Angelica's Grotto by Russell Hoban Read Free Book Online Page B

The big gangsters used electric shavers in their cars as they were driven downtown. At home they were massaged by ex-prizefighters who called them Boss. When they got shot there was no blood. The chorus girls had beautiful rounded legs, not thin. The money in those films was only stage money; no wonder they didn’t bother with the change. There was an organist at the cinema of my childhood, spotlit and sparkling; we followed the bouncing ball and sang but later, much later, last night I was thinking of the red telephone box in Beaufort Street, I can see it now. In 1970 Forbidden Fruit was the shop at the corner of the King’s Road. ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ was a song we listened to. Hannelore gave me a copy of Jung’s
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
and I still haven’t read it. New flowered sheets on the bed for our first night. Minutes and hours that will still be there when I’m long gone.
    ‘I want to speak in black-and-white,’ he said. ‘I want not to bleed when I’m shot. I want to part the slats of a Venetian blind and look down at the street and say, “I’m tired of running.” From what? Everything.
“Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head. Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?”’
    Although Klein’s self-discipline had slackened of late he was hoping to get back to a solid work routine with
Naked Mysteries: The Nudes of Gustav Klimt:
opening one of his Klimt books he turned to the plate of Danae being entered by the shower of gold that was Jupiter. He studied the picture intently, marvelling at the magnificence of Danae’s haunches lifted to the downrush of the god, the pearly paleness of her breast, the surrender in her flushed enraptured face, eyes closed, red mouth open. From the opulence of Danae he went to a book of drawings, ghostly sketches of naked and half-naked women sitting, standing, lying in each other’s arms or playing with themselves, Klimt’s faint and snaky lines stroking every curve and savage flaunt of hip and thigh, buttock and breast, lustful lines enclosing volumes of indolent and eager female flesh. ‘He was as woman-hungry as I am,’ said Klein. ‘I wonder if he ever got as much as he wanted.’
    ‘Others have appreciated women,’ he wrote, ‘but Klimt is unique in the astonishment with which he perceives the essential mystery of the female.’ He stopped typing.
    ‘What he does,’ he said, ‘is fuck them with his eyes.’ He saved the page, switched on the modem, went to the Internet and put Angelica’s Grotto on the screen.
    He skipped from picture to picture in the various galleries, shaking his head and following the anatomical permutations eagerly. Returning to the homepage, he looked long and earnestly at Angelica’s face. ‘Haunted,’he said. ‘She looks haunted; there’s no other word for that look. What is the rock she’s chained to? Is it the money she gets for posing? Is she a prostitute? Does she want to be rescued? Is she waiting for Ruggiero?’ He saw himself mounted on the hippogriff, felt the wind on his face and the beating of the great wings, heard the shriek of the animal as it battled through the murk towards the incandescent nakedness of Angelica.
    When he reached the end of Gallery 7 the screen suddenly went black, shuddered a little, then came up with the home-page picture of Angelica in her grotto. Below her a dialogue box asked:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE A WALK ON THE NIGHT SIDE?
YES/NO
    ‘Yes!’ he said, and clicked on it. On the left side of the screen appeared a block of text under the title, MONICA’S MONDAY NIGHT. The right side was a photograph of the Strand near the Aldwych on a rainy night, the wet road and pavement reflecting the darkness and the lights. Walking towards the viewer was a very pretty young woman with long red hair, very chic in a black suit with a short skirt, black stockings, and shiny black high heels. She was carrying a leopard-spotted