From: Takashi Matsuoka- Hawaii

Subject: The Tango Lesson

Date: 4/april/2000
The Tango Lesson
My life is like your life: What I am is purely an accident of birth.
I was born in Buenos Aires, the son of a tango man. My father lived to
dance. So of course, he had no material wealth. What true dancer does?
He had sharp clothes, a fashionable hat, an American convertible. This was not
material wealth, these were the bare necessities, because tango women adore
style, and how can a man be a tango man without tango women?
In those days, my father could have any woman he wanted, and so had
transcended the bonds of commitment. Or so he thought. Until, one breezy
spring afternoon, while cruising through a rich section of the city, top
down, hat cocked, he happened to look up at the balcony of a rich man's
house. At that precise moment, my mother stepped out to gaze at the sky.
One look and he was gone. That's all. You doubt me? That is because
you don't yet know the tango. When you do, you will be ashamed of your
doubt, I promise you. And I promise, too, I forgive you already. He looked,
and his heart was hers, forever. Nothing else mattered. This is how it is
with those who dance with their whole being. Are they not the only ones who
truly live?
A tango man knows people from all walks of life. He asked and soon
discovered the identity of his damsel. She was the only child of the
Assistant Minister of Justice. The marrow in his bones froze. This was the
era when the Ministry of Justice was a place of torture, murder, rape,
mutilation, dismemberment. The angel of his heart was the daughter of a
monster.
He had two choices. He could forget her. He could move toward her.
He couldn't forget her. He tried. The music dreamed of love, his head
snapped like gunshots, his legs flashed whips, lightning, dangerous
caresses, the same as before. Yet at the end of every tango, he didn't see
the woman he was with, he saw only her.
He moved toward her. There was nothing else he could do.
Those who knew her told him she was a classical pianist, that music was
all she lived for. That her father, the Assistant Minister of Justice,
loved her more than life itself.
That she was 35, and still a virgin.
When he heard this, he wept shamelessly. And pledged his eternal love to
her, to all who would listen. His friends feared for his sanity and his
safety, especially his safety. Many in their group of artists, musicians
and dancers had already disappeared because of unknown slights to the
regime. Find another, his friends urged him, someone safer, someone more
beautiful.
But hers was the only beauty he could see.
He moved toward her in a way only a tango man could move. Instinctively,
naturally, perfectly: He bought a violin case.
He would have bought the violin, too, and the bow, and rosin, if he'd had
the money. The more complete the picture, the better. But he didn't have
the money. All he could afford to purchase at the pawn shop was the case.
Then he began driving past that balcony, at just the time when he knew
she would be taking in the sky after piano practice. He drove past, hat
cocked, top down, the violin case prominently on the seat beside him.
She didn't see him the first time he went by. Nor the second, third,
fourth times. It always took her several breaths of sky before she returned
to earth after playing the piano.
Tango is not mere emotion, tango is discipline, too. She didn't look
down. Never mind. He drove past and never looked up.
Finally, it must have been the seventh, eighth or ninth time, she glanced
at the street below and saw complete incongruity: A red Pontiac
convertible, the top down, at the wheel an obvious tango man, a self-styled
charmer who preys on women's vanity -- so far, everything made sense --
then, there on the seat beside him, a violin and the score of a Beethoven
composition. A violin? The music of Beethoven? Could a man who appeared
so shallow have such depth?
A minister in a totalitarian government can uncover anything about
anyone. A beautiful 35-year-old virgin in Buenos Aires society, by
definition, has uncovered nothing. Some inkling of what her father did for
a living kept her from asking him for help. Instead, she asked one of her
maids, the oldest, most grandmotherly one.
Grandmotherly in appearance, but in her heart, a wild young girl in a red
dress, dancing, always dancing. So, of course, the maid knew my father. I
do not know such a man, my lady, but I will ask those who may. This is what
she told my mother. At the first opportunity, she told my father, You must
leave the city at once. If the daughter has noticed you, then soon, so will
the father, for he protects her as a miser protects his treasure. And for
him to see you is for you to see your death.
My father said, I will not run away from love, that is not the tango.
For love, I dance to the very edge, and beyond.
Yes, yes, the maid said. That is what you tell your dance partners. I
am speaking of life and death.
So am I, said my father.
The next day, the maid told my mother that the man in the convertible was
known to frequent a certain cafe, and this was all she knew. Even doing
this much could cost the maid her life, but she was willing to risk it for
the sake of the tango, for love that dances to the very edge. That very
afternoon, my mother did something she had never before done in her life.
She lied to her father, told him she was visiting her friend, the cellist,
and went to the cafe the maid had mentioned.
She found my father seated alone at a table, intently focused on the
score of Beethoven's last quartet, Opus 135 in F Major. (He was holding it
right side up. That's all he knew about the score.) Then she did something
else she had never done before. She approached a man to whom she had not
been formally introduced.
She said, That is one of my favorite pieces.
He said, Oh, you too are a violinist?
Piano, she said, I play the transcription for keyboard. I love the
contrapuntal texture, the unpredictable harmonies. And she looked at him,
waiting for him to say something.
What could he say? He knew nothing of Beethoven, less than nothing about
Opus 135. But music is music, and he knew dance music like he knew his own
heart. He smiled and said, What I love is the instability, the turbulence,
the effortless motion.
