Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

I GUESS I’D HAVE TO SAY YES — IN FANTASY.

EVER FANTASISE DOING IT YOURSELF?

YOU’RE SOUNDING MORE AND MORE LIKE MY SHRINK.

ANSWER THE QUESTION, PLEASE.

YES, I HAVE FANTASISED IT BUT NOT IN A VIOLENT WAY. DON’T PRESS ME FOR DETAILS.

NOT VIOLENT BUT AGAINST THE WOMAN’S WILL, YES?

YES.

DO YOU THINK, IF YOU STILL HAD YOUR VIRILITY, YOU’D EVER CROSS THE LINE FROM FANTASY TO REALITY?

NO.

WHY NOT?

IT ISN’T RIGHT TO FORCE A SEXUAL ACT ON ANYONE AGAINST THAT PERSON’S WILL.

WOULD YOU SAY THAT WHAT I DID TO YOU LAST NIGHT WAS AGAINST YOUR WILL?

YES.

BUT YOU DIDN’T SEEM TOO TERRIBLY OUTRAGED. YOU DIDN’T SEEM TOO DISTRESSED EITHER. YOU DIDN’T REACH FOR THE GLYCERYL TRINITRATE AND YOU DIDN’T CRY ANGINA. WHY WAS THAT?

YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A PRISONER BEING INTERROGATED BY THE KGB.

DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP?

NO.

WHY NOT?

I DON’T KNOW.

I THINK YOU DO BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO SAY.

MAYBE.

YOU WANT ME TO SAY IT, DON’T YOU.

YES, I WANT YOU TO SAY IT.

YOU DON’T WANT ME TO STOP BECAUSE YOU LIKE SUBMITTING TO MY BIG ISNESS.

I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK DIRTY.

I KNOW YOU DO, PROF. AND YOU LOVED IT WHEN I DID YOU THE WAY I DID LAST NIGHT, DIDN’T YOU. EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS.

Go with it, said Oannes.

‘With what?’ said Klein.

Anything.

‘You just don’t give a damn, do you.’

No answer.

HAROLD, ARE YOU THERE?

YES.

ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER ME?

WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?

I WAS SAYING THAT YOU LOVED WHAT I DID TO YOU LAST NIGHT EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS. AM I RIGHT?

DATA-RAPE.

ALL RIGHT, IT WAS DATA-RAPE BUT IT WAS ALSO QUID PRO QUO. SO TALK TO ME, HAROLD.

I’M NOT COMFORTABLE WITH HOW I FEEL.

T.E. LAWRENCE HAD A LOT OF TROUBLE WITH IT TOO, AFTER HE GOT BUGGERED BY THE TURKISH SOLDIERS. I’M NOT A NICE PERSON BUT THE INFORMATION I’M GATHERING IS IMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIALITY WILL BE OBSERVED IN MY USE OF IT. ISN’T THERE AN AMERICAN EXPRESSION, ‘TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL’?

OK. FOR ALL I KNOW, YOU’RE THE DEVIL. BUT HERE GOES. IT HURT BUT THE PAIN MADE ME FEEL THAT I WAS PAYING MY DUES IN SOME WAY. THEN I STOPPED NOTICING THE PAIN AND IT JUST FELT GOOD NOT TO HAVE TO BE A MAN FOR A WHILE.

DO YOU THINK THAT HAVING THAT DONE TO YOU WAS UNMANLY?

YES.

MEN DO ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

NOT MY KIND OF MAN.

WAS THERE A POINT WHEN YOU ENJOYED IT?

YES. THAT’S IT FOR TONIGHT, OK?

OK, HAROLD. THANKS.

WHAT’S NEXT?

WHO KNOWS? NIGHTY-BYE. X

‘It was a Beetle Cat,’ said Klein to Oannes, ‘only twelve and a half feet long, a wooden day-sailer that was patterned on a Cape Cod fishing boat — the mast up forward in the eyes of the boat, a single gaff-rigged sail, and what they called a barndoor rudder. This was back in my first marriage, in my other life back in the States.

