Angelica Lost and Found

by Russell Hoban

Paradise Lost

  I wanted to know how (and if ) things were with Volatore Three, the hairstylist and inventor of TurboScalp. I still had his card so I invited him round to the gallery for drinks. In view of the fact that the hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar painting had turned up in San Francisco Bay I thought he might be in a delicate state and would be glad to avoid the hurly-burly of a more public watering place. We were in the process of taking down Ossie Przewalski’s show but I doubted that the hairstylist would be disturbed by a roomful of nudes on Harley Davidsons.

  Remembering Volatore Three’s grandiosity, I was surprised and saddened by his present appearance. He had always been a small man but this afternoon he seemed so diminished that I could have sworn he’d lost a couple of inches. His wig looked dispirited; his Armani hung loosely on him; his Rolex, I guessed, had no good times to offer and apparently his Mont Blanc and fat chequebook could buy him no joy.

  We sat him down at a little table with a bottle of Sancerre and a plate of sandwiches. Olivia and I raised our glasses to him.

  ‘Here’s luck,’ I said.

  He responded with a weary nod.

  ‘How are you?’ I said.

  He shrugged and made the universal so-so gesture with the flat of his hand.

  ‘So-so,’ he said. ‘Cosi-cosi.’

  ‘Did you,’ I tried to say very gently, ‘drop the painting off the Golden Gate Bridge?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It was either it or me. I was poised to make the jump myself but a large policeman convinced me that the wind conditions were not right and I might fatally injure one of the yachtsmen below us. He gave me his card and invited me to have coffee with him to talk the matter over. I began to think about how foolish I should look falling through the air with my toupee flying off, so I decided to go on living a while longer.’

  ‘You mean that isn’t your own hair?’ said Olivia.

  He shook his head and smiled modestly.

  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘Tell me, was the policeman’s name Hennessy?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘I know him, and it’s the kind of thing he would do.’

  ‘Can you tell us what happened?’ said Olivia. ‘The last time we saw you, you liked that painting well enough to pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it.’

  ‘The tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep,’ he murmured, and held out his empty glass which I quickly refilled. ‘There was with me when I bought the painting a feeling’ – he spread his arms as if to embrace the world – ‘of an immensity of comprehension, of containing in myself the whole dream of reality which is the world.’

  Olivia and I had nothing to say; we were both eating the little sandwiches to fill the emptiness we suddenly felt.

  Silence. I offered the plate of sandwiches to Volatore Three. He shook his head and took more wine.

  ‘Please go on,’ I said. ‘What happened then?’

  He put down his glass and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘It left me, the immensity of comprehension suddenly was gone from me like a dream I couldn’t remember. The painting closed up and went flat.’ He took his hands away and I got another bottle of wine. ‘You can’t imagine my loss,’ he said, ‘unless you’ve contained that immensity and experienced the same loss.’

  More silence.

  ‘TurboScalp?’ I said hesitantly. ‘Does that help at all?’

  ‘It works only if you think it will. And I don’t think it will.’

  ‘How’s your translation of Orlando Furioso going?’ said Olivia.

  ‘I seem to have lost my flair for rhyming. Thank you for your hospitality. I shall leave you now.’

  ‘Come see us again,’ I said.

  Volatore Three bowed, kissed our hands, and headed for the door. We watched him get smaller and smaller and then he was gone.

  Chapter 61

  Mental Jimnastics

  The painting of the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep: the words alone make you want to lean against a wall. This painting affects different people in different ways: Joe Fontana, who had never painted before, created it in an altered state, calling himself Volatore and smelling like Volatore. He later reverted to his normal state with no recollection of doing the painting nor of selling it to Lenore Goldfarb. When Hennessy and Angelica took him to the gallery and made him look at it he fainted.

  Volatore Three dreamed about the tiny tinies and followed their metaphysical scent to the gallery. Looking at the painting seemed to have no physical effect on him while he was in the altered and smelly state. When he reverted to his normal state he threw the painting off the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Lenore Goldfarb paid Joe Fontana fifty thousand dollars for the painting but then developed an aversion to it without going strange or smelly and wanted it out of the house.

