Russell Hoban - Angelica Lost and Found

What was to be done with Tiny, Tiny Dancing Giants in the Dim Red Caverns of Sleep ? To sell it to anyone would be irresponsible; to give it to a charity would be uncharitable. After long thought Dr Jimatore wrapped it in two thicknesses of brown paper and locked it in a Dos Arbolitos cupboard, the resting-place of a broken beach-umbrella, a retired croquet set and a Ouija board.

The Chicano Collection is the current exhibition at the El Paso Museum of Art. Christian Gerstheimer, the curator, has been showing visitors through the galleries daily. This morning, in his office checking his messages, he finds himself thinking of where he is in the world. El Paso, the Pass, is on the Rio Bravo del Norte, the Rio Grande, facing Juarez across the river which flows through Texas to the sea. Beyond Juarez stand the mountains. Mountains beyond the river that flows to the sea. El Paso, the sound of horses is in the name, the whinnying and the hoofbeats, the creak of leather and the cries of riders riding to the sea. El Paso. Why these thoughts? No idea.

He passes through the galleries to where Ruggiero Saves Angelica , tempera on wood by Girolamo da Carpi, hangs, hearing his footsteps on the hardwood floor and thinking, as he has never thought before, how many millions, billions, countless trillions of footsteps there have been since the world began. Under the nocturnal daylight of the halogen lamps the silent faces in the paintings have no answers.

Michelle Villa, the Registrar of the El Paso Museum of Art, driving from her house in Kern Place three miles away, takes Mesa Street past the University of Texas at El Paso, and continues through the architectural reminiscings of Sunset Heights. The pale browns of the urban palette are picked up in painterly fashion by the distant-background brown ridges of the Franklin Mountains beyond Jaurez across the Rio Bravo. The air is dry, the day is windy and the wind shakes the stacked sombreros and flutters the rebozos of the street vendors. Michelle thinks of how the dry wind and the distant brown mountains will go with her little daughter Astrid wherever she goes as a grown-up Astrid with perhaps a childhood rebozo carefully folded in a drawer.

As often happens, the tide of her travelling thoughts has brought her to the beach of the working day and here she is in the museum.

Christian Gerstheimer pauses before the da Carpi. Something has caught his eye. What? He doesn’t know. With his right arm bent at the elbow, the forearm across his stomach, his left elbow resting on it and his left hand cradling his chin, he contemplates the painting in the classic stance of a man contemplating a painting. Minutes pass and so does Michelle Villa.

‘Have a look at this,’ he says.

She takes up a stance identical to his. Minutes pass.

‘Well?’ says Gerstheimer. ‘See anything different about the picture?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll think I’ve gone crazy.’

‘No, I won’t, I promise. Tell me what you see.’

‘OK,’ says Michelle. ‘Maybe I have gone crazy.’

‘Please, Michelle!’

‘All right then, it looks to me as if Angelica is smiling.’

‘Really! But she’s almost in profile, her features not all that distinct. How can you make out a smile?’

‘I’m telling you how it looks to me, Christian.’

Gerstheimer says, ‘To me something seems different but I couldn’t say what it is. Maybe the lighting is funny today.’

Nick Muñoz, Museum Preparator is passing. Beckoned by Gerstheimer, he too takes up the stance, and now the three of them are contemplating Ruggiero Saves Angelica .

‘Well,’ says Gerstheimer, ‘what do you think?’

‘It looks different,’ says Muñoz.

‘How?’ says Gerstheimer.

Muñoz begins to hum ‘Volare’.

‘What’s that tune you’re humming?’ says Gerstheimer.

‘Was I humming?’ says Muñoz. ‘I wasn’t aware of it. Maybe the colours seem deeper and more vibrant.’

‘I wonder if we should send it to New York to be examined by the Kress Foundation conservation labs at NYU,’ says Gerstheimer.

‘No need,’ says Muñoz with his nose very close to the painting. ‘I can smell if a painting’s been tampered with and I haven’t been wrong yet. Nothing’s been done to this one but to me the colour does seem different. Maybe it’s my eyes.’

‘We’re all tired from this Chicano show,’ says Gerstheimer. ‘Maybe tomorrow it’ll look the same as always.’

The two men depart while Michelle Villa continues to contemplate the painting.

‘That still looks like a smile to me,’ she says.

‘Why San Francisco?’ you may ask. Well, when it turned out that Marco Renzetti was going there, Volatore had perforce to go along. I have never been to that city, so I had to rely on the goodwill of friends, the kindness of strangers, and Google. Along the way, people in two places allowed me, with gallantry well beyond the call of duty, to put fictionnal words in their real mouths. At the El Paso Museum of Art, curator Christian Gerstheimer, registrar Michelle Villa and preparator Nick Muñoz graced my last chapter with their presence. Michelle also gave me visual notes on El Paso, as did my son, Brom Hoban. At KDFC in San Francisco Bill Leuth asked Hoyt Smith on my behalf to allow similar fictionalisation, which he graciously agreed to.

I turned up suddenly in various San Francisco telephones and was unfailingly received with courtesy and co-operation. Becky Swanson, Wine Director at Delfina, told me not only about food and drink but also what music was being played in the restaurant. Annie Glyer at Noe Valley Pet Co. told me what Angelica would need for Irene Cat. Bill Hughes at Schoonmaker Marina told me about wind and tide in San Francisco Bay. Robert Tachetto at the Giant Camera gave me details of that obscura establishment.

Eli Bishop in San Francisco put in a lot of time and mileage to provide me with on-the-spot observation wherever needed. Endlessly patient and reliably accurate, he was my private eyes.

My wife Gundula helped me with fashion notes and all kinds of information I couldn’t get for myself.

Liz Calder read my first draft and her advice helped me to get the manuscript into better shape.

Bill Swainson patiently put up with my various inserts and revisions after the manuscript was delivered as final.

Phoebe Hoban gave me useful suggestions for amplifying the text in several places.

Dominic Power read successive drafts and cheered me on at our monthly lunches at Il Fornello.

I work without an outline or overall plan, flying by the seat of my pants. Sometimes the pants wear thin and my inertial guidance system loses its way. Jake Wilson, reading my pages as I worked, kept me more than once from walking over a cliff.

Barbara Reynolds’s wonderful rendering of Orlando Furioso into English in the Penguin Classics editon was, in its humour and joie de vivre , a constant inspiration.

RH

12 May 2010

Russell Hoban is the author of many extraordinary novels including Turtle Diary, Riddley Walker, Amaryllis Night and Day, The Bat Tattoo, Her Name Was Lola, Come Dance with Me and, most recently, My Tango with Barbara Strozzi . He has also written some classic books for children including The Mouse and His Child and the Frances books. He lives in London.