‘Melisande, I named her — the original owner hadn’t bothered with a name. Francine never took to sailing and she didn’t want to know the right words for the parts of the boat and rigging. Once in a while we went out to Ram Island for picnics, but most often I sailed alone, sometimes in fairly rough weather. The man I bought her from had told me how wonderfully safe and sturdy she was, and being wooden she couldn’t sink. Francine wouldn’t go with me unless the weather was mild. ‘If you have to reef you shouldn’t sail,’ she said. She thought I drove too fast too.

‘We’d been out in the boat one summer afternoon; it was a beautiful day with a good breeze. Coming back to the mooring we were running before the wind, the sail all the way out on the port side. About halfway in I wanted the sail on the other side. I’d learnt sailing from books and I knew about bringing the wind across the stern. “Watch your head,” I said to Francine. “The boom’s going to swing around.” I put the tiller up and WHAM! The boom came round and slammed into the starboard shroud and suddenly the boat was full of water.

‘I was amazed — when you’re running like that it’s easy not to notice the strength of the wind because the boat is moving with it and if the water’s calm it’s very smooth sailing. I ought to have brought the boom midships and then eased it out on the starboard side instead of just letting it go as I did. There’d been such a stillness in the boat until I let the wind take the boom and the swamping was so sudden that it was a real shock to me and a bigger one to Francine. I’d been out in rough weather without a care in the world but here on this balmy day I was suddenly made aware of the power of that fair wind and the depth of my ignorance. We bailed the boat out and got back to the mooring with no further difficulty but I still remember how surprised I was that afternoon. When I think of van de Velde’s seamen in rough weather and myself on that sunny Sunday I have to shake my head.’

Klein didn’t want to look at the pictures in Angelica’s Grotto. He wanted to hold in his mind Melissa’s nakedness; he wanted to hold in his nostrils the scent of her skin, on his tongue the taste of her, in his hands the feel and the weight of her buttocks. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I had no right to do what I did. All manner of things can be done that ought not to be done and this was one of them. Melissa is intelligent but she has no idea of correct behaviour, of what is appropriate for this old man. And of course neither have I. Why have I spent hours looking at the pictures in Angelica’s Grotto? What hath it profited me? Where was the gratification? There is a never-enoughness in such looking. Why is that? Why is it never enough? What is this non-existent grail that millions are seeking on the Internet? What is hidden refuses to stay hidden; the collective mind, as in a delirium, vomits up treasures of knowledge and images of longing and madness into the Internet. The seekers after the grail of enoughness think to be secret in the dark but the synapses of that heaving brain lead back to them; they can be found, exposed, discovered, unhidden as I have been. There was no Internet when Klimt was alive.’

He went to the book of Klimt sketches, opened it at random to an elegant drawing of a woman in period underwear lying on her back with her knees up and her legs spread, masturbating. Masturbierende mit gegratschten Beinen, said the earnest caption. ‘There you go,’ said Klein. Then, recalling another book, ‘It’s a paperback with an orange cover. Yes,’ he said when he found it, Clay Gods: The Neolithic Period and Copper Age in Hungary.’ He turned to a photograph of an anthropomorphic urn, female, stylised almost to the point of abstraction — the eyes, nose, and breasts indicated by clay knobs, the shape primarily urn but numinously woman. ‘Better than Klimt,’ he said.

He got his video of The Blue Angel, watched the end of it again, with Professor Rath, broken and disgraced, stealing back at night to the school where he’d been a respected master, and resting his head on the desk of his onetime authority. ‘And yet,’ said Klein, ‘for a while you had a singing canary.’

‘Oannes has said quite a bit more since the last time I saw you,’ said Klein to Dr DeVere.

‘Up to then, all he’d said since the shutdown was “Gone”, right?’