Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 14. Up, Up and Away, But …

Sometimes the fog came rolling in off the bay, heightening scents and muffling sound. It rested on my face like the touch of Time’s hand and I felt lost and alone. My existence is so tenuous that it could be snuffed out like a candle by any unfriendly wind. If the vital connection between me and Angelica were broken … but I dared not think of that. Nevertheless I did think of it and everything else: the raven in whose mind I live and the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep. I had broken through the membrane that divided the reality of the imagination from that of the tangible world and only now did I question my right to do so. This world, whatever its reality, is held together only by consensus, by everyone’s agreeing to abide by rules arrived at by trial and error over the centuries. I had broken those rules, I was an ontological outlaw and I was suffering a just punishment.

But one foggy night I smelled — was it truly, could it be? Yes, it was! Angelica! Her voice came softly through the mist. My soul was irradiated with hope.

‘Volatore!’ she called. ‘Volatore!’

The park was deserted. I made my way to the overlook. The bridge was invisible; the foghorns hooted like lost sea beasts. There she was, my? Angelica.

‘No Vassily baby tonight?’ I said.

‘Only you and me,’ she answered.

‘For how long? An hour? Two?’

‘For as long as we’re allowed.’

‘By whom? By what?’

‘By the story that we are part of.’

‘Really! And was your time with Vassily a chapter in that story? You abandoned me and went off with him. How could you do that?’

‘At first I thought he was you. I kept calling your name but you didn’t answer. He was all over me, hot and heavy, and I lost my head. I was confused and all stirred up and I wanted satisfaction, I’m only flesh and blood after all. Can you understand that?’

‘I can understand one time, but you’ve been with him night after night.’

‘No, I haven’t. He’s not a very nice man and I got away from him after that one time. I’ve had some gallery business to catch up with and since then I’ve been looking for you. Which hasn’t been that easy. Now that I’ve found you can you forgive me?’

‘If it was only the one time.’

‘It was. Listen to this.’ She had a book in her hand, and by the light of a little torch she began to read:

‘ “Non è finto il destrier, ma naturale,

ch’una giumenta genero d’un grifo:

simile al padre avea la piuma e l’ale …” ’

A thrill ran through me like electricity, I felt the blood coursing through my body as my wings stiffened.

‘That’s the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso!’ I said. ‘That’s me! You’ve brought me Ariosto!’

‘So are we going to fly out of here or what?’

It took me a moment to grasp the reality of this new situation.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we’re going to fly out of here.’

‘Where to?’

I was taken aback by her direct question. I had given no thought to a destination. Back into the world of da Carpi’s painting? No, that was the reality I’d broken out of to get to San Francisco. Angelica had spoken of what we were allowed by ‘the story we are part of ’.

‘Here, then,’ I said to her, ‘is an anomaly: we purpose using Ariosto’s words to power our flight out of Ariosto’s story.’

‘But we’re already out of his story, aren’t we? San Francisco isn’t in Orlando Furioso. I’m having a hard time getting my head around this! What do you think we should do?’

I closed my eyes and the golden sunlight of Rome, its seven hills and the ruins of the Colosseum flashed into my mind.

‘Rome!’ I said. ‘We’ll fly to Rome on the Maestro’s words and continue our own story there.’

‘Do you think we’ll get away with it?’

‘ “Dum spiro, spero,” baby, if I may speak classical and modern at the same time.’

‘Gimme an asterisk.’

‘ “While I breathe, I hope.” ’

‘You’re one ballsy guy, Vol.’

‘Hung like a hippogriff, piccina.’

‘It’s all very well to kid around but this thing we’re doing could be the end of us if it goes wrong.’

‘Let’s just do it, OK?’

‘Can you navigate in this fog? There’s no visibility at all.’

‘We’ll climb above it.’

‘Yes, but you must remember not to fly over the island where Angelica is chained to the rock.’

‘I’ll remember. It gets cold high up and it’s a wet night. Will you be warm enough?’

‘I’m wearing a heavy woollen sweater and foul-weather yachting gear, OK?’

‘You’ll have to hold on tight — there’s no saddle or bridle for you.’

‘Not to worry — I’ve got rope to tie myself on with.’

‘Do that and tell me when you’re ready for take-off.’

‘Ready now.’

‘Start reading again.’

‘ “Non è finto il destrier, ma naturale,

ch’una giumenta genero d’un grifo:

simile al padre avea la piuma e l’ale,

li piedi anteriori, il capo è il grifo;

in tutte l’altre membra parea quale

era la madre, e chiamarsi ippogrifo;

che nei monti Rifei vengon, ma rari,

molto di là dagli aghiacciati mari …” ’

I felt the power in my wings and there came a rush of air beneath me as we rose into the fog.

‘Yes, oh yes!’ said Angelica. ‘Welcome to Volatore Air!’

Once above the fog I was able to see the North Star and the Wain and I set my course for Italy with a cold wind against us.

‘This is like a dream,’ Angelica shouted above the wind and the whoosh of my wingbeats. ‘I think we are in our own time which is outside of time.’

‘We are together, that is enough.’ I had some doubts about the outcome of our flight but I kept them to myself.

‘But there’s something you have to understand. Listen, Vol — is it OK if I call you Vol?’

‘It’s cool. I can speak modern but I must not lose altitude.’

‘About our togetherness — I’m not a reincarnation of Ariosto’s Angelica, I’m Angelica Greenberg and I run a San Francisco art gallery in the year 2008. And I have to say I’m a lot nicer than Ariosto’s Angelica. He himself says, “She holds the world in such contempt and scorn,/No man deserving her was ever born.” She uses men when she needs help, she makes them think she’s hot to trot, then as soon as she’s safe she’s off without so much as a goodbye kiss. To put it crudely, she’s a cock-teaser.’

