William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Do come over here and sit down.

— There's nothing I'd rather do, but it doesn't help. Here, would you believe me if I told you that Martha Constantine. .

— Please, don't touch anything on that desk.

— And do you fall in love with the barber when you go for a haircut?

— My dear fellow. . Valentine crossed the room quickly. — Put down those papers.

— Here, here, Hungarian. .

— Give me that book. — Magyar, isn't it bad enough without coding it?

— This… a dictionary, obviously, Basil Valentine said, taking the plain-cover book and jamming it into the dispatch case with the papers.

— Transdanubia…

— Do go over there and sit down, now. Valentine snapped the lock on the case.

— Buda Pest, they tell me, was the most civilized city in the world. And within living memory.

— And they are right, Valentine said curtly. Close upon the figure before him, he followed as though to enclose and drive it before him toward the couch. — Now sit down and tell me what you've been up to.

— Down to, consorting with mermaids in the bottom of a tank where the troll king lives (here a cough interrupted; and Basil Valentine held his breath) — God love him. I had willingly fastened the tail to my back, and drank what he gave me, you know, but there, when he tried to scratch out my eyes. "I'll scratch you a bit till you see awry; but all that you see will seem fine and brave."

— So you've been to see Brown, have you? Basil Valentine leaned down and pulled open the loose newspaper package. — And this?

— There they are, from A to izzard, from under the watchful eyes of Rose. . protected, cautious, circumspect, eyes in every variety, but mostly those of children.

Valentine looked up from the painted fragments, and poised, the lines in his forehead wove concern. — What's the matter, what's the matter? he said suddenly, — groaning like that, what is it?

— I'll explain… as soon as I… yes. . get settled. .

— My dear fellow. .

— It's a liberty I'm taking today, pretending I weigh three hundred pounds. Damn it, will you allow it? "I min Tro, i mit Håb og i min Kjærlighed". . eh? No, it didn't work out that way, I tell you. There's Solveig locked up with a dangerous man, human and industriously mad, he may save me yet like Luther saved the Papacy. Good God, today I dishonored death for ten thousand dollars. I'll die like Zeno then, strangling himself at ninety-eight because he fell and broke a finger coming out of school.

— Now relax a bit, my dear fellow. Tell me, what did Brown say to you.

— Took the bottle away from me just like you're doing, and he swore if he were a dog he'd bark at me in the streets. Then he went on to ask me about my liver, and he offered me work selling a bottled chemical in the streets to some lowland consumers dead four centuries. But good God, I'd just come in from the streets, you know. The streets were filling with people like buttons, and you can't sell anything to them. Someone once told them the best things in life are free, and so they've got in the habit of not paying. So I simply warned him and came on my way. He was so kind and fatherly, I left him with a warning and came away.

— Tell rne what you mean, you warned him.

— Oh yes, yes. Warned him the priests are conspiring against him, and he hasn't a chance. You, and I, and the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan.

— Now wait a moment. .

— What chance has he, old earth, when hierophants conspire. Especially three like you, and I, and Reverend Gilbert Sullivan. He believes us three, at any rate. How he will dance when he finds that we are projections of the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan's uncon-science. You and I.

Basil Valentine had been seated. He stood up now, his hands clasped behind him and walked toward the window, his head down (watching the toes of his black shoes on the plain carpet) and back. As the voice sounded he would raise his head, and lower it again immediately.

— Or like Cleanthes then? Gums swelling, and two days' laying off from food, the doctors' orders. With leave to return to his diet, I'm far along on my journey now, he says to them, and starves. There's dieting to extinction, that's the thing. People stop too soon. Doubled in one century, from a billion to two. We're being devoured. Here, let me walk up and down the room with you. We'll see better that way.

— Sit down, Basil Valentine snapped, behind him.

— I've brought my report. In the year two thousand and forty, four billion. Twenty-one forty-one, eight billion. Twenty-two forty-two, sixteen billion. Those are statistics. What are we to do to civilize them? Centuries of art and celibacy, plagues and wars and abusive acts of God, religious ascetics howling in the desert and cultured mermaid men whispering sweet absolutely nothings on the beach, and good God they won't learn they're not wanted. One pair of human beings, there, a man and a woman at the rate of love of one per cent per annum, could equal our population in nineteen hundred years. Our work's laid out for us. Stamp out polygamy, I say. That's the first thing. Our exemplary African missions have shown us the way. Why, good God, as a result of their fine work we're able to spend twenty thousand pounds sterling on syphilis in the Uganda alone. Perhaps we should have been doctors then, you and I, instead of what we are. Cardinal Richelieu drinking horse dung in white wine on his death bed, it's not hard to see why France is first son of the Church. And in Egypt. .

— My dear fellow…

— We treated sore eyes with the urine of a faithful wife. Today of course we're forced to buy drugstore make-shifts.

Basil Valentine had walked down to the windows and returned to the couch from behind, the fingers of one hand tapping the palm of the other: there was more to it than the agitation his face betrayed, for every moment he seemed to become more aware of his own physique, and the weight of its members extended in space. Most oppressive, however, became the respiratory system; not a sense of constriction (though it might amount to that if it went on so) but an acute sense of what was going on there, among fibro-elastic membranes and cartilaginous rings. He was having difficulty in swallowing. He put his left hand to his throat, manifesting in gold the cricoid cartilage within, its seal turned behind. There was no one on the couch. Basil Valentine swung around. — What. . what are you doing prancing behind me here. Good. . good heavens, my dear fellow, come along now, and sit down again.

Basil Valentine turned a light on, and herded the figure before him like a shadow. — Put your feet up and relax, if you like. But I want to talk to you seriously.

— Seriously? Then talk to Richelieu. I've only been ordained a matter of months. Or years, is it? I can't distinguish now, I've come so far, tempted by the daughters of Mara disguised as beautiful women. That was before Buddhism was corrupted by idolatry. Where is that good cigar you gave me?

— Take one of these and sit down, Valentine said, holding out the gold case.

— Varé tava soskei. . soskei… I can't sit down with one of these things. I'd float away. Here, what's this thing over here, this gold bull busting an egg.

Basil Valentine breathed more easily as the figure before him seemed to weary and wither a little. — An altar figure, my dear fellow.

— Well that's apparent, that's apparent.

— A small copy of one that stood in the Miaco pagoda, in Japan, Valentine went on, watching the hand stroking the gold of the bull's back. — The time of Chaos, you know, before creation, and the world concealed in an egg floating on the waters. And the bull here, the symbol of creative force, breaking the egg to give birth to the earth.

— Is that what the Jesuits are teaching now? Good God! How far back do you go, anyhow? Before death came into the world? Be- fore the time of Night and Chaos? Before good and evil, before magic, before religion. There, religion is the despair of magic. . no, that's not you Jesuits, is it. Religion is the mother of sin. I like that. That's Lucretius. You do keep occupied, don't you. Books, papers, a griffin's egg? You can't manage without one of those. All the churches had griffin's eggs hanging around. Hung them on the lamp ropes so the rats couldn't get down and eat the oil. Exterior brown and hairy, white inside and the yolk a clear liquid. Tell them about the egg that Leda laid, and make them laugh.