My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

by Russell Hoban

  Constanze handed me her little CD player and headphones. ‘Here’s a working recording of one of my songs called “Blue Mountains”.’

  I started the disc. Over the sound of instruments tuning up Constanze’s voice said, ‘“Used-To-Be” take three.’ After a short silence there was the wavering melody of a flute, then a violin and a cello came in over a quietly pulsing drumbeat. I imagined a distant escarpment under a wide sky. The flute faded out and the strings and drums continued under a woman’s voice speaking low and breathily, as in the intimacy of the small hours. A naked voice making itself heard in the darkness. At first I thought it was a black woman, then I recognised the voice as Constanze’s:

  Kopelo, kopelo e e iketlileng mo tsebeng ya moja

  Ee, kopelo ee ritibetseng e le runi

  Jaaka phala ya selemo se se fetileny mo tsebeng yame

  Sona Sepoko, ke go raa ke go raa

  Ke tlaabo ke aka go rileng?

  Sone Sepoko sa maloba-le-maabane Aiyeeah!

  Understanding not a word, I was filled with a great sadness. ‘What language is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Setswana,’ she said. Her voice on the disc paused. The music came up and she sang with it wordlessly and very low. Then she continued speaking:

  Aiyeeah! Kutlobotlhoko ya sona ta se opela

  Sona Sepoko sa maloba-le-maabane!

  Se a opela, Se a opela sona sa fa loapi le ne le tlhapile,

  dithaba di boitshega letsatsi ke bosigo jwa lona

  di ya lolololo dinoka di elela!

  The music changed, the drums became more urgent. Constanze’s voice went higher and the words came more quickly:

  Utlwa fa ke go rao Nao, O itse tsa moloba-le-maabane

  Kwa re tswang gona mmogo, fa lorato le ne re aparetse

  le tletse mo pelong tsa rona, aiyeeah!

  Le kae jaanong, le sietse kae?

  Gore loapi le be le thibile jaona, dithaba di sa

  ntsikinye, dinoka di kgadile jaana! Aiyeeah ka

  iketlo mo tsebeng ya moja kopelo ya sepoko sa

  moloba-le-maabane. Mo tsebeng ya molema go utlwala

  fela kgakalo ya dikgang tsa sesheng, pherethlano

  mo mebileng le modumo wa tse di fetileng.

  Always the sadness came to me in those words I couldn’t understand. The vowels and the consonants had a life of their own that seemed also to be my life. I remembered how it was when Mimi and I were first in love, the newness of the world. And I remembered the sadness when love had gone and we stood in a dry riverbed. The flute was alone again and I could see for miles. High overhead a hawk circled, sharp against the blue. The violin and cello and drums came in and over them Constanze singing in English:

  Singing, singing tiny in my right ear,

  in my right ear only, yes! Singing tiny

  like the summer’s last cicada in my ear,

  a ghost! That’s what I’m telling you –

  why should I lie? The ghost of used-to-be!

  Aiyeeah!

  Her voice was thrilling, with a wildness under the words that sometimes almost whispered, sometimes soared. The sound of the instruments and her voice together seemed layered with before and after:

  The sadness of it singing there, that

  ghost of used-to-be! It sings, it sings of

  when the sky was very wide, the mountains

  were magic, a day and a night were for ever

  and the rivers never dried up.

  Hearing the English now with the Setswana behind it I smelled the sun-warm grass, tasted used-to-be on my tongue.

  Now Constanze’s was more urgent as the words came faster:

  Hear what I’m saying! You know that used-to-be,

  you know we lived there, you and I, when love

  was with us, when love was in our hearts, aiyeeah!

  Where is it now, where has it gone, that the sky

  has become little, the mountains nothing special,

  the rivers all dry? Aiyeeah!

  Tiny in my right ear sings that ghost of

  used-to-be. Loud in my left ear is the news on the

  hour, the traffic in the streets, the roar of

  all-gone.

  Silence and the sound of traffic on Putney Bridge. I opened my eyes. There was the river and I was in London again. ‘You look sad,’ said Constanze.

