Angelica's Grotto (14 page)

‘Where is
my
Ruggiero? Or have I said that before?’

‘I’ll wait till quarter-past, maybe half-past ten,’ said Klein. ‘Why should she take me for granted? Waiting waiting waiting.’ He waited till five past, logged on to the Internet, and moused his way to Angelica’s Grotto. He clicked on a few of his favourite Gallery 7 thumbnails to kill five more minutes, then scrolled down to the YES or NO place and clicked YES.

IS THAT YOU, PROFESSOR?

IT’S ME, LOLA.

SO? HOW’S IT HANGING?

REARWISE?

WHATEVER.

I’VE BEEN AFRAID TO LOOK.

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT HERE IN ACADEME.

I’VE NOTICED.

ENOUGH OF THIS SMALL TALK. TELL ME ABOUT YOU AND YOUR TONGUE.

IT STILL HAS THE TASTE OF YOU.

YOU LIKE THAT TASTE?

YES.

DID YOU LIKE TO DO THAT WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER AND STILL CAPABLE OF AN ERECTION?

YES, ALWAYS.

CAN YOU SAY MORE ABOUT IT?

I GUESS WE’RE BACK TO *L’ORIGINE DU MONDE*. IT HAS A STRONG ATTRACTION FOR ME. TO MAKE LOVE IN THAT WAY SEEMS TO ME THE HEIGHT OF PHYSICAL INTIMACY, A COMFORTABLE GIVING AND TAKING OF PLEASURE AND AFFECTION. FOR ME IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A TREASURING OF THE WOMAN.

SAY MORE.

THERE WAS A GREAT MOTHER GODDESS BEFORE THERE WERE MALE GODS. THERE STILL IS FOR ME. HERE’S A QUOTE I PREPARED EARLIER, IT’S FROM *THE LANGUAGE OF THE GODDESS* BY MARIJA GIMBUTAS:

THE AMAZING REPETITION OF SYMBOLIC ASSOCIATIONS THROUGH TIME AND IN ALL OF EUROPE ON POTTERY, FIGURINES, AND OTHER CULT OBJECTS HAS CONVINCED ME THAT THEY ARE MORE THAN ‘GEOMETRIC MOTIFS’; THEY MUST BELONG TO AN ALPHABET OF THE METAPHYSICAL.

I’VE READ GIMBUTAS.

I LIKE THAT IDEA OF ‘AN ALPHABET OF THE METAPHYSICAL’. FOR ME THE VULVA IS THE KEY TO THAT MATRIARCHAL ALPHABET AND IT HAS MYSTICAL POWER. I ALMOST DON’T WANT TO PUT THIS INTO WORDS.

WORDS ARE USEFUL. THEY HOLD THE SHAPES OF IDEAS
.
WHEN WE TALK LIKE THIS YOU ALMOST SEEM A FRIEND.

I’M NOT A FRIEND, HAROLD. THE DATA I’M COLLECTING MATTER MORE TO ME THAN YOU DO. AND AT YOUR AGE YOU OUGHT TO BE WISER THAN TO PUT YOUR MOUTH ON STRANGERS. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MIGHT PICK UP.

FROM YOU? I THINK YOU’RE PROBABLY A CAREFUL KIND OF LOLA.

DON’T BE TOO SURE. LET’S GET BACK TO THE VULVA. HOW DO YOU RECONCILE YOUR WORSHIPFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS IT WITH YOUR PLEASURE IN VIEWING THE BUGGERING OF MONICA?

I THINK IT’S A POWER THING. FOR ME THE ESSENCE, THE ISNESS OF A WOMAN IS MORE POWERFUL THAN MY ISNESS. THAT MAKES ME ENJOY THE IDEA OF A WOMAN BEING FORCED TO SUBMIT TO ANTI-VULVA PENETRATION. AND NOT JUST ME: MORE AND MORE IN FILMS I SEE WIVES, GIRLFRIENDS, MISTRESSES, AND STRANGERS BEING BUGGERED BY CHAPS WHO DO THAT INSTEAD OF SMASHING CROCKERY AND FURNITURE WHEN THEY WANT TO SHOW WHO’S IN CHARGE.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT IT’S A CASE OF THE LESSER ISNESS REBELLING AGAINST THE GREATER?

YES.

SO IF IN FANTASY AND IN FILMS, WHICH ARE READY-MADE FANTASY, YOU LIKE TO
SEE WOMEN ANALLY RAPED, ARE YOU NOT, IN FANTASY, ALSO IN FAVOUR OF THE RAPE OF WOMEN IN GENERAL?

I GUESS I’D HAVE TO SAY YES – IN FANTASY.

EVER FANTASISE DOING IT YOURSELF?

YOU’RE SOUNDING MORE AND MORE LIKE MY SHRINK.

ANSWER THE QUESTION, PLEASE.

YES, I HAVE FANTASISED IT BUT NOT IN A VIOLENT WAY. DON’T PRESS ME FOR DETAILS.

NOT VIOLENT BUT AGAINST THE WOMAN’S WILL, YES?

YES.