Never before had she heard anyone express so well the unspoken fervor of
her own heart. She sat down. He took her hand in his at the same moment
she took his hand in hers. I believe it was at that moment -- moments are
all there are, so we must treasure them as we find them -- that she became
my mother and he became my father. Yes, the physical action, the
conception, took place at a later time. I am speaking of the spirit.
She called her father, told him she had fallen in love, would return
after her honeymoon, and hung up as he began to object. They were married
in a civil ceremony that evening. For three weeks, they did only two
things. They made love, and they recovered from making love. Miraculously,
the police and the military, distracted by serious civil unrest in another
part of the country, could not spare sufficient resources to discover her
whereabouts.
Not so miraculously, she made a discovery of her own.
My father awoke to find the bed beside him cold. This was late morning
of the twenty-first day. When he went into the living room of the rented
beach cottage, he found his violin case open and, of course, empty, as empty
as the day he bought it. My mother was gone.
She returned in shame to her parents' house, and confessed everything to
them. How it was that my father did not disappear into the bowels of the
Ministry of Justice I can only guess. Perhaps the Assistant Minister of
Justice could not do to his own daughter what he had done to countless
others. He could not make her a widow, he could not orphan her unborn child.
My father tried to speak to her, of the deepest truth he knew, the truth
of his love for her. My mother wouldn't hear it. All she understood was
the empty violin case, the lies, the seduction.
There was a civil divorce. When I was born, some months later, the
question of custody did not arise. I grew up in the house of the Assistant
Minister of Justice, in my mother's house. I saw my father twice a year:
On my birthday and at Christmas. Each time, he was treated with utter
disdain by my mother's family, and with cold politeness by my mother. Once,
when I was almost a man, I asked him, Are you so hungry you will endure such
insults just to eat? He smiled and said, If I do not endure the insults, I
cannot see the lady.
Love, I decided, was a weak, pathetic thing, and so was my father.
When I was eighteen, I entered the military academy. My grandfather
envisioned a career for me in the air force. It didn't matter to me. The
military, business, government, any of the careers open to the elite was
fine. I would take my place. I would continue.
On the eve of my commissioning as an officer, my father called and asked
me to visit him. He was in the hospital, fatally ill.
I went wearing my uniform. I had seen little of him in recent years,
finding reasons to be away from home during his biannual visits. If this
was to be the last time, then I wanted him to see the man that I had made of
myself, despite being the son of a weakling.
I found him sunken into a hospital bed, his skin gray, his flesh wasted.
But on his lips, the same easy smile, in his eyes, the same sparkle as of
old. It was then that he told me, for the first time, the story of his love
for my mother, how he saw her on the balcony of her father's house, how he
bought the violin case, how he loved her from the very first moment he knew
of her existence. He asked me to talk to her, to ask her to come to his
side for the last time.
This I did.
My mother was reluctant, but I told her that my father was dying, that he
had last words he wished to say to her, that he wished to hear her last
words to him, if she had any. So she came.
I waited outside while my father and mother spent three hours alone in
the hospital room. I don't know what they spoke of. When I went back in,
my father was dead. My mother was holding his hand. On her lips was his
easy smile.
She said, He never stopped loving me.
He never did, I agreed. Did you not know it?
She said, I knew it. A woman always knows when a man loves her. She
began to weep. What I didn't know is that I never stopped loving him. All
these years, I kept seeing the violin case, I kept hearing the lies. I
never saw what was in the case, what was behind the lies.
I said, There was nothing in the case, and nothing in his words but lies.
She said, There was no violin in the case, but the case was not empty,
and the lies were not everything.
What was in the case? I asked. And what more was there than lies?
There were no more words from her. She became incoherent. Twenty-four
hours after my father's death, my mother lost her sanity, and had to be
confined.
During leaves from duty, I would visit her. She was always calm and
seemingly alert. She spoke with great insight and precision. But she spoke
of places, people and times that had no relationship to the recognizable world.
Three years later, she returned to herself overnight. She was released
from the hospital and went home. As soon as she was there, she packed a
suitcase of clothing and took a taxi to my house. She asked, like a child,
if she could live with me.
My grandfather and grandmother tried in vain to get her to return home.
She answered their pleas with gentle laughter and said, But I don't know who
you are.
I believe she didn't. She had forgotten them, by choice, and chose
instead to remember my father.
My mother lived with me for five years, until her own death. She was
happy at the end. I truly believe this.
Why do I speak of these things to you? Because if I did not, you would
not know why I am tango man instead of an air force officer. And if you do
not know, then you might think tango is about dance steps. You might decide
to proceed based on false assumptions. We should dance together only if you
accept that instability, turbulence, effortless motion, are the essence of
my tango.
So, now, I see from your grace, your rhythm, your courage, that you are
no less a dancer than I. But I do not ask why you have come to me. I ask
only, Who will teach this lesson?
I?
You?
We two together?
The tango itself?
We hold our heads proudly, neither yielding to the other. Not yet. When
we yield, we will yield together, or not at all.
You know how I came to tango. I do not yet know how you came to it. The
advantage is yours, as it should be, for you are the lady.
We place our arms just so. Our hands rest lightly, thus.
Your hips, my hips.
Your heart, my heart.
Music that is ours alone, no matter the multitude around us.
So.
Now.
hours after my father's death, my mother lost her sanity, and had to be
confined.
During leaves from duty,