Angelica's Grotto

by Russell Hoban

  ‘These days time goes in and out like an accordion,’ said Klein.

  ‘Listen,’ said Leslie, ‘I’d love to stay and talk about relativity with you, but the boss wants me gone.’ To Melissa, ‘Watch your ass, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Klein, as he left the van with the object of his desire.

  25

  A Taste of Honey

  For a moment they stood by the steps of Klein’s house. On the far side of the common a Wimbledon train dopplered its way to Parson’s Green. The night was warm for December; there was a nightingale singing; there was an almost-full moon.

  ‘Waxing or waning?’ said Klein. ‘I’m never sure.’

  ‘Three-quarters full or three-quarters empty,’ said Melissa. ‘Maybe there’s not all that much difference.’

  ‘Are you so world-weary?’

  Unbelievably, she moved closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder; he was just tall enough for that to be comfortable. He put his arm around her, feeling through her jacket the heat of her body. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure what I am; sometimes I’m not sure if I am.’

  ‘You? The formidable Lola Lola?’

  ‘Nobody is the same all the way through like a stick of seaside rock. Or from moment to moment, for that matter – you must know that, living as long as you have. Put your other arm around me. You’re older than my father.’

  ‘The one you stabbed twelve times?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Is this happening?’ said Klein, recalling her legs as she stepped out of the van in her very short skirt. ‘I’m an old man, close to the end of my life, and I feel like a sixteen year old on a first date. This isn’t real, of course, but can we say that reality is whatever is the case?’

  ‘You think too much, Harold.’

  ‘Like a Jewish horse.’

  ‘Are we going inside or are we putting on a show for the neighbours?’

  ‘Sorry, you felt so good that I didn’t want to move.’ He went up the steps ahead of her, unlocked the door, and held it open for her. Once inside, before he turned on the hall light, he leant towards her, said to himself, ‘What are you doing, Harold?’ and drew back.

  ‘What were you doing, Harold?’ The moon shining through the fanlight glazed the oval of her face, made her like porcelain, fragile and collectable.

  ‘It’s that sixteen-year-old feeling – I was going to kiss you.’

  She moved into his arms. ‘Do it, Harold, this is your fantasy and my scientific enquiry.’

  Madness is good, said Oannes.

  Klein kissed her, feeling faint as she opened her mouth to him. They stood that way for a while before anyone spoke. ‘That was quite acceptable, Harold,’ she said. ‘I was wondering if you’d smell and taste old but you don’t; your tongue certainly carries its years well.’

  ‘You weren’t disgusted?’

  ‘In my line of work I can’t afford to be. Any response below the belt?’ Her hand asked the question as well.

  ‘Vestigial there but ten out of ten in my head.’

  ‘That’s where it counts. Are we going to move out of the hall?’

  He hung up their jackets and they went into what used to be a living-room but had long since been taken over by his work. There were bookshelves on all the walls except the one where the bay window fronted the street and the chimney breast where Pegase Noir hung alone. There were boxes and stacks of videotapes, piles of newspapers and unanswered correspondence. The desk was occupied by a PC, modem, and printer of recent manufacture, a very old Apple II computer for running unconverted floppy discs, a mini-hi-fi, and a variety of owls in glass, brass, china, bronze, spelter, stone, and plastic. On the printer a little naked china female presented her rear view as she reclined on one elbow and made eye contact with a tiny mermaid who leant against the groin of a large violently green-and-gold ceramic frog of almost abstract design. Two other little china females in the bookshelves danced in different periods while a third charmed a snake. Various sargassos of old and current yellow A4 pages drifted in the stillness of the desk.

  Red file cabinets stood where possible, and in the odd shelfless corner there were posters: the 1933 King Kong atop the Empire State Building with a crushed aeroplane in one hand and Fay Wray in the other; Vermeer’s Portrait of a Young Girl; Caspar David Friedrich’s The Stages of Life; and a brightly coloured toucan advertising der bunte Vogel BIERKAFFEE RESTAURANT in Munster. Bric-à-brac, beach pebbles, seashells, a model of a Portuguese fishing boat and the Meissen girl kept station on the mantelpiece of the bookshelf-blocked fireplace. In deserts of desuetude on floor and tables tottering babels of defunct workroom cultures and buried civilisations awaited the archaeological spade.

