My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

by Russell Hoban

  Looking out into the sea-dark she said, ‘He used to take me on his lap. Once, when I was ten, he put his hand …’

  ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Don’t talk it out – get it down on paper and maybe it’ll lead to something further.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll start tonight then because ideas are coming to me right now. See you tomorrow.’

  When we parted I watched her walk away and Moshe Leib’s words about the burden of one’s sorrow came to mind again. There’s a lot of it about, I thought. Barbara’s face came to me then, with her look of unknowing that was so characteristic of her. Perhaps it mirrored the look on my face? It’s very difficult to know anything, really, and here I was teaching people as if I knew something they didn’t. I was experienced in some ways – I was like a tracker who always found the turds of his prey but never caught the animal he was after. I stopped in at the Xanadu and ordered a large Glenfiddich.

  One of the men in my group came up to me and nodded. I didn’t remember his name. ‘Geoff Wiggins,’ he said. ‘I’d like to write but I can’t think of anything to write about.’

  ‘Write about that then,’ I said. ‘If you do it carefully and honestly something will come to you.’

  ‘Does that always work for you?’ he said.

  ‘Sure it does. What comes to me is crap a lot of the time but that’s how it is.’

  ‘I guess if you were more successful you wouldn’t need to teach courses like this.’

  ‘And if you were capable of sitting at a desk alone you wouldn’t need to take courses like this,’ I said.

  We both smiled hard at each other and he walked away.

  Hoping I wouldn’t see any more familiar faces I had a look around me. Diamond Heart, definitely not a retreat, was a cruising ground offering interesting people of all sexual persuasions, most of them with a look of easy availability. It was rather like an auction where you had to be careful not to scratch your nose. It was the kind of scene I used to enjoy but now I found the whole thing dissolving into visual noise like a computer picture infected with a virus.

  I had manuscripts to read but I put it off yet awhile. I finished my drink, went outside and walked back to Kirsty’s Knowe. I sat down on the still-warm grass, closed my eyes and listened to the sea. The warm summer air seemed a medium of transmission and Barbara’s face came to me then. I’d never been able to recall it accurately before but here it was utterly clear and real. I didn’t think any words, just looked at her face while the sea whispered me its secrets. At the beginning of these pages I’ve given my first impression of her that Saturday night at St James’s Clerkenwell. I described her as having a long oval face, a sullen mouth, and an up-yours expression. But attractive, I said: a face that pulled the eye. A shapely face that followed up the shapeliness of her legs and referred itself to the hidden sensuality of her body. As I looked at her now her face asserted its Strozzi attributes: the sombre eyes; the small mouth with its full underlip; the round chin that completed the juiciness of the mouth and led the eye down to the full breasts. Now my Barbara had become Barbara Strozzi and now the face flickered between the two of them, proclaiming the mystery of itself and the unknowability of Woman and sorrow. Tears rolled down my face; almost I could believe in God, or at least a demiurge. My empty hands moved as if kneading the dust of stars into wet clay. I looked up at the sky wondering what effect Mercury and Venus, all unseen, might be having on me.

  Without being aware of having walked there I found myself at the guest dome where I was staying. Feeling strange but not sleepy I read Clara Petersen’s novella and several of the short bits from the group. When I fell asleep I dreamed that Barbara Strozzi kissed me and put my hand on her breast.

  Next morning Constanze arrived at the group session with the pages she’d written. First I gave my comments on Clara’s ms, then I went through the short bits I’d read. I’m never brutal in my critiques but there’s no escaping the fact that some would-be writers have it and some don’t. Many of the people who take these courses have a modicum of talent but very few will ever be published because talent isn’t enough: you need the character that will drive the talent as far as it can go.

  ‘Are you going to read this out?’ I said to Constanze.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, taking up a position at the front. ‘This is the first chapter of a novel and the title is Uncle William’s Lap.’

  ‘You’ve been doing this to me since I was ten,’ I said.

