Angelica Lost and Found

by Russell Hoban

  I looked at the cast list from forty-four years ago. Where were Richard Cassilly (Max) and Elizabeth Mosher (Agathe) now? And Malcolm Smith (Kaspar) and David Giosso (Samiel)? Forty-four years! Not doing opera any more, I should think.

  I listened to the recording, then I bought a libretto and a DVD of the 1968 Hamburg State Opera production. They did it beautifully. The singers looked good and sounded great, the sets and staging were wonderfully atmospheric and the Wolf’s Glen was scary like anything, a proper place in which to invoke Samiel for the casting of magic bullets. The music – Weber is above all a colourist and the singers and the orchestra perfectly conveyed the mordant blues, the sombre browns and the darkling devilish greens of his forest and his story. Those colours were consonant with my mood at that time and I had a strong craving for them.

  Here are the main elements of Der Freischütz:

  1. Max and Agathe are in love but Cuno, Agathe’s father, will only let them marry if Max wins Prince Ottokar’s shooting trial the next day. If he does, he wins Agathe and succeeds Cuno as head forester. But Max has been missing all his shots lately and things look bad for him.

  2. Kaspar, who has sold his soul to Samiel (the devil), sees Max drinking alone and says, ‘See that eagle high in the sky? Take my gun and shoot it.’

  ‘It’s out of range,’ says Max, but he fires and the eagle falls dead at his feet.

  ‘That was a charmed bullet in his gun,’ says Kaspar. ‘If Max wants such bullets he must meet him in the Wolf’s Glen at midnight.’

  3. Despite Agathe’s fears Max goes to that haunted place where even the ghost of his mother tries to warn him away. Evil apparitions surround him but he goes down to where Kaspar, invoking Samiel, is casting seven bullets. Six will fly true but the seventh is meant to kill Agathe and give Kaspar three more years before Samiel collects his soul.

  4. Agathe dreams that she is a white dove and Max is aiming at her. In the morning she hurries to where Ottokar is saying, ‘The white dove in that tree is your mark, Max.’

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ cries Agathe. ‘I am the white dove!’ But Max has fired. Agathe falls, but only in a swoon. Kaspar falls from the same tree, killed by Samiel’s charmed bullet.

  5. Ottokar says that Max must be punished for consorting with Samiel but he asks the local holy man, a pious hermit, to decide on the sentence. Max and Agathe must stay apart for a year, says the hermit. After that they may marry. Everybody cheers and thanks God, and that’s a wrap.

  ‘The white dove’, my father had written, and I knew that for him the dove was more than Agathe but I was content to let it be his private bird.

  I wondered what Michael would think of Der Freischütz and the white dove so I invited him over for pizza and a viewing. He arrived with a big smile on his face and an airline ticket which he waved in front of me.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘A weekend at the Grand Mayan in Acapulco,’ he chortled, ‘and two business-class seats on Aviacsa’s Friday-afternoon flight. One of the nurses has Mexican connections and she got me a big discount.’

  Michael and I had never slept together and I’d made him keep his tongue in his mouth when he kissed me goodnight after a date. He was better at operating on other people’s brains than at using his own which was mostly in his pants.

  ‘I’m busy this weekend,’ I said.

  ‘Busy doing what?’

  ‘Busy not going to Acapulco.’

  ‘Come on, Angie, don’t mess with me like that.’

  ‘I’m not messing with you. There’s the doorbell, the pizza’s here.’

  ‘Pizza!’ he snorted.

  ‘Don’t snort,’ I said. ‘That’s what you were invited for: pizza and Der Freischütz.’

  ‘Der Frei-fucking-schütz,’ he resnorted, scorning italics.

  ‘This is Marco’s pizza classica,’ I said. ‘Don’t let it get cold. And there’s Chianti Classico.’

  ‘Pepperoni,’ he said when I opened the box. ‘But I like it with Hawaiian topping.’

