Angelica's Grotto

‘Didn’t that set any alarm bells ringing in your head?’

  ‘OK, when we made the date to meet in Surrey Street on a Monday night my first thought was that I might be getting into a Monica situation.’

  ‘So you weren’t all that surprised to see Leslie, were you?’

  ‘All right, at some level I might’ve been half-expecting it.’

  ‘And how were you feeling about the possibility?’

  ‘Scared, but curious.’

  ‘Curious about …?’

  ‘About how it would be.’

  Dr DeVere was looking at ‘Monica’s Monday Night’ again. ‘Here Monica’s recalling newspaper stories of rape,’ he said, ‘then “She sees her thighs being forced apart; she makes an O with her lips, imagines the taste of semen on her tongue and the sweat of brutal men on filthy mattresses in evil-smelling rooms.” Were your thoughts running along those lines?’

  ‘Look, I’m not homosexual.’

  ‘I never said you were. People have all kinds of thoughts and that’s what we’re talking about.’

  ‘All right – my thoughts were running along those lines, the same as Monica’s, OK? Tell me, do you enjoy rubbing people’s noses in what they don’t want to have their noses rubbed in?’

  ‘I’m not rubbing your nose in anything; if that’s how you experience this it might have to do with the judgements you pronounce on yourself. All I’m trying to do is clear away the bullshit. Do you think we can do that?’

  ‘I’ll make an effort.’

  ‘People have all kinds of wants and needs and they have different ones at different times. Sometimes I want to listen to Beethoven quartets; sometimes all I want to hear is Argentinian tangos.’

  ‘I know you’re trying to make me feel more comfortable, Dr DeVere, but sometimes I’m afraid of what’s in my mind.’

  ‘Mr Klein, you have got to learn that you’re not on trial for anything. Everybody has a public life and a private one; the private one is full of things that are not public business. This double life is part of the human condition. Nobody needs to know where you flick your bogies and I don’t need to know all your private thoughts but we’ve got to establish some points of reference. Can you say exactly what it is that you want from Angelica and/or Leslie?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Right now what I want is her real name and I’m meeting Leslie tonight to get it.’

  ‘Why does that require a meeting?’

  ‘Because I have to give him money for it.’

  ‘Ah! The question, “Do you know what you’re doing?” springs to mind.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Oannes hasn’t been very forthcoming but I’ve talked it over with myself out loud. I really need to know who this woman is and why she’s doing what she’s doing.’

  ‘But Oannes has been forthcoming – he said, “Gone.” It might be useful to consider the implications of that word.’

  ‘I have, but I’d rather this Angelica person didn’t get away with being inexplicable. Have you seen the Antonioni film, Beyond the Clouds?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In it there’s a filmmaker who travels around looking for characters and stories he can use. He has an encounter with a young woman who says to him, “It’s better if I speak to you plainly. Whatever you have in mind, I’d rather tell you who I am: I killed my father – I stabbed him twelve times.” We learn that she was acquitted but we never find out why she did it. This young woman is played by Sophie Marceau. Have you ever seen her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter what she’d done – she’s irresistible. She and the filmmaker sleep together, after which we see him through the window waving goodbye and that’s it. We never find out why she stabbed her father twelve times.’

  ‘Maybe we don’t need to know.’

  ‘I think Antonioni left it that way so it would stay in our minds, unexplained and unforgettable. That’s OK in a film but this is real life and I need to know more about this woman who calls herself Angelica.’

  ‘Just remember that if a scene in a film doesn’t work they can take it out

  ‘But real life is full of scenes that don’t work and we’re stuck with them. I know what you’re saying.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘I will.’

  Oannes – deep-sea habitat – K getting in over his head? wrote Dr DeVere in Harold Klein’s folder. Then he slowly and carefully perused ‘Monica’s Monday Night’.