  On a well-worn Kelim stood a TV with two video-recorders; facing those a soft chair, a footstool, and a little Indian table inlaid with ivory on which was a bowl of banana skins and tangerine rinds, beside which stood an unwashed glass that smelt of Glenfiddich. Under the rear window squatted a downtrodden couch in a geometric pattern of browns and reds, its seating space occupied by archive boxes and National Geographies. A variety of lamps, mostly articulated, arranged light and shadow to Klein’s liking. ‘This room is my exobrain,’ he said.

  ‘It looks about ready for a moult, but well-organised in an overwhelmed sort of way.’

  ‘I don’t know where everything is but I know where a lot of things are. Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘Like a real date, eh, Harold?’

  ‘It’s my party and I’ll buy if I want to.’

  ‘Whisky for me, please.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘No, just as it comes.’

  He was able now to see her with more objectivity than before. She was actually pretty but her art-deco style of face and hair formalised the prettiness with a sophistication that hardened it somewhat. Her hair was hennaed, her eyes blue, her features very like those of some of his china ladies. She was wearing a short-sleeved, low-necked black jersey top, a red skirt, the shortness of which he had already noted, the de rigueur black stockings, and medium black heels. When she sat down in the TV chair and crossed her legs he took in her white thighs and the black suspenders. Scarcely able to believe this windfall of goodies, Klein remained, as always, critical: she was not beautiful like the lithe and supple Angelica and her legs were ‘definitely not in a class with Dietrich’s’, he heard himself say.

  ‘If you can do better, feel free, Professor.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just as well that I can’t hear your thoughts about me – I’m sure they’re a lot more critical than mine about you.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong – when I’m into something and going with it I suspend all disbelief.’ She was still looking around the room. ‘I don’t see a stuffed owl; the place seems somehow incomplete without one.’

  ‘I know. I’m waiting for the right one to turn up.’ He went down to the kitchen, came back with the Glenfiddich and two clean glasses, and poured. Melissa was standing in front of the Meissen Girl. She touched the nipple of the bare right breast.

  ‘That’s Meissen,’ said Klein nervously.

  ‘Christ, what a simper. This was obviously done by a man, probably an old man. Do you think she’s pretty?’

  ‘I think she’s beautiful.’

  ‘That’s what I mean – it’s the sort of gymslip prettiness dirty old men go for: virgin pussy in porcelain. Figures like this are somehow crying out to be smashed.’

  ‘O God, please don’t!’

  Her eyes moved up to Pegase Noir. ‘Is this an original?’

  ‘Yes. Odilon Redon.’

  ‘Harold! Are you a closet millionaire?’

  ‘No. There was a time when I made a few bob in art deals for collectors. Now I write books and make a whole lot less.’ He showed her Darkness and Light: the inner eye of Odilon Redon. ‘This is my latest.’

  She opened it to the copyright page. ‘Published four years ago. What’ve you done since?�
�

  ‘This and that: articles, TV. I’ve just started research and notes for the next book.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Naked Mysteries: The Nudes of Gustav Klimt.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough naked women on the Internet?’

  ‘Naked women by Klimt aren’t the same as naked women on pornographic websites.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The women on the Internet have become product. That’s what the bad guys call drugs in the movies. “How much product can you move?” the suppliers say to the dealers. Pornography dehumanises women; Klimt explores their humanity.’

  ‘Very smooth, Harold. Maybe we’ll come back to that later. You’ve got some very deep thoughts in this Redon text.’ She read aloud, ‘“It is evident that Redon was not so much the master of his material as its servant; his images and ideas forced him to give them form and substance, compelled him to find the shapes and spaces they required. Always his forms are hypermorphic – the gesture configures the shape and the shape becomes itself to a greater degree than ordinary vision allows. In Roger and Angelica, the tiny distant Angelica is the pearly flaunt of her nudity; the hippogriff is the quivering thrust of its haunches; and these, like all of Redon’s figures, are celebrants of a mystery in which they themselves are the sacrifice. The colour, dream-haunted and strange, bursts from the seed-pods of his noirs. ‘Black,’ he said, ‘is the most essential of all colours.’ In the black is where his creatures live, the black from which Oannes, half-fish and half-human, emerges, saying, ‘I, the first consciousness of chaos, arose from the abyss to harden matter, to regulate forms.’ And in this same black, Venus, all rosy and golden, becomes visible in the nacreous genitalia of her birthing.” Does anybody buy your books?’ she said.