  ‘“Used-To-Be” is a sad song,’ I said.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘That was meant to be “Blue Mountains” in the player. I didn’t mean for you to hear “Used-To-Be.”’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m still working on it.’

  ‘Is there a ghost in your ear, Constanze?’

  ‘Always. Africa is full of ghosts.’

  ‘So is every place. I was wondering if the song is about a particular used-to-be in your life.’

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’

  ‘Sorry for the intrusion. It’s a beautiful song and a terrific performance. Is anyone else doing anything like this?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘How did you become so fluent in Setswana?’

  ‘I learned it from my nanny. She was from Bophutatswana and her name was Omphile which means God’s gift. When I was a baby she carried me around on her back in a towel while she did the household chores. She had a baby of her own who was living with Omphile’s mother in the homeland – that’s what Bophutatswana was during apartheid.’

  ‘So Omphile raised you while the grandmother raised her child.’ I had to shake my head at that.

  ‘That’s how it was,’ said Constanze. ‘Nannies usually had to speak Afrikaans or English in the houses where they worked but my parents thought it was good for me to learn Omphile’s language.’

  ‘Why did you speak the song in Setswana?’

  ‘I wrote it in that language and then translated it into English. I think my songs in Setswana, that’s how they come to me. Setswana has Omphile in it and her people and where they came from. I like to keep this inside me, so let’s not talk about it any more. I read Hope of a Tree last night.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I like the way you write and I liked the ideas in the book but I didn’t think it was a very good novel.’

  ‘Can you say why?’

  Constanze thought about it for a while. Her face was one that changed from moment to moment; now, when she was mentally rehearsing what she would say, she looked about eighteen. ‘There wasn’t really any hope in it,’ she said. ‘It just runs downhill in a straight line. It starts with Cynthia standing on Clifton Bridge looking down at the Avon Gorge. Is she going to jump? Sam thinks so. He says, “It’s a long way down.” She says, “It’s a short trip though.” He tries to distract her, says, “Have you seen the camera obscura at the observatory?” And of course she says, “I don’t need to – I’ve been living in a dark chamber for a long time.” So you wonder if Sam is a suicide saver, the way some people are drunk savers. It never works, and you know it won’t work for Sam and Cynthia so it’s no surprise when it doesn’t.’

  ‘Life is like that sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, but why bother with that kind of story?’

  ‘I was trying to do a story where one thing follows another in a chain of cause and effect that goes right down the line to its inevitable end. Have you seen Kaurismäki’s film The Match Factory Girl?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a straight cause-and-effect film. Iris, the match factory girl, after being treated badly by her mother, her mother’s live-in boyfriend, and a man who picked her up in a bar, puts rat poison in their drinks and in the end is led off by the police. Very bleak, but it leaves you feeling good.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s a positive element in that. She fought back with the rat poison. Cynthia and Sam didn’t do anything like that so there’s nothing to feel good about.’

  ‘You’re right. I must do better. Fancy some lunch?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘I can’t – I’m meeting my agent for lun
ch in Soho.’

  ‘What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘I doubt it – he’s from Jo’burg, an old friend of the family, Teddy von Augenblick.’

  ‘Theodor von Augenblick?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Actually I have heard of him. My ex-wife works at the Nikolai Chevorski Gallery and he was in there trying to promote some painter whose talent wasn’t as big as his canvases. I haven’t seen the paintings or met von Augenblick myself.’

  ‘Teddy has his finger in all kinds of pies – I don’t know anything about his painters.’

  ‘But you trust him to represent you.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? I’ve known him since I was a little girl. As I’ve said, he’s an old friend of the family and he’s been like an uncle to me.’

  ‘Uncle Teddy.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I used to call him.’

  ‘Did he use to take you on his lap?’

  ‘That’s what uncles do, isn’t it? What’re you getting at?’

  ‘Nothing. Being a writer, I’m always interested in a character’s back story.’

  ‘I’d rather you backed away from mine, it’s not that interesting.’

  ‘If you say. Could I have the words to “Used-To-Be”, both the Setswana and the English?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s a lament and I’m into laments.’

