I was still at the office computer when I saw two figures at the gallery doors. By their in-your-face humble posture I recognised them as Jehovah’s Witnesses and went to meet them. One was a young woman, the other a middle-aged man. The woman was modestly frumped-up but she was pretty in a way that made me think her name might have been Tiffany or Amber before she went into the witnessing business. The man had painfully sincere horn-rimmed glasses and grey hair.
‘Hello,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Ruth and this is my father Jonathan.’
‘How do you do,’ I said.
We shook hands.
‘We’ve been going around,’ said Ruthany, ‘asking folks how they feel about the world today. Would you say you feel optimistic about it?’
‘Definitely pessimistic,’ I said.
‘Many people tell us that,’ she assured me without placing a hand on my arm, ‘and Scripture gives us an answer in Isaiah, Chapter 65, Verse 17.’ Her fast-draw Bible appeared open in her hands before my reply had cleared the holster.
I read, ‘For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.’
‘But that’s imaginative displacement,’ I said, ‘and believing that wishing will make it so. It’s a Ghost Dance!’
‘Say what?’ said Ruthany.
‘Wovoka, the Paiute holy man from Nebraska, in 1888 had a vision during a solar eclipse, and he started the Ghost Dance 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 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!