  ‘Academic libraries, mostly.’

  ‘And this is all you do?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What do you live on?’

  ‘I invested the money from my picture deals. Do you require a financial statement?’

  ‘Sorry, I always want to know the facts of people’s lives. So you live shut up in this room, devoting your life to the work of others.’

  ‘Art raises the worldwide level of perception, it takes the mind to places beyond ordinary experience. Do you think the study of it is a waste of time? It beats running a porno site, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m gathering information about sexual attitudes, studying emotional dysfunction in male/female transactions. Do you think that’s a waste of time? Look at the state of the world, look at the sorts of things our law-makers and heads of state get up to when they’re not creating gridlock, destroying the environment, and deciding the fates of nations: MPs dying in women’s underwear with an orange in the mouth while trying for a better orgasm; every level of politician celebrating the virtues of the family while his willie votes the other way. Look at advertising – to sell ice-cream they have to show naked people eating it, and coffee’s promoted as a sexual catalyst. Look at the fashions designed by queers for skeletons with tits. Look at the rape statistics. Look at you, a presumably intelligent man, spending hours on the Internet with your pleasure hand working overtime and your nose up the vaginas of women who’d call a cop if you got within sniffing distance of them. No wonder your inner voice packed up – it was embarrassed for you. There are millions of you out there and nobody’s asking the right questions.’ She picked up her drink. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Here’s looking at you. This is the first time you’ve told me what Angelica’s Grotto is about. I heard you and Leslie talking about funding in the van. Where’s the money going to come from next?’

  She looked at him warily. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I’m interested, and I have some connections. Maybe I can help.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘OK, Melissa. I’m still not sure whether you qualify as gamekeeper or poacher but we don’t have to go into that just now.’

  ‘How come you know my name?’

  ‘Your filofax with your name on it is in your shoulder bag. Your name comes from the Greek word for honey.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you mind if I put on some music?’

  ‘If that helps you get into the mood. You aren’t subject to lingual impotence, are you?’

  ‘Not so far. What would you like to hear?’

  ‘You choose, it’s your party.’

  Klein put on Portishead’s first album.

  ‘Not too bad, Harold. I was expecting Bach or Haydn or Engelbert Humperdinck.’ She pulled off the black jersey top; her arms were pleasingly round and her unshaven armpits delighted him; she slid the strap of her little black bra off her left shoulder and exposed one small girlish breast with its rosy areole. She undid the red skirt, dropped it, and leaned back in the chair. ‘Would you like to remove my knickers, Professor?’

  He sank to his knees and took hold of the black silk with shaking hands. She was wide-hipped, with shapely thighs and a belly like a Matisse odalisque. Her black pubic hair was as he had imagined it, coarse and springy to the touch of his lips. The heat of her body and the scent of her flesh made him giddy. He rubbed his cheek against her thigh, closed his eyes, breathed in the odour of her sex.

  Yum yum, said Oannes.

  ‘I read in this morning’s Times,’ said Melissa, ‘about an eleven-year-old boy who’s eaten nothing but Marmite sandwiches ever since he was weaned.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Klein.

  ‘Wandering star,’ sang Beth Gibbons, ‘for whom it is reserved – the blackness, the darkness, the river.’

  26

  Last Tango In Fulham

  ‘You’re a tiger from the neck up, Professor,’ said Melissa, now fully dressed. ‘How was it for you?’

  ‘Terrific: there’s nothing like getting back to basics. And you – were those sound effects real or faked?’

  ‘Below the waist I never lie. You’re a very cunning linguist and as I’ve told you, when I’m into anything I go with it all the way.’

