Angelica's Grotto

by Russell Hoban

  ‘What a miserable-looking bum you’ve got,’ she said as she spanked him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Klein. ‘I wish it were nicer for you and I wish it were raining.’

  ‘Little pervert!’

  I’m only happy when it’s complicated, said Oannes.

  ‘Get me a drink,’ she said when she’d finished: ‘whisky, and don’t get dressed – I’m not through with you yet.’

  When Klein came back from the kitchen she had the Bruno Schulz book open on her lap. She accepted the drink without a thank-you and extended her booted left foot. ‘Put your neck under my foot,’ she said.

  Klein obeyed and she rolled his neck back and forth for a few moments. ‘You can imagine me being mounted by a stallion,’ she said. ‘You can imagine my screams and the neighing of the horse.’

  Klein imagined. ‘Who ever thought we’d get this far this fast?’

  ‘You obviously did. I notice the wall’s bare where the Redon used to hang. Tell me about that.’

  ‘I’m still not ready, Lola.’

  ‘I see. There’s no rest for Lola, is there. Face-down on the floor with you, Prof.’ She removed her pullover and her bra, took the necessary equipment from her shoulder bag.

  ‘Please be gentle,’ he said.

  ‘No way, Prof.’ She buckled it on and went to work.

  ‘Right,’ she said, fastening her bra and vanishing into the pullover, ‘you can pop your things on now.’

  ‘Have you ever trained as a nurse?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘No reason, it just popped into my head.’

  ‘Pour me another drink and have one yourself, why don’t you.’

  He poured. He drank. He admired her stockinged legs, her shiny black boots, her white thighs and black suspenders, l’origine du monde between her legs.

  ‘Poor little Prof! Would you like a kiss now that your punishment’s over?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She took him in her arms. Her whisky-flavoured mouth was delicious, her tongue inventive. When she released him he said, ‘It’s just business for you, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Everything’s business in one way or another, Harold. Now let’s talk about the Redon. Where is it?’

  ‘How can you be so cynical so young, Melissa?’

  ‘I’m not cynical, I’m educated, that’s all.’

  ‘Do you really think you can be impartial in your study of emotional dysfunction in male/female transactions?’

  ‘I don’t have to be – my questions will be there with the answers they elicit, so I’m not hiding anything and my conclusions are admittedly subjective. Now, where’s the Redon?’

  ‘At Christie’s.’

  ‘You’re going to auction it?’

  ‘That’s what they do.’

  ‘Aha! And what’s their estimate?’

  ‘Give me another business kiss.’

  She gave it. ‘Now tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Five to seven hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘Nice one, Harold!’ She kissed him again. ‘How soon will it happen?’

  ‘Ten weeks.’

  ‘I’m so excited!’ She hugged him.

  ‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ he said, clasping her bottom.

  ‘Actually,’ Hannelore had said two or three centuries ago, ‘I don’t like that painting all that much. I don’t like pictures that are symbolic of something. If you’re going to paint a horse, study horse anatomy and do it the George Stubbs way. The best thing about this painting is the money it’ll be worth when we’re old. We can sell it and do some travelling on the proceeds.’

  ‘You’ll never be old,’ said Klein to Hannelore.

  ‘Why not?’ said Melissa. ‘Do you think I’ll die young?’

  RRRRAAAAARRGH! said Oannes, and flashed a picture through Klein’s brain.

  ‘No!’ said Klein.

  ‘Or did you mean age cannot wither me, nor custom stale?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pull yourself together, Harold. We were talking about the Redon.’

  ‘Five to seven hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘You said that already.’

  ‘What was the question?’

  ‘I haven’t asked the next one yet. Are you all right?’

  ‘Would you excuse me while I whisper into my hand a little?’

  ‘Private thoughts, eh? Carry on – I’ll do a little more drinking while you’re thinking.’

