I thanked Cosmo for his help and returned to the gallery where I found Mrs Goldfarb standing in front of the tiny, tiny etc.
‘Don’t try to sell me that,’ she said. ‘I already own it. Here’s my receipt.’
I read, in her firm script: ‘Received from Mrs Lenore Goldfarb $50,000 for the painting Tiny, Tiny Dancing Giants in the Dim Red Caverns of Sleep. (Signed) Volatore.’ The signature looked crazed.
‘Have you given him any money?’ she said.
‘No. Where is he now?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know. Sell the painting if you can, I bought it on impulse but it turns my stomach now. You can take your usual commission on the fifty thousand and keep anything you get over that.’
‘How’d you meet him?’ I asked her.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘This guy is involved in my personal life somehow and I’m trying to figure it out.’
‘Involved sexually?’
‘No, metaphysically.’
‘Well, different strokes for different folks, I guess.’
‘Was it sexual with you?’
‘Ladies don’t tell.’ Which meant that it wasn’t.
‘So anyhow, your first meeting with him?’
‘In the Green Apple. I was looking at a two-volume paperback Orlando Furioso when I noticed this smell and there he was. “Ever been to El Paso?” he said.
‘ “No,’ I said. Why?”
‘He got the Italian edition off the shelf and showed me the cover illustration. “They have this painting by Girolamo da Carpi in the museum in El Paso,” he said. “Ruggiero saving Angelica from the sea monster.” He was wearing a very dirty T-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up even shorter to expose his muscular arms. “Riding this guy,” he said as he pointed to the da Carpi hippogriff, riderless, tattooed on his left wrist. “He’s on my left because he got left, but one of these days …” The naked Angelica was on his right wrist. He crossed his wrists so that the hippogriff covered Angelica and leered at me.
‘ “Unusual,” I said. “How’d you come to choose that motif?”
‘ “Saw it in a tattoo parlour. The tattoo artist had a print of the painting and he told me who the characters were. Right then I could feel how the hippogriff must have felt, so I told the tattooist to leave out Ruggiero when he did my hippogriff.” Once I had that part of the story on me I went to the library and borrowed the two-volume paperback.
‘ “You’re interested in art?” I said.
‘He seemed to think about it for a while, then he said, “I paint a little.”
‘ “Got anything to show me?” I said.
‘ “I could paint something for you,” he said, “but I’ve got nothing to do it with.”
‘ “Why not?” I said. “Are you on the run?”
‘ “Just walking around,” he said. “Do you want to see what I can do or not?”
‘The rest is history. Let me know when you sell the tiny, tinies.’
She glittered and tinkled out and there we were, wondering whether we’d ever find someone to take that painting off our hands. But more than that I was wondering about my Volatore: was he trying to reach me but unable to zero in on me?
Chapter 36. A Sudden Kind of Thing
There’s been a Mehitabel-looking cat hanging around the entrance to my building. I don’t know what she does for a living. Raids the garbage cans, maybe. Only one eye — she looks as if she’s knocked about a bit and been knocked about more than a bit. When I came home today she looked at me with a look that said, ‘Well?’
‘You talking to me?’ I said.
‘I don’t see nobody else here, do you?’
‘So?’
‘So are you taking me in or what?’
‘This is kind of sudden.’
‘Life’s a sudden kind of thing, baby.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you know what I’m saying, OK?’
When I’d been thinking cat I’d been thinking Persian maybe or Siamese, strictly upmarket felines. Now here was this upstart vagrant from nowhere with ideas beyond her station. A hardcore optimist.
‘OK, Cunégonde,’ I said. ‘We’ll give it a try.’
‘What kind of a name is that?’
‘You have to read Voltaire.’
‘Whatever you say, Boss.’ She rubbed against my leg, purring like an outboard motor with a bad cold.
‘You’ve got fleas, right?’
‘Gimme a break, I come from a broken home.’
‘What other kind is there? Wait a minute.’ I found an empty Napa Valley carton and put it in front of her.
‘I can take a hint,’ she said, and jumped into it.
I didn’t want to be seen in the elevator with my Napa Valley cast, so I carried her up the three flights to my apartment. When Cunégonde jumped out of the box I tore up Sunday’s Chronicle into strips, filled the box with my improvised cat litter, primed it and put it in a corner of the kitchen.
‘Your temporary bathroom,’ I said.
She sniffed it and said, ‘Roger that, Boss. Is it chow time yet?’
I spread the ‘Datebook’ of the paper on the floor, filled a bowl with milk, opened a can of sardines, put them in a dish, and said, ‘Your table is ready, Madame. I’m going out for supplies. If the phone rings, don’t answer it. Back soon.’
I went to Noe Valley Pet where I consulted with Annie and bought Frontline for the fleas, cat litter, a litter tray, a basket and blanket for my new friend’s bed, and some catnip for recreational use. I had briefly considered a rubber mouse but rejected it as being an insult to a cat who had probably dined on rats or indeed anything that couldn’t dine on her. I stopped off at Decamere for six cans of Whiskas, and thus laden arrived at my apartment.
‘Honey, I’m home!’ I called as I opened the door.
Chapter 37. Every Valley
Shall be exalted? Every single one, really? KDFC got a Handel on Easter with Messiah, all two hours and seventeen minutes of it. In spite of my outburst on the isle of Ebuda I am not a religious person. Jewish to the core, yes, but that’s my personal identity, nothing to do with God who, being omnipotent, has had the power to imagine Himself into being with all attendant perks and privileges.
He certainly convinced George Frideric Handel, who made a career out of his devotion to that exigent deity. It’s hard to be sure which came first. Did God invent Handel or did Handel invent God? Not forgetting that the same arrangement existed between Him and Johann Sebastian Bach. The whole thing is confusing and I dwell on it because there is more to it than meets the mind.
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ sings the soprano. From what are we redeemed? Original sin? Unoriginal sin? I think uncertainty is what we are redeemed from by this redeemer whom we have invested with the power to redeem us. The extra-strength placebo. If you think it works, it will.
And, unaccountably, it does. Listening to Messiah I feel redeemed.
Chapter 38. Calamari, Hali But Not Really
‘Listen, Angelica,’ said Clancy when I finally stopped cutting him short on the telephone, ‘I know I behaved shamefully the other day, but is that a good enough reason to break off a long-standing friendship? I apologise wholeheartedly and I promise never to turn nasty again.’