Tango A Fable

In the autumn of 1990, twenty-two-year-old James Douglas finds himself in an idyllic relationship with his young fiancee Jane. But he begins to experience disturbing psychic illusions - phenomena which medical science cannot explain - and when he meets Camille, a narcissistic temptress with a veiled past, he is lured by her increasingly erratic and bizarre behaviour, into a dangerous game: a cerebral tango.

In attempting to unravel her motives, James will come to understand his own, but in doing so, his obsession will serve to imperil not only his psychological existence, but his very life as well.

Exploring themes of sexual narcissism, conscience, the illusion of free will - and the nature of love - this rich and imaginative novel by figuratio takes the reader on a psychological adventure spanning two continents and the nightmarish tableaux of a tortured mind.

Tango

A Fable

By figuratio

Copyright 2012 figuratio

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Acknowledgements

* T & T Interpreting Services Sydney Australia.

Special thanks to my wife and children

for their unwavering support.

Cover photo: 'Clementine Observes the Moon, Solar Corona and Venus'.

(Photo Courtesy NASA)

* Due to ebook formatting constraints, diacritical marks have been

deliberately omitted from French and Spanish words, and Spanish

punctuation marks removed from Spanish language dialogue.

This is the author's decision (in order to provide an optimal reading

experience across all e-formats) and is not an omission by T & T Interpreting Services.

This is a work of fiction.

All characters and incidents portrayed in this story are

entirely fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter One

Meeting Jane

A TARDIS

A storm's Parthian shot

A disturbance down below: the caterwaul

Chapter Two

Verbrugghen; an apology; 'Resistance is futile'

Victorians in the Queen's building

An ad for a piano

Ross washes in

Bearing gifts: the Jeux d'eau

Ivy in the room; the ghosts of Henry James

Clementine

Another gift

An explanation; it wasn't Clementine

Chapter Three

Laryngeal echolocation

Estella's 'predicament'

The story behind Estella

A surprise for Ross

I offer to pay

Austinmer; a wentletrap

The sick buyer

Chapter Four

The painting of Narcissus; Jane upset

At John and Clementine's

'We are all we have'

A shrunken head

The nature of evil

The illusion of free will

Chapter Five

A letter from Estella

Desiccated leather

Estella brings Camille to visit

Chapter Six

Byram Grammar

A moustache and a Naevus of Ota

Another letter from Estella

I am not mad

The story of Francis

Chapter Seven

Summoned to Camille's

An instrumental reunion

Camille's proposal

'Bring me a present'

Parthenocissus quinquefolia

An attempt at cloning

My choice: the schoolgirl

Chapter Eight

Succubus

A sarabande of images

A tryst in the garden

Her mysterious visitor

Captured souls and captured birds

An out-of-tune woman

A wombat in the Garden of Eden

A pair of lorikeets, a violet and a promise

Chapter Nine

A wounded demigoddess

Paul

An armada of prawns

Ripening fruit

A modern Odalisque

Chapter Ten

By the spilling fountain

Patterns; a saintly celibacy

A desire to kill

Fading Jane

Ravel's ghost; a bird in the hand; makeup

Chapter Eleven

Accused from all sides

A further intelligence report

The idea of an experiment

An unexpected result

Murphy's move

What Jane had to say

Her joke in the moonlight

Chapter Twelve

A conversation with Estella

Flights in different directions

October 1981

A prison guard's story

Spanish love-songs

Chapter Thirteen

Posadas and an English couple

El Dorado and the treasure map

An 'X' marks the spot

The mask in the play

A fantasia for cello and an automaton

Chapter Fourteen

A table for two

Nearly run over

A chase

A silver flash and a breaking storm

The last pieces of the puzzle

A chat in Miraflores

Meeting Jane

Tango

A Fable

To Amanda

Chapter One

She was standing near the Bangalow palm. I could see her waiting, in the clear air and a late afternoon sunlight. By some coincidence, a ray of this last light of the day highlighted her face. It was a face that showed a lost look - or was it surprise? She wore no makeup, and the rest of her was in shadow.

How long she had been there - how long she had been watching my approach - was uncertain, because the street is long and straight, but I rarely looked ahead in those days. The terrace house still stands near the end, but the palm is no longer there. Not much else has changed, except for the people. Sometimes I revisit this quiet little street, tucked away as it is, around the corner from the madness of Enmore Road and the rest of the city. I revisit at around this same time of the late afternoon, on a clear day. Just to recapture the moment, just once again, but always - always - the moment slips away from me, despite the clarity of everything else.

Elusive; nothing now, as it was. All else - all that has gone on - seems tawdry.

