"Tango 25: Sad severe tango dance of love and death.
Dance of night and men.
Dance of the dark, kitchen of the poverty of desire."
"Shall we sharpen our eyes and circle closer
to the beauty of the husband?
Carefully, for he was on fire.
Under him, the floor was on fire.
The world was on fire.
Truth was on fire.
Around him, green fire blew straight off every tree.
He was almost never sad, a God led him on,
nor did he doubt his feet which looked
as Napoleon used to say like this,
I write myself between worlds.
Now, what he wrote depended on who he was with.
Once he met Ray, he began to write paintings,
for Ray was a painter.
In Ray's room, they work side by side the husband talked.
Ray liked learning about places in the world
for he had scarcely traveled, and about books, for he did not
read.
"What are the Alps like?" said Ray.
"Aw from the plane they look fragile,
like pieces of pottery, thin silences in between."
"And up close?"
"Up close, more like cheese Parmesan."
"Is it expensive?"
"Parmesan--" "no Italy" "Yes and no"
"Do you stay with your Italian, sweetie?"
"She got married" "To who?"
"A guy named Ricky" "Are they happy?"
"No, she had to unlock him", she said.
"Meaning sex?"
"I guess"
"You know what's good for that is tango."
"Good for unlocking?"
"Yeah, cures the digestion too."
"How do you know these things, Ray?"
"Well, remember Flor?"
"No."
"The one before Carl."
"Carl?"
"Carl was the one before Saul."
"Oh."
"Well, Flor was a tangoist."
"That seems a long time ago to me.
Doesn't that seem a long time ago to you, Ray?"
"No, not so long.
But you were married then.
It was all different."
"It makes me tremble."
"What?"
"To think back.
I remember exactly how I thought life would be."
"Well, everyone has dreams."
"No, not dreams.
It was a precise picture."
"What went wrong?"
"Middlemen."
"Sorry?"
"Take the divorce, for example.
It wasn't her idea to divorce me, middlemen got to her."
"Well, she knew you were lying and sleeping around."
"Ray, please, I never lied to her.
When need arose, I may have used words that lied."
"That's way too philosophical for me."
"Well, philosophers say, man forms himself in dialogue."
"That I understand."
"Well, so did she."
"Now, there you're wrong."
"Why do you say so?"
"Because I saw her go down.
She was far stronger than me.
She went down.
Everything I did, I did for her."
"Why are you yelling?"
"I'm going to see her this weekend, you know."
"You're insane."
"I'll write first."
"She threw you out three years ago, why not leave her alone?"
"I have faith."
"In what?"
"In us."
"There is no us."
"Deep pure faith."
"But why?"
"Oh, Ray, you know, I wish I lived in another century."
"You used to say, the body is the beginning of everything."
"I don't believe that anymore."
"You still sleep around."
"I do."
"You make me sad."
"Yeah."
"What do you hope for now?"
"Me?
To be reborn as a great Warrior in the year 3001."
"On a June evening?"
"What did you say?"
"It's a line from a tango song."
"Yeah, on a June evening."
So they went on working, the one at his easel
and the other on the floor by the lamp,
while high black banks of twilight
came and stood around them close as sentries.
The husband was making a plan of the Battle of Amphipolis, which
he hoped to transfer to a wall of his house
using acrylic paint and small flags.
Why Amphipolis?
This bloody Athenian defeat began with one surprise night
move in 413 BC.
Blurring a line between courage and folly,
the Athenians attacked uphill in the dark
against fortified Syracusan positions.
Its originality at first brought success to the plan,
then the Syracusans grasped it and charged,
and disorder flowed everywhere.
Visibility was by moonlight.
They could see outlines, but not who was who.
Hoplites caught turning in a space no bigger
than a stairwell, because those Athenians
who were already routed and descending the cliff,
met others arriving fresh to the attack
and took them for enemies.
Moreover, constantly shouting the password,
they revealed it to the enemy.
And with this word coming at them wrongly in the dark,
the Athenians panicked.
Friend fell upon friend.
It was like a beautiful boiling dance, where your partner turns
and stabs you to death.
Cauldron of red Sicilian moon and white Greek lips.
The husband hums as he works.
Rectangles for the Syracusan outbuildings.
Broken lines for the brave Athenian assault.
Triangles for likely places of confrontation.
Black dots of varying sizes for estimated casualties
along the path of the route.
In his mind, he is composing a letter,
to explain to her again about the fog of war
and the need for endurance and the splendor they we'll come to
in the end.
We need a new password, he whispers with a smile,
as he imagines himself arriving, exhausted and hoarse,
dusty from the road, riding a tank one fine evening,
one June evening.