  Klein went to his desk, whispered, ‘Stop it, Oannes,’ and hurried to put another picture in his mind. He loaded his National Gallery Complete Illustrated Catalogue into the CD-ROM drive, put Ingres’s Ruggiero and Angelica up on the screen, then slid over to Oedipus and the Sphinx. ‘I’d forgotten how shadowy she is,’ he whispered. He went to the shelves, took down Meisterwerke der Erotischen Kunst, turned to Der Kuss der Sphinx by Franz von Stuck, contemplated the powerful beast-woman crushing the naked traveller to her breasts as he yielded to her kiss. ‘What happens next in this picture?’ he wondered without whispering, ‘Why am I thinking sphinx?’

  ‘Why don’t you give art history a rest, Harold?’ said Melissa as she freshened her drink. ‘There are practical matters for us to talk about.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in a moment.’ There were various things leaning against a wall in the order of their last viewing; he moved a portfolio to reveal a framed black-and-white wet pastel: Sphinx by Quentin Blake. The artist had first brushed water on to the paper in the approximate shape of the figure which he then drew with black pastel; he pushed the drawing about with his finger, then further defined it with his fingernail.

  The figure was that of a naked young woman, three-quarter front view, her knees on the floor and her hands on a bed. The drawing stopped at mid-thigh; the bed was only a darkness that she leant on. From the waist up she was in shadow, her head and shoulders and arms shaped of darkness, her face lost in obscurity. The curve of her back, the lithe roundness of hips and bottom drew the eye to the animality of her body; the darkness and thickening of the upper parts suggested a minotaur. The figure seemed as if it had been made to appear by the stripping away of its invisibility.

  ‘Looks as if she’s about to be buggered,’ said Melissa.

  ‘Thank you for that penetrating insight. Can you see anything else in it?’

  ‘Well, she looks as if she might be wearing half of a crop-top gorilla suit.’

  ‘Good job you’re not running an art-appreciation website.’

  ‘Why? What do you see that I don’t?’

  ‘Never mind – let’s get back to whatever you were saying before I took time out for thinking.’

  ‘Hey, listen, Prof – don’t do me any favours. You sound a little bored now that you’ve had your geriatric jollies. Maybe I should leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Melissa – my mind always jumps from one thing to another, sorting images and looking for connections. Don’t leave yet, please – I like having you around.’

  ‘OK, I’ll stay a bit longer. Have another drink and tell me about Christie’s. If the painting fetches five hundred thou, how much do you walk away with?’

  He took a card out of his pocket. ‘Commission is on a sliding scale – the more money you bring in, the less commission they charge. If the hammer price is from £300,000 to £599,999 the commission would be six per cent.’

  Melissa got her pocket calculator out. ‘Six per cent is £30,000. Leaves us with …’

  ‘Leaves me with …’

  ‘Four hundred and seventy thousand, which is not too bad.’

  ‘Don’t forget seventeen and a half per cent VAT on their commission …’

  ‘Five thousand, two hundred and fifty,’ said Melissa, ‘from £470,000 leaves £464,750 which is still a nice little bundle to walk away with. Or are there more deductions?’

  ‘The insurance premium is one per cent of the hammer price.’

  ‘Five thousand! That leaves £459,750. Anything else?’

  ‘Tha
t’s it; Mr Duclos said they’re waiving the catalogue illustration fee, and according to my accountant the Inland Revenue doesn’t get any of this because the Indexation Allowance comes to more than one hundred per cent of the market value in 1982.’

  ‘That’s a mercy. So we’re talking about a final figure of £465,625.00. How much of that can you use to fund me?’

  ‘Funny – fund is a four-letter word.’

  ‘I love it when you talk dirty, Prof. Keep talking.’

  ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Funding me.’

  ‘I think I need to refresh my memory as to what I’m funding.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ she said, leaning back in the chair.

  He knelt in front of her and slid his hands under her bare bottom. ‘I’ll think of something,’ he said with his face between her thighs.

  38

  Numbers

  Still the same evening. ‘Now, then,’ said Melissa. ‘We were going to talk numbers.’