About ten paces from her, I happened to look up. I must have guessed who she was, and she must have guessed who I was, because her face in all its openness, relaxed into an expression of hopeful familiarity, though we were still strangers. The lost look slipped away. Had it even been there a moment ago? And then we were close, with nothing between us. She put her hand up to brush away some errant strands of long chestnut hair: strands that had floated up, gossamer-like, in the movement of the cooling air around us. I probably smiled - I can't recall - and she smiled too, and she looked up at me and she said, 'James?' just like that, and then I knew I was home, without being able to say exactly how; not at the time.

*

'Yes, that's me. Henry James Douglas. But I'm known as James, or Jamie.'

Now she silently offered her hand to me. I reached out and we shook, and an awkward sense of unnecessary formality struck me: a formality which didn't suit. But her pressure, though light, was reassuringly tangible, where everything else seemed otherwise.

'I'm Jane. Jane Ashton.'

'I hope you haven't been waiting here long, Jane.' I said it that way to hear myself say her name. The zephyr wafted up some more strands of her hair, and she laughed a little as she tamed them again and said that no she hadn't been here long, that she already had the keys from Ross, he'd given them to her earlier, but he had to go out again, he would be back tomorrow. And did you know, it's lovely here, so quiet, a bit like home?

Her voice: soft and vague; her hand distractedly playing with her hair. And looking down the street past me, as she said this, and I wondered what she saw. It gave me an opportunity to look at her more, so I did. Long, straight hair parted in the middle, and covering much of her forehead, and framing a face whose smile was unselfconscious. A face that could have been conceited, but was not. And then the eyes, grey or green, looked up at me and away again, and the smile stayed, now conscious of itself, or of me.

A moment passed when I did not know what to say. Had she been standing outside waiting for me? Or simply looking around, to see the place she had come to, this autumn in 1990, to live some of her life?

I said, 'Well, step into the TARDIS and I'll fix us some drinks, if you like.'

She gave me a quizzical look, but I saved the explanation for later.

The terrace house was a curious illusion. On the outside, it was tall and narrow, and a dull colour, an off-white that was more off than white. Up against its neighbours, which stood shoulder to shoulder (still heralding, but only en masse, the forgotten grandeur of a lost Victorian era), it looked compressed. There was a balcony on the upper floor, protected by an ornate, black-painted ironwork railing. The balcony, being partly enclosed, only added to the sense of compression of the house, which was further threatened by the Bangalow palm in the tiny front yard, behind a matching ironwork railing with a gate that had long since ceased to be of any practical use. There was much in the house that had long since ceased to be of any practical use, but I supposed Jane would find this out for herself, too late. To my advantage.

On the inside, once you stepped in, things were different. Space expanded, so that the outside of the house didn't appear to be able to contain the inside, a faintly ridiculous state of affairs. Thus I came to call it the TARDIS. And on some stormy nights, with the machinery-like sound of the Bangalow palm fronds waving around against the roof, flailing like the crazy arms of a lunatic, the house really did seem to be like a TARDIS, about to take off into another dimension, the lights inside flickering because of something wrong with the wires, and the roof rattling because of something loose up there.

There was a hallway that ran from the front door, down the length of the house, and it ended by opening into a small kitchen at the rear, from which the back door led out to a small ivy-covered courtyard. This was enclosed on three sides by ivy-covered walls, and on the fourth side by an ivy-covered fence. It was a museum for ivy: a mix of both true ivy and Virginia creeper. And old pots, rusted tools, snails, and a wooden bench on which to sit and talk.

Just enough space on it for two, and I wish Ross weren't here.

I looked in the fridge. No food.

'Do you like beer, Jane?' Again, that sound of her name, an echo from before. Ashton, that's her other name. Remember. English? Irish? No, sounds English. Like Jane Austen. I looked around from the fridge. She was still there, seated at the kitchen table. She had removed her coat, the brown suede one with the white fur around the collar and the sleeves, the one I still remember her in. 'I'm afraid that's all we've got.'

She made some slight indication that said don't go to any trouble, and mentioned beer would be fine, so I handed her a glass and opened a stubby of beer for her, and then one for myself, and sat down opposite.

'So, welcome. And . . . cheers. You found the place okay? No troubles? The traffic's a killer this time of day.'

'Yes, it was easy. The taxi . . . would have been too hard otherwise . . . my things . . .' The voice, still soft and vague. Fragments of what she was saying.

A taxi. Of course. Stupid me.

'If I'd known, I could have asked Ross to pick you up. He has a car of sorts. You might have seen it. Or heard it.'

