Free Angelica Lost and Found by Russell Hoban Page A

Religion.’ I read off my computer printout: ‘ “He claimed that the earth would soon perish and then come alive again in a pure, aboriginal state, replete with lush green prairie grass, large buffalo herds and Indian ancestors.”
    ‘He told the Indians how to earn this new reality, with prayer and meditation and especially dancing “through which one might briefly die and catch a glimpse of the Paradise to come”.
    ‘The government banned the Ghost Dance, the Indians didn’t stop, so on the morning of 29 December 1890, at Wounded Knee, the soldiers killed a hundred and fifty Indians and wounded fifty, all of them wearing Ghost Shirts to stop the bullets.’ By this time I was crying again.
    ‘She’s upset,’ said Jonathan to Ruth. ‘We’ll talk about this another time,’ he said to me as I sat there in my Ghost Shirt, weeping by the rivers of Babylon.

Chapter 24
    Pictures in the Sand
     
    Sometimes I listen to gospel songs. I like the way they sound. There’s one called ‘Far Side Bank of Jordan’ in the Alison Krauss and the Cox Family album, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow . Willard Cox sings of leaving this world before his wife and waiting for her by the River Jordan while drawing pictures in the sand.
    Listening to that song I see, beyond the Jordan, vast herds of buffalo grazing on the lush green grass. And I see the tents of the ancestors and the smoke of their fires. Frying fish from the Jordan, maybe. Rainbow trout, big ones.

Chapter 25
    Broad-Mindedness of Volatore
     
    Angelica, no word for me? After all that has passed between us! Are you perhaps now having doubts because you’re a Jewess and my literary father Ariosto was a Catholic? But love knows no barriers – ethnic differences are nothing to me – both of my birth parents almost certainly worshipped the old gods, as do I. Put aside your doubts – there are no religious obstacles to our union!

Chapter 26
    Dim Red Taverns of Sheep
     
    Hoyt Smith rang me up to tell me that my request would go out next morning between eleven and twelve. While waiting for that to happen I acted on a heads-up from Phyllis Stein. She collects the paintings and drawings of autistic savants in the belief that they contain hidden messages. She said there was a fellow in Hunter’s Point who was doing the Periodic Table of the Elements with nude figures in elemental combinations, explicitly. Sadominsky was his name and she wanted me to check him out before she showed her chequebook.
    So I schlepped myself out to the address she gave me, an ex-factory of some kind, all girders and skylights and high spaces. The door was open and as I stepped inside the Smell hit me. Yes, that one: Volatore! Holding myself ready for whatever there was to be ready for, I advanced slowly.
    ‘Well,’ said a husky voice with a heavy accent, ‘you looking for?’
    ‘Sadominsky?’ I said as I descried a bulky figure in a shadowy corner.
    ‘Zhabotinsky am.’
    ‘Oh, sorry.’
    ‘Who sent?’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Aren’t you doing the Periodic Table of the Elements with nude figures?’
    ‘They say I?’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘Automatic?’
    ‘You mean autistic?’
    ‘Not am. Eccentric, OK? They always.’
    ‘Get it wrong?’
    ‘Not Periodic Table.’
    ‘Not?’
    ‘Big not. Beeriodic Fable of the Elephants.’
    ‘Elephants!’
    ‘With beer tell fable to.’
    ‘Whom?’
    The smell got stronger as he put his head on one side and looked at me slyly.
    ‘Winey, winey trancing clients in the dim red taverns of sheep.’
    ‘Sheep!’
    ‘Baa.’
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Zhabotinsky.’
    ‘Your name’s always been Zhabotinsky?’
    ‘Only since born. See paintings?’
    ‘All right, let’s see them.’
    We went past his kitchen to get to the paintings. It consisted of the factory sink, a little fridge, a Coleman stove, and a cardboard box for crockery and pots and pans. Some beets in a string bag. The furniture was orange crates. No empty pizza or Chinese cartons, his