘I’ll try to look like a figure of authority,’ I said. But they weren’t waiting. My bluff had apparently convinced them that I was a figure of authority. But that wasn’t real heroism. I’d been reading about Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar and I imagined those great wind-driven wooden fortresses coming slowly downwind through the French line: HMS Victory, Temeraire, Royal Sovereign and the others moving towards the moment when the marksman in the mizzen top of the Redoutable would aim for the stars on Nelson’s coat. Nelson had to display himself in full regalia on the quarterdeck when the battle was at its height – that was part of what made him an inspiration to his men. At the age of eleven, considering his career prospects and the lack of any useful connections, he had written, ‘Well then, I will be a hero, and confiding in Providence I will brave every danger.’ But his crew above and below decks, men with no stars on their coats, many of them shirtless as they served their guns – they were too busy for displays; it was simply their job to be heroic, even the powder monkeys who might never reach puberty: there was nothing else to be, and in the heat of battle they were hooked up with the necessary violence in them, that practical violence that I’d never reached in myself.

  I needed to walk the decks of HMS Victory. I needed to touch with my hands those great guns; I needed to stand in the orlop deck at the place where Nelson died. A visit to Portsmouth was what I needed. HMS Victory might seem a long way from the crypt at St James’s Clerkenwell, even farther away from seventeenth-century Venice and Barbara Strozzi but, seen from Mercury and Venus as they look down on us, nothing is far away from anything.

  On a dull and sultry day in July I went to Waterloo and took a South West train to Portsmouth Harbour. I seem to run into that kind of day when I’m looking for some hard-to-find thing, like a left-handed monkey wrench or whatever. After being nowhere for a while the train found Guildford. Then gradually the views on both sides became fields and trees and the sky seemed to widen. Time moved slowly and was further slowed down by the many mothers who were patiently reading to their children, playing games with them and feeding them snacks. The buffet car sent its nice little earner through the carriages with many kinds of overpriced refreshment but I’d brought my sandwich and bottle of water with me and was able to resist when the trolley paused for me.

  Haslemere and other stations unrolled before and behind in due course while I read a book about Bellerophon, the seventy-four-gun ship of the line in Nelson’s fleet known as Billy Ruffian to the sailors. Designed by Thomas Slade who also laid down the lines for HMS Victory, she was built in 1782 in the yard of Edward Greaves at Frindsbury in the River Medway in Kent. I’d received this book from a friend, and having nothing on HMS Victory I made do with the smaller vessel. More than three thousand oak trees were cut down to make the frames, strakes, beams, carlings, masts, yards and spars that with axe, saw, adze and drawknife were shaped and assembled into Billy Ruffian.

  After my lunch I dozed off for a while and awoke when the train pulled into Petersfield. The sky was heavying up in a brooding sort of way and I had no doubt that its intentions were serious. Time now speeded up a little and Portsmouth Harbour was achieved, flaunting a vertical blot on the seascape that was clearly commissioned by one of those committees that can’t leave anything alone. I learned later that it’s called the Spinnaker Tower.

  When I came out of the station I expected to see or at least hear gulls wheeling over the harbour but there were none. It was a half-mile or so from the railway station to HMS Victory, past HMS Warrior, various naval buildings, small craft moored in the harbour and a succession of eateries, boat-ride docks and other tourist attractions barnacled on to the dockyard along with a pub whose name I don’t remembe
r, the Royal Naval Museum and a shop that sold HMS Victory books, videos, and every kind of souvenir that England could expect. It was raining by then as it usually does when I’m looking for a left-handed monkey wrench or heroic inspiration.

  Having bought my ticket I walked on glistening cobbles, along with the world and his camera, wife and children, towards the masts and rigging of Nelson’s flagship which became gradually larger in our eyes as we approached. A life-size effigy of Nelson, a flat thing made of painted sheet metal, encouraged us to continue yet another half-mile or so to the queue waiting at the entrance to the ship.

