Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

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?’