‘Because I want you to keep looking at me. As long as I feel your eyes on me I think we’re both real. Maybe.’
‘You doubt your reality?’
‘Constantly. Don’t you, being imaginary as you are?’
‘I am as real as Ariosto imagined and that is enough for me. I try not to question it.’
‘How strange this is!’
‘Strangeness is all there is. May I come in? I feel rather exposed out here. My name is Volatore.’
‘How do you do. I’m Angelica Greenberg. But I’ve already told you that.’
‘I ask again, may I come in?’
‘First tell me where you’re coming from.’
‘Geographically, or are you speaking modern?’
‘Either, both, whatever.’
‘I’m coming from the isle of Ebuda.’
‘But you didn’t fly here out of Orlando Furioso, did you? That’s literature; this is San Francisco.’
‘I walked from the Mission.’
‘How come?’
‘That’s a long canto and I’m still outside here for all the world to see.’
‘Sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Come in and have a cup of tea.’
‘If I can get through the window.’
‘Think small.’
I folded back my wings, thought small, and squeezed through the window.
‘I’m afraid my talons will tear up your rug,’ I said.
‘Not to worry, hippogriffs are scarcer than kelims.’ She stared at me for a few moments, then went to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
I looked around me at her flat. Many books, colourful cushions on the sofa. A framed print on the wall that was strangely evocative but confusing, an empurpled chaos with a little naked woman glowing at the heart of it.
I called to her, ‘What is this picture?’
‘Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica, by Odilon Redon,’ she said as the kettle whistled.
‘As I look more closely I see myself in it,’ I said, ‘but he could have represented me more powerfully.’
‘With a symbolist,’ she said, ‘you have to take the thought for the deed.’
‘Nevertheless, this picture is yet another sign that this is a fated meeting, or at least a fateful one.’
‘Remains to be seen,’ she said as she came into the room with the tray and tea things, but I could already feel what Doris called chemistry between us. Angelica gave me the tea in a bowl so that I could dip my beak. ‘Now that I see you up close it’s a lot more startling than when you were at the window,’ she said. ‘Your eyes, your beak, your smell …’ She looked away, and began to hum a tune.
‘What are the words to that tune?’ I said.
Still looking away from me and blushing, she said very quietly, ‘They’re just something about a wrong time, a wrong place, a wrong face and a strange attraction. Nothing about a wrong smell.’ Her fragrance was maddening. I felt her warm breath on me.
‘Is there a strange attraction?’ I said.
Almost in a whisper, her face still averted, she said. ‘I feel kind of crazy, so if you’re going to make a move, do it now before the feeling goes away.’
‘I’m not sure what to do,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to frighten you.’
‘Please don’t look at me directly, you make me feel weird.’
‘In what way?’
‘More like an animal than usual.’
‘And?’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘Say!’
‘I’d like you to kiss me but you can’t because of your beak.’
‘I think I can change to human form if you want me to.’
‘No. I want you as you are.’
‘You want me, really? Is that what you’re saying? I can scarcely believe my ears – I never dared hope, so soon, that this could happen.’
‘First we have to see if it’s a practical possibility.’ She was inspecting my genitals. ‘Jesus! you’re hung like a horse.’
‘Like a hippogriff, actually.’
‘Could you think a little smaller?’
I thought a little smaller while she watched the process. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘That should be about right.’
She removed her underwear and got down on all fours like a submissive mare. Her naked back and breasts, seen from behind, filled my eyes, my mind and my very soul with their femaleness. And at the same time I was thinking, Ariosto imagined me. Did he imagine this?
‘Here I am,’ she said softly. ‘Take me.’
So seductive she was! So delicious, so full of desire as I mounted her! She gasped and cried out when I entered her but soon she was moving with me and voicing her pleasure. And I! This was the happiest moment of my life. To how many of us is it given to be wanted for what we truly are! And to be loved for our true selves! And she did love me, I could feel the very soul of her in my embrace. Her orgasm went on and on until she was exhausted. When I withdrew she remained on her hands and knees, swaying a little.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
She turned her face to me. She was smiling with tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘When you came, when I felt your seed spurt into me, I saw the shadows of great wings on a sunlit meadow; I seemed to be remembering it from a long way back.’
‘I come from a long time back, my love.’
‘Yes, I am your love and you are mine. You’re an imaginary beast from an epic poem by Ariosto. You were an imaginary beast when you mounted me and you’re the same talking to me now. Volatore, how is it that a real woman can mate with a poetic invention?’
