Russell Hoban - Angelica Lost and Found

‘Here’s my card,’ said Hennessy. ‘Phone me and tell me where you’ll be. I don’t want you to pass out somewhere and be lying unfound for days.’

‘Thanks,’ said Fontana.

‘Give you a lift anywhere?’ said Hennessy.

‘That’s a lot of money to be carrying around,’ I said. ‘We can keep most of it here in the safe for you or open an account for you at our bank.’

‘OK,’ said Fontana. He had fifty thousand-dollar bills. He peeled off one and gave me the rest. ‘Please just keep it here for now,’ he said.

‘So?’ said Hennessy. ‘Lift?’

‘Thanks,’ said Fontana. ‘I’m going to do some walking to clear my head.’

With that he left. Odourlessly, the man who was not my Volatore.

I am confused, forlorn, full of doubts. Again and again I try to send my thoughts and fears to Angelica but there is no response from her. Have my messages gone astray? Is she sending messages to me?

Now I wonder how things have come to this pass. How did I come to be stranded in this nowhereness, half out of one reality, half into another? Where and when was the beginning of it? My memory is scattering into dancing colours, blurs and flashes swooping to escarpments of eyes, caverns of listening, farnesses of tinyness. A sorcerer told me to go where I went, I looked into an eye and saw the beginning or was it the end of me?

I gave Dr Levy notice and moved on to my third shrink, Dr Long. Dave Michnik, one of our painters, said he was a no-bullshit guy. Dr Long worked out of a houseboat called Dos Arbolitos at Sausalito. The dancing ripple pattern on the ceiling was reassuring and the gentle lapping of the water endlessly rocking made me feel sleepy and safe.

‘ Dos Arbolitos ,’ I said. ‘Two little trees.’

‘You know the song?’

‘I’ve got a CD with it but all I remember is the title and the fact that it’s a huapango . Is there a story behind that name for your houseboat?’

‘There’s a story behind everything but let’s talk about you.’

Dr Long was a tall man in jeans and a denim shirt. He had startling blue eyes and a long face that always seemed ready to — and frequently did — break into a half-smile.

‘You don’t look like a shrink,’ I said.

‘I charge like one though,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you? If anything.’

‘I have a reality problem.’

‘That’s called life.’

‘But I’m living in two realities. Maybe more.’

‘And?’

‘I’m trying to understand them, trying to define what they are.’

‘Why?’

‘So I’ll know, so I can deal with them.’

‘Knowing won’t help. That’s a waste of energy. Get practical.’

‘How?’

‘It doesn’t matter how many realities there are or what they are; just handle them one at a time and do whatever needs to be done.’

‘That’s theory; practice is something else. I want to talk about Volatore Two.’

‘But you haven’t told me about Volatore One yet.’

So I told him all there was to tell about Volatore.

‘And I still don’t know if it was real. I mean, how can a woman have sex with an imaginary creature that only exists in a book?’

‘ Everything is real — try to remember that.’

‘Even a hallucination?’

‘Even a hallucination. You experienced it; whatever it was, it happened to you and is part of your reality.’

‘You’re batting a thousand, Doc. I’m ready to throw away my placebos. Have you read Orlando Furioso , by the way?’

‘Yes, I have. Did you make up the name Volatore?’

‘No, he, the hippogriff, told it to me.’

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘Yes, but I want him to be somebody I can walk down the street with, and he can only assume human form if he takes over someone else’s body. I’ve told you all that.’

‘What if you did walk down the street with him in his original hippogriff form — do you think other people would see him?’

‘I’m afraid to try that experiment. Can we move on to Volatore Two?’

‘OK.’

‘He had the same smell and he knew about the painting of Ruggiero and Angelica in El Paso. He himself did a weird painting while in a sort of trance, then he came out of it, didn’t remember doing the painting, and hasn’t painted since. I keep wondering if Volatore played any part in that.’

‘Where is the original Volatore now?’

‘I don’t know. Somehow we dropped out of the Ariosto story and now we’ve lost touch.’

‘Have you tried to contact him?’

‘No, this double-reality stress got to be too much for me and I’ve just been trying to get my head straight for a while now.’

‘Do you want to find him?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So will you try to reach him now?’

‘Yes, I will. It’s something I have to think about.’

‘What is there to think about?’

‘How to do it.’

‘Don’t you know how?’ The ripple pattern on the ceiling was moving faster, as if speeded up by his voice.

‘It’s a trial-and-error thing,’ I said, ‘and I’ll have to do it in my own time if you’ll allow me.’

‘You sound defensive.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I feel attacked.’

‘I’m not attacking you.’

I looked at my watch.

‘Isn’t my time up?’ I said. ‘You probably have someone coming for your next session.’

Dr Long shook his head.

‘Is it possible,’ he said, ‘that you’re not altogether sure you want to be with Volatore again?’

‘I have to go now,’ I said. ‘I’m expected elsewhere.’

Olivia Partridge, my partner at Eidolon, is more of a pragmatist than I am; her thinking always leads to action.

‘We promised Ossip Przewalski a new show,’ she said, ‘a while before our recent Volatore binge, remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘So let’s do it, OK?’

‘OK.’

Przewalski rides a Harley Davidson and he paints nudes on Harley Davidsons. His approach is somewhere between Kokoschka and Redon and his last show was a sell-out. We swung into action planning the layout of the show, composing the ad for the art magazines, making up the invitation list and organising the catering.

I did this automatically while my mind was on other things. Sometimes I ask myself whether being human in the usual way is enough. Whether something isn’t missing. Some animality in another dimension. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? I have coupled with an imaginary beast and I can still see his strange eyes, his beaked face close to mine. Not a dream, not a hallucination. Part of my humanity. Maybe I’m not the only one. Maybe others have had imaginary-animal lovers.

Dr Long says not to bother with definitions but to deal with things in the simplest way practical. Occam’s razor and all that. But what is the simplest way? It seems that the original Volatore is transmitting something of himself to receivers who don’t necessarily have any connection with him. Joe Fontana had read Orlando Furioso and knew about the da Carpi painting but Alyosha Zhabotinsky, who might have read Gogol but not Ariosto was picking up scrambled Volatorisms such as ‘dim red taverns of sheep’. Are these the people he’s trying to reach? Not likely. He’s firing off random shots because he’s unable to aim his transmissions. I know he’s trying to reach me .

Dr Long asked me whether I was sure I wanted to be with Volatore again. Am I sure? Well, no. It’s a heavy trip, and scary because I sense in it the danger of losing my mind. R. D. Laing said, at the height of his vogue in the seventies, that the breakdown is often the breakthrough but that idea hasn’t had too many adherents lately and I don’t think it would work for me. I’m afraid of falling through a hole in reality if I keep messing with two kinds of it. So are my fears and doubts creating a barrier to communication from Volatore? I won’t think about that any more right now, I’ll think about other things.