Free Angelica Lost and Found by Russell Hoban Page B

budget clearly didn’t run to such luxuries. His clothes were shabby and he was pretty scruffy. The guy was poor.
    There were lots of canvases: he was a full-time painter, so what was Volatore to him or he to Volatore? The smell, I noticed, was gone. The paintings were weird and witty and original, not like anyone else’s.
    ‘These are very good,’ I said.
    ‘Talk numbers?’ he said.
    ‘Big numbers if I can sell you as an autistic savant.’
    ‘No prob. Big autistic savant, me.’
    He probably hadn’t ever sold a picture before. He was a latter-day Albert Pinkham Ryder, a recluse who had uncashed cheques lying around all over the place. Except this one had no cheques, maybe he lived on an allowance from an older brother in Siberia, who knows. Maybe he was a dishwasher in some café. Certainly no part of any artistic community or he’d have learned the ropes and found some buyers. A dyed-in-the-wool loner. I was pretty sure I could do right by him.
    ‘Phone?’ I said.
    He took one out of his pocket; he was at least that much connected to the age of technology and commerce.
    ‘Got a first name?’ I asked him.
    ‘Alexander. Alyosha you can.’
    ‘Call you. OK, Alyosha. Let’s see if we can move you into a higher income bracket.’ I wrote down his cellphone number and said, ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow or the day after and arrange to bring somebody to see your work. Be careful crossing streets and don’t talk to strangers. Do svidaniya .’
    He kissed my hand. Blessed are the pure in heart, but it takes more than purity to put blintzes on the table.
    But Volatore! My Volatore was trying to reach me! Yes,
     
One day soon, you and I will merge,
Everything that rises must converge …
     
    Yes, my love! I want to merge with you, I long for the two of us to converge! Was it you who put a coin in my jukebox to play me that old Shriekback track? Clever Volatore!

Chapter 27
    Cigarettes and Heart Trouble
     
    I switched on KDFC a little before eleven just to be on the safe side. ‘Carmencita,’ Smith was saying, ‘which has put me in the mood for Georges Bizet’s masterpiece. Carmen is one of those classics every mezzo has to face. Year after year they step up to the plate to see if they can knock it out of the park. Most of them get a base hit but not too many put a home run up on the scoreboard. You’re about to hear one who who belts it like the old Bambino, Babe Ruth himself. Elina Garanca truly does the biz for Bizet: Carmen sings the seguidilla seated in a chair with her hands tied behind her back. She’s knifed another girl at the cigarette factory where they both work and now, under arrest, she is alone with Don José, the dragoon corporal guarding her while she waits to go to prison. Carmen methodically sets out to seduce him, he unties her hands and she’s off like a shot to join her smuggler pals at Lillas Pastia’s tavern.
    ‘Garanca’s mezzo can do anything and her Carmen could have seduced the whole platoon, let alone a mama’s boy like Don José.’
    ‘ “ Près des remparts de Seville ,”   ’ she sings,
     
‘ “ Chez mon ami Lillas Pastia .
Nous dansons la seguidille
Et boirons du Manzanilla .
Tra la la la la la! ”   ’
     
    Her voice transported me to that time, illo tempore , when my father and I danced our seguidilla in the foreign country that is the past. ‘ “ Va , pensiero !”   ’ I sang, and listened for the Babylon-river Greenbergs to join me. But Hoyt Smith was gone and I was hearing the news, I had missed my message to whoever was listening.

Chapter 28
    Pheromonal
     
    Lydia Greenberg, née Katz, had a brother. Leo, who is still with us and in good health, had a daughter, Phyllis, who is Mrs Irving Stein. Mr Stein is rated by Forbes one of the ten richest men in America. He built his fortune from the bottom up by patenting and marketing the Stein EZ-Sit, an ‘intimate-size’ ring cushion that is worn inside (loose-fitting) clothes and eases the discomfort of