Outside, the lake is a smooth lacquered round tray, ebony dark and sheeny with the twin spheres of duplicated blue moons above and below. I walk sweaterless around its grassy margin: the very slight chill in the breeze makes me think of the long cold to come — even in summer, the air holds the promise of snow and the water molecules are waiting in readiness, hands outstretched to clutch four neighbour hands, to take up the frozen positions of their country dance, the hexagonal musical statues of winter.
I sit back on a padded bench in the mirrored upstairs room, fingers twirling the stem of a wine goblet, listening intently and watching with deliberately fuzzy focus. Our host is a slender, dapper figure, handsome, upright, snowy-haired. He moves a little stiffly, but with an obvious intent to catch the insistent rhythms of this Rodriguez song. I make a mental note to accept if he invites me to dance. I like a man who enjoys the music. Most of the others, on the floor, are occupied with the demands of their figures: their milonguero-style giros here; their volcadas there — the women, in their printed slip dresses and spaghetti-strap tops lean precariously suspended from their leaders’ right arms. They are too busy to listen and the tango plays on unheeded as I watch one of them lead his follower to step round into a parada. She steps with a slight hesitation over his extended leg and then he pulls her back so that she ends at right angles to him, facing away from him towards the bench where I sit, carefully lifting her leg up and leaning in towards him slightly so that they can touch thigh to thigh for a gancho. Their eyes are down, watching the figure, and his brow is furrowed slightly with concentration, his arm muscles tense with the gentle effort. It is like watching a badly-dubbed film. Their movements coincide neither with the pulse, nor with the rhythm of any instrument, nor with the larger musical arcs of the phrases of the song. “For them, the music is more like a kind of backdrop, a background noise; they don’t really pay much attention”, one of my neighbours on the bench says, shrugging her shoulders.
There is one person who is definitely paying attention to the music. The DJ, a genial chubby bearded man, is hovering by the computer. His girlfriend has come to sit beside me. She has a girlish pixie haircut and round cocoa-coloured eyes and a delightful tendency to burst into laughter, receiving my feeble attempts at small talk with lovely head-tossing giggles that make me feel like Oscar Wilde in tango heels. The jazzy off-beats of a tanda of Biagi-Ortiz are sounding and she lifts her upper body up tall and thin and flattens it against the wall obligingly so that I can see past her to try to catch the DJ’s eye for a dance. But the night is still young and I’m not sure I want our first tanda to be a Biagi. “I’m not sure your man and I are on Biagi-dancing terms yet”, I tell her, provoking another ripple of flattering laughter.
My mischievous and humour-seeking companion and I are soon deep in conversation. But I sense, behind me, someone hovering close by. In my peripheral vision I catch a glimpse of a bright cotton shirt. I know who it is and I don’t want to dance with him — I have noticed his big, messy-looking stagey moves — so I don’t look in his direction; I keep talking, focusing my gaze towards her. And suddenly, between us, intruding into my line of vision, there is a hand, tilted at an angle, palm upwards. I angle my own head just slightly away. I feel awkward, embarrassed. I want to avoid this encounter, this demand that cannot be met. The fingers wiggle just a little, like those of a yoga student reawakening his extremities after ten minutes in savasana. He clears his throat. “Would you like to dance?” he asks, with a degree of impatience, approaching nearer and inclining his body slightly in a gallant half-bow without waiting for my answer. Surely the question is superfluous? his tone seems to imply. “No, thanks”, I tell him. His eyebrows lift and his eyes widen in shocked surprise. “I think I misheard you. You said yes, didn’t you?” “Er, no, actually, no thanks”, I repeat. “I see”, he says, with heavy sarcasm in his voice. “Are you tired?” “Er, no, I’m not tired.” “I suppose your feet hurt then.” He glances down at my grey stilettos. “No.” I say. And then, on a sudden impulse, I know what to answer: “I’m sorry. You see, I’m choosy about who I dance with.” “Oh”, he says, packing a lot of meaning into that one small syllable, the vowel sound high and long at first, with a falling inflection. As he retreats, I take a big gulp of my wine to fortify myself.
Later that evening, I am sitting on the bench again, listening with pleasure to the music, relaxed and content to sip my wine after a happy tanda of smooth walking to Caló in the DJ’s arms. Dramatic Di Sarli instrumentals are playing in the almost empty room. Mr Wiggle Fingers is on the floor. With so few other people to obstruct their dance, he is free to reinvent the space, to change his trajectory from the anti-clockwise circle of a ronda to the straight lines, forward and back, of a stage. He strides backwards in a series of long steps, gripping his partner with firm hands. He shakes a little with the effort as he pulls her forward into a volcada. He straightens up again, pulls her in towards him and waits with outstretched leg for her to flick her own foot upwards in a gancho. Then he firmly places her with strong arms, so that she is perching precariously on his knee, feet daintily crossed at the ankles, lips pursed in an ‘O’ of what seems to be pleasant surprise. He holds her with her back to him and takes sideways strides along the length of the room like that. Her face expresses uncertainty and their arms are awkwardly tangled and she walks with him, craning her head a little to check his position behind her. His movements bear little or no relation to the music. His focus is demonstratively elsewhere. Perhaps I am paranoid, but, unlikely as it may seem, I think I am its object. Again and again during the dance, he looks over at me. Each time our eyes meet, he makes a small gesture. His eyebrows twitch upwards slightly. He blinks with slow deliberation. At one point, he turns his head to look over his shoulder at me. His lips form a half-smile. As the music ends and they leave the floor, he shoots me a last, long look. This is what you have been missing, it seems to say.