  ‘You’re a strange one, Melissa.’

  ‘Life is strange. Is there a table in this house with nothing piled up on it?’

  ‘Down in the kitchen. There’s nothing on it but this week’s papers and a bowl of fruit. Why?’

  ‘Let’s go there and I’ll tell you.’

  In the kitchen Klein switched on the bead-fringed lamp over the table. ‘Plenty of room,’ said Melissa. ‘I’ll sit here and you sit opposite. We’re going to arm-wrestle.’

  ‘Do you always do that after sex?’

  ‘No, but I want to see which of us is the stronger.’

  ‘Why? By now everybody’s stronger than I am.’

  ‘Tell you later. First let’s do this. Best out of three.’

  Looking at her serious face in the lamplight Klein said, ‘Every day is certainly a winding road, isn’t it.’

  ‘Definitely. Are you ready?’

  They rested their elbows on the table, lined up their forearms vertically, and laced their fingers together. Her grip was like iron.

  ‘Ready,’ said Klein, and his arm was immediately pressed flat. They did it once more with the same result.

  ‘OK,’ said Klein. ‘You’re the stronger one. What next?’

  ‘Back upstairs for the next event.’

  When they were once again in the workroom Melissa arranged some cushions on the floor, then opened her shoulder bag. ‘We might as well have some more music, Prof.’

  Klein went to the CD player, put on the Diana Krall All for You album. When he turned back to Melissa he saw what she had taken from the bag. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better believe it, ducky.’ She took off her skirt and buckled on a male member of respectable dimensions. ‘You owe me.’

  ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘You owe me your bottom for that time you got out of your date with Leslie. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. As well as bei
ng stronger than you I’m a karate black belt, so get face-down on the floor and do what I say or I’ll hurt you.’

  ‘You’re going to hurt me in any case.’

  ‘Are you going to show fight?’

  ‘That would be more dangerous for me than for you.’

  ‘You know you want it, sweetheart. There’s no gain without pain but lubrication is included. Trousers down, bitch, this is what your prostate has been waiting for.’

  ‘After all our intellectual discussions you turn out to be rough trade.’

  ‘I’m academic trade,’ she said as she moved into position, ‘which means it isn’t over until you answer my questions on the website.’

  ‘Multiple choice, I hope.’

  ‘You have no choice, Professor – you need to talk about it as much as …’

  ‘O God,’ said Klein.

  ‘… you need to … Yes! … do it.’

  ‘Love makes me treat you the way that I do,’ sang Diana Krall, her silky voice all blonde and sultry. ‘Gee baby, ain’t I good to you.’

  Gee baby, said Oannes.

  27

  30,000 Feet Up

  Klein in the shower was thinking about Karl Wallenda. ‘He was seventy-three when he came off the wire,’ he said to himself, ‘a year older than I am now. Ten storeys up between two hotels in Puerto Rico when a gust of wind blew him away. That was in 1978 and ever since then he’s been dead and he’ll keep being dead from now on, rain or shine, nothing else in his diary for ever and ever.

  ‘I don’t remember what year it was when I last saw the Wallendas at the circus. It was in my other life, back in the States. I was there alone because I’d seen them years before and I wanted to see them again, high up on the wire and maintaining their balance while doing impossible things. Francine was at a dance class and I had no child to take with me, no excuse for being there except my own fascination with what they did.

  ‘High up on the wire they were, two of them on silvery bicycles and Karl sitting in a chair that was balanced on a pole between the one in front and the one behind. Was the band playing a tango? “Jalousie” maybe? Or was there silence while the Wallendas crossed from one side to the other. I don’t think there was a net. The tent was blue, the lights were on the Wallendas, darkness below them. Everything sparkled. If I slip getting out of the shower I could break my hip and that’s the beginning of the end. Wrong – I’ve already had the beginning; this would be the middle or some way past the middle. I should have a cellular phone with me at all times but I don’t want to be like the people I see talking on cellular phones. Of course this is different but I still don’t like the idea of them. It’s like drinks in the Underground; why are so many people in the trains carrying bottles of mineral water or cans of beer or soft drinks? Why this constant thirst?’