  ‘I’ll send you the words after we do the final recording.’

  ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’

  ‘Not really. I have to go now.’

  ‘When can I see you again?’

  ‘I’ll call you after I get back from Cape Town.’

  I walked her to Putney Bridge, and even for that short distance she stayed a little way ahead of me. At the entrance to the tube station she said, ‘See you,’ and was gone.

  6

  Barbara Strunk

  I was sitting naked on Brian’s unmade bed on a Saturday morning. Alone. I’d had a lie-in and Brian hadn’t woken me. I didn’t hear him anywhere, no sounds but the traffic on the Embankment. Naked me on the bed; naked me on the wall. I wasn’t exactly thinking but I was thinking about thinking when I heard the front door open and close downstairs. Then there were quick footsteps on the stairs, a female voice said, ‘Bri?’ and a girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty burst into the room. Blonde, good figure, very pretty – well, she would be, wouldn’t she. And she had a key because she’d let herself in. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘are you posing for him?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ I said. ‘Are you Cheryl?’

  ‘Yes. Has Brian mentioned me to you?’

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘And you,’ she said, ‘you’re …?’

  ‘Just leaving,’ I said. I went to the bathroom but didn’t bother to take a shower. When I came out Cheryl wasn’t in the bedroom. I picked my clothes up off the floor, got dressed, walked up to the King’s Road and caught an 11 bus.

  When I got off in Harwood Road I was about halfway between my flat and Phil’s place. Which way will my feet take me? I thought. I watched them take me back to Moore Park Road and over to Eel Brook Common. No, I thought, not with the smell of sex with Brian still on me. I turned back and went up Harwood to Fulham Broadway and home to Sir Cliff Richard and the Spanish dancer on black velvet and Hilary’s latest happy news, if she was there, of the Alpha course. She wasn’t there, probably out laughing it up with some happy-clappy Jesus crowd. My room looked small, the way childhood rooms look when you come back to them as a grown-up. There was Hope on the wall. I bought that print after Troy broke my nose and I moved out. Pathetic.

  I had a shower, put on fresh jeans and a sweatshirt, thought about going to Phil’s place, then decided not to just yet. I put on a jacket and went out to look for Hope of a Tree. WH Smith didn’t have it so I went back to the Fulham Road and over to Nomad where I bought the one copy they had. ‘How has this been selling?’ I asked.

  ‘We had two copies,’ said the woman at the till. ‘Sold the other one a couple of weeks ago.’

  I didn’t want to go directly home so I went past the North End Road to Caffe Nero at the corner of Vanston Place. It was busy but I got myself an Americano and found an empty table by the window where I could start Hope of a Tree while drinking my coffee. The day was sunny and the Fulham Road was thronged with people doing their Saturday things. With my book and my coffee I felt as if I was in a little island of no hurry and no bother where I could let my mind be quiet for a while.

  I opened the book. The dedication was To the memory of my father, J. B. Ockerman. The epigraph was from Job 14: 7:

  For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut

  down, that it will sprout again, and that

  the tender branch thereof will not cease.

  Well, I thought, that’s optimistic. Then I started chapter 1 and there’s Cynthia on Clifton Bridge thinking about jumping and here comes Sam to talk her out of it. OK, I thought, you can get a good love story out of a beginning like that. Then I noticed a woman who’d just sat down at the next table watching me. She was about my age, not bad looking, maybe a little too much jaw, dark brown hair in a Louise Brooks cut. Black polo neck, little pink leather jacket, black trousers and Birkenstock. Very sleek, very cool and sure of herself.

  She gave me a sort of knowing leer and said, ‘Enjoying it?’

  ‘Just started it,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Had to,’ she said. ‘I was married to the author.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know him?’ she said.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ I was surprised to hear myself say that but I tend to take against sleek women on sight.

  ‘Really!’ she said. ‘He usually goes for the intellectual type. Which you don’t, at first glance, appear to be.’

  ‘It could be that he’s looking to change his luck,’ I said.

  ‘Which way?’ she said.