  HMS Victory is a three-decker 104-gun warship and it’s huge. I’d never seen anything so big made out of wood by human hands. No power tools, just tools made by hand and worked by hand. When my ticket was punched I was given a printed guide. I have an ingrained resistance to manuals and guides, so I just followed the crowd up the gangway and into the lower gun deck. I have a problem with seeing things: when I go to an exhibition of paintings I clock the pictures briefly but I don’t really study them, don’t properly get into them until I look at the reproductions in the catalogue at home and recall to life the images recorded by my mind. So now in HMS Victory’s lower gun deck I trudged by dim lanterns past the thirty-two-pounder guns and their tackle, the rammers, sponges and the hammocks slung above them, all of our many tourist feet treading the planks where men long dead had walked and run and fallen. I couldn’t see anything or feel anything, there was no privacy in which to see and feel.

  Up and down steep stairs and companionways we went and at some point stood numerously in the orlop deck in front of the place where Nelson died. There was the oaken knee against which he leant as he lay dying. By it stood the painting of that scene by A. W. Devis. To the right was a painted wreath around the words, ‘HERE NELSON DIED’. The lighting was too bright, it magnified the absence that prevailed. Foolishly I had hoped to feel Nelson’s heroic death at the moment of victory but I felt only my own emptiness. You can buy a ticket to walk up and down and all around HMS Victory but the moment of Nelson’s death is not for sale.

  Still we kept trudging, and after a while the world and his camera, wife, children and I stood on the quarter deck. ‘This is where Nelson was shot,’ said an American voice, ‘by a marksman in the rigging of the Redoubtable.’

  ‘Le Redoutable,’ I said.’Mizzen top.’ No one seemed to hear me. ‘HERE NELSON FELL, 21st Oct 1805,’ said the brass plaque.

  On the way out I passed the great cabin and the stern lights through which Nelson must often have looked at the wake of his passage in all weathers. Now they showed today’s grey rainlight that gleamed on his table, his telescope and sextant.

  Then I was out in the rain again. At the shop I bought a book on HMS Victory and a video tour of the ship. I walked back to the station and in a short time was on a train back to London. I closed my eyes and waited for delayed heroic inspiration. What came to me, dark and shadowy, were the frames and timbers I had seen in the hold. These were of oak, their forms heroically achieved by the concerted skills of men with axes, saws, adzes, drawknives and augers who shaped them into the structure that would be planked up as the flagship of the fleet. The beautiful drawings in the book showed the lines, the framing, planking, masting, yards and spars of the ship they had built. Englishmen now alive had in their genes the army of skills that had flourished in this English nation.

  Two hundred years ago my people, the Jews, had no nation. Their skills were scattered throughout the diaspora. In Biblical times there were Jews who built ships and sailed them: Hiram shipped ivory, apes and peacocks to Solomon from Ophir. There were Jews on the sea and by the sea, working in Akko, Joppa and other ports. Jesus’s disciples were mainly Jewish fishermen who got their living in boats. But in my genes there was no army of Jews with axes, saws, adzes, drawknives and augers two hundred years ago.

  I sat there in a funk for a certain time, then there came to mind Martin Buber’s books on the Hasidim. Aha! I said, and smote my forehead (one or two people looked at me): there are ships and ships; there is a great unsinkable oak-ribbed copper-bottomed ship of the mind, strong to weather any storm and impervious to all broadsides. Who built this ship? The zaddikim! Theirs the axes, the adzes, the augers, the strength of arm for the great unsinkable ship of the mind.

  Who were these men? Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov! Dov Baer of Mezritch, the Great Maggid! Pinhas of Koretz and his school, yes! Such as these and other illustrious zaddikim were the men. Swarming up the rigging, they manned the yards and stood ready. With them behind me and the Louisville Slugger ready to hand I felt that I could deal with whatever had to be dealt with.

  But as I was putting the zaddikim back on the shelf Rabbi Moshe Leib slipped out and said,

  To know the needs of another and to bear the burden of their

  sorrow, that is the true love.