I never had any intention of asking Ross, but she didn't know that. Already I was peeved that she had met him first, that he had helped her with her things. He and I had been looking for another flatmate to help with the rent, and Ross said he knew, through one of his ex-girlfriends, of a fine arts student looking for accommodation.

That student, Jane, now pursed her lips in a contained smile, and said, 'That's okay, James. Ross was saying he had to go to Victoria this weekend, something to do with one of his friends - Matty, is it? I think that's who he said.'

I nodded, and silently gave thanks. She continued, almost dismayed, 'Ross won't be back till late Sunday night.'

I did my best to conceal a sudden smile, which threatened to break out into a flooding relief of laughter, and made to cover my face. Then breezily, expansively, 'Well . . . then . . . that leaves the whole weekend, doesn't it?' Waving the beer around as I said this. 'I mean, for you to settle in.' And made the attempt to look honest-serious.

But Jane was innocent, so she didn't read anything else into that, or else she was being polite, and pretending not to read anything.

'Ross told me you were a musician.'

'I'm studying music at the Con. Piano.'

'Con?'

'The Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Students call it the 'Con' for short. It's just next to the Royal Botanic Gardens. In Macquarie Street.'

'I don't know Sydney.'

'Well, in that case I'll have to show you. So you don't get lost.'

She was amused by that. I was making progress.

'I have a thing to go to tomorrow, at the Con. Visiting maestro: a masterclass.'

'Sounds impressive.'

'Well, it only goes for an hour. So why not come with me, and I could show you the Con, and some of Sydney, if you like?'

'I'd love that. Thanks.'

We finished our beers and I said, 'Hungry?'

Jane was; I wasn't.

'I'm starved,' Jane said.

'So am I. Why don't we go and have something to eat in Newtown? You choose; I'll eat anything, I don't care. You don't mind a walk?'

'No, no, I'm used to walking. The farm, you know, I grew up on it. We walked everywhere . . .' Jane had come from Wagga Wagga, from her father's grain-farm, a one hundred hectare property about half an hour's drive out of Wagga, on the road to Narrandera.

Then: 'What was that you said, about a . . . TARDIS . . . is it?' The puzzled look she had was fetching. She was rinsing her glass at the sink, face turned around towards me.

I explained to her about the illusion, and this pleased her, and I could see her looking around as we passed back down the hallway, looking at all the space on the inside, before we got outside.

'People are like that.'

I wasn't sure I heard this - she had murmured it, almost to herself, while adjusting the collar of her suede coat. I closed the front door, turned, and was with her again, and we started walking down the street towards Enmore Road.

*

'Darlinghurst Gaol?'

'The Old Darlinghurst Gaol,' I explained. It had been converted, long ago, from the gaol of the 1800s, into The East Sydney Technical College, which would, five years later, become the National Art School. A sandstone masterpiece, for its early inmates to gaze upon just before swinging from the end of a rope.

'So I'll be a prisoner.'

'A pretty prisoner, though.'

She had such a pleasing face that it sounded trite to call it pretty: it required a better term of description. But it just came out of me, that phrase, inadvertently revealing (to both of us) what I felt about her. There was a silence in which I couldn't tell what her reaction was, or if indeed she were showing any. The light was fading fast, the sun having set behind a premature horizon in the form of banks of cloud to the west, and so I looked, but it was unclear if she were a willing prisoner or not.

Then I said, 'When does your term start?' We crossed the street.

'Next week. Tuesday. I think I've cut it a bit fine. I don't even know where the College is.' She was moving her hands, trying to explain with them. She sounded animated; energetic. Walking briskly in the chill air, with a clear purpose, but I wanted her to slow down.

'May I get lost with you?'

Our shoulders touched momentarily.

Jane laughed, clearly amused. 'Of course, of course. That would be nice. I wouldn't mind that.' The words rushed out as fast as the pace she was setting: such a confident pace. 'After your masterclass at the Con?'

'Yes. To make a day of it, so to speak. I promise to act like a gentleman.'

I felt Jane's eyes on me: another quizzical look, trying to work me out, as if I had appeared out of another time, or else was being facetious. But I was serious. Her pace slowed a fraction, more thoughtful, as we passed by the Victorian era in the street.

Then we were in Enmore Road, headed towards King Street in Newtown, and the traffic noise made conversation difficult, so Jane and I walked on silently, through a universe masquerading as chaos - a chaos of lights, of strangers and of noise. The whole, ceaseless in its seemingly-random activity, but the parts steady in their unknowable courses towards their unfathomable destinies: a sort of entanglement. An entanglement of future and past, with present. We found sanctuary inside a small eatery I had been to before, and ordered some food, and conversation was again possible, for the place had not yet filled with diners.

