William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— But in the name of God. .?

— Another program like this one, see? Ellery waved his hand toward the radio. — But for different denominations, like Catholics and Protestants. Stuff like this. Listen. "In Arethusa, several were ripped open, and corn being put into their. ." wait, here. . "scourged, put to the rack, his body torn with. ." here, "Martha Constantine, a handsome young woman, was treated with great indecency and cruelty by several of the troops, who first ravished her, and then killed her, by cutting off her breasts. These they fried, and set before their. ."

— Esther, goodbye, please God. .

— Here, there's another about the guy they tie little bags of gunpowder. . it's for kids, this is what kids like.

— Esther, please God, this man is mad and dangerous.

Ellery came forward with the book. — What, is he gone? Is he gone already?

— Yes. Yes, gone.

— Well what about this book. He is a weirdy, all right. Drunk?

— Oh take it, take it, take it.

Ellery returned to say, — Turn the radio up, to Rose, who sat immersed in the sounds it shaped from the silence she maintained.

— What was it, that phone call, Ellery. You said it was all fixed up. You found a doctor?

He looked at her, vaguely, shoulders hunched unevenly like a man deformed from holding a plow down in a thousand furrows. — A doctor? Oh, that call, no, I meant it was all fixed up about this guy who jumped out a window.

— What. .?

— Never mind, it's something for a TV promotion stunt.

— Ellery, you've got to find one.

Ellery put down John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. He scratched the back of his head and looked uncomfortable. As he sat down he picked the book up again and said, — Martin Luther was struck by lightning, did you know that? He was knocked down and this guy with him was killed, that's why he entered the hermits, see? Imagine that on TV, the Combined Electric program. .

— Ellery, for the love of God. .

He looked up at her, then. — Don't worry, he said, hunched, perhaps, now like Blessed Catherine de Racconigi, suffering curvature of the shoulder from the blessed burden she was allowed to wield. — Listen.

— Zap, approved by doctors everywhere. Tell Mummy about

Zap, the wonder-wakener, one Zap first thing in the morning and she'll zip into the day. So don't forget, gang. Tell Mummy about these new scientific aids to modern family living. Necrostyle, the wafer-shaped sleeping pill, swallowed just like a wafer, no chewing, no aftertaste. Zap, the wonder-wakener. And Cuff. Remember, it's on the Cuff.

— Spelled backwards. Spelled backwards, of course, the Holy Sacrament turned inside out, you know. Basil Valentine stood with his eyes closed, the telephone resting on his shoulder. — Yes, the redemption of women, if you like, he went on, forcing a wearied patience in his voice. — Eve, the curse Christianity had put on her. What?. . Yes, the priestess and the altar too, the Mass performed on her open loins, I've come across something about the bread being baked on her loins, the wafer for profaning the Eucharist, but what in heaven's name do you want to know this sort of thing for? A novel? But. . yes, perhaps he can, if he thinks it will do any good. But you can tell your friend Willie that salvation is hardly the practical study it was then. What?. . Why, simply because in the Middle Ages they were convinced that they had souls to save. Yes. The what? The Recognitions? No, it's Clement of Rome. Mostly talk, talk, talk. The young man's deepest concern is for the immortality of his soul, he goes to Egypt to find the magicians and learn their secrets. It's been referred to as the first Christian novel. What? Yes, it's really the beginning of the whole Faust legend. But one can hardly. . eh? My, your friend is writing for a rather small audience, isn't he. Incidentally, the next time you borrow Loyola… So I gathered, but that's hardly the place to read Loyola. Do they have what in the Vatican? A mold for fig-leaves?. .

He stood for a moment, his eyes closed still, after he'd hung up the telephone, and murmured, — What can drive anyone to write novels? but thinking not of novels nor the Black Mass nor even the mold for fig-leaves kept in the Vatican museum; thinking instead and vainly of the dream which this telephone call had broken, though he could not recapture it, re-enter it, could not alter, even in that wishful fabric, events of a quarter-century before.

Eyes closed, attempting to revive the dream, it shut him out, escaped him; eyes open, he walked into the front room to stare at the face of the Vulliamy clock on the mantel, the gilt cupid atop oriental alabaster, and the dream pursued him. The shade of the boy whom he had not seen since they were boys together (Martin was Father Joseph's "suck") lived on the air as though they had parted only minutes before. — It's true then? We're not supposed to understand? Whether thirty seconds or thirty years ago he could not tell; and only memory rehearsed his own words spoken in childhood's shadows under the tower of Saint Ignatius where they met daily, met for the last time when he said, — Weeping will not help you. There is no place for weakness among us. You will grow up to be a fool, Martin, but I shall not. Obedience is the first servant of love. It was for love I did it.

Basil Valentine forced his feet into the black leather pumps and drew his dressing gown tight. He went into the bathroom where he washed his face with cold water, and stood for a moment looking into his own eyes reflected in the glass as the soft towel revealed them. The clock struck in the other room, and he dropped the towel and returned to the papers spread on his desk. — Idiots, he murmured, gathering papers together. — Ten million babbling idiots. He thrust the papers into a dispatch case and was standing with a cigarette unlit, looking at the gold case absently, when a sharp continuous bell severed the sentence, Much I ponder. . Basil Valentine muttered, and crossed the room to the telephone connecting the downstairs entrance. — Who is it? he demanded. — The Reverend Gilbert Sullivan? Yes, my dear fellow, come right up-Then at the door he said, — Good heavens, come right in. Where have you been?

— I? With my dear wife, listening to Mozart. Sie kocht schlecht, my wife. It is some time since I have heard music.

Basil Valentine stood lighting his cigarette, watching the motion before him carefully; care, that is, which extended from every part of himself, to correspond with the movements he repeated, bearing them out, as he followed into the room, weighing the cigarette which distinguished him.

— I have been in the rotting room, to tell heaven's truth. The pudridero, where Charles the Second sits out his last days surrounded by his dead and Spanish family. Good God, now, some preservative is indicated.

— Sit down, my dear fellow. Cognac? Valentine glances at the irregular newspaper-wrapped package laid on the marble top of the coffee table; and hands over the decanter.

— Precision of shape and smell, and the sixth heaven all enclosed. Basil Valentine watches the decanter tipped over the crystal globe, seconds too long, and his right hand shifts, stopping it; while it continues to pour. — Not the seventh, of shining light, but a cigar, perhaps, to weigh me down.

— And perhaps some music? Here, do sit down, where I can see you.

— Music? To leave my heels swinging free in the air? No. I'm obliged to take refuge in fabrication as it is, where I can see you. It's the accumulation, you see. The accumulation. We are all in the dumps, for diamonds are trumps, the kittens have gone to Saint Paul's, do you remember that one? The babies are bit, the moon's in a fit, and the houses are built without walls. Well, you wouldn't remember it, without a childhood you wouldn't. As for me, I've just left a round dozen of crucifixions. Allegro ma non troppo.