Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 5. Dame Fortune’s Decree

How to begin? I let the idea of me wander to find a useful body with a receptive mind. Wandering, wandering, no hurry, let it happen. Did the time pass slowly or quickly? Time is so various in its textures, densities, and flavours! I flowed with it, swam in it, tasted it, rose through it into the next scenes of my dream of reality.

Ecco! Here is a fine big fellow, very strong, I sense. Pictures in his mind, men locked in a struggle for a ball that is not round. On a field that is formally marked off. Wing, he’s thinking. Wing is what he is. Rugby. Rugby is his game. Marco Renzetti is his name. OK, Marco! Andiamo!

What is this? Roma Ciampino. Being in this man’s mind I think ‘airport’ but in my animal mind it is a monstrous thing, braying light and colour, black with noise, stinking of sweat and un-nature, ceiled and carpeted with footsteps. Here one may eat, drink, buy every possible thing. I, Marco Renzetti, drawn in by the glittering array of shops, buy perfume, six silk shirts, four neckties, a bottle of grappa and a little model of the Colosseum.

Now we stand behind other people. A desk. A woman takes from us what? Passport. Ticket. San Francisco is the name in our mind. San Francisco in America! Why San Francisco? No matter, this is what Dame Fortune has decreed and I must obey. Walking, walking, many people. Sitting, sitting. Through glass we see great machines. Flying soon, we think. A large voice tells us that passengers will now embark. We descend stairs and go through a little door. ‘Buon giorno.’ Walking, walking, people, people. Sitting down. Fastening, with a click, a heavy belt. Music, music. A uniformed woman demonstrates what to do if the machine falls out of the sky. Waiting, waiting. Noise, vibration. We are moving, moving. My stomach lifts. We are airborne.

Very good, I have a big strong man body and I’m in a machine that flies. It’s not like real flying; the wings don’t move and the machine is loud and shaky as it crawls laboriously through the sky. White cloud-castles pass beneath us. Volatore, the flyer, in this unnatural flying machine. How strange to be us, living in words above the clouds. But the strangeness is all there is. There is no other place to live. From a sea of nothingness we are washed up on its empty shore, there to build our palaces on sand and dress up as whatever we think we might be.

A very pretty woman comes with drinks and little packets of nuts. The scent of her flesh lingers in my nostrils, her perfume and her woman-smell. I hear the rustling of her underwear, her stockinged thighs. Short skirt but I stop my hand from sliding up. Not now. Not here. Later, if Fortune smiles on me, there will be Angelica.

In my mind something with a big oven, round slabs of dough, a long wooden paddle, an illuminated signboard, Marco’s Pizzeria, changing to Pizzeria Renzetti, changing to Pizzeria Classica. OK, Pizzeria is cool, I suppose, yes? Plain white flour in my mind, salt, dried yeast, sugar, olive oil and polenta — these are things I seem to know. Ovens, what kind of ovens are there where I am going? In my mind there is a smell of baking.