  Alexander Zhabotinsky had never seen the painting but spoke of ‘winey, winey trancing clients in the dim red taverns of sheep’ and took on the famous smell very briefly. As his normal state, however, is already altered from what most people would call normal it is not possible to assess the effect, if any, on him.

  Hennessy, Angelica and Olivia all felt woozy looking at it but no more than that. I had to sit down quickly when I first looked directly at it.

  So, reviewing these data, what do I think? I think the painting puts into an altered state only those who come more than halfway to meet it, those who want something from it, perhaps access to that dream of reality made real in it. Joe Fontana and Volatore Three went more than halfway to meet it and what happened? It took them in and then it spat them out. So the painting has opinions, it decides whom to accept and whom to reject. What is it looking for, what does it want?

  What is the genius of the painting, its familiar spirit or whatever that made Joe Fontana, not an artist, visualise the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep? Whatever it is, it’s something that wants to, needs to? make itself known to some but not to others.

  Lenore Goldfarb, Hennessy, Angelica and Olivia were not invited in; they didn’t need what it had to offer. They were already based on the reality necessary to them.

  Well, we’ll see what happens when Dr Jim steps up to the plate.

  Chapter 62

  Between Jim and It

  The painting was in the bedroom, with its face to the wall it was leaning against. I hadn’t looked at it since bringing it home. When I fished it out of the water and laid it on the cabin roof it was just a big canvas on stretchers, nothing more than that. But now it seemed to be waiting for me. Well, I had done that to myself, hadn’t I, by leaning it against the wall and making it wait. But now the evening seemed favourable; I’d seen my last client for the day, a woman who constantly used the word ‘relationship’ and the phrase ‘more importantly’. She also liked using singular verbs with plural subjects and she thought the nominative case classier than the objective case. ‘Between you and I,’ she said in a burst of emotion, ‘there’s many, many guys out there who will simply not commit to a relationship. More importantly, I have issues of my own with commitment in a relationship. You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘More importantly, I’ve been taking notes so I can go over your issues again.’

  She seemed well satisfied with the therapeutic relationship but I was very tired after the session. I poured myself a large Jack Daniel’s, sighed and returned to the matter of the painting.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m ready.’

  I brought it into my office and stood it on the sofa facing me. I had to look away then and sit down because I lost my balance and almost fell over.

  ‘Obviously I’m not going at this correctly,’ I said. As I said that I could feel what the correct approach was but I wasn’t ready to commit to the relationship the tiny, tiny dancing giants seemed to want. Not looking directly at the painting I said to it, ‘I’m going to have to think about this, OK? I’ll get back to you.’
I took it into the bedroom again and leant it against the wall as before.

  Chapter 63

  Blondin Not

  In 1859 Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. It makes my feet tingle just to think of it and I can hear the roar of the Falls. He had a balance pole, I can feel the weight of it in my hands, with Jim on one end of it and Volatore on the other as I cross my Niagara, not daring to look down and not altogether confident of reaching the other side. Thinking, meanwhile, that I didn’t ask for this. Did I?

  Chapter 64

  Patience of Volatore

  Time is on my side and I can wait. Have I not already waited centuries? Closer and closer, Angelica! Faster and faster runs the sand through the glass!

  Careful, Volatore! ‘Chi va piano, va sano.’ Luck is a frail craft, and the Sea of Chance has not only storms to sink the unwary but also windless days to weary the spirit.

  Chapter 65

  Jimportantly, A Commitment

  ‘OK,’ I said to the Jack Daniel’s bottle, ‘you know and I know that the only way to get on the other side of this thing is to go through it, right?’

  Getting no argument from Jack I fortified myself as required, strode into the bedroom and laid hands on the painting. So far, so good.

  I took it into the office, set it on the sofa as before, and sat down without looking at it. Then, after a brief consultation with Dr Daniel I turned the full power of my trepidation on the painting. While I held on to the desk to keep from falling out of my chair I asked myself: Why was I trepidating? I think we know instinctively, all of us, when we are going into something from which there is no way back. So the question arises: Do I want to get to that place from which there is no return? From that question arises a second question: Do I have a choice? And a third question: Why do I have to bother with this painting at all? Angelica has warned me that it’s a lot of bad luck. But my instincts are telling me that it is also the way to make Angelica mine.