‘The ordinary rules do not apply to her. She is beyond such limitations.’

‘That may be but she’s nothing like me.’

‘No matter; the idea of Angelica may manifest itself in various ways but it persists and you are it.’

‘All right. Let’s talk about you for a moment. Apparently you’re making your own decisions now but in that part of Canto IV that I read you Atlante was your master.’

‘That necromancer! Although by artifice he made me do as I was bid, my heart’s desire from him I kept well hid.’

‘Vol, you’re speaking like the English version of Orlando Furioso.’

‘Sometimes emotion makes me slip into rhyme.’

‘Have you flown this route before?’

‘Probably. I don’t remember.’

‘Atlante used to do the navigating, right?’

‘Angelica, what are you getting at?’

‘The anomaly you spoke of earlier — we’re trying to get away to our own story by flying on the power of Ariosto’s words, right?’

‘Right. We talked this over and decided to chance it.’

‘I think our plan’s not working. Call it woman’s intuition. Keep on flapping your wings and we’ll find ourselves over that island where Angelica’s chained to her rock and Ruggiero’s riding to her rescue on your back.’

‘I won’t allow that. From this time forward I am my own hippogriff.’

‘That’s as may be, but there’s another thing that’s bothering me. Maybe this is the wrong time to bring it up.’

‘What?’

‘Vol, sweetheart, tell me, what sort of future can we have together, in or out of this story: an imaginary beast and an actual woman? You and I might couple from time to time but we don’t constitute a proper couple. I’m only human and I ought to have a human lover.’

She was voicing the doubts that had long been lurking at the back of my mind but now I was too preoccupied to answer. Oceans and continents sped beneath me faster and faster. Something was pushing me in a new direction.

‘Well,’ shouted Angelica, ‘I’m waiting to hear your thoughts.’

‘We can’t go into that now. I’m being forced off my course.’

‘I was afraid this was going to happen. What are you going to do?’

‘Whatever I can. Don’t distract me.’

‘We’re over water — are you going to ditch?’

‘Quiet! I have no control whatever.’

The water was behind us and the ground was coming up fast.

‘There’s that lousy island with Angelica chained to her rock and that monster with a hard-on,’ shouted Angelica. ‘Ugh, I can smell him from here. Oh God, are we going to crash?’

‘Worse, I fear. Try to prepare yourself.’

Even as I spoke she found herself chained to the rock, clothing and foul-weather gear gone, naked as the day she was born. Orca’s roars took on a throaty note.

‘What’s happening to me?’ she wailed. ‘Am I the original Angelica now?’

I was too busy to answer, finding myself saddled and bridled with Ruggiero in charge of me. He put me into a dive but he was overly cautious and pulled me up too soon. His lance did little more than scratch Orca’s back, and the monster laughed at us as we flew up out of harm’s way.

‘You’re some hero!’ I said to Ruggiero, lapsing into modern. ‘Why don’t you hit him with your handbag?’

He, of course, did not understand a word I said.

‘Let’s go,’ he shouted. ‘One more time!’ Another dive, another pull-up.

‘Maybe you should take up some other line of work,’ I said, ‘or maybe you’re hoping Orca will laugh himself to death.’

Angelica, writhing in terror against her chain, chose this moment to assert her religious affiliation.

‘Hear, oh Israel!’ she cried. ‘The Lord our God, the Lord is one! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!’

‘You’re a day late and a shekel short with Jehovah,’ I shouted to her. ‘Now we’re stuck with Ariosto.’

‘Yeah, right!’ she shouted back. ‘Is somebody going to rescue me or what? Right now Orca seems to be ahead on points.’

After a few more tries Ruggiero abandoned his Orca-killing charade and we swooped down for him to unchain Angelica and airlift her to safety, thus saving her life while imperilling her chastity. As we did so there came to me some half-memory of a legendary ring.

‘Keep your eye on her ring,’ I said as Ruggiero put Angelica on my pillion seat and we took off. As always he understood not a word.

Enjoying the weight of her sweet buttocks on my back I resigned myself to whatever disappointment was coming next. Ruggiero’s mind was an easy one to read — he mostly had one thing on it. As Angelica clasped him from behind he could feel the heat of her breasts right through his armour and he was confident of claiming his reward for the rescue. As soon as he descried a suitable landing spot he put us down and began to struggle out of his armour, somewhat impeded by his erection. Cursing and sweating, inspired by Angelica’s nakedness and maddened by his heroic tumescence he strove to make himself available for the longed-for embrace.

The ring? It was still in my mind but there was nothing I could do to prevent what would happen next. I could see Angelica waiting in fear and trembling for Ruggiero’s onslaught but then she looked at her hand and there it was, the golden ring to break all spells and render its wearer invisible. Immediately she put it in her mouth and disappeared from view.

Ruggiero’s frustration was nothing to me but how was I to find her again? With my animal sense of smell I detected her fragrance lingering on the air, compounded with the salt-sea tang and the sharp scent of her fear. But she was for the present lost to me and I was in myself confused and lost; Ariosto’s words had left me!

I was aloft but without focus and direction. Why did I not fall? Something was sustaining me, but what? On the screen of my mind there flickered, like summer lightning, scenes of battle and courtship, chivalry and treachery, life and death in rapidly changing colours, and with them came, as from a great distance, their sounds. I understood then that the story, not only of Ariosto but of Angelica and me, had moved away from me. I flew in aimless circles, asking questions of the air that gave no answers. I had broken rules not allowed to be broken; what new rules was I now bound by?

Angelica Greenberg who is also Ariosto’s Angelica, you and I belong together; there is a mystery between us; I must find you!