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,