Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

He was meeting his friend Seamus Flannery for lunch at II Fornello, an Italian restaurant with Spanish waiters. Seamus wrote radio, screen, and stage plays and taught History of Film at the National Film School. The waiters Paco and Juliano called the two of them ‘Dottore’ or ‘Professore’ interchangeably. Flannery was already there in their usual booth.

‘Professore!’ said Juliano. ‘Nice to see you. Are you having something to drink?’

‘Half lager, please. Same for you?’ he said to Seamus. Over their half-pints they brought each other up to date.

‘That’s really awful,’ said Seamus when Klein told him about the loss of his inner voice. ‘Some of my best conversations happen inside my head.’ He was as bald as an observatory dome; Klein imagined echoes.

‘Different voices?’ he said.

‘No, just mine. Did you have an inner voice that was different from yours?’

‘No, but I suppose one might.’

‘Where would it be coming from?’

‘From a different part of oneself, I should think.’

‘How different?’

‘Well, mostly I’m Harold, right? But maybe I’ve got a Jim part as well.’

‘Chelsea supporter, hangs out with the lads at the pub, owns a Rottweiler, has a tattoo?’

‘Maybe not that different.’

‘Jekyll and Hyde spring to mind, or maybe The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. “Doe not call upp Any that you cannot put downe.” Flannery and Klein were both well-grounded in H. P. Lovecraft.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Klein.

‘Has Jim said anything interesting lately?’

‘Not yet.’

They talked of Klimt, Kieslovski, and Egberto Gismonti over their tortellini and lasagne. ‘Do you use the Internet?’ said Klein.

‘I haven’t got round to that yet, I’m afraid I’d become addicted to it. You?’

‘From time to time; it’s useful for research.’

After lunch they walked down to Great Russell Street, then over to Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street and the Virgin Megastore, where they headed for the video department. Klein bought, among others, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Flannery included Point Blank in his purchases. They both possessed recordings from TV of these all-time favourites but they liked the pretty boxes.

Klein ignored holidays and celebrations as much as possible. On Hallowe’en, his neighbourhood being ever more gentrified, little groups of middle-class trick-or-treaters rang his bell but he didn’t answer the door. On Guy Fawkes night the gunpowder-smelling streets were hung with smoke as fireworks near and far lit up the sky but he stayed indoors.

On the appointed day at the appointed time he presented himself at Dr DeVere’s office. DeVere looked him up and down, saw no slings or casts, and said, ‘Well done! You’ve kept out of Casualty for two weeks. How’s it going?’

‘Variously. I think too much Internet can make you go blind.’

‘A new development?’

‘I’m not sure development is the word for it.’

‘Go on.’

Klein told Dr DeVere about the various websites he’d visited; he told him about Angelica’s Grotto, the homepage with the Ingres painting and the pictures in the galleries.

‘Interesting,’ said Dr DeVere.

‘She asked me onscreen if I wanted to take a walk on the night side. I clicked on YES and got a picture story called ‘Monica’s Monday Night’ in which a young woman on her way home from a late meeting at King’s College is pulled into a van by a black man and forced to perform oral sex, after which she’s anally raped. She has to do other things as well. Afterwards this person who calls herself Angelica and I had an onscreen one-to-one dialogue and she asked me if I’d enjoyed it.’

‘Had you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you feel about the fact that you enjoyed it?’

‘Troubled. I’ve always thought I liked women but now I’m wondering if that’s really so. Maybe I’ve never liked them; certainly I’ve always been afraid of them.’

‘Did that contribute to your enjoyment?’

‘Well, if you see someone you’re afraid of being forced to submit to a more powerful person you can take pleasure in it, right? Or maybe, as they say, the enemy of the enemy is a friend.’

‘You think of women as the enemy?’

‘I’ve never thought I did. But I believe it’s generally accepted that men who sleep with as many women as they can don’t really like women.’

‘Have you slept with many?’

‘My opportunities were limited but I did what I could.’

‘Did your wife know about it?’

‘I tried to be discreet but I think women always know one way or another — you sound funny on the telephone or you come home smelling different or things fall out of your pockets.’

‘Were these one-night stands or something more?’

‘They were affairs that went on for a while.’

‘How did you feel about them?’

‘Guilty.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Successful.’

‘I think it might be useful if you tried to understand where you are with women in general.’

‘Where I was, you mean.’

‘Well, you’ve got something going with this Angelica woman. Can you say what it is?’

‘I can’t say because I don’t know. I’m pretty confused right now.’

‘Confusion is OK; confusion is generally the first step in the process of change.’

‘Confusion is nothing new to me; I’m like those people who divide their time between a house in London and a villa in Tuscany except that I do it between confusion and panic’

‘Can you describe the panic?’

‘Well, I used to wake up in the morning like a man trapped in a car going over a cliff.’

‘And now?’

‘Like a man lost in a cave.’

‘That’s when you first wake up. What about later?’

‘At breakfast I settle into the day, read the papers, plan what I’m going to do. After breakfast I go to my desk and then it’s just the normal work panic’

‘What’s the normal work panic?’

‘It’s a state of not knowing each time whether you can make it happen. For a writer that’s an OK state to be in — it’s respectful of the unknowable thing-in-itself of whatever you’re writing about. If that goes I’m in big trouble. Winter is coming; in November there’s always a big rain that leaves the trees black and bare. This is the November of me — there’s no getting away from that. Sometimes I go to a bookshelf and stand there with my hand outstretched, not knowing what I came there for.’

‘What can I say? Everybody grows old except those who die young. Naturally that’s part of your current problems but I’d like to get back to the sexual area.’

‘Me too.’

‘Please don’t be offended by my next question: when your wife was with you, how would you have felt about seeing her in a picture-story like the Monica one?’

Klein blushed. ‘That’s a very uncomfortable question.’

‘Don’t answer unless you want to.’

Klein took a deep breath. ‘Bear in mind that the Monica story was a fantasy — it wasn’t presented as something that really happened. I mean, I’ve had fantasies about murdering one or two people but I haven’t ever got those fantasies mixed up with reality.’

‘Understood.’

‘ A fantasy like that with my wife in it — my response would have been pretty much what it was with the Monica story.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Ashamed.’

‘You didn’t feel ashamed of your murder fantasies but you feel ashamed about the idea of enjoying a rape fantasy with your wife as the victim, yes?’

‘Monica wasn’t altogether a victim; at some level she almost wanted it to happen and when it happened she found herself sexually responsive to the man who was mastering her.’