Free My Tango With Barbara Strozzi by Russell Hoban Page A

voice.
    ‘I meant to say Bertha,’ I said. ‘You must be Hilary.’
    ‘And who are you?’
    ‘Phil Ockerman, I’m a friend of Bertha’s.’
    ‘Odd that you couldn’t remember her name.’
    ‘Anyhow, is she available?’
    ‘No, she isn’t. Goodbye.’
    ‘Thanks so much,’ I said to the silence.
    I was sitting in my TV chair then with my hand on the round part at the end of the bat handle. I moved the handle around as if it were the control stick of an aeroplane. Then I wrote down the telephone number of Jimmy Maloney’s, put on a jacket and went out to the Fulham Road.
    I stationed myself near the bus stop diagonally opposite the club and looked at the big man standing in the doorway. Dark suit, dark polo neck. Did he have a plaster on his head? Couldn’t see one. Took my mobile out of my pocket and dialled the number. ‘Jimmy Maloney’s,’ said a growly voice over a lot of background noise.
    ‘Is Troy Wallis on the door tonight?’ I said.
    ‘Who’s this?’
    ‘Nobody he knows. Somebody gave me a message to give him. Is he there?’
    The bartender or whoever it was hung up. I kept my eyes on the door and saw a man who looked like a bartender come to where the bouncer was and talk briefly with him. So that was Troy Wallis. About six four, fourteen or fifteen stone. Right, thanks very much.
    I’d read in the paper that Mercury would be low in the west and Venus out of sight. Not too comfortablewith that. The moon was in its first quarter, the vernal equinox only three days away. I looked up at the sky and made out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Polaris, Cassiopeia, and Draco. Draco looked aggressive. I was too ignorant to identify the other constellations. I felt uneasy with the forces affecting me and longed for some guidance from Catriona.
    I thought of the Louisville Slugger leaning in its corner, saw the name
Barbara Strozzi
engraved on it. I hadn’t listened to her music for what seemed a long time and now I hungered for it. I walked home through the Friday-night noise in the Fulham Road, then through the quiet of the path between the common and the District Line. An Upminster train rumbled and clattered past, people printed on the windows as on a tin toy. Crowded but lonely, that train. Maybe all the passengers were headed for a pleasant evening or even a good time; but the train was a lonely tin toy.
    At home I put on the
Arie, Cantate & Lamenti
disc. The voice of Mona Spagele came out of the silence with ‘L’Eraclito Amoroso’. Up and up it circled, obedient to Venus and the moon, to the planetary spring tides and neap tides of love and the death of love. The song was a lament but the beauty of it was Strozzi’s thank-offering for being alive. One doesn’t beg for constant guidance, I thought; one gives oneself and takes what comes.
    Well, yes. That had a good sound to it but what did it mean exactly? Getting up from my chair to pour myselfa drink I knocked the top book off the nearest stack:
Walt Whitman: The Complete Poems
. As it hit the floor it fell open to pages 462 and 463. I picked it up and read:
    A Noiseless, Patient Spider
    A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
    Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
    It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
    Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
    And you, O my soul where you stand,
    In measureless oceans of space,
    Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
    Till the bridge you need will be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
    Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my Soul.
    ‘You’re the man, Walt,’ I said, and as a change from Glenfiddich pour’d myself a large Laphroaig. While getting myself around the smoky peat-bog flavour I considered where next to fling my gossamer. Constanze had written a song about being true to your craziness. OK, I thought, and rang the Wimbledon number. A young