  He smiled down at me while he took his pleasure. ‘Well, love,’ he said, ‘this is what uncles do.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I said, and reached under the bed for the knife. We came together, then I cut short his enjoyment and a very messy business it was. After I’d dismembered the body and buried the pieces in different places far apart I burned the bedclothes, had a long hot shower, opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and thought about the last fifteen years.

  She went on to read the whole first chapter which was five pages long, her South African accent adding a little something to the eroticism and the nastiness of it. When she stopped there was spontaneous applause from the coarser element of the group. ‘Don’t stop!’ was their cry. ‘Go for it! Give us more!’ Clara shook her head sadly.

  ‘That’s all she wrote so far,’ said Constanze, ‘but I’ll keep working on it.’

  After supper I found her at the Xanadu surrounded by admirers. ‘What you read out today was quite different from your songwriting,’ I said.

  ‘The songs are my art,’ she said. ‘This is for money. Do you think I’ll get it published?’

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Under your own name?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t you feel at all strange about it?’

  ‘Why should I? This is a legitimate commercial product – it’s entertainment.’

  ‘Yes, but the songs are a class act and this is something you’d be better off not putting your name to.’

  ‘Are you applying to be my uncle now?’

  ‘Why? Is the situation vacant?’

  ‘Who knows? You might get lucky.’ Gasps and giggles from her audience.

  ‘Thank you but I’m fully committed elsewhere.’

  ‘No problem. But tell me: Haven’t you ever wanted to write something that wasn’t boring?’ The circle of admirers had backed off a little to give us space but now there were more gasps followed by bursts of laughter.

  I felt a hot wave of anger rising in me but I tried to stay cool. ‘What I write doesn’t seem boring to me,’ I said, ‘and it takes up my whole self so there’s nothing left over for any other kind of writing.’

  ‘I think you might be a self-defeater, Teach. Maybe you should take up another line of work.’ General tittering from the sidelines.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Plumbing maybe. It’s a useful trade, it gets you out of the house and plumbers make a lot of money.’ She was swaying a little as she spoke. Evidently the drinks following on her popularity had somewhat gone to her head.

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your concern.’

  ‘You’re welcome. And I’ll be there tomorrow with the rest of the swine to pick up any pearls you might be throwing our way.’

  ‘I think you’re going to have a hangover in the morning, so I’ll wish you a good night now.’

  ‘Goodnight, Uncle Not.’ Accompanied by two or three well-wishers and the scent of cannabis she departed.

  I walked out to Kirsty’s Knowe again and waited for Barbara’s face to come to me. It didn’t come and I sat there asking myself how I could make ends meet without teaching.

  Constanze didn’t turn up the next morning. She left a note for me with Geoff Wiggins:

  Dear Uncle Not,

  I think it’s best if I leave now. I’m too embarrassed – for you.

  See you around. Or not.

  Constanze

  I finished the week somehow. It’s nothing I feel like talking about. The group had an
end-of-course party that I didn’t go to. They gave me a bottle of plonk and I left it on the desk where they put it. On the train going home I did some arithmetic: if I didn’t do any more teaching I had enough to live on for seven or eight months. What then? No idea. I trusted that something would come to me; it always had so far.

  With that settled I was able to give my attention to Barbara. I closed my eyes and this time her face came to me with its beauty and its sorrow. It was there only for a moment before a shadow fell across it and there was Troy Wallis. There are things in life that compel recognition, things that you know are for you and nobody else. You can’t get around them; you have to go through them or be stopped by them. I remembered how it was when Barbara and I watched The Rainmaker, how excited she was when Rudy was about to finish off Kelly’s husband. ‘Stop!’ said Kelly. ‘Give me the bat. You were not here tonight. Go!’ And when Rudy left, she struck the final blow and Barbara hugged me and kissed me and asked if she could stay the night.