  ‘We weren’t talking about love, Moshe,’ I said. ‘And besides, Troy Wallis is a big sorrow for Barbara and I’m bearing the burden like a true lover.’

  ‘So you’ll bash in his brains with your baseball bat, yes?’

  ‘Strictly in self-defence.’

  ‘Which means he’ll have to attack you.’

  ‘Or Barbara – the way it was in The Rainmaker.’

  ‘And what, he’ll also have a baseball bat?’

  ‘He doesn’t need one, he’s very big and very strong – he’s a professional bouncer. I’ll have to play it by ear and see how the situation develops.’

  ‘It sounds to me like a disaster waiting to happen.’

  ‘So tell me, Rabbi Moshe, from the depths of your wisdom, what should I do?’

  ‘Who knows? Sometimes a disaster is just something you have to get out of your system.’

  ‘With this kind of advice you became famous?’

  ‘I came off the shelf to talk to you about true love and sorrow, not baseball bats, OK? Your first priority is Barbara’s sorrow.’ And with that he was gone.

  8

  Barbara Strunk

  I was going to phone Phil before I left for work but then I didn’t; it was one of those times when I wasn’t exactly depressed but I was anxious and scared and sad: I didn’t know where I was with Phil and I didn’t know where I was in myself. Is the world real? I wondered. What is this that’s looking out of my eyes? ‘Never mind,’ I heard myself say. ‘Time to go to work.’

  As always, I took the District Line to Notting Hill Gate where I changed to the Central Line. When I came out at Oxford Circus the ordinary rhythm of a July Thursday seemed to have been disrupted. Some people were walking quickly and looking anxious; others stood in little knots and talked with many gestures. Listening to them I learned that there had been bombs in the Underground. I tried to ring Phil on my mobile but the network had been shut down.

  When I got to the Lichtheim brothers they had the radio on with all the details: three bombs in the Underground and one in a bus; many dead and injured and the Underground system was now shut down. I phoned Phil on the landline and got his answering machine. ‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Call me at work!’ then I thought that he might be out doing one of his workshops and not near a phone. Maybe in a tube train.

  I was enraged by the bombings. I flung my arm out as if to push away this intrusion; how dared they do this to my London! Then as details kept pouring in my mind filled with the screams of the wounded and the panic of those climbing over bodies to walk the tracks in darkness. And more dead and injured in the double-decker bus that stood in the sunlight by Russell Square with its top blown off. My hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t do anything with artificial eyes so Karl told me to go home. The sunny day was a mockery and the ordinariness of a London Thursday was gone. It was as if London was an anthill that had been kicked by a giant foot; there was nothing gigantic about the bombers, they were just creeps with evil minds. It was Terror that was the giant: Here I am, it said. I have always been here but now you will pay attention
.

  It was too early in the day for drinking but I badly wanted a drink. I headed for The Blue Posts knowing they’d be closed but hoping for sanctuary from the weirdness of the day. When I got there I found Grace Kowalski looking at the closed doors and shaking her head. ‘I know it’s too early,’ she said, ‘but I feel like drinking and I don’t want to do it alone.’

  ‘Bombers evidently can’t disturb the British licensing laws,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Come up to my place and we’ll do early drinking not alone.’

  The baseball bat in its velvet sheath was slung from her shoulder as before. ‘I see that Irv is with you,’ I said.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I hope some day to hear Irv’s history.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grace. ‘It’s a matter of how much disbelief you can suspend. Do you work out?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Suspending enough disbelief to believe Irv’s history would be roughly equivalent to pressing four hundred pounds.’

  ‘Maybe I could suspend a little each day and gradually work my way up to the full whack.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Grace. The shop was closed; we went up the stairs to the studio. The place smelled of soldering and unknown chemicals. On the workbench were coils of brass and silver wire, various small pliers and cutters, and boxes filled with bits of coloured glass. In the vice was an unfinished angel brooch, brilliantly bejewelled. On the workbench lay a goat done in yellow, orange and brown glass. It was a longhaired goat like the one in the William Holman Hunt painting.