Read Online Angelica Lost and Found by Russell Hoban - Free Book Online Page A

about a reality that’s not the usual thing. I was only wearing panties and a bra so I took those off and got down on all fours and he covered me the way his father the griffin had covered his mother the mare.’
    ‘His mother the mare …’ He lingered over the words. ‘How long ago was this?’
    ‘I don’t know what kind of time we’re talking about.’
    ‘What I mean is, did he make you pregnant?’
    ‘Not in any way that ends up in the maternity ward.’
    ‘What other kind of pregnant is there?’
    ‘Mental, Clancy. All in the mind.’
    ‘Leave any marks on you? I’d think his talons … unless they were all in the mind too.’
    ‘There were some scratch marks but they’ve faded by now so I can’t show you any evidence. Do you not believe me?’
    A pause while Clancy Bushmilled himself again and I went on to my second boilermaker. The light through the window was very golden, and otherwise full of memories forgotten and remembered and there came to mind a Latin phrase from a book by Mircea Eliade, ‘ in illo tempore ’, ‘in that time’.
    ‘I believe you, Ange – it’s just that I don’t know how to get my head around this other reality. I keep seeing you naked on all fours and him on top of you …’ He trailed off into silence and he was blushing.
    ‘Does it excite you?’ I said.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Me too.’
    Nobody said anything for a moment while the tourist influx murmured and drank its drinks. Then we looked at each other, nodded, and went upstairs.
    When we had our clothes off Clancy blushed again and I read his mind.
    I got down on all fours and said softly, ‘Here I am. Take me.’
    Afterwards, lying in his arms, I saw that he was crying.
    ‘What is it, Clance?’ I said, and kissed him.
    ‘I can’t describe it exactly,’ he said. ‘There’s a great sadness come over me, what a little short thing it is to be alive and so strange. Maybe it’s just the whisky.’
    ‘No, it’s the sense of loss, something lost so far back we can’t remember it.’
    ‘Were you thinking of Volatore while we were doing it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Was it better with him? Did it give you that thing that was lost so far back?’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Clance. It was what it was.’
    ‘And you’re hugging the memory to yourself, not to lose the goodness of it, yes?’
    ‘Please, Clancy!’
    ‘What happened after he climbed off you? Did you fly away together?’ His face as he said that was not the face of anyone I wanted to be with and I felt thoroughly ashamed, as I had known all along I would be.
    ‘That’s as far as this conversation goes,’ I said.
    I got dressed while he watched me in a dirty-minded way, and left.
    ‘Come back soon,’ he called to my departing back. ‘You can be on top next time.’

Chapter 18
    The Eight O’Clock to Katerini
     
    There is a jukebox in my head. Coloured lights, bubbles going round into vanishment and reappearing to go round again. I have no choice in what songs are played. Sometimes a lissom cheerleader inserts the coins, sometimes a tattooed truck driver; the mystic arm rises and descends with the silent disc which then blossoms into song and I dance or cry or shake my head accordingly.
    This time it is a woman in black who feeds the Wurlitzer. The mystic arm rises, descends, and an empty railway station arises in the November evening around Agnes Baltsa as she sings in her native Greek ‘ “ To treno fevgi stis okto ”  ’, ‘The train leaves at eight’. The woman in black remembers, will never forget the eight o’clock to Katerini and a lost love. This is not Baltsa wearing the borrowed language of Bizet; here, giving her whole heart to this little story in the tongue she was born into, she sings me the empty platform, the gathering November night and the departure of love and I cry accordingly.

Chapter 19
    A Little Way on the Tin Globe
     
    I phoned my partner Olivia to tell her that I’d not be at the gallery that day, and I went