  Lovely. But Barbara and I were not in a movie. However appealing the idea of duplicating that scene in real life, there was no practical way of making it happen. I couldn’t see myself walking around with a baseball bat. Too big for a violin case. Double bass? Not exactly a quick-draw thing: Don’t look now, Troy, I have a surprise for you. Barbara as bait? He follows her and I show up with the Louisville Slugger disguised as a French bread, upon which I do it to him before he does it to me. Right, no problem. Meanwhile there was the six-foot-four reality of him in front of Jimmy Maloney’s like a wall.

  I called Barbara as soon as I got back. ‘Sometimes I can see you when I close my eyes and sometimes I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘That’s how it is with me too,’ she said. ‘I think the trick is not to try. When I look away mentally your face comes to me.’

  ‘Did I say anything good while I was walking around in your head?’

  ‘You hummed – tangoes. “La Cumparsa” seemed to be your favourite.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you knew that one.’

  ‘Grace Kowalski heard me humming it and she was surprised too.’

  ‘It was made into a song with an English lyric,’ I said: ‘“For Want of a Star”. “For want of a star a dream had to die, For want of a dream the stars left the sky …” That’s all I remember.’

  ‘That’s a pretty sad song to carry around in your head.’

  ‘Yes, it is. I guess sadness is my default setting.’

  ‘Mine too. Maybe everybody’s. What did I do when I was walking around in your head?’

  ‘You were explaining something with all kinds of gestures but no words – you did it in absolute silence.’

  ‘What was I explaining?’

  ‘I never figured it out.’

  ‘Shall I come to your place this evening?’

  ‘That would be like rain on parched earth. This time I’ll pick you up at your place and walk you to mine.’

  ‘Very gentlemanly! Around seven?’ ‘See you then.’

  At seven she came out when I knocked and I thought My woman! ‘Wow!’ I said. She was wearing a black T-shirt with a large Mickey Mouse in coloured sequins, a little denim skirt with a broad red leather belt slung low on her hips. The skirt was wider than the belt but not much. The rest was bare legs ending in roman sandals with straps halfway up the calf. Looking at her legs I said, ‘Thank you, God.’ She laughed and we kissed. ‘Glad to see me?’ she said.

  ‘If I were a bell I’d be ringing,’ I answered. ‘Nothing less than champagne will do this evening. We can get it at Waitrose.’ We crossed to the other side of the North End Road and found ourselves face to face with Troy Wallis. As if he’d sprung out of the ground.

  He grabbed Barbara by the arms and began to shake her. I moved in and said, ‘No more of that! She’s with me now!’

  ‘Jesus, Bertha,’ he said, ‘is this the best you can do?’ With his right arm he knocked me down with a backhand blow. Before I could get up he kicked me but I managed to grab his foot and pull. He fell backward and his head hit the pavement, Wham! He lay flat on his back absolutely still with a pool of blood spreading under his head. Barbara was laughing hysterically. ‘Stop! Give me the bat,’ she said. ‘You were not here tonight. Go!’

  I put my arm around her shoulders and urged her to pull herself together. A middle-aged couple had seen the whole thing and they came to where we stood looking down at Troy.

  ‘I’m a nurse,’ said the woman. She bent down and felt for Troy’s pulse. She shook her head. ‘He’s dead,’ she said. I dialled 999 on my mobile and we stood there waiting for the police and an ambulance to arrive.

  Barbara was shaking her head in astonishment. Looking from Troy to me she said, ‘He picked the wrong guy to fuck with – I guess it was bound to happen some time.’

  ‘You might say it was an occupational hazard in his line of work,’ I said.

  ‘In movies,’ said Barbara, ‘when a non-violent man kills somebody the way you just did, he turns away and vomits but you didn’t.’

  ‘Nothing to vomit about, all men are violent – it’s just that not all of us can act it out.’

  ‘Now that he’s dead I feel sort of dropped. What do we do now, live happily ever after? How do we get from here to what comes next?’

  ‘We’ll just have to work at it: if we can’t get under it we’ll have to get over it.’

  ‘Why would we want to get under it?’

