The Sitting Woman

The lesson was over and the men in their leather shoes and the women in their spiked heels milled toward fold-out chairs at the side of the room. Over tinny speakers a simple tango played. A few of the men chatted with the women, then took their hands and led them to the floor. The women smiled and turned their heads to the side, pressing their breasts against the men, draping pretty arms over shoulders and backs, breathing warm smells. Then everyone began to move.

The steel seat felt cold under Claire’s print dress and she crossed her legs, one of her heels moving away from the floor but still keeping the beat. She straightened the cotton over her thighs and brushed a hand through graying hair. A young couple circled in front of her.

To her left sat a young man in his early twenties who did not watch one couple in particular, but turned his head quickly like a small bird. For a brief moment their eyes met and she smiled. He returned the smile but looked away. He was the only man on the chairs. A few women, middle aged and elderly, sat apart. Claire moved next to him.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Claire.”

“James,” he said, and shook her hand.

“Is this your first time?”

            “First time here. I dance a lot in Seattle.”

            “I see. Do you know what kind of music is playing.”

            “This is Canarro. His pieces are usually straightforward and easy to dance to. Are you new to tango?”

            “This is my third time. I come for the beginning lesson at seven and then stay for the dance.”

            “It’s difficult to get good at tango dancing only once a week,” he said.

            Claire smiled and looked at a young woman and her partner. They were standing in place, rocking side to side. Her locks clouded his eyes. “Why are they not dancing?” she asked.

            “It’s probably been a while since they’ve danced,” James said. “The man is learning how the woman moves. He needs to tune to her body.”

The young couple began a few simple steps- forward, back, to the side. He guided her gingerly, as if sitting down to a new piano, uncertain how the keys would play beneath his fingers.

            “That’s a gancho,” James said, “Think of it as an interrupted back step.”

            “I see,” Claire said.

The young man struck a few simple chords and then started to improvise, first a grace note. She added a grace note in response, a tap. Then he sounded an arpeggio, tap, tap, tap, one movement broken into three. Her limbs moved in counterpoint, harmonizing. Soft legs were the melody, strong legs the bass. Their fugue broadened, echoing themes in different keys, twirling in the tonic of Canaro.

            “That’s a boleo,” said James. “Think of it as a kick that comes from interrupting a back-ocho.”

            The song ended and the couples untwined and made their way to the side of the room. Claire looked at the men and women, and smiled. Some smiled back. James stole glances at the women but looked away when they returned his interest. Partners found new partners, except for the young couple. They continued to dance though there was no music. Claire and James remained on the steel seats and a new song began.

“What do you do in Seattle?” Claire asked.

            “I study art at the University of Washington,” he said.

            “Really?” she said. “I have a nephew there. What kind of art do you study?”

            “Mostly figure drawing,” he said.

            “How lovely,” she said. “I never had the talent to draw but I have a number of prints around the house, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, that sort of thing. One of my favorites is Sitting Woman, by Rembrant. Do you know it?”

            “Everyone knows Sitting Woman.”

            “Oh,” she said. “Well, I like the quietness of it. You can see the rolls of middle age advancing and she sits there, quietly. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

            “It’s a nice drawing. I’m partial, myself, to Lucian Freud.”

            “I don’t believe I’ve heard of him.”

            “He was a modern artist, died recently. His portraits are insightful, very raw. He was famous for spending fifteen months with one model, painting one picture.”

            “That’s an extreme amount of dedication,” she said.

            “It’s what you do when you’re truly passionate about something.”

            “Well, I suppose it depends upon the character of the passion,” she said. “I’m passionate about Sitting Woman but I’m content to admire it while eating dinner, though of course I would love to draw.”

            “Why don’t you take a class?”

            “Perhaps I will,” she said, and smiled, “perhaps in the summer.”

            “What do you think of the classes here?”

            “They’re well taught,” she said. “However, I would like to learn how to lead as well as follow and there is some resistance to that.”

James said nothing. Claire looked at the young couple, again. The woman wore a sheer top and lace skirt that lifted and fell above ivory thighs during graceful boleos. Her eyes were closed. During the sharp draw of a violin one of her willowy legs hooked under her partner’s trousers and then darted from view.

“My, she has fine legs,” Claire whispered to the floor, “such fine legs.”

The song ended and most of the couples made their way to the chairs. Claire smiled at them and some smiled back. The young couple remained dancing. A new song played, more hurried than the last. Claire and James remained on the steel seats.

“Do you know what kind of song this is?” Claire asked.

            “It’s a milonga,” James said. “The music is in two-four time, with accents on the first and fifth beats.”

            Claire thought for a moment. “It’s very quick,” she said, “very strong.”

            The young dancers moved in flashes now, a kick here, a hard tap there, keys falling in torrents on an organ floor.

