Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

Returning to his desk and the computer he called up:

NAKED MYSTERIES

The Nudes of Gustav Klimt

No additional words had appeared since the last time he’d looked at the screen. He opened one of his Klimt books and looked at the painting of Pallas Athene wearing the mask of the Gorgon on her breast. ‘Wisdom,’ he said. He considered Medusa’s dread rictus and her loosely hanging tongue. He quit the word processor program, switched on the modem, double-clicked on the Internet icon, and clicked once on Connect. The modem chirped its dial-up and trilled, twanged, and roared through its connection sequence. He watched impatiently as the computer logged on to the network, and when he arrived at the Internet homepage he went to the Yahoo search engine.

‘Everybody’s somebody’s fool,’ he said. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool and there’s a first time for everything.’ He took a deep breath, typed SEX in the box, and clicked on Search. Scrolling down the results he clicked on Sexuality, clicked again on Oral Sex, and found a page of text with instructions for performing cunnilingus. ‘Give me a break,’ he said, and closed the page. Ignorantly but determinedly he pressed on until he found websites with free samples showing a whole range of sexual activities in clinically detailed photographs. Videos, live performers, telephone fantasists and other services and goods were also available, demotically described and payable by cheque or credit card, sometimes to be invoiced under names like Opticom and Allegro and sometimes more straightforward ones.

‘Oannes, you strange fish,’ said Klein, ‘is this your kind of thing?’ Website after website offered free samples and previews and promised the earth if he would sign up. The women were young and pretty, some of them beautiful; many of the men were heroically endowed. Several times he was on the point of signing up but shrank back at the thought of giving his credit card details and e-mail address to whatever might be lurking out in cyberspace.

Eventually he stumbled on to a website called Angelica’s Grotto. The homepage, to Klein’s astonishment, featured the Ingres painting, Angelica Saved by Ruggiero . ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, responding as always to the Ingres Angelica’s blonde attractions. ‘O God! the tastiness, the marzipan, the utter confection of her goodies and her sweeties and her rosebuds. Angelica, yes! Her nudity and her bondage — what more could a hero ask for! The tight little crease of her firm young flesh where her right arm crosses her bosom! “How long?” says her expression. “How long must I await the hero’s pleasure?”’

Turning away from the chocolate-box Angelica on the screen he got one of the Redon books off the shelf and looked at the Roger and Angelica pastel, so intense in colour, so full of danger and unknowing. He took a magnifying glass to the tiny figure of Angelica who seemed more than a story, who seemed the heart of a mystery, chained to her rock and awaiting death or rescue.

‘Lost and helpless,’ he said. ‘Lost and helpless and seductive in the darkness and obscurity, in the purpureality of her rock, her body glistening with spray as the sea-wind moans, the waves crash on the rock, the monster bellows, the hippogriff shrieks. The rock is like a face islanded in darkness; Ruggiero on the hippogriff is almost lost in the murk, battling against the darkness and the monster Orca. So much lostness!’

He went back to the computer and Angelica’s Grotto. CLICK HERE TO ENTER, said the screen. Klein clicked and got a beautiful naked young woman with long dark hair crouching in the shadowy opening of a cave by the sea. ‘Another naked Angelica,’ said Klein. ‘No chains, but is anyone without chains? Her face — what is it saying? Is she waiting in her grotto for a rescuer?’

YOU HAVE FOUND ANGELICA, said the screen. THIS SITE IS ABSOLUTELY FREE. ENJOY IT! BROWSE MY GALLERIES TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT. RING ME UP AT THIS NUMBER IF YOU WANT TO CHAT.

There were seven galleries in Angelica’s Grotto, each containing twenty to thirty thumbnail photographs which could be enlarged by clicking on them. Klein scanned them thoroughly, entranced by Angelica’s beauty, the suppleness of her body, and the expressions on her face as she was penetrated in every orifice. From picture to picture she was by turns pensive, shy, coquettish, dreamy, surprised, but always submissive and eager to please. She looked no more than eighteen, with little pointed mermaid-breasts and the face of a Waterhouse nymph. ‘How can she want to do this?’ demanded Klein. ‘Can she possibly enjoy it? Has she read Ariosto? Does she want to be rescued?’

In the first gallery Angelica and her colleagues performed in rocky and sandy places by the sea but after that they moved indoors. Sometimes she was nude, sometimes in white knickers and bra, suspender belt and stockings. She was active with single partners of both sexes and with groups, using her hands for whomever she could not accommodate more intimately. Klein regretted that she had removed her pubic hair; the baldness of her genitalia seemed degrading. He examined each photograph carefully, looking at many of them several times, but the one he returned to most often was the one on her homepage where she crouched alone in her shadowy grotto, her face thoughtful.

‘Angelica,’ he said, ‘what are your chains and what is your rock?’ With his eyes inches from the screen he went over the pictures hour after hour. ‘Probably I’m on the edge of madness,’ he said. ‘On the other hand,’ noting the counter that showed him to be Visitor No. 973,472 to the site, ‘I’ve got a lot of company.’ Lamenting that he was no longer a player, he consoled himself manually. ‘ And there are no exceptions to the rule …’ sang Connie Francis (afraid of silence, he had put the CD on REPEAT) ‘Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.’

Many of the views of Angelica in action were confined to the sexual organs, seen from only a few inches away and suitable for gynaecological study. After a time these images became abstract; a kind of visual dyslexia set in, and Klein didn’t always know what he was looking at. He was confused, disoriented, and baffled in his quest for solitary satisfaction; nonetheless he persevered, achieving tiny climaxes that were little better than footnotes referring him to the op. cit . of his youth. ‘Ibid,’ he said. ‘q.v. Call me Ozymandias.’

In photographs of anal intercourse Angelica was often seen sitting or lying supine on her partner and spreading the lips of her vagina while he sodomised her. In that view her genitalia and anus seemed an ancient and savage face from which protruded the curved penis ‘Like the tongue of the Gorgon,’ said Klein. ‘Hundreds of thousands of fools like me are staring at screens where this face laughs at them. Hundreds of thousands of pounds — no, millions! — are spent on this demonstration of… what? A mystery?

‘Her genitals (he knew them intimately now) no longer seem firm and fresh. The monster that menaces Angelica has by now mounted her many times. Maybe she never wanted to be rescued, maybe she lusted after the monster. What will she give birth to? What is the mystery behind the Gorgon face? Why do I sit here for hours with my nose up the bottoms of strangers? Bottoms in cyberspace, for God’s sake, slick with lubricant! Surrogates, stuntmen and women for the stunts I can’t do any more. Or never did in the first place. I wonder what her voice is like? I wonder if she’s read Ariosto? Not likely. Am I going to ring her up?’ He picked up the telephone, put it down again.

He noticed that he was still connected to the Internet. ‘Lucifer,’ he said as the name came into his mind. He put the Yahoo search engine on it and went down the list of matches until he came to a painting with that title by Zdenek Polach. He clicked on it and got something bluish-white, blurred and spinning, tilting on its axis. ‘Confusion,’ he said. Unlike the soaring Lucifer in the Rorshach blot it made him uncomfortable. He clicked on Next Painting and got The Confusion in which a dim and malevolent face looked out of a noxious yellowish-white bafflement. ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ he said.