'Thanks for helping me, James. I feel rather like a fish out of water at the moment.'

A mermaid?

'My close friends call me Jamie.'

She gave an odd embarrassed-pleased look, might have squirmed a little, and said, her voice a little higher in pitch now, 'So. Jamie. You have no piano? I didn't see one at the house. Don't you need to practise?' Resting her chin on her hand now. Cute.

'These days I do all my practice at the Con. I have a Steinway - it's my mother's - but it won't fit in the terrace house. A full-sized grand. It plays beautifully.'

'A Steinway - that's a good one, isn't it?'

'One of the better makes. But I'll have to sell it.'

'That's a shame.'

'Yes. It's in storage at the moment. If you look on the fridge in the kitchen, you'll see a photo of it. I've put it up for sale at the Con. My father gave it to my mother as a present just after they were married. Cost him a small fortune, it did. He had it brought out from Scotland. He said, If that doesn't please her, nothing will. Of course, it did please her.'

'Your mother . . . does she still play?'

'She died some time back.'

'I'm sorry.' Then she said, 'Your father must be a generous man.'

'He died too, not long ago. You know, my mother made him the way he was: generous, that is. He would not have been the man he was, without her; he said she taught him how to love. And she taught me to play the piano, from an early age: she was a music teacher before she got married. The notes I played must have done something, because I'm still playing.'

'And you want to be a pianist? Professionally?' She lightened, and so I must have relaxed, because her smile broadened as she said this. Clear green eyes and a broad smile.

'I'm already a pianist. But professionally, I don't know . . . That is, I don't have any great ambitions to become some famous concert performer. There are other things in life I want to do.'

'Such as?'

I looked at her and grinned, and hoped that she would also get my meaning.

Just then the door opened, allowing me to avoid the potential problem of providing a detailed, yet subtle, explanation for the other things I wanted to do, such as bedding her there and then, and a rush of wind and traffic noise entered. On our way, the zephyr had produced a gentle wind, which had in turn given birth to a mild breeze, the progeny of which were stronger, more fitful, gusts. A change in weather seemed to be on the way. Outside, little eddying whirlwinds of scrap chased each other, all wondrously formed in exactly the way they had been destined to form, from the randomness of their subatomic particles. As we ate, the outside chaos was admitted more frequently, because of people entering the little establishment, which was popular with the Sydney University crowd.

'And how about you, Jane?'

She said nothing, and had a curious look on her face, but I felt the pressure of her foot against my leg. And it was only Friday.

We got back just as the first large, fitful drops of rain started down from a black and moonless sky. I let Jane in through the front door: aware, for a brief moment, of her sudden proximity as she passed me - a transient and unexpected flash of animal excitement. And followed her in, taking in her scent, and reaching for, and fumbling with the light switch. Nothing happened for two or three seconds, but then - whether by chance, or by means of some hidden chain of events - the lights came on. The fronds of the Bangalow palm began to flail against the TARDIS.

I said, 'Don't be surprised if the lights go off tonight. The landlord hasn't fixed the problem yet.'

Jane viewed me with amused disbelief.

I added, in a hopeful way, 'We've got candles.'

Please stay, don't escape.

I gave her the torch, just in case, and started searching for candles in the kitchen cupboards, to prove to her I was being truthful. She still had on her suede coat, but it was now open, and she was standing there, with her hands in her pockets, one knee resting on the seat of a kitchen chair. She was wearing white pantyhose.

'Are you missing home yet?' I fumbled, and dropped a couple of the candles I had found, and they rolled away on the floor.

'Not yet. I've only just arrived, Jamie.'

'That's good.'

I dropped the rest of the candles on the table, and bent to pick up the two on the floor: these had rolled under the chair she was kneeling on. As I knelt and chased the uncooperative candles, I looked up at Jane.

She hadn't changed position; hadn't moved away from my closeness. She was smiling down on me, hair dangling down either side of her amused face, and it was obvious she was energised by something, I couldn't tell, but it was not by the approaching storm, and her knee was so close I could have kissed it. Just then, an explosion of light; and she put her hands up to her ears, little-girl fashion. Then a sharp preliminary crack, followed by the sonic boom of torn air, that rattled the windows and threatened to bring down the building, and she was laughing and rocking her head to and fro, in mock terror, her hands still up to the sides of her head, and myself deaf, but my vision enhanced.

We stood in her doorway, on the upper floor, looking in at her room. The storm was retreating, its thunder more distant now, and the wind had died to an almost preternatural calm as the sudden downpour eased. The curtainless north facing window, which was directly opposite, over the single bed,