  Where I am now is like being in a flooded cave and what looks like the only way out is to swim underwater through a narrow tunnel towards a faint glimmer which may or may not be daylight. And you wonder if you can hold your breath long enough.

  So how much do I want Angelica and am I a man or a coward? OK, Jack. One for the road and in I go.

  Chapter 66

  Impatience of Volatore

  Something is happening! Something is approaching! Closer, closer, don’t hang back! Closer, closer, closer! Here I am, here is Volatore waiting!

  Chapter 67

  Jim-Jammed?

  OK, guys, this is it, you and me mano a mano. You’re on the sofa, I’m at my desk. Here’s looking at you dim red tinies. Do whatever you’re going to do.

  Queasiness, uneasiness. Dimness, redness, cavernous sleep. Dream-dancing the dream of … what? Dancing, dancing. Tinily gigantic, I also redly dim Jim. What Jim? This Jim. What this? Suddenly! an immensity of comprehension, of containing in myself the whole dream of reality which is the world.

  Oho! So farther, deeper? No, I don’t, yes, I do but wait. What? What entering? Entering me but I’m not, I haven’t, I don’t but aah, the tiny, tiny dancing jim-jams! But this other. Not tiny, very big. Well, no use locking the barn door after the horse is inside.

  Chapter 68

  Cautious Optimism of Volatore

  Dare I hope? The way has been so long and hard! You old gods, forgotten by the world, hear my humble prayer!

  Chapter 69

  Jam Today

  This was my regular session day so I went. It was two days after the night of Ossie Przewalski’s opening and everything was fine between Jim and me but I was wondering and worrying about how matters stood with Volatore and me. The last thing I wanted was to have to choose between my two lovers and I was afraid of losing both. The ferry ride to Sausalito this morning felt different from ferry rides on other mornings. The day was hard and bright, the sunlight unyielding, the sun points on the water were like dancing shards of glass. The gulls were laughing at me, ‘Haha, haha-ha! Haha!’

  ‘Stupid garbage-eaters!’ I said. ‘Who the hell are you to haha at me?’

  ‘Today, today!’ screamed the gulls.

  ‘Today what?’

  ‘Um maybe yes, maybe no,’ thrummed the engines. ‘Um maybe maybe maybe.’

  ‘Nobody asked you,’ I told them.

  When the ferry docked there was nothing to do but get off so I did that. All the way to Dos Arbolitos I was talking to myself. Sometimes people stared at me and I realised that I was speaking out loud. Why so freaked out? I asked myself. This is only the rest of my life we’re talking about here.

  Then all of a sudden Dos Arbolitos was in front of me. I went in and Jim came to meet me. With, yes, the smell!

  ‘Volatore!’ I said. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Here is Volatore,’ he said.

  He took me in his arms and everything became all right.

  Since then I’ve had no complaints. Sometimes Jim is plain Jim and sometimes he’s Volatore Jim. Well, really, every good man is a bit of an animal and every animal has something human about it. Reader, I married them.

  Chapter 70

  Dancing in the Dark

  What became of that infamous painting that passed from hand to hand and went swimming in San Francisco Bay? Volatore Two ( Joe Fontana) painted it. He had never painted a picture before, and later could not recall doing it. Lenore Goldfarb paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it, then couldn’t stand the sight of it. Volatore Three bought it next. At first it filled him with an immensity of compre-hension, a feeling that he contained in himself the whole dream of reality which is the world. Then it almost made him jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Angelica Greenberg and Olivia Partridge felt woozy viewing it, as did Sergeant Hennessy. When Joe Fontana was taken to the Eidolon Gallery and forced to look at what he had painted he fainted. Alyosha Zhabotinsky picked up random snatches of the idea of it and suffered no ill effects. Jim Long experienced the immensity of comprehension but was occupied by Volatore One before any come down from the immensity.

  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.

  Chapter 71

  Passage to El Paso

  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.