  23

  Death And Life

  ‘In Klimt’s painting Tod und Leben,’ wrote Klein, ‘we see the very essence of his mature art; he has emerged from the decorative excesses of his gold period and is now coming to grips with unadorned elementals; the grinning skeleton, ein Knochenmann (bone-man), in his cross-bedecked robe, wielding the red sceptre of his authority, feasts his empty eye-sockets on the living naked bodies (all but one with closed eyes) intertwined in love and procreation. In successive revisions of this painting from 1911 to 1916 Klimt changed the background to a non-space and removed the aura once worn by Death. This same Death, naked and lascivious, looks out, unseen, from the ardent and indolent bodies of the half-dressed and undressed women in his ghostly sketches: every one of these drawings is a matter of life and death; the snaky lines barely contain the transience of the flesh that cries out against the death that waits within, lusting for consummation.’ Klein sighed. ‘And in me too a death is growing; it’s getting bigger as I get smaller, and when we’re both the same size we’ll change places – I’ll be my death and my death will be me.’

  He quit the word processor, went to the Internet, and put Angelica’s Grotto up on the screen. ‘Why can’t I be dignified in my old age?’ he said, and patiently trawled through the galleries in which Angelica did every possible thing in every possible position with partners of both sexes, singly and in groups. With his face close to the screen he lusted after the firm flesh in the photographs, flesh that could be touched and tasted, flesh in which Death nestled, cosy and warm and smiling. ‘What good is this?’ he said. ‘Why am I wearing out my eyes on it? Why am I insulting my intelligence with it? I’m pathetic’

  Do something, said Oannes, speaking for the first time in a voice that seemed not to be Klein’s own. Was it a deeper voice? Were the words somewhat slurred?

  ‘I am doing something – I’m meeting Leslie at ten o’clock and he’s going to tell me Angelica’s real name. OK?’

  No answer.

  ‘If that’s not enough, just tell me what else you want me to do.’

  No answer.

  ‘All right, have it your way: maybe I’ll go out and do something really crazy and it’ll be on your head. Is that what you want?’

  Klein dug around in a box where he kept tools and other ironmongery and came up with a hunting knife bought for a long-ago camping trip. He went down to the kitchen and sharpened it. Then he put it in a pocket of a shoulder bag, got his jacket, and went out.

  24

  Hoka Hey

  At ten o’clock the van with Leslie at the wheel pulled up in front of where Harold Klein was standing in Surrey Street. Klein walked around to the driver’s side. ‘I’ve got the two hundred,’ he said. ‘Have you got a name for me?’

  ‘Melissa Bottomley,’ said Leslie as he took the money and pulled away.

  ‘Melissa Bottomley,’ said Klein. ‘Honey Bottom.’ He visualised her wearing nothing but her name. His hand closed on the knife in his pocket. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to stab anybody.’ He moved a little way up Surrey Street towards the Strand, muttering to himself, ‘For the first time I think of time as a sphere, as a globe on which, at various intersections of latitude and longitude, all things past and present are located, some near, some far from where I am. I’m thinking of Crazy Horse. On that great globe of Time, in western plains across the ocean, herds of long-gone buffalo make the ground shake and shadow hoofbeats sound down endless trails of sleep. Who am I that I should think of that strange one, the mystic, the great warrior who painted
himself with lightning and hail and wore a little stone behind his ear? Riding into battle he shouted, “Hoka hey! It is a good day to die!” Now in the long yesterday of the place that once was his the visions flicker but there is no one to see them. In Paris at the Crazy Horse Saloon the naked dancers shake and wiggle for the tourists.

  ‘Melissa Bottomley,’ he said as he continued up Surrey Street, ‘could well be an academic; Monica was a lecturer at King’s.’ At the Strand he turned left and headed for King’s College. As always, the traffic seemed full of urgency and purpose, pressing westward between dark buildings that loomed speechless and strange in their nighttime mode.

  ‘DANGER, SLOW DOWN,’ said the sign at the barrier. ‘5 MPH. ALL DRIVERS HALT AT THIS POINT AND REPORT TO PORTER.’ There was no porter visible as Klein walked around the red-and-white barrier and went into the quadrangle beyond it. There were cars parked in almost all the spaces, and at the far end he saw the white Ford Transit, E621VGD. ‘Probably it’s locked,’ he said.

