Oh, Luc! With him I am differently – or less – desperate. But less natural too. From the very beginning I never lied to Jean. To Luc I don’t express my desire for him to be harsher or more tender, more courageous or more playful. I’m ashamed because I want more than he can give. Or who knows: maybe he could if only I asked for it? But how?
‘Even when you dance with another woman, never betray the tango by holding back,’ we were told by Gitano, a tango teacher at one of the bars.
He also proclaimed that Jean loved me, and I loved Jean. Gitano could see it in every step we took: we were one being. Maybe that’s not so far from the truth?
I need to be with Jean because he’s the male part of me. We look at each other and see the same thing.
Luc is the man whom I stand beside, and we look in the same direction. Unlike the tango teacher, we never talk about love.
Only the pure and the free may say, ‘I love you’. Romeo and Juliet. But not Romeo, Juliet and Stephen.
We’re in a constant race against time. We have to do everything at once; otherwise we’ll get nothing done. We sleep together and talk about books at the same time, and in between we eat and are silent and argue and make up, dance and read aloud, sing and look for our lucky star – all at great speed. I long for next summer when Jean will come to Provence and we will search the stars.
I can see the Palais des Papes, glinting golden in the sun. That light again, at last; at last, people who don’t act as though no one else exists, not in lifts or in the street or on the bus. At last, fresh apricots from the tree again.
Oh, Avignon. I used to wonder why this city with its sinister palace, always cold and shady-looking, is so full of secret passages and trapdoors. Now I know. This restless lust has been with us since the dawn of mankind. Bowers, private rooms, theatre boxes, corn mazes – all designed for one and the same game!
Everyone knows this game is going on, but pretends it isn’t, or at least is far away, harmless and unreal.
Yeah, really.
I can feel the burning shame in my cheeks; I can feel the longing in my knees; and the lie nestles between my shoulder blades and scrapes them sore.
Dear Mamapapa, please, don’t make me have to choose between them.
And make the pea-sized lump in my armpit be just one of the grains of chalk that come trickling out of the taps up there in Valensole, home of the lavender and the world’s most incorruptible cats.
22
Monsieur Perdu sensed eyes brushing over him from under mascaraed lashes. If he caught, held and returned a woman’s gaze, he would already be entangled in the cabeceo, the silent exchange of glances that was the currency of every tango negotiation: an ‘invitation with the eyes’.
‘Look down at the floor, Jordan. Don’t look directly at a woman,’ he whispered. ‘If your eyes linger, she’ll assume you’re asking her whether you may invite her to dance. Can you dance tango argentino?’
‘I was handy at freestyle fan routines.’
‘Tango argentino is very similar. There are very few fixed step sequences. You touch chests, heart to heart, and then you listen to how the woman wants to be led.’
‘Listen? But nobody’s saying a word.’
It was true: none of the women or men or the couples on the dance floor were wasting their breath on talking, and yet they were so eloquent: ‘Lead me more tightly! Not so fast! Give me some room! Let me entice you! Let’s play!’ The women corrected the men: here a rub of the calf with the back of the shoe – ‘Concentrate!’; there a stylised eight on the floor – ‘I’m a princess!’
At other milongas, men would employ all their powers of persuasion during the four-dance sequence to arouse their partners’ passion. In soft Spanish a man would whisper in his partner’s ear, to her neck and into her hair, where the breath stirred the skin: ‘I’m crazy for your tango. You’re driving me wild with your dancing. My heart will set yours free to sing.’
Here, though, there were no tango whisperers. Here, everything was done with the eyes.
‘Men run their eyes discreetly around the room,’ said Perdu, whispering the rules of cabeceo to Max.
‘How do you know all of this? From a—’
‘No. Not from a book. Listen. Cast your eyes around slowly, but not too slowly. That’s how you seek out the person with whom you want to dance the next tanda – the set of four pieces of music – or check if someone wants to dance with you. You ask them with a long, direct gaze. If it’s answered, maybe with a nod or a half-smile, then you may consider your invitation accepted. If she looks away it means “No, thank you”.’
‘That’s good,’ Max said quietly. ‘That “No, thank you” is so quiet that nobody has to worry about being embarrassed.’
‘Exactly. It’s a gallant gesture when you stand up to fetch your partner. On the way over you have time to make sure that she really did mean you … and not the man diagonally behind you.’