William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Listen, my boy, I want to talk to you. Now what about this picture you're working on?

— That's why I'm here. It's out in the hall.

Recktall Brown had been sitting forward in the big chair with his hands turned in upon his knees. He shifted so that flesh rolled over the back of his collar, and shouted, — Fuller!

— Sar?

— Bring in that big package in the hall, bring it in here. Is that it, my boy? he asked, turning. He got no answer, and shifted again to watch Fuller advance, carrying the thing, picking his way among the roses.

— Hurry up, Fuller. What the hell are you doing, playing hopscotch? Now lay it out here and open it and be careful, be God damn careful. As the brown wrapping paper came away Recktall Brown was saying, — I told you not to bring these God damn things up here on the subway. I told you to call me and I'd send a car down for it. Look at here, you already banged up a corner. Then he stopped speaking, and gathered his breath to say, — What the hell!

Fuller had taken three careful steps backward, and stood now staring with a look which another face might have refined into anxiety, but on his was simple expectant terror. The explosion was not for him, however; but however, he remained bound.

— Where the hell is her face?

— Sar?

— I'm not asking you, Fuller, God damn it. Where the hell is her face?

— Appear she deprived of it by the many centuries passin respectfully over…

— Fuller! By God, Fuller! Have both of you gone crazy? Get out of here. The pools behind the thick lenses quivered like water disturbed by wind. — This is… by God. Now here. Tell me where the hell is her face.

— As Fuller says, it appear she deprived of it by the attrition of many respectful years passing their loving hands. .

— Stop! Recktall Brown lowered his voice, and then his bulk into a chair. He was perspiring. — I'm tired too, God damn it. Now just tell me simply why the hell you damaged it like this. Fuller, I told you to get out of here.

— Yes sar.

— Ah, to dictate to the past what it has created is possible; but to impose one's will upon what it has destroyed takes a steady hand and rank presumption. My wife told me once, that I looked like a criminal.

— What you've done to this picture here, it's a crime.

— A supralapsarian criminal.

Recktall Brown sat forward gripping his knees. — You mustn't laugh like that, my boy.

— Why not? Tell me, tell me. Some time I haven't laughed.

— It just don't sound right, Recktall Brown muttered, and looked down at the damaged picture. Then he looked up again. — Are you all right, my boy?

— Yes, well. There is often now the sensation of weightlessness, or weighing very little. There. Weightless but well. When you live where I do, upsets of the liver are seldom occurrences.

— It wasn't your liver I'm thinking about, Recktall Brown said looking down again. — Look, you got to paint this face in here again, the face on this woman. Ten thousand dollars you've taken right off the price right there.

— And dishonored death into the bargain, so they tell me. Could I have a cigar?

— You?

— A cigar.

— My boy. .

Recktall Brown watched him tear the cellophane cover away, and commence to trim the end with his thumbnail. — Here, take this, he said and offered the penknife. — Don't just stare at it, my boy. Trim the end of the God damn cigar with it.

— Indeed.

— My boy…

— Nothing moves in this room. If you had music…

Nevertheless, the smoke rises.

— There! something moved, intimate movement there on the far wall. . He recovered with a shudder, to draw a hand over his eyes and whisper, — Never mind. I thought I saw Patinir hanging there, I keep forgetting he's in mortmain, gone home and taken his wages. You see how the prospect draws us on? Making perfect dice. They have to be perfect before you can load them. Goodness! what beautiful diamonds. How their impurities dance with life! Not deceit just skin-deep, like this intricate, cunning field full of fraud separating us here, seven and deadly. It's not even a very good copy. He stared unblinking at the table, and suddenly came forward to pick at the edge of it with the penknife.

— Here! Brown lunged his naked hand out. — It's real, this table picture, stop scratching it. Don't worry, right after Valentine shot his mouth off about it I had some real experts look it over. Don't worry, Brown grunted belligerent satisfaction, looking down at it. — It's the genuine original.

— I can see, it is not, came the whisper distinct across the table of the Seven Deadly Sins. — Christ! to have copied a copy? and that was how it began!

— My boy, says Recktall Brown, and stands to his feet to light his own cigar and jam it among uneven teeth. The youthful portrait hangs still as he approaches it, and perhaps, as Basil Valentine remarked, serves in some measure to humanize the fragments of motion which compose his progress toward it. Immediately upon arrival there, Recktall Brown turns his back upon it, a gesture which leaves its expression unchanged as he obscures it with the one which has superseded it. — Maybe you need a girl.

— A girl?

— How long is it since you've had one?

— Had one?

— I don't mean a God damn wife hanging around all the time. I mean just a girl. You can't go around month after month with all this piling up inside you. Of course, hell anybody can see that will drive you crazy as hell. You got to release that once in a while, or it drives anybody crazy. Do you want me to send you a nice girl down there for a couple of nights?

— But the cost.

— The cost? Each foot planted upon a rose, Recktall Brown's laughter might seem to rise the entire distance of his frame, a laborious journey, complicated by ducts and veins, cavities and sedulous organs whose functions are interrupted by the passage of this billowing shape which escapes in shambles of smoke. — You can pay for anything in this town.

— Barefoot on that vast acreage, for love or money.

— God damn it, my boy. God damn it…

— Without love?

— Do I fall in love with the barber when I get a haircut? God damn it, my boy.

— Reverend Gilbert Sullivan. .

— God damn Reverend Gilbert Sullivan!

— Exactly.

Recktall Brown starts to turn away; his reversal is remarkable for its quickness, a feat of muscular co-operation which happens before his eyes can contain the reason. They do, though; his voice too. — Put that damn bottle down now and sit down.

— A hindrance to the working of reality. Ah, Brown, Brown, your daughters all were fair. But the youngest. .

— Are you getting anything from Esme?

— There remains the complication of the mermaid men.

— Sit down. We're both going to sit down and figure this out. Did he put you up to all this crap?

— I hear singing.

Sinking, on heavy tones into the depth of the vast room, come these weights, — Littel girl

— My bachelor room

— Fuller!

— Sar? drops from above.

— Stop that God damn noise.

— You and I, Brown. You and I. You are so damned familiar.

— You've got to get hold of yourself, my boy.

— If we are, as he says, projections of his unconscious. Then the intimacy is not at all remarkable, is it.

— Stop it. You got to stop talking this way. Valentine does the same God damn thing to me, he tries to wear me down. Did he… has he been bothering you, my boy? Now damn it talk to me, let's get all this straight. What's on your mind?

— The equation of x to the power of n plus y to the power of n has no nontrivial solution in integers for n greater than two.

— Sit down.