Angelica's Grotto

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.