  He tried the rear doors: not locked. He opened them. Inside were the mattress, a folded blanket, and the tripod and lights for the videocamera. ‘Is this a sign that I should do something?’ said Klein.

  Hoka hey, said Oannes.

  ‘Oannes,’ said Klein, ‘you’re a hell of a guy; you’re a wild thing, you don’t care about consequences. If I get inside I can’t make myself invisible – they’ll get in and they’ll see me. Then what?’ His bowels indicated that they were on standby. ‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘I can’t go looking for a toilet now.’ Windows stared down at him from both sides of the quadrangle. ‘What am I going to say – that I’m a homeless person looking for a place to sleep? Any suggestions?’

  No answer.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Klein, ‘how much difference does it make what happens to me? I’m old, my health isn’t good; whether I ever finish the Klimt book isn’t really going to matter all that much to anyone. I could go at any time – heart attack, stroke, whatever.’ He heard hoofbeats on the plains, saw a blue sky in which a hawk circled. ‘Hoka hey,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s a good day to die.’ He got into the back of the van, covered himself with the blanket, and tried not to look like a little old man covered with a blanket.

  ‘Who will it be?’ he wondered. ‘Leslie and Al? Leslie and Melissa? Maybe the van belongs to somebody else altogether. Maybe they leave it here overnight.’ He listened to his tinnitus and looked at the pictures in his head until he heard voices and footsteps approaching, then the sound of the driver’s and passenger’s doors being opened and closed as the van shook a little.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the voice of Melissa. ‘The money from Leeuwenhoek’s almost used up.’

  ‘There’s bound to be more out there,’ said the voice of Leslie. ‘Have you tried Penthesilea International?’ He started the van, backed out of the parking space, turned around, drove to the barrier, waited while the porter raised it, then turned left into the Strand.

  ‘They don’t want to know unless you’re a big name like Candida Stark or Gnostia Mundy,’ said Melissa.

  ‘There must be big-money guys hitting your website all the time.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I bet you do: if you could arrange a meeting with a bit of action on camera they might find it in their hearts to offer a little financial support for your project.’

  ‘That kind of thing could backfire – big-money guys mostly have high-priced help for making trouble go away.’

  ‘What were you going to do with the tape if Harold’s Monday night had gone as planned?’

  ‘Hadn’t decided yet.’ She turned in her seat and slung a heavy shoulder bag on top of Klein. ‘What’s under the blanket – a body?’

  ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘This.’ She prodded Klein.

  ‘It’s me – Harold Klein.’ He threw the blanket aside.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ said Melissa.

  ‘What can I tell you? If you play games with little old men they’re likely to come looking for you.’

  ‘How do you know I’m the one you’re looking for?’

  ‘It’s your voice I’ve heard on the telephone, speaking as Angelica.’ Her face was alternately lit and unlit as the van passed under street lamps. It was not the Waterhouse-nymph face of the website Angelica but a delicate oval art-deco face, neatly stylised features, precisely red mouth, dark hair in a short bob and fringe – most of all it was a serious face, a face that meant business.

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Leslie. They were on Waterloo Bridge.

  ‘Turn around when you get to the other side,’ said Melissa. To Klein, ‘Well, what is it you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to you, just the two of us, and not in this van.’

  ‘All you want is conversation?’

  ‘For starters.’

  ‘Tell me why I should accommodate you, Mr ex-Ruggiero.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell the police that I was forcibly abducted for a sexual assault but my angina scared you off?’

  ‘Why would they believe that?’

  ‘I’ve recorded my brief encounter with Leslie on Monday night; I’ve printed out “Monica’s Monday Night”, featuring Leslie and this van, and my doctor has a copy of it; and I’ve recorded my telephone conversation with you. You might consider your website and other activities a legitimate form of research but various academic and municipal authorities could well take a different view. Howzat?’

