‘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.