  ‘If I’d known you were into that kind of perversion I wouldn’t have invited you. Shall I remove the pepperoni and put jam on your half?’

  ‘That does it,’ he snapped. ‘I’m outta here. And I won’t have any trouble getting somebody else for Acapulco.’

  ‘I hope you’ll be very happy together. Don’t slam the door on your way out. Vaya con Dios.’

  That was how we parted. And that evening a hippo-griff appeared at my window. I’ll never forget my first sight of that strange beaked face and those eyes staring at me. Volatore! An imaginary creature but there he was, and in a matter of minutes I was naked on all fours under him and he covered me as the griffin had covered his mother. I screamed as his seed spurted into me, and all the while the music that had lifted him to my window was on the Bose, Olimpia lamenting her lost Bireno in the voice of Emma Kirkby.

  Why and how had it happened? Had I ever since my limited reading of Ariosto nursed a subconscious passion for the hippogriff? And even if that were so, how had he broken through the membrane of his reality into mine?

  Now Volatore and Jim were circling in my head like the figures in a little weather house. Who was fair weather and who was foul? I didn’t know, I was burdened well over my confusion loadline and my judgement was not to be trusted.

  Eventually I fell asleep and the eyes that stared at me in the darkness of my dream were those of Volatore. In utter silence he brought his face close to mine and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, and woke up.

  Chapter 56

  Where from Here?

  I didn’t see Jim or talk to him until our next session, two days later. Dos Arbolitos looked at me as if she’d never seen me before.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ I said. ‘We go way back.’

  But I was wondering what Jim was to me now; could a lover still be your shrink? Was he now my lover? Or had it just been a one-boat stand?

  When I went inside Jim was wearing a cardboard smile.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, syncing his lips with his voice.

  ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘You look as if you’re expecting my dad to turn up with a shotgun.’

  ‘Nothing as simple as that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘What did you dream last night?’

  ‘Ah! I see where this is going. Let’s do it like the song – you tell me your dream and I’ll tell you mine.’

  ‘I dreamed of your hippogriff, the same as you, right?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because it felt as if it was coming from you.’

  ‘What was he doing in your dream?’

  ‘Looking at me with tears in his eyes. Was that your dream?’

  ‘Yes, exactly the same. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Not really. When people are tuned to each other, that kind of thing can happen. It’s a sort of telepathy.’

  ‘Has it ever happened to you before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So then we’re tuned to each other, right?’

  ‘As I’ve said.’

  ‘Are you comfortable with that?’

  ‘I think there are things we need to sort out.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Jim had his notebook in his hand and was leafing through it.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘The session where you said you had a reality problem and I said, “That’s called life.” Which seems to me now a little flippant. The fact is that I’d never had a client with your looks before and I was showing off. Trying to be cool.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You said you were living in two realities, maybe more, and you were trying to understand them so you’d know how to deal with them. And I said that was a waste of energy, that it didn’t matter how many realities there were, you just had to handle them one at a time and do whatever had to be done.’

  ‘Perfectly sound advice, I thought. Still do.’

  ‘Wait, now we’re coming to th
e heart of the matter: I said that everything that happens to you – even a hallucination – is real; it’s part of your reality.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The thing is, Angelica, sometimes you have to let go of part of your reality. Life is, after all, a succession of losses.’

  ‘How can you say that! Was it a loss that you and I found each other?’

  ‘I’m talking about the loss of such things as youthful illusions; and adult delusions.’

  ‘Get to the point, Jim.’

  ‘Your Volatore thing, for example.’

  ‘My Volatore thing? I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you jealous, is that it?’

  ‘I don’t want your Volatore reality to interfere with the reality you and I share.’

  ‘Are you afraid that Volatore is stronger than you are?’ All sorts of thoughts were running through my mind when I said that. I remembered Vassily Baby and the ease with which he had expelled Volatore. ‘Jim, are you afraid of Volatore?’

  ‘I don’t want to have to compete with him.’

  ‘What about coexisting with him?’

