William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

— How about a couple of thumbs.

— Maybe you got it backwards. Maybe that never really happened, McCandless. Maybe what really happened was what happened in your rotten novel… The boots dangled bump, bumping against the metal file. — I didn't hear about it for a month. I didn't hear about it till I was back in Nairobi. Maybe it was just bar talk.

— No no no, don't try that on me no, you knew damned well I was still there when you pulled out. You knew they had Seiko.

— Seiko was theirs. He knew what was coming… Bump, bump, — trouble with you McCandless, you'd always blame somebody else wouldn't you. What do you know about the redhead.

— They rented the house, they got it through an agent that's all. Is that what you want to know? what you came all the way up here for? Worried about my health, chat about architecture is that what you…

— Just taking an interest… One of the boots thrust out to flick open a manila folder heaped on the floor. — You rented them the house, what are you doing here.

— Cleaning things up. I came up here to get things cleaned up what about you. What in hell are you doing here.

— What things.

— All of it. Everything.

— Quite a job. At your age that's quite a job isn't it… Pages spilled from the manila folder with a stab of his boot. — What's this.

— Read it. Take it with you and read it.

— I don't want to read it. I don't need to read it… He bent over the file drawer to push aside a folder, another, — maybe I can help you. Clean all this up you'll need some help won't you, he brought up papers in a handful, caught one from dropping with the rest — here's your accident policy with Bai Sim Casualty, Burundi, convenient offices everywhere. Loss of life five thousand dollars, taken out by Lendro Mining that's not very flattering is it.

— One trip, that was one trip across the… — Now wait, wait. Loss of both hands, both feet, both eyes, a hand or a foot and an eye you still pick up the five thousand. That's not bad is it. Nothing here about thumbs though… He'd glanced up at the tobacco spilling from the ends of a paper being drawn into a new cigarette, — or toes, it's got to be the whole hand or foot. Loss means actual severance through or above wrist or ankle joints for hands or feet, maybe you'll have better luck next time… and he let it fall with a new handful of envelopes, ticket folders, a prescription — didn't know you needed glasses, I never saw you with glasses here, you better hang on to this… He held out a bank note, — ever get back over there you may need it. What are these.

— They're comic books. Take them with you and read them.

— I don't want to read them.

— No take them, take them. They're good clean fun, one there on God creating the universe and there's a really juicy one on the wages of sin take them along, hand them out on the subway.

— And don't start that again.

— I start it? Good God Lester you're the missionary, you're that skinny kid in the cheap black suit, the black tie and that cheap white shirt you washed out every night in the…

— Who are you working for, McCandless. He waved away a fresh cloud of smoke coming down from the file, turning up folders stacked on the floor with the point of a boot. — You've got some job here, you know that? he came on, unrolling a map far enough for a glimpse of familiar coastline to let it go with a snap, picking up a notebook to riffle blank pages, dropping it to hold up a glossy square of colour. — What's this.

— What does it look like.

— It looks like an infrared scanning. I know what it looks like. Where. Where was it. He stood there kicking at a heap of magazines, Geotimes, Journal of Geophysical Research, Science, — we lost track of you there for a while, you were out in Texas? Oklahoma? I saw your name in the paper didn't I?

— How in hell do I know what you saw in the paper.

— Testifying as the big expert witness? the big authority on the age of the earth? One of those trials over teaching science in the schools, you were the big…

— Genesis, teaching laundered Genesis in the schools where do you think those damned comic books came from. Try to teach them real sdence they'll run you out of town, tell them the earth's more than ten thousand years old they'll lynch you, the same damned smug stup…

— You wrote this? He'd straightened up with a magazine crushed open in the heap. — What did you find up there.

— Up where.

— The Gregory Rift, it's about the Gregory Rift.

— I know what it's about, that's my name on it isn't it? Take it, take and read it.

— I don't want to read it. Were you up there for Klinger?

— I wasn't up there for anybody.

— What did you find up there.

— Same thing the Leakeys found up there fifty years ago, those fossil remains they dug out of the volcanic ash on Lake Rudolf read it, take it and read it.

— You ought to stick to this, McCandless. You ought to stick to writing science, you know that? The magazine went tossed to the floor, — your fiction is really rotten, you know that? He'd kicked aside a cobwebbed roll of canvas, the black on white, or was it white on black roll of a hide, getting over to run down a row of books in the bookshelf, Plate Tectonics, Second Gondwana Symposium, Continents Adrift, — Runciman's History of the Crusades volume two, where's one and three. Greek Tragedy? Travels in Arabia Deserta? And here's your man with the grasshoppers isn't it… he pulled the Selected Poetry down and blew dust from it, — you've got everything mixed up here. It's like the inside of your head, you know that? and he thrust it back unopened. — four drinks and you'd start on the grasshoppers making merry in the…

— No no no, no it's the little people Lester, The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon…

— Look. You've got a Bible here.

— Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; they eat and laugh too, Groan against labors, wars and…

— What's the Bible doing here. It's in here upside down. What's it doing upside down.

— Maybe it tripped over Doughty, read it. Take it with you and…

— I've read it. He pulled it out to right it, — it's got no business here, you know that? You've got no business with the Bible.

— Always get it right don't you, came through a fresh billow of smoke. — That hat has no business on the bed, these chickens have no business in the parlour like you having business with…

— Don't start all that.

— You were what, thirteen? when you were ordained? Signed up for two years over there in your cheap suit when you were twenty? Up there in the Luwero Triangle restoring the Ten Tribes of Israel, firing up the Bagandas for the Second Coming someplace in Missouri with your moronic angel and the golden plates he'd hidden in a…

— I said don't start that! We, we've heard it we've heard it before, the same harangues, the same raving, ranting…

— No no no, no it's history Lester, five hundred years of it, your Portuguese sailing into Mombasa plundering the whole east coast, ivory, copper, silver, the gold mines spreading the true faith right up the Zambezi valley slave trading all the way? the whole damned nightmare sanctified by a Papal Bull good God, isn't that what you'd call having business with the Bible? So damned busy picking through my books find that one, Christianizing the Bakongo kingdom in the fifteenth century read it, take it and read it it's up there on the next shelf, baptizing Nzinga dressing him up in European clothes teaching him manners till he finally figures out they're selling his whole damned population to the plantations in Brazil and they…