  ‘“Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself,”’ said Klein.

  ‘What the hell’s that about?’

  ‘That’s from Deuteronomy, it comes after Numbers. It just popped into my head, I’ve no idea why.’

  ‘What you’ve been eating is still very much alive, Prof. What is it with you, post-cunnilingual depression?’

  ‘It’s not exactly depression – it’s just that every now and then I wonder how I came to be where I am.’

  ‘You mean where you are with me?’

  ‘With you, with everything.’

  ‘I notice that it happens after your treat rather than before.’

  Watching her mouth and her steady blue eyes as she spoke, Klein thought that mercy was not a big part of her makeup. ‘Don’t you ever wonder about that?’ he said. ‘Don’t you ever wonder how you came to be where you are and doing what you’re doing?’

  ‘I know how I came to be where I am and doing what I’m doing. But for now I’m wondering if you intend to put your money where your mouth is – which might not be the best choice of words. Is you is or is you ain’t my sponsor? is what I’m trying to say.’

  ‘Hannelore and I had in mind to travel on some of the money from the sale of that painting.’

  ‘Who’s Hannelore?’

  ‘My wife. She’s been dead for a long time.’

  ‘Great. I’m deeply moved. I’m so moved that I think it’s time for me to go. Let me know when you’re ready to talk seriously about money. Otherwise stop rattling my cage.’

  ‘Are you in a cage, Melissa?’

  ‘I’m out of here, Prof.’ There was a rush of air as she picked up her shoulder bag and made her exit, slamming the door behind her. Klein listened to the sound of her heels receding into the night.

  He looked again at the Sphinx drawing, the picture and the figure both divided diagonally into light and dark. From the obscurity of her face her hidden eyes looked back at him.

  39

  By The Swells, By The Stars

  ‘Dying sea skills cost islanders their lives,’ said the headline over an Associated Press report in The Times:

  Suva, Fiji: Possibly hundreds of Pacific islanders die slow agonising deaths from sunstroke, thirst and starvation every year because they have lost the seamanship skills of their ancestors, it was claimed yesterday.

  ‘Today, about ninety-five per cent of Pacific islanders who fish at sea do so in small dinghies powered by poorly maintained outboard motors … They chase fish over the horizon, lose sight of their island and can’t find their way back,’ said Michael Blanc, who teaches basic sea safety skills in the South Pacific Commission’s fisheries programme.

  Klein spent about an hour searching through his video collection until he found a documentary called The Last Navigator that he’d once taped from Channel 4. It had been filmed in Micronesia, which at the time had massage parlours and Burger Kings but no Disneyland. On the island of Satawal in the Carolines the navigator, Mau Piailug, was first seen with a circle of stones on a mat and a group of less-than-keen children whom he was attempting to teach the star-compass memorised by his ancestors. ‘I’ll continue to voyage,’ he said, ‘and if I’m not disabled, or too old or dead I will pass my knowledge to the next generation.’

  As a demonstration of the traditional skills, Piailug had organised the building of a sailing canoe for a 500-mile voyage with an adult crew from Satawal to Saipan in the Marianas. Piailug was perhaps in his forties; his compact brown body was sea-tempered and ready, his face intense with the island-finding spirit. ‘We men should think only of our strength,’ he told his crew, ‘we are not children. When we’re on the canoe it is my role to tell you the talk of the sea. Remember the canoe is our mother and the navigator is our father.’

  The vessel herself seemed as eager as Piailug; she was a creature of quickness and memory, a magic of wind and wood, winged with a landfall-hungry sail, rigged with ropes of nothing-forgotten, keeled with the shape of answer-the-sea. At the start of the voyage Piailug, at the helm of the outrigger canoe, sang to his crew:

  I sing of this canoe, our canoe,

  of the life of the spirits, the life of people.

  Be with me, spirit,

  on the small beach, on the wide beach,

  on the beach of my island -

  I sing of this canoe, our canoe.

