William Gaddis - The Recognitions

It was neither known, nor did anyone (except perhaps the Town Carpenter) trouble to wonder why the Reverend had named the Barbary ape Heracles. Most, in fact, took the easy way of ignorance, and believed the name of the tenant in the carriage barn to be Hercules, easy enough to explain for he was a sturdy fellow over three feet high, light yellowish-brown with a darker line along his cheeks, and parts of his hands and feet naked of hair. He was active, good-tempered, and took up a whole end of the barn with his cavorting and singing. He slept in an old sleigh. When he thought it was mealtime, when he wanted company, or sometimes it seemed had simply the effervescence of some message to communicate, he rang the sleighbells furiously. A white rabbit given him for company proved his gentle nature mawkish. He sat with it cradled in his arms, singing. But his best friend was still the child who came down to give him cod-liver oil from the same bottle and spoon he used himself (a tie Aunt May did not know of), and spent hours devoting confidences to him. Heracles scratched his chin thoughtfully when asked questions, bowing his head in much the same manner, if anyone had noticed it, as Reverend Gwyon did. For at other hours Gwyon came too, always alone, always smelling better than anyone else, the faint freshness of caraway. He asked questions too.

But as he grew older, Heracles sang less often. He took to sitting sullenly in the sleigh looking far beyond the walls of the barn, as though dreaming of days under the Moroccan sun, in another generation, stealing from the gardens of the Arabs. He had never met Aunt May. He knew her thin shape, appearing to hang clothes on the line (where she inclined to hang male and female garments separately, or directed Janet to do so), or coming out alone with a trowel and scissors to tend the hawthorn tree on the edge of the upper lawn. He knew her singing voice too, and he hated it. She had never seen Heracles, and never mentioned him, but drew her lips tightly together and looked in another direction when his name came into conversation. So disquieting to her Christian scheme that she had never mentioned it, nor admitted it even to herself, was the sense that this monkey had replaced Camilla.

— Now where have you been? she demanded as Wyatt came up the steps, but her voice was almost gentle. — And what is the matter, have you been crying? He rubbed his eyes, and then drew his hand down over his face, but did not answer a word. — You look feverish, she said as he took her skirts in the sudden self-effacing embrace of childhood, and thus hobbled, she led him into the house. — Today is your mother's birthday, she said, once inside, and then, — You have dirt all over your hands.

— What is a hero? he asked abruptly, separating himself and looking up at her.

— A hero? she repeated. — A hero is someone who serves something higher than himself with undying devotion.

— But. how does he know what it is? he asked, standing there, grinding one grimy hand in the other before her.

— The real hero does not need to question, she said. — The Lord tells him his duty.

— How does He tell him?

— As He told John Huss, she answered readily, seating herself, reaching back with assurance to summon that "pale thin man in mean attire," and she started to detail the career of the great Bohemian reformer, from his teachings and triumphs under the good King Wenceslaus to his betrayal by the Emperor Sigismund.

— And what happened to him then?

— He was burned at the stake, she said with bitter satisfaction, as footsteps were heard in a hall from the direction of the study, — with the Kyrie eleison on his lips. Here, where are you going? What have you been up to…? He had turned away, but Gwyon stood filling the doorway, and between them the child started to cry. Gwyon raised a hand nervously, uncertain whether to punish or defend, and Aunt May took up, — What have you done? I know that guilty look on your face, what is it?

— Go to your room, Gwyon brought out, trying to rescue him.

Aunt May started from her chair with, — To his room!. but Gwyon's upraised hand seemed to halt her, and she turned on the small retreating figure with, — To your room, go to your room then, and read. read what we've been reading, and I'll be up before supper to see if you know it.

— What have you been reading? Gwyon asked her, a strain in his voice.

— He's learning about the Synod of Dort.

— Dort? Gwyon mumbled, dropping his hand. — Dort. The final perseverance of the saints. Good heavens, you.

— But. the child…

— Did you see the guilty look on his face? His sinful.

— Sinned! Where has he sinned. already.

— That you, as a Christian minister, can ask that? You. Suddenly she came closer to Gwyon, who stepped back into the hall away from the assault of her voice. — Not his sin then, but the prospect, she came on in a hoarse breathless voice, near a whisper, as though she were going to cry out or weep herself, — the prospect draws him on, the prospect of sin.

She stood there quivering, until the sound of Gwyon's footsteps had disappeared back down the hall. Then she sniffed, biting her lower lip, and stepped into the hall herself.

Later that evening Reverend Gwyon stood over the littered desk in his study, staring through the glass at the darkness beyond. — The final perseverance of the saints! he muttered. Then he turned to the door, as though he had heard a sound there. He waited, a hand out to the doorknob, for the faint knock to be repeated, but there was nothing. He had just turned away when he heard a creaking in the corridor, but whether it was someone moving slowly and carefully away, or only renewed betrayal of the constant conflict among those sharp angles of woodwork, he never knew.

The house was large and, perhaps it was the unchanging, ungratified yearning in the face of Camilla on the living-room mantel, eyed from the wall across by the dour John H., it held a sense of bereavement about it, though no one had come or gone for a long time.

While even Aunt May's medieval posture could not credit her stomach as a cauldron where food was cooked by heat from the adjacent liver, she sought evidences of the Lord's displeasure in foreign catastrophes and other people's difficulties, and usually found good reason for it. Among provinces where He retained sway was that of creativity; and mortal creative work was definitely one of His damnedest things. She herself had never gone beyond a sampler, atoning there in word and deed for any presumption she might have made, at the age of ten, in assuming creative powers:

Jesus permit thy gracious name to stand As the first effots of an infants hand And while her fingers o'er this canvass move Engage her tender heart to seek thy love With thy dear children let her share a part And write thy name thy self upon her heart

That absent r was not, like the flaw in Oriental carpets, an intentional measure of humility introduced to appease the Creator of perfection: she had been upset about it now for half a century, and would have torn out her mistake with her teeth as a child, had not a weary parental hand stopped her. (So she worked NO CROSS NO CROWN in needle-point, still hung unfaded in her room.)

But it was why Wyatt's first drawing, a picture, he said, of a robin, which looked like the letter E tipped to one side, brought for her approval, met with — Don't you love our Lord Jesus, after all? He said he did. — Then why do you try to take His place? Our Lord is the only true creator, and only sinful people try to emulate Him, she went on, her voice sinking to that patient tone it assumed when it promised most danger. — Do you remember Lucifer? who Lucifer is?

— Lucifer is the morning star, he began hopefully, — Father says.