  ‘A ménage à trois with an imaginary animal! What a great idea! Or we could bring in the Tooth Fairy and make it a foursome, how about that?’

  ‘All right then, you tell me what we should do.’

  ‘I already have: lose Volatore.’

  As I looked at Jim, his face didn’t seem to be the one I had kissed aboard the Mariposa. I remembered my heartfelt relief when he climbed back on deck after being knocked overboard. Where was that relief now? And who was this stranger laying down the law for me? I knew in my heart that there was something wrong in Jim’s rightness and something right in my wrongness. I may be crazy, but I feel I have a moral obligation to be true to my craziness. No matter what happened I wasn’t about to give up Volatore.

  I must have been silent for a while because Jim said, ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘Home,’ I said, and left.

  Chapter 57

  Shame and Blame

  I’m ashamed of myself. Why did I behave that way with Angelica, denying not only her beliefs but also my own? Why this cowardice? What am I afraid of? I’m afraid of opening myself to the same reality I’ve encouraged her to accept without question. So how can I now regain my belief in myself? I need to become as brave as Angelica. She makes me want to be a better man than I am.

  Chapter 58

  Ars Longa, Cuddly Catering

  I still had my Jim problems on my mind but for the moment the Ossip Przewalski show provided a welcome distraction. Nudes on motorbikes would seem, to some art-lovers, a trashy subject, but Ossip Przewalski’s paintings are definitely not trash. As I’ve said before, his approach is somewhere between Kokoschka and Redon, and Toby Shure, art critic of the Chronicle, has said of his work, ‘With instinctive insight, Przewalski has reached into the Zeitgeist and come up with an image emblematic of our speed-and-sex-crazed time. These blurred and frantic female nakednesses with their elongated testosteronal steeds between their legs are the perfect eidolon of our going-to-hell-as-fast-as-possible culture.’

  The place was filling up fast and the atmosphere was right. The paintings bejewelled the white walls with colour and a warm and cheerful buzz suffused the gallery. Students from the Conservatory of Music, recruited as a small string orchestra, were harmoniously stringing their way through Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico while champagne and canapés were being dispensed by girls wearing biker jackets and little else – black bras and panties, garter belts, black stockings and boots. CUDDLY.CATERING.COM, said their jackets with justifiable confidence.

  Olivia and I were flaunting our assets in very tight black designer jeans, high heels, pink shirts open down to here, leather biker jackets with the Eidolon logo (a spooky sibylline face) and the words Ars longa, vita brevis est, and visored biker caps.

  Moira Lesser, Arts and Entertainment reporter for CBS5 TV, arrived with her crew to interview Ossie. Standing him in front of Nude on Harley No. 15, she told her viewers, I’m coming to you live from the Eidolon Gallery in downtown San Francisco where Ossip Przewalski’s new show is opening.’ Turning to him, she said, ‘To me this painting says many things about our world, our time. Can you share with our viewers some of your thoughts when you stand before a blank canvas ready to begin?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ossie, ‘at that point I have a girl and a bike in front of me. Suzie is one of my favourite models – she’s a natural redhead with pale-pink areolas and a lovely bush.’ Ignoring the look on Moira’s face he continued smoothly, ‘The bike is my new XR1200, red. Red is the quintessential motorbike colour. Think bike and you see red.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Moira, ‘and if you could tell us a little about what drives you, your motivation?’

  ‘I like naked women, I like motorbikes and I like money.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Moira. Facing the camera then, ‘I’ve been talking to Assip … Ossip Przewalski, at the opening of his new show at the Eidolon Gallery. Moira Lesser, CBS TV, San Francisco.’

  She drew her finger across her throat, the crew packed up, and she and they were gone.

  I might mention here that Ossie arrived at the opening of his show as Lenore Goldfarb’s arm candy. She was lustrous and tinkling in full chandelier and he was in leather except for a blue denim shirt open far enough to display a tattoo of a full-frontal nude redhead on a Harley. Rumour has it that Lenore has commissioned him to paint her, presumably with a body double but her own jewellery and a naked bike.