  Out of sight of land Piailug’s eyes were attentive day after day to the colours and shapes of clouds, to the winds that shifted or were steady, and to the swells. At night he steered by the stars that successively rose over the horizon on the chosen course, each night bringing the mother canoe and her children closer to the loom in the sky, the reflected light of the island landfall, and the tiny speck of land in the wide, wide sea. He had no instruments, only himself, his thousandfold memory and the dead who sailed with him, chanting the names of winds and swells and stars.

  The outrigger canoe seemed less a man-made thing than a natural part of sea life, the sail as inconspicuous against the sky as the wing of a tern. Watching that swift and urgent vessel hissing through the blue water Klein was riveted. Saipan safely reached, he shook his head, then sat for a while whispering into his hand. He didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

  40

  Fifth Session

  ‘I’m lost,’ said Klein.

  ‘In what sense?’ said Dr DeVere.

  ‘In the sense of I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  ‘I am of a people who have always been fearless navigators of the mind. The dead sail with us as we make our way from idea to idea, steering by the stars and sea-marks named by those before us. Such a wide, wide ocean! But you always know where you are by the waves, by the swells, by the loomings and the stars. Then one dark night the waves change, and the swells; the winds blow from not the usual quarters. Black squalls come, and heavy seas, the stars are blotted out, the wind moans in the rigging. You suddenly realise that you might never make your landfall, you might drown. A great wave hits the boat and takes you with it, you feel yourself going down, down, down and then you don’t know any more which way is up and you can’t hold your breath a moment longer and the wild wide ocean fills your lungs and then you’re gone: down among the dead men.’

  Dr DeVere kept respectfully silent for a few moments. ‘It’s good that you could get that out,’ he said.

  ‘Is it? I almost don’t know who I am. I try to think of how I came to this and it’s hard to believe how it all began. I read this lousy piece in The Times and Boom! my world fell apart.’

  ‘Ronnie Laing said some good things in his time: one of them was, “The breakdown can be the breakthrough.”’

  ‘Depends on what you break through to, I should think.’

  ‘What do you think you’ve broken through to?’

  ‘Way back in our first session – it seems a hundred years ago – you brought up Georg Groddeck and his theory of the It. When I wasn’t too impressed by that idea you asked me to
visualise a speaker in my head other than myself and I named Oannes. It looks to me now as if he’s the It that’s been living me and I’m not too happy with it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My involvement with Melissa Bottomley became an obsession; I got to a point where I wanted whatever I could have with her at any cost. Her Leeuwenhoek money is almost gone and she needs funding to continue this study she’s doing. I told her I’d help her with that.’

  ‘Can you afford to?’

  ‘I own an original Redon that’s going to be auctioned at Christie’s for quite a bit of money.’

  ‘Maybe you could fund the NHS – they’re always coming up short.’

  ‘Very funny, Leon.’

  ‘Sorry. You were saying?’

  ‘Well, I got carried away and told her I might give her some money for her study. I didn’t say how much.’

  ‘So if you’re going to be coming into some money, what’s the problem?’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to give her anything now. That painting was going to be converted to money for Hannelore and me to enjoy. Now Hannelore’s dead, and in exchange for sexual treats and a bit of conversation now and then I’ve promised money to this woman who has only contempt for me.’

  ‘When you spoke about your obsession with Melissa Bottomley you used the past tense. Are you no longer obsessed with her?’

  ‘No, I’m not. Long before this I could see her for the cold and calculating bitch she is but I was more or less under her spell. Now that spell is broken.’

  ‘So you’re not having anything to do with her from now on?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She gets to me in all kinds of ways: that first time she came to my house, we were standing outside on the pavement and she laid her head on my shoulder and said, “I’m not sure what I am; sometimes I’m not sure if I am.” When I expressed surprise she said, “Nobody is the same all the way through like a stick of seaside rock. Or from moment to moment.” Then she asked me to hug her and she said, “You’re older than my father.”’