Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

The house now wore a look of surprise and expectancy; encountering him in odd places scratching his head and muttering to himself, it found his presence changed. Standing before the Meissen girl, Klein was argumentative. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘is there such a contradiction in you? You’re a porcelain oxymoron: you’ve got a body that’s made for sin and a face like the Virgin Mary and you’ve never looked at me once in all these years — you’ve always got your eye on those invisible balls on that invisible pitch that’s behind me when I stand in front of you. What’s your message? Are you trying to tell me that the game is elsewhere, that I’m missing the point?’

Her eyes entranced and dreamy as always, she looked past Klein at the unseen world behind him.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m mad. It’s the natural state.’

Just don’t get too natural, said Oannes.

What can happen that’s bad?

You never know.

That night Klein dreamt that Hannelore was walking towards him in the Fulham Road, the sunlight behind her shining through her hair. They both stopped and she looked at him sadly. ‘You left me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t leave you.’

Early the next evening he was watching at the front window when the van appeared with Leslie driving. Klein went out to meet them. ‘Here we are,’ said Melissa. ‘Hi,’ said Leslie.

‘Hi,’ said Klein.

There was no parking space in front of the house so Leslie and Melissa unloaded the van in the street and put everything on the pavement. Melissa kissed Klein. ‘Well, Harold,’ she said, ‘this is it.’

‘Yes, it is. I’m not strong enough to carry you over the threshold and of course it’s not really that kind of thing.’

‘Just as well, since there are two of us and Leslie’s a lot heavier than I am.’

While Leslie drove off to find a space Melissa and Klein carried things up the steps and into the house. ‘Don’t take anything heavy, Harold,’ she said.

‘I won’t. The computers go in the room all the way at the back.’

This one too, said Oannes when Leslie reappeared.

That’s how it is, said Klein. The work was soon done. He looked away when Leslie took his things into the front bedroom. ‘Shall we order a pizza?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d do the shopping tomorrow.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Melissa. ‘Cheese and tomato pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and anchovies?’

‘Whatever does it for you.’

‘Got any beer?’ said Leslie.

‘There’s an Oddbins just up the road,’ said Klein. ‘Why don’t you get a couple of six-packs while I order the pizza?’ He gave him a twenty-pound note.

Leslie’s eyes met his for rather a long time as he took the money. ‘Any particular kind?’

‘I mostly drink wine, so get whatever you like.’

‘What beer do you drink when you do drink beer, Prof?’

‘Beck’s, and I’d rather you didn’t call me Prof, Leslie.’

‘Sorry! Should I call you Mr Klein?’

‘Harold will do nicely, OK?’

‘OK, nicely is how I want to do it, Harold.’ He moved away pantherishly, the primal waves of his maleness continuing their transmission after he was out of sight. Receiving the message, Klein shrank into non-existence, reached into it, hauled himself out by the scruff of the neck, and shook his head.

He could be trouble, said Oannes.

Tell me about it, said Klein.

‘Leslie’s a lot of fun when you get to know him,’ said Melissa.

‘I’ll bet he is. I can see already that he’s got a great sense of humour.’

Melissa was standing by the wall where Pegase Noir used to hang. She touched the blank space it had left behind. ‘That winged horse flew away with some of the past, Harold. Now there’s more space for the present, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I suppose so.’ He wished she would move away from the mantelpiece and the Meissen girl. She was running her finger over the nipple of the figure’s exposed right breast, exactly as she had done the first time she was in this room. Maybe this is a dream, he thought. Maybe I’ll wake up and she won’t be here and I’ve never met her.

‘We’ve got the makings of a very pleasant arrangement here, Harold.’ She smiled suggestively. ‘Don’t spoil it for yourself.’

‘God forbid.’ He put Egberto Gismonti’s Sol Do Meio Dia on the CD player and the guitar filled the room with Amazonian jungle shadows. ‘That’s a nice sound,’ said Melissa. She shook her hips and rolled her shoulders to the music while he stood there danceless.

The pizza arrived, Leslie and the beer shortly after. They ate at the kitchen table. Klein opened a bottle of red which he and Melissa shared. Leslie drank Special Brew from the can. ‘They were out of Beck’s,’ he said.

‘Could I have the change?’ said Klein.

Leslie gave it to him. There was a beaded lamp over the kitchen table; Klein had always found its light cosy but now it seemed to fix the strangeness of this gathering like a surveillance photograph. He imagined the police examining it and asking questions. Really, he said to himself, what have I to feel guilty about?

Don’t ask me , said Oannes.

While they ate and drank, Gismonti continued in the living-room and the bedroom waited upstairs for what would come later. Klein tried to stop the pictures in his mind but couldn’t. ‘What’s the domestic routine going to be?’ he said to Melissa. ‘Will you be cooking?’

‘Hello, hello, are you there, Harold? This is 1998; unisex cooking has been going on for quite a while. What did you do until now?’

Over the years Klein had become a reasonably good cook, even essaying such advanced dishes as beef Stroganoff and goulash. He rebelled, however, at becoming the housewife of the group. ‘I mostly bought frozen dinners at Safeway or I ordered in various kinds of takeaway,’ he said. ‘What did you do until now?’

‘Sometimes we ate out; sometimes Leslie cooked.’

‘Leslie, you’re a real all-rounder,’ said Klein.

‘Some of us have to be. If I’m going to do the cooking here you and Melissa can do the shopping — I’ll write out a list for you tonight.’ To Melissa he said, ‘We still have to get everything hooked up.’

While Leslie and Melissa organised the website room Klein went to his desk and put the last unfinished Klimt page up on his computer screen. Then he made it go away and put up a blank new page. He sat with his arms folded across his chest, looking at the wordless screen. He remembered an old Jimmy Durante song and typed:

Sometimes I think I wanna go,

And then again I think I wanna stay.

He needed music but wasn’t sure what kind. He put on Piazzolla Classics. The first track was ‘Three Minutes with the Truth’ which always sounded to him like something struggling to move forward while being pulled back. The second track was ‘The Little House of My Ancestors’ which made him see it on a hillside under a flat blue cloudless sky, children playing in the dusty road. He listened through the disc, going where the music took him while staring at the words of Jimmy Durante on the computer screen.

‘Beddy byes,’ said Melissa, and kissed him. To his questioning look she said, ‘Soon,’ and went upstairs, followed by Leslie who said, over his shoulder, ‘Sleep well, Harold.’

‘No doubt in his mind about where he sleeps,’ Klein muttered to himself. He went to the window, looked out at the street where the parked cars were frosting up under the unblinking stare of the pinky-yellow lamps. The winter night, sensing his attention, came up to the window, pressed its bleakness against the glass, mouthed You and me, sweetheart.