  Joe Fontana was also here by my invitation. When Lenore saw him she gave him a very hard look, doubtless recalling the fifty thousand dollars for the tiny, tinies. Joe apparently still had no recollection of her and that event.

  Our usual Ossie A list had been invited. It included the local Harley Davidson CEO, high-ranking members of Hells Angels and the other clubs, the Mayor, the Chief of Police and other dignitaries. My own additions to the list were Sergeant Hennessy, Joe Fontana and Volatore Three, who brought in his wake Lola Trotter and her boyfriend, pop sin-singer Billy Viro. Dad showed up looking spruce and successful, to be hovered over by Olivia who took pains to keep both his glass and his eye filled. I had invited Jim and here he was. Explanations seemed unnecessary so we hugged and kissed without explaining.

  People were mingling well, the cuddly caterers were handing out business cards and perhaps telephone numbers along with the champagne and canapés. Things were mellowing nicely and red dots were breaking out all over as Ossie’s nudes sold briskly, his instinctive insights in demand as always.

  Sergeant Hennessy – his name is John – arrived with his wife Kitty. He was quite handsome in a dinner jacket and I was surprised to realise that he was about the same age as Jim. Kitty was about my age and frisky. She reminded me of Ruby Keeler.

  ‘Vivaldi might do for a reel,’ she said, ‘but I’m more of a buck-and-wing girl.’

  ‘I thought you might be,’ I said. ‘You have a Ruby Keeler air.’

  Her eyes brightened with recognition of a kindred spirit.

  ‘You’ve seen 42nd Street?’

  ‘It’s one of my favourites – I’ve become kind of hooked on Depression films.’

  ‘They knew how to have fun,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Well,’ said Hennessy, ‘just around the corner was a rainbow in the sky. We haven’t got one.’

  ‘I’d like to learn to tap dance,’ I said.

  ‘Have you got rhythm?’ said Hennessy.

  ‘All us Jews got rhythm.’

  ‘Call me up,’ said Kitty. ‘We’ll have a session to give me an idea where to send you for lessons.’

  Joe Fontana made his way to me looking serious. He was in good financial shape now, having bought into Marco’s Pizzeria Classica, and he had time on his hands.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘of taking up painting.’

  ‘Your former patron is here,’ I said. ‘Lenore Goldfarb. Name ring any bells?’

  ‘None that I c
an hear.’

  ‘But you’re thinking of taking up painting. Having dreams?’ I said.

  ‘More like something I almost remember.’

  ‘Don’t give up your day job,’ said Hennessy.

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ said Joe. ‘All I do is collect money from my share of the business.’

  ‘Why’d Renzetti sell off a third interest in the place?’ said Hennessy.

  ‘He wants to spend more time coaching a kids’ rugby team that he organised.’

  ‘I don’t suppose painting as a hobby can do any harm to you or the general public,’ I said to Joe. ‘Just be careful.’

  ‘If you start smelling mostly like a horse, give me a ring,’ said Hennessy.

  ‘I will,’ said Joe. He thanked us and drifted away.

  ‘You guys probably have things to talk about,’ said Kitty. ‘I’m going to look at the paintings and maybe find some champagne.’

  The crowd was thinning out.

  ‘I used to have an impulse to climb into your lap and tell you my troubles,’ I said to Hennessy.

  ‘Looks as if you might have found a better lap,’ he replied, grinning at Jim.

  ‘Do my best,’ said Jim.

  We left together and he did.

  Chapter 59

  Jim on the Brim

  The painting I fished out of the water. I haven’t really looked at it since I brought it home. Angelica said it was a lot of tiny, tiny dancing bad luck and we’d both be sorry if I picked it up. Did it try to drown me? The boom knocked me overboard when she let go of the tiller. Had I told her what happens when you do that? Now I can’t be sure. Anyhow, this seems like a good time to see what’s what with this thing.

  Chapter 60