  ‘I don’t know – it’s a Hasidic thing.’ By this time the police and the ambulance had arrived with sirens and flashing lights and a small crowd quickly gathered. ‘What happened?’ said those in the rear to those in front.

  ‘There was a fight over a woman,’ came the answer.

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘The one that’s talking to the cop.’

  There were a PC and a WPC on the scene. The police of course have less money to spend than the networks and the WPC didn’t look as good as the ones on TV. She took a Polaroid of the body and drew a chalk outline around it. The PC spoke briefly into his radio, then turned to us. ‘Who called this in?’ he said.

  ‘I did,’ I said.

  ‘Your name please,’ said the PC.

  I told him and he wrote it down. ‘Who’s the deceased?’ he said. When I’d given him Troy’s name he said, ‘Who are these other people?’

  ‘I’m the wife of the deceased,’ said Barbara. ‘Widow, actually. But we weren’t living together any more.’

  ‘What about you, Mr Ockerman?’ he said. ‘What was your relation to Troy Wallis?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘How’d you get the black eye?’

  ‘He knocked me down and tried to kick me but I grabbed his foot and he fell backwards and struck his head on the pavement.’

  ‘Why did he knock you down?’

  ‘Because I was with Ms Strunk.’

  ‘My husband and I witnessed the whole thing,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Right,’ said the PC. To the paramedics he said, ‘You can take the body to the morgue. There’s no question about the time and cause of death – I’ll call the ME.’ To the crowd he said, as Troy’s feet disappeared into the ambulance, ‘Let’s move on, people, there’s nothing more to see.’ To the rest of us he said, ‘We’re going to need statements from all of you, so if you’d like to step around the corner to the police station we’ll get that done.’

  We followed him and the WPC to the street behind Waitrose and the blue lamps and steps of the station. By this time I was feeling the after-effects of the evening’s action and my impressions were somewhat blurred. I think there were various notices on the walls and photos of persons wanted for one thing and another. Although the lighting was probably adequate the place had a one-eyed blinking sort of look (which may have been due to the closure of my left eye from Wallis’s backhander). Two PCs were supporting a drunk while the duty sergeant at the desk took down the details of what I gathered was his attempted assault on the two officers. ‘Name?’ said the se
rgeant.

  ‘Mickey Mouse,’ said the drunk.

  Barbara and I and the nurse and her husband had our details taken down and made our statements, after which I was arrested as a murder suspect by the duty sergeant, had the contents of my pockets listed and bagged, and was taken to a cell. ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Barbara as she kissed me goodnight. I lay down on the bed and sank into a restless sleep in which I dreamed that Troy kept jumping up as fast as I killed him.

  In the morning the sky was flat and grey and I was taken to the West London Magistrates Court in Talgarth Road. The magistrate reduced the charge to manslaughter and my case went to the Old Bailey for trial at the first available court date. I was then released on £10,000 bail. ‘Who put up the ten thousand?’ I asked. ‘Name withheld,’ said the bondsman. I was released pending a hearing. After that, as I had a permanent address, no record, and wasn’t on any other wanted list the magistrate said I could go home.

  Barbara came to meet me. As we walked to my place together I thought of the virgin Louisville Slugger leaning in its corner. ‘Oh God,’ I said.

  ‘Oh God what?’

  ‘I don’t want to say it.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘What if…?’

  ‘What if what?’

  ‘What if our whole relationship has only been held together by the prospect of killing your husband? Would you have stayed with me otherwise?’

  ‘Oh shit, I’m not sure of anything any more. What do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t know – my place? Pizza?’

  ‘OK. I don’t really want to make any decisions.’

  We went to Basuto Road walking like zombies. When the pizza arrived we ate it and drank beer without saying much, and afterwards Barbara went straight to bed.

  I rang up Catriona. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘tell me how things are looking for me.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘your Moon is opposed by Pluto and there’s possible action pending from dangerous females. If you aren’t dangerous enough yourself, you and your female might drift apart. Maybe that would even be desirable to one or both of you. Things are looking dodgy, so watch your arse.’