‘Everything is real, Angelica. Reality is a house of many rooms, and sometimes we can enter more than one. Ariosto’s words put real wind under my wings, made me fly. It was not only words on paper – I remember the air rushing past me, remember looking down on plains and forests, mountains and oceans. I lived, I flew over the sea in a painting by Girolamo da Carpi in a time long past. You and I are both in the world of that picture which lives even now and waits for us here in this country, in El Paso. And in the same Now here I am in your mind or in a dream, I don’t know. But you felt my weight on you, felt me inside you in our dream of reality.’
‘If we could couple as we did, mind and matter, waking and dreaming, might we produce an offspring?’
‘I don’t know, Angelica. I don’t know the boundaries of this reality.’
‘Maybe our child …’ she started to say. She was still on her hands and knees. Then, ‘The figures in the carpet are dancing all around me.’
‘Our child, Angelica?’
‘Maybe our child will be a story,’ she murmured. ‘A story will be our only child.’ And she began to weep.
I tried to comfort her.
‘We have each other,’ I said. Lamely.
‘I want you to hold me and kiss me and cuddle me,’ she said. ‘Can you put on a human shape for me?’
‘Tell me something first, Angelica …’
‘What?’
‘Tell me again that you are my love.’
‘Yes, Volatore, I am your love.’
‘And you truly love me, heart and soul?’ As the words left my beak I felt the swoop of a great blackness.
‘It’s all so strange!’ she cried. ‘Please!’ she said again, ‘I need you to kiss me and cuddle me before I can be sure.’
‘Wait here and I’ll leave my hippogriff shape and find a man body and come back to you.’
‘I’ll come with you; after all, I should have the choosing of the man I’m going to be intimate with. When you beome a man, how shall I know it’s you?’
‘I’ll say, “Here is Volatore.” ’ I became the idea of me with no visible form and we set out.
Angelica was of course chained to the rock of her beauty and monsters of all shapes and sizes came thick and fast, some with honeyed words and some with lewd proposals. She rejected one after another; when any became offensive I showed them my full hippogriff self and they left pretty qui
ckly. We wandered up and down and by winding ways and eventually came to the place that overlooks the bridge and the bay.
A man was standing there with his back to us.
‘You’ve come at last,’ he said to Angelica.
Was there something? What?
‘You were expecting me?’ she said, looking him up and down critically.
‘Yes, I was. Sometimes I get a little crazy. I told myself that if I come and stand here night after night a beautiful stranger will appear.’ His breath. Vodka.
‘Maybe,’ said Angelica, ‘I won’t always be a stranger.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Wait!’
Chapter 11
The Buttocks of Giuseppina
‘Whoosh!’ says Marco. He suddenly feels as if something has gone out of him, leaving him in some way a new man, light and easy, refreshed and invigorated. ‘Wow!’ he adds.
‘Che?’ says Strozzi as he slides a pizza in to bake.
‘Where?’ says Marco, standing in the pizzeria that bears his name.
‘Where what?’ says Strozzi.
‘Who?’ says Marco as Giuseppina, pizza-laden, sways past him. Coming back to himself in a flash, he affectionately squeezes her left buttock.
‘What’s this?’ she says. ‘You’ve just now rediscovered my natica sinistra? I have one on the other side also. They’re a matched pair.’
Marco bilaterally embraces her bottom and draws her to him.
‘Piano, piano,’ says Giuseppina, ‘the pizza’s getting cold. See me after closing time.’
‘Sweet Pina!’ cries Marco as the joy of life and the vital sap of the vernal season rise in him and he follows her into the dining room. ‘I feel as if I’ve been away for a long time but now I’m back, and only now do I realise all that you are to me! You are my basil and my oregano! You are my mozzarella!’
The diners look up from their pizza classica and give the couple their full attention.
‘I’ve seen nothing of you and heard nothing from you for weeks,’ says Giuseppina with the colour mounting to her cheeks, ‘and do you mock me now?’
‘I do not mock, Giuseppina! I love you!’
‘You’re embarrassing me! Be serious, padrone!’
‘But I am serious!’
Her eyes narrow as she serves the pizzas.
‘How serious?’
Marco goes down on one knee and there is a collective intake of breath from the onlookers.
‘Go for it!’ urge the assembled upholders of traditional family values.
Marco goes for it.
‘Marry me!’ he demands in ringing tones that make passers-by in the street turn their heads and smile.
‘You hear this?’ says Giuseppina to the breathless pizzagoers. ‘What answer shall I give the padrone?’
‘Yes!’ they shout as one.
Giuseppina raises Marco to his feet, kisses him soundly, places his hands firmly where they have been longing to go, and breathes softly into his ear, ‘What’s mine is yours.’
Cheers and applause. It’s like something in a movie.