  I stood up and took half a step towards her. She suddenly looked less sure of herself. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘You’d like to continue this discussion outside?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Phil has come a long way down the female evolutionary ladder. This conversation would seem to be at an end. I suggest that you go back to your book and I to my cappuccino.’

  ‘While you still have your teeth,’ I said. She stayed quiet then, and when she picked up her cup it rattled in the saucer. I was amazed at my behaviour and quite pleased with it. Ms Ex-Wife finished her cappuccino quickly and left, avoiding eye contact the whole time.

  I sat there with my book but I wasn’t reading it; I was thinking about what I’d said: ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ Just like that. It’s funny how you can have something in your mind but not know it until you hear yourself say it. So that was it – I was Phil’s girlfriend. One more thing for me to deal with. Not simple. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be Phil’s girlfriend. I imagined the two of us walking down the street; did we look like a couple? Yes? No? OK, I thought, I’ll go see him but first I’ll read some more of his book.

  Sam talks Cynthia down off the bridge and they go to the camera obscura. ‘It’s a dark chamber,’ says Sam, ‘but you get a clear bright view of things from here.’ I imagined him saying that in the kind of film where you can see what’s coming long before it arrives. Sam – he’s American – would be played by Jim Carrey without his usual gurning and pretty soon we’d find out in a flashback that he’d been contemplating suicide after being dumped by Jennifer, played by Emily Watson. Cynthia would be Kate Winslet. An American film shot on location here.

  ‘Another dark chamber?’ says Cynthia as they start taking their clothes off at Sam’s place on page 17. They get through the sex pretty quickly because that part is only foreplay for a whole lot of talk about books and music and painting and movies. With quotes from here and there in italics. Italics always tire me out. I had a second Americano because I was getting sleepy. Then I got up and walked d
own to the New King’s Road and over to the river. I found myself a bench in Bishop’s Park and sat there in the sunshine watching a crew rowing down the river with the cox yelling at them. For a while I just sat there trying to let my mind go blank but the book was in my hands and I kept thinking, Am I this guy’s girlfriend? It’s always a bad sign when you start thinking in italics. I read a little more but by then I knew I wasn’t sure I could finish the book, it was too boring.

  So where are we then? I thought. Am I his girlfriend because I feel that he needs me? Women who try to save drunks or gays hardly ever straighten them out. Was I going to be a boring-writer-saver? Phil’s wife told him he was a failure when she divorced him. I pictured her saying that, sneerer that she was. Maybe she brought out the failure in him – that could happen with a guy like Phil. Could I bring out the non-failure? Did I even want to? I spun around a couple of times deciding whether to head for Phil’s place or mine, then I shook my head and went home.

  Back at the flat I breathed in the stale air and saw Hilary’s Bible on the coffee table in the living room. I picked it up and it fell open to John, 11. My eye went to Verse 43:

  And when he thus had spoken, he

  cried with a loud voice, Lazarus,

  come forth.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘gimme a break.’ Then I thought I’d better check Phil’s novel again to see if there were signs of life. I made myself a coffee, put on The Essential Billie Holiday, and settled down to carry on with Cynthia and Sam.

  Cynthia is tall and blonde; Sam is short and dark. No surprises there. Cynthia is an assistant editor at the Raven Press; Sam is a painter. Cynthia’s contemplating suicide because she’s been dumped by the man she’s been with for two years and Sam is still emotionally entangled with his wife who killed herself three years ago. Of course Sam talks her down off the bridge and pretty soon they’re sleeping together regularly but they don’t enjoy it all that much – they’re both holding on to the past and they can’t let go of the bad experiences they’ve had. The story drags along with a lot of moaning and groaning on both sides until finally the two of them are on Clifton Bridge again looking down into the Avon Gorge but they don’t jump. They decide to go their separate ways and search for new roots elsewhere. I wished they had jumped. So there I was back at the question of whether or not I wanted to be a boring-writer-saver. He wasn’t boring to talk to and he wasn’t a boring lover but still … Come to think of it, Brian was a better painter now than he’d been before he took up with me.