DO YOU THINK, IF YOU STILL HAD YOUR VIRILITY, YOU’D EVER CROSS THE LINE FROM FANTASY TO REALITY?

NO.

WHY NOT?

IT ISN’T RIGHT TO FORCE A SEXUAL ACT ON ANYONE AGAINST THAT PERSON’S WILL.

WOULD YOU SAY THAT WHAT I DID TO YOU LAST NIGHT WAS AGAINST YOUR WILL?

YES.

BUT YOU DIDN’T SEEM TOO TERRIBLY OUTRAGED. YOU DIDN’T SEEM TOO DISTRESSED EITHER. YOU DIDN’T REACH FOR THE GLYCERYL TRINITRATE AND YOU DIDN’T CRY ANGINA. WHY WAS THAT?

YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A PRISONER BEING INTERROGATED BY THE KGB.

DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP?

NO.

WHY NOT?

I DON’T KNOW.

I THINK YOU DO BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO SAY.

MAYBE.

YOU WANT ME TO SAY IT, DON’T YOU.

YES, I WANT YOU TO SAY IT.

YOU DON’T WANT ME TO STOP BECAUSE YOU LIKE SUBMITTING TO MY BIG ISNESS.

I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK DIRTY.

I KNOW YOU DO, PROF. AND YOU LOVED IT WHEN I DID YOU THE WAY I DID LAST NIGHT, DIDN’T YOU. EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS.

Go with it,
said Oannes.

‘With what?’ said Klein.

Anything.

‘You just don’t give a damn, do you.’

No answer.

HAROLD, ARE YOU THERE?

YES.

ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER ME?

WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?

I WAS SAYING THAT YOU LOVED WHAT I DID TO YOU LAST NIGHT EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS. AM I RIGHT?

DATA-RAPE.

ALL RIGHT, IT WAS DATA-RAPE BUT IT WAS ALSO QUID PRO QUO. SO TALK TO ME, HAROLD.

I’M NOT COMFORTABLE WITH HOW I FEEL.

T.E. LAWRENCE HAD A LOT OF TROUBLE
WITH IT TOO, AFTER HE GOT BUGGERED BY THE TURKISH SOLDIERS. I’M NOT A NICE PERSON BUT THE INFORMATION I’M GATHERING IS IMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIALITY WILL BE OBSERVED IN MY USE OF IT. ISN’T THERE AN AMERICAN EXPRESSION, ‘TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL’?

OK. FOR ALL I KNOW, YOU’RE THE DEVIL. BUT HERE GOES. IT HURT BUT THE PAIN MADE ME FEEL THAT I WAS PAYING MY DUES IN SOME WAY. THEN I STOPPED NOTICING THE PAIN AND IT JUST FELT GOOD NOT TO HAVE TO BE A MAN FOR A WHILE.

DO YOU THINK THAT HAVING THAT DONE TO YOU WAS UNMANLY?

YES.

MEN DO ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

NOT MY KIND OF MAN.

WAS THERE A POINT WHEN YOU ENJOYED IT?

YES. THAT’S IT FOR TONIGHT, OK?

OK, HAROLD. THANKS.

WHAT’S NEXT?

WHO KNOWS? NIGHTY-BYE.
X

‘It was a Beetle Cat,’ said Klein to Oannes, ‘only twelve and a half feet long, a wooden day-sailer that was patterned on a Cape Cod fishing boat – the mast up forward in the eyes of the boat, a single gaff-rigged sail, and what they called a barndoor rudder. This was back in my first marriage, in my other life back in the States.

‘Melisande,
I named her – the original owner hadn’t bothered with a name. Francine never took to sailing and she didn’t want to know the right words for the parts of the boat and rigging. Once in a while we went out to Ram Island for picnics, but most often I sailed alone, sometimes in fairly rough weather. The man I bought her from had told me how wonderfully safe and sturdy she was, and being wooden she couldn’t sink. Francine wouldn’t go with me unless the weather was mild. ‘If you have to reef you shouldn’t sail,’ she said. She thought I drove too fast too.

‘We’d been out in the boat one summer afternoon; it was a beautiful day with a good breeze. Coming back to the mooring we were running before the wind, the sail all the way out on the port side. About halfway in I wanted the sail on the other side. I’d learnt sailing from books and
I knew about bringing the wind across the stern. “Watch your head,” I said to Francine. “The boom’s going to swing around.” I put the tiller up and WHAM! The boom came round and slammed into the starboard shroud and suddenly the boat was full of water.

‘I was amazed – when you’re running like that it’s easy not to notice the strength of the wind because the boat is moving with it and if the water’s calm it’s very smooth sailing. I ought to have brought the boom midships and then eased it out on the starboard side instead of just letting it go as I did. There’d been such a stillness in the boat until I let the wind take the boom and the swamping was so sudden that it was a real shock to me and a bigger one to Francine. I’d been out in rough weather without a care in the world but here on this balmy day I was suddenly made aware of the power of that fair wind and the depth of my ignorance. We bailed the boat out and got back to the mooring with no further difficulty but I still remember how surprised I was that afternoon. When I think of van de Velde’s seamen in rough weather and myself on that sunny Sunday I have to shake my head.’