Chapter 12
Figs with Cream!
Vassily, his name is. A big man and no gentleman, reeking of Stolichnaya the same as on the night he attacked Doris. I knocked him out then, so why don’t I become my hippogriff self now and let him feel the weight of my talons?
Right! Here I go. Nothing happens, I’m still an invisible idea. Only a little while ago I was seeing off unwelcome suitors with my full self but suddenly I don’t know how to do it. Was there a magic word? Meanwhile Angelica was breathing in his stinking breath and looking at him with desire in her eyes.
All I could do was climb into his mind, and it was so swollen with his single intention that it was a tight squeeze.
‘Here I am,’ I gasped to Angelica. ‘Here is Volatore.’
‘What’s your name, handsome?’ she said playfully, as if sharing a joke with me.
‘Volatore, Volatore!’ I tried to say, but the name that came out was ‘Vassily’.
‘Sure you are, but you’re my Volatore, yes?’
‘Who’s Volatore?’ said Vassily.
‘You are, aren’t you?’ said Angelica.
‘I’ll show you who I am pretty quick as soon as we get out of the weather,’ said Vassily.
We, the three of us, went to where his red Mercedes was parked. It had doors that opened like wings.
‘Classy set of wheels,’ said Angelica. ‘This is a 300 SRL.’
‘You can depend on me for a good ride, golubchik,’ he said (I was unable to make myself heard).
‘I believe you, Volatore.’
‘Vassily, baby.’
‘OK, Vassily Baby.’
We got in and Vassily put his hand on her leg.
She put her hand over his.
‘Don’t be shy, Vassily Baby,’ she said, and moved his hand further up her thigh (I could do nothing). ‘Have we got time for a kiss and a cuddle right here?’ she said.
‘For this there is always time,’ said Vassily, and she came into his arms (I, Volatore, felt that hot embrace.) Tasting the sweet mouth of my erstwhile love, Vassily recalled a favourite dessert of his childhood: figs with cream. That was how she tasted, his delicious Angelica.
‘ “Wild thing!” ’ she said. ‘ “You make my heart sing!” ’ (This from the woman who had declared herself my love only moments ago. Was eternal Angelica forever unreliable?)
‘I’ll get to your other parts right away.’ (The coarseness of the man!) ‘Excuse me for just a moment,’ he said as he stopped the car. ‘Call of nature.’
Vassily stepped behind a bush, dropped his trousers, there was a little straining and I, Volatore, was expelled, hitting the ground as a full-size hippogriff. Then Vassily got back in the car and drove off with Angelica.
So easily had Vassily Baby disposed of Volatore the hippogriff!
I tried to revert to the mode in which I was idea without visible form but I was unable to do it. How had the Russian been able to expel me like that? Had the idea of me become so weak that an ordinary human was stronger than Volatore the hippogriff?
Fortunately the hour was late and there was no one about. If only I could fly out of this situation! But I had no winged words to lift me. Trying hard to think small, I crept away in the dark, cursing and whimpering, seeking a place to hide.
Chapter 13
Extruded, Excluded and Bewildered
Many scents came to me: animals; grass; trees; flowers; fresh water; wooden buildings; bushes. I smelled my way to a great park and there I hid myself in the bushes and tried to think what to do next. I was distracted by a roaring, then I realised that I was doing it: my loss was too great for words. Only roaring and the outpourings of madness could express it. To find Angelica after long centuries only to lose her after a brief moment of happiness! Only those who have possessed and immediately lost the fulfilment of their hopes and desires can know my despair.
Then my lamentation turned to rage. How could Angelica, after what had passed between us, drop me and go off with Vassily Baby! Faithless slut! How could I ever trust a woman again! No, I mustn’t think that, there must be some explanation for her behaviour that will eventually reveal itself to me. Perhaps my power had faded and needed recharging – that would explain much. But not Angelica’s acceptance of Vassily Baby as her lover.
What to do now? No idea; I couldn’t be invisible and I couldn’t fly. And I was hungry. Following my nose I found large, shaggy, horned cattle which I could have killed, but they were too big to be eaten in a single meal and I didn’t want to keep a carcass that was starting to smell. I contented myself, therefore, with such smaller cattle as I could find: frogs; toads; lizards; mice; ducklings. I required a great deal of this sort of provender, so I hunted every night in areas of the park not frequented by visitors or homeless men.
This was certainly a low period in my life and I could see no end to it. I tortured myself calling to mind Angelica, naked, waiting on all fou
rs for me to cover her as the griffin had covered my mother.
‘Yes, Volatore,’ she had said, ‘I am your love.’
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.’