            “There is little time for slow turns or quiet movements,” James said. “It’s difficult unless you have a close connection.”

New motifs emerged and disappeared- sequences of turns, feet replacing feet, arms twined round backs, hips moving by hips, and then the coda. The woman’s left foot spiked the air, a high C, then wrapped around her partner’s leg in deafening consonance. The chord held for a few long moments, bodies joined by an echo of keys still pulsing in the air. Then she released him and stood close, breathing in his ear.

            Claire’s lips were parted and her being was still. She leaned back against the cold steel, peered into the rafters, and breathed deeply. Then she looked around. Almost everyone had found new partners. She and James remained on the seats.

“So where do you work?” James asked.

            “I was an obstetrician,” she said. “Now I’m retired.”

            “Did you work here in town?”

             “I had a practice and hospital privileges at St. Elizabeth.”

            “Why obstetrics?”

            Claire peered over the floor. The young woman still breathed in her partner’s ear, but rocked gently.

            “I think at first I was enthralled with the idea of new life.” she said.

            “You’re not enthralled anymore?” he asked. The couple played a few grace notes.

“Yes, only it’s different.”

            “You must have worked with a lot of young people like me” he said, “starting new families.”

            “Are you starting a new family?” she asked.

            “No, but I would like to,” he said. “I suppose I’m different from most people my age in that I’m already thinking about it.”

            “More people are thinking about it than you realize,” she said.

“Really?”

            “Really. Some women know from age eleven or twelve that they want to be a mother.” Claire looked out at the floor. The young woman circled about the man, swiveling full hips forward, back, to the side, forward, back, to the side, then a cross.

Claire smiled. “However, a funny thing happens if they never marry. They reach middle age and life has sped by and they think to themselves, ‘Did I ever want a baby? Do I even want to be married?”

James said nothing.

“Of course, that’s only for some women,” she said. “Some women marry early. For others, having a baby isn’t on their minds until they reach their late thirties and then they realize the door is closing, and some never want a baby. Everyone is different.”

            “Which kind of woman did you see more?” he asked.

            “I saw mostly older women,” she said. “I specialized in high risk pregnancies.”      “Women who are getting pregnant after nature intends,” he said.

            “I’m not sure nature has an intention,” she said. “They were pregnant when it was harder. That’s all I can say for it.”

            The song ended and the men and women milled to the chairs. Claire smiled at the men but did not engage their eyes as she had before. New music moved across the tired oak, more lyrical and subtle than the milonga, but the beat remained clean.

“Who is this composer?” Claire asked.

            “This is di Sarli,” said James. “His orchestra played at the end of the golden age of tango.”

            “The ‘golden age?”

            “It was a period in the 1930s and 1940s when hundreds of tango orchestras played across Buenos Aires.”

            Claire looked to the floor. Many of the older couples had left. The young dancers still moved across the oak and harmonized as when dancing to Canaro but were less playful. The grace notes receded.

“Then the Peron government fell in 1955,” James said, “and the new regime outlawed meetings of more than three people. As a result, tango moved underground.  It never recovered the vitality it once had but evolved new forms with freer rhythms.”

On the floor counterpoint disappeared and an aria emerged. Pivoting on one toe, a supple limb sounded small embellishments. The bass circled quietly, holding the melody in his arms

            “What do you love about art?” asked Claire.

James thought for a moment. “I love to create beautiful things,” he said. “I don’t usually tell people that. It’s not something you hear in art class.”

            “That’s a shame,” Claire said. “I would very much like to be in a class where people say things like that.”            

            A new song came over the tinny speakers. It was mournful and intimate with a beat for walking softly. “This is Pugliese,” James said. “He wrote music that followed the golden age of tango, toward the end. It is deeper and more complex than Canaro. They play it at night before everything closes, when couples want to dance slowly. It can be harder to dance to, but can be beautiful.”

            Claire closed her eyes. Her toe tapped hidden rhythms behind the viola and violin and for a moment she breathed musk of fir and balsam as she moved right to left, and her partner left to right. Deep beneath the notes she felt a strong hand cup her shoulder blade and stubble brush her forehead, or perhaps the cheek was smooth and the hair was soft. The hem of her dress swayed about her calves.

“I want to play this song in my kitchen as I make dinner,” she whispered, “this song and Sitting Woman, Sitting Woman, sitting and dancing, sitting and dancing, as I make dinner.”

            The young couple no longer executed back-ochos, or boleos, or ganchos, or crosses but moved only back and forth, back and forth, noting breaths and rustles of fabric, feeling light threads of hair and starched collars, listening as the duet they played all night slowly disappeared into the floorboards. Yet they heard their feet under them; spiked heels and leather soles on weary wood, the quiet taps at the end of the evening when soon there will be silence.