He closed his eyes again.
‘In a dream have I been there with the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep.’
‘Have you had this dream recently?’ I asked him.
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
‘This is the first time I’ve heard of anyone seeing the subject of a painting in a dream before seeing the actual painting. You don’t happen to know Lenore Goldfarb, do you?’
‘This pleasure,’ he said, ‘I have not yet had. Again I flourish my chequebook and express my wish to know the price of this painting.’
‘This one is a rarity,’ I said. ‘In fact it’s unique, the only work of a man who gave up painting after producing it.’
‘As one would,’ said the odoriferous gentleman, uncapping his Mont Blanc. ‘I am ready if you are.’
‘Very well then.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘The price is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
Unperturbed, he found a table to lean on, wrote the cheque in a large round hand, waved it in the air once or twice to dry the ink, and presented it to me. I looked at the signature: ‘Volatore’.
‘Volatore!’ I exclaimed.
‘Ah,’ he said preenfully, ‘this name makes a bell to ring, yes?’
‘Yes. Tell me why.’
‘Do you go to the movies?’
‘Sometimes. Are you an actor?’
‘Actors! Pfft!’ (With a snap of the fingers.) Have you seen A Midnight too Far?’
‘I’ve seen it,’ said Olivia. ‘Lola Trotter and Rodney Stark.’
‘And the credits?’ said Volatore. ‘Did you read the credits?’
‘No.’
He passed his hand over his wig and gave us a sidelong glance.
‘Hairstylist!’ said Olivia.
‘Hairstylist!’ he said, drawing himself up to his full shortness. ‘I, Volatore, made of Miss Trotter a thing of beauty, Ah! che bellezza! Without my art she would receive from no one a second glance.’
‘You’ve done a great job on her,’ said Olivia.
‘Thank you,’ said Volatore, bowing modestly. ‘I am also known for Volatore’s TurboScalp System (patent pending) which has stimulated Mr Stark’s performance to a level well beyond the limits of his talent.’
‘Can a TurboScalp System really do that?’
‘He thinks it does, so it does. This is known as the placebo effect.’
‘Interesting!’
‘Yes, and profitable as well. High-powered executives, athletes, opera singers and many other professionals who must work to the highest standards swear by my TurboScalp System. It is because of this that my chequebook is so virile.’
‘Forgive me if I’m being too personal,’ I said, ‘but your smell …’
‘Ah, the smell of me!’
‘Yes, as you have to get close to your clients, doesn’t it present a problem?’
‘No. Only when I am receiving a transmission does the smell manifest itself. In my salon it happens not.’
‘So you’re receiving a transmission now?’
‘As your nose tells you.’
‘From whom?’ said Olivia.
Volatore shrugged and with both hands made a ‘It’s a mystery to me’ gesture.
‘It’s a mystery to me,’ he said.
‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ I said, ‘is your name always Volatore?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, is it Volatore every day or only on special days?’
‘My name is what you call a twenty-four-seven thing, every day of the year.’
‘Please don’t be offended by these personal questions,’ I I said, ‘but has it always been Volatore?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Only since 1958. In that year there was a popular song that was a big hit: “Nel blu dipinto di blu” was the title but it became known as “Volare” which is the infinitive “to fly”.’ He sang a few bars of the song. ‘My father liked the sound of that word, and he went on to the word for “flyer” which he liked even better, and he had the family name legally changed from Garzanti to Volatore.’
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘what do you think is the special attribute that made you a receiver of these mysterious transmissions?’
‘This to me is also a mystery,’ said the hairstylist with the appropriate gesture.
‘Do you know why Orlando is furious?’ asked Olivia whose knowledge of Ariosto was limited to the title.
‘This I think must be known to everyone,’ said Volatore Three. ‘It began when he and Angelica drank from the two fountains, he from the one that made him love her and she from the one that made her despise him.’
‘This is not common knowledge,’ I said. ‘Have you a particular interest in Ariosto?’
Volatore Three smiled deprecatingly.
‘It is my hobby to render his Italian into English,’ he said humbly. ‘Mine may not be as good as what is already published but it gives me pleasure and harms no one. Ariosto’s elegance and wit can be approached in more than one way in a rhyming translation.’
‘Ah!’ said Olivia and I together.
‘Please telephone me when my cheque has cleared,’ he said, ‘and I shall have the painting picked up.’ He handed me his card which bore a Nob Hill address, bowed ceremoniously, and left.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Olivia. ‘I wonder who Volatore Four will be.’
‘Me too,’ I said, and the two of us took the cheque to the bank.
Chapter 48. Cold Water
Dr Jim Long was born in Pennsylvania, and sometimes when his mind is pedalling in busy circles he recalls a thing from his youth. He recalls a drink of water from a mountain spring in the Appalachians. He was hot and sweaty and tired when he came upon a stone trough with water flowing into it from an iron pipe. Cold sparkling mountain water filling the trough from an iron pipe that was beaded with droplets of condensation. There were leaves and sand and tiny crayfish in the bottom of the trough. He plunged his face into the water and drank the best drink he would ever have in his life. The leaves of the trees were stirring in the summer breeze. Everything was more than itself.
Dos Arbolitos is both home and office for Jim, with books everywhere and various prints and posters, among them John William Waterhouse’s Naiad. He smiles approvingly, then moves on to Waterhouse’s Destiny, where he shakes his head in admiration. ‘Yes!’ he says quietly, because in those two paintings he’s looking at the face and form of Angelica Greenberg. Her beauty is Victorian and she is quite simply the definitive Waterhouse woman from top to bottom. Her figure is long and lithe, her limbs all sweetly rounded, her body ideal for such naiad activities as swimming and dodging around trees. As to her face, the nose is long and elegantly retroussé; the delicately modelled cheeks echo her other roundnesses and offer to the viewer her large and lustrous sea-green eyes with their shapely brows under that shining coppery hair. Her lips are made for kissing, and her firmly rounded chin completes the face that is poised on the long and graceful neck of Angelica Waterhouse Greenberg.
‘That whole first session with Angelica,’ says Dr Jim to himself, ‘I was showing off. The things I said were OK but when I play the session back in my head I can hear myself showing off. “It’s called life,” ’ he says, mimicking his show-off voice. ‘OK, she’s a Waterhouse beauty but she’s also someone who came to me for help with her problems and I’m her forty-one-year-old shrink who started with her like a sixteen-year-old high-school kid and have since abandoned all professionalism and indulge in sexual fantasies. Very good, Dr Jim. Felicity said when she moved out that I lived too much in my head and acted too much out of it. She’d have made a pretty good shrink.’