Klein didn’t want to look at the pictures in Angelica’s Grotto. He wanted to hold in his mind Melissa’s nakedness; he wanted to hold in his nostrils the scent of her skin, on his tongue the taste of her, in his hands the feel and the weight of her buttocks. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I had no right to do what I did. All manner of things can be done that ought not to be done and this was one of them. Melissa is intelligent but she has no idea of correct behaviour, of what is appropriate for this old man. And of course neither have I. Why have I spent hours looking at the pictures in Angelica’s Grotto? What hath it profited me? Where was the gratification? There is a never-enoughness
in such looking. Why is that? Why is it never enough? What is this non-existent grail that millions are seeking on the Internet? What is hidden refuses to stay hidden; the collective mind, as in a delirium, vomits up treasures of knowledge and images of longing and madness into the Internet. The seekers after the grail of enoughness think to be secret in the dark but the synapses of that heaving brain lead back to them; they can be found, exposed, discovered, unhidden as I have been. There was no Internet when Klimt was alive.’

He went to the book of Klimt sketches, opened it at random to an elegant drawing of a woman in period underwear lying on her back with her knees up and her legs spread, masturbating.
Masturbierende mit gegratschten Beinen,
said the earnest caption. ‘There you go,’ said Klein. Then, recalling another book, ‘It’s a paperback with an orange cover. Yes,’ he said when he found it,
Clay Gods: The Neolithic Period and Copper Age in Hungary.’
He turned to a photograph of an anthropomorphic urn, female, stylised almost to the point of abstraction – the eyes, nose, and breasts indicated by clay knobs, the shape primarily urn but numinously woman. ‘Better than Klimt,’ he said.

He got his video of
The Blue Angel,
watched the end of it again, with Professor Rath, broken and disgraced, stealing back at night to the school where he’d been a respected master, and resting his head on the desk of his onetime authority. ‘And yet,’ said Klein, ‘for a while you had a singing canary.’

‘Oannes has said quite a bit more since the last time I saw you,’ said Klein to Dr DeVere.

‘Up to then, all he’d said since the shutdown was “Gone”, right?’

‘Right. He said that after I’d been talking about the past, when Hannelore and I used to go to the South Bank for concerts. But since then he’s spoken seven more times.’

‘We need to be absolutely clear about this voice of Oannes. Are you hearing it the way you’re hearing me, as a voice originating outside your head?’

No,
said Oannes.

‘No,’ said Klein.

‘How
are
you hearing it?’

The way you used to,
said Oannes.

‘The way I used to,’ said Klein, ‘in my head and with some tension in my vocal cords, as if they’re almost forming the words. Oannes is nobody separate, it’s just how I dress up mentally when I’m thinking Oannes thoughts.’

Dr DeVere was busily writing. His pen made a tiny sound as he put the dot under a question mark. ‘And you dress up mentally because … ?’

‘Because I feel like it, OK? Does that make me some kind of a textbook case?’

‘Not that I know of. What was the next Oannes message after “Gone”?’

‘The next thing he said was, “Do something.”’

‘When was that?’

‘It was the evening of the day of our last session; I was going to meet Leslie because he’d promised to tell me Angelica’s real name, remember?’

‘Remind me, please – why did he make that promise? Why didn’t he just tell you her name straight out?’

‘Jesus, don’t you take notes? He wanted two hundred quid for it. I didn’t have the cash with me at the time so I said I’d meet him next evening.’

‘Why was her name worth two hundred pounds to you?’

‘Because she’d been jerking me around and I didn’t want to be completely at her mercy. I wanted to track her down.’

‘How had she been jerking you around?’

‘I told you last time: the evening before this I’d arranged to meet her but Leslie turned up instead with a van and a videocamera and he was going to bugger me for posterity.’

‘Why had you arranged to meet her?’

‘Sometimes you ask stupid questions, you know that?’

‘Indulge me. You could have wanted to meet her for a variety of reasons. It’s important for both of us to know which it was.’

‘How’s this? I’m old but I’m not dead; I still become interested in women who interest me.’

‘OK, but what were you hoping this meeting would lead to?’

‘Do I have to tell you every goddamn thing? Sometimes you have to use your imagination.’

‘You’ve got a pretty short fuse today.’

‘I’ve got a pretty short fuse every day, and I’m getting tired of stamping it out.’

‘Try to remember that I’m on your side.’

‘That’s a great comfort to me.’

‘How did you feel when Leslie let you off?’

‘I felt relieved. When the actual Leslie was in front of me my curiosity vanished.’

‘Why was that?’

‘You’ve looked at that printout of
“Monica’s Monday Night”
and you must have noticed the size of his equipment – it’s scary.’

‘Are you saying that if it had been less scary you’d have been …’

‘Less scared but just as unwilling.’

‘Because … ?’

‘Because I have all kinds of weird and wild thoughts but I don’t really want to act out all of them. Do you use the Internet?’

‘Are we changing the subject?’