  ‘I’d no idea you were such a cold and calculating little old non-hero, Harold. Evidently you’re determined to get what you want. If I called your bluff you might well come out of it worse than I but in a spirit of academic research I’m half-inclined to help you act out your fantasy.’

  ‘As any proper academic would,’ said Klein.

  ‘OK, old cock, we’ll have our little assignation at your place, not mine. Where do you live?’

  ‘Fulham.’

  ‘Fulham, Leslie. You can drop me off at Harold’s place and I’ll find my own way home.’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ said Leslie.

  ‘We’ll find out, won’t we. He’s weird but I don’t think he’s dangerous. Let’s cross the water and get on with it.’

  ‘That’s the way to do it,’ said Klein. ‘It’s a good day to die.’

  ‘Why did you say that?’ said Melissa.

  ‘It’s a quote – something some guy used to say before going into battle.’

  ‘Did he die in battle?’

  ‘No, he was stabbed in the back after the battles were over.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

  Melissa’s face, into the light and out of it, was attentive, interested, calculating? The traffic sounds were like those in a dream and the geography of London inflected itself in unfamiliar ways, looming here, passing unnoticed there, strange music to the eye. ‘Like a sixteenth-century map,’ said Klein, ‘full of odd shapes and terrors: the winds have faces and there are anthropophagi in unknown corners.’

  ‘What are you on, Harold?’ said Leslie.

  ‘Mortality,’ said Klein. He tasted, like fruit gums, the intensely red, green, and amber of traffic lights. Cars on both sides, ahead and behind, were silent worlds of otherness with bright reflections sliding rearward on their tops. Again there appeared the Embankment and the river garlanded with lamps, jewelled with boats, shining with lost years.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Klein murmured to Oannes. Marlene Dietrich appeared in his mind as Lola Lola with naked thighs, black stockings, suspender belt, top hat. Emil Jannings, at the end of his tether, crowed like a rooster. ‘Are we getting into a Blue Angel-situation here?’

  ‘There are worse ways to ruin yourself,’ said Melissa.

  ‘Like Russian roulette?’

  ‘Think about i
t: the professor’s canary was dead at the very begining of the film but when he moved in with Lola Lola, up jumped a new canary singing like a steam whistle. How’s your canary, Harold?’

  ‘The last time I looked it was on its back with its feet in the air. Are you wearing black stockings?’

  ‘Of course, with a suspender belt. I like to be correctly attired for mental undressing. Sorry about no top hat.’

  ‘No wanking while we’re on the road,’ said Leslie to Harold as the Tate Gallery and the Vauxhall Bridge came and went. ‘How do we get to your place?’

  ‘Carry on down the Embankment past the Battersea Bridge and around into the New King’s Road where you turn left.’ To himself, ‘Before that there’s the Albert Bridge and Daphne.’

  ‘Who’s Daphne?’ said Leslie.

  ‘A bronze nude. When I lived in Beaufort Street I used to go jogging on the Embankment and I always slapped her bottom when I passed. I think she was vandalised and now she’s fibreglass.’

  ‘That’s life,’ said Melissa.

  ‘Who vandalised you?’ said Klein.

  ‘Would you believe me if I told you I stabbed my father twelve times?’

  ‘I’d believe you saw Beyond the Clouds.’

  ‘You’re so five minutes ago in a sort of twenty-five-years-ago way, Harold. You’re a hippy replacement.’

  ‘“By brooks too broad for leaping the lightfoot lads are laid,”’ said Klein, ‘but a lot of us old retreads are still around.’

  The Albert Bridge wedding-caked and diamonded its way over the river. ‘Albert Bridge, my delight,’ sang Klein, ‘let your lights all shine tonight.’

  ‘You just make that up?’ said Leslie.

  ‘Something from a long time ago,’ said Klein. It was a rhyme he’d composed for Hannelore back in the good time. For the rest of the trip he whispered into his hand except when he had to give directions. Arrived at his house, he looked out across the common towards the District Line. ‘The place hasn’t changed since I left it earlier this evening.’

  ‘Did you think it would?’ said Melissa.