William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— And this? she appeared one morning in the study door poised rigid, dangling forth a pamphlet between forefinger and opposable thumb, — tell me how this got among my things? As though there might have been movement in the air, the pamphlet fluttered open, quaking its suspended title: Breve Guida della Basilica di San Clemente. In his chair, Gwyon startled, to reach for it, but stayed held at bay by her unpliant arm, and unyielding eyes which had fixed the distance between them. With a single shudder he freed his own eyes from hers and fixed them on the pamphlet, to realize that it was indeed not being offered in return but rather in evidence: not an instant of her stringent apparition suggested surrender. — Another souvenir from Spain! she accused, a page headed in bold face La Basilica Sotterranea Dedicata alia memoria di S Clemente Papa e Martire fled under her thumb. — Pictures of Spanish idols, fragments of Byzantine fresco captioned Nostra Signora col Gesu Bambino almost caught her attention, — Catholic images. Another page fell over from the hand quivering at her arm's length, and bringing her foot a step past the sill she held it out that space closer to him: nothing moved. But the sill's sharp creak underfoot penetrated, a signal for her to hurl it at him, or down; for him to leap and snatch it. But nothing moved until she retired recovering her advance, and spoke with bitter calm, looking square at the thing, — A nice. place of worship! The illustration pinioned by her gaze was captioned Il Tempio di Mitra. —Look at it! a dirty little underground cave, no place to kneel or even sit down, unless you could call this broken stone bench a pew? She got her breath when he interposed, — But. — And the altar! look at it, look at the picture on it, a man. god? and it looks like a bull!

— Yes, a pagan temple, they've excavated and found the basilica of Saint Clement was built right over a temple where worshipers of

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— Pagan indeed! And I suppose you couldn't resist setting foot inside yourself? Did you? Again she paused, getting breath she appeared to prepare requital for his answer, admission or denial, and when he withdrew mumbling only — Set foot inside myself.? she snapped immediately, — At least I have finally had the satisfaction of hearing you call the Roman Catholic Church pagan! She filled her grievous gaze a moment longer with the picture, and finishing with — Now that we all know what the inside of a Catholic church looks like, she was gone, holding the abhorrent memento at arm's length, her eyes alert upon it, as though it might take life and strike.

Gwyon came slowly forward in his chair, hands clenched on nothing, listening to her sharp footsteps receding toward the kitchen. He waited until he heard them on the stairs, then hurried to the kitchen himself. Janet came in a few minutes later to find him sifting through the kitchen trashbin; but he went out without a word, and empty-handed. And when at lunch he once or twice faltered toward questioning her she looked up and beyond him and the room, as though listening to a confidence, or a summons, from far away.

For the most part, conversation seemed to pass over her, when she would stop it in its tracks to rescue something which struck her. Few things seemed to îtir her pleasantly but news of unhappy occurrences in Italy: whether storms or strikes or railway accidents, she saw imminent in them the fall of Rome. She waited, contemplating wholesale damnation for the whole non-Christian world with an eye as level as that of Saint Bonaventura: no more mother than he, the prospect of eternal roasting for millions of unbaptized children did not bring the flutter of an eyelash: "The sight of the pains of the damned heaps up the measure of the accidental joys of the righteous," and with his words on her own lips, she firmly expected to see Saint Bonaventura heaping her own measure in the Life ahead. But even that torrid landscape chilled and shattered, pierced by the sleighbells, more pointed for their infrequency, to stop her breath if she were speaking, or raise her voice to the defense when she read.

— It's all right indeed, all right for a man who goes to bullfights! she brought out next day at table, summoning this distant detail to interrupt the conversation between father and son. — Bringing a… a creature like that back from Africa, there should be a law against it.

— Creature? Gwyon repeated.

— That creature you brought back, that's what you're talking about isn't it. Isn't it?

— I was telling. talking about that painting, there, the table under the window.

— There ought to be a law against it, bringing back creatures like that.

— Oh, oh Heracles, yes, you mean, it's forbidden, yes, taking them from Gibraltar, he commenced, confused, answering.

— Breaking the law, proud of yourself! Her glasses went blank with light as she returned her attention to her plate; and Wyatt, after the pause of her absenting herself, asked:

— How were you certain it was the original? Suppose.

— That took some. umm. conniving, getting it through customs. It's prohibited, you know, taking works of art out of Italy.

— Italy! Aunt May cut in across the table. — You never told me you had been in Italy! Never. You never told me that!

— Strange I never mentioned it, Gwyon said.

— Mentioned! You never told me, she said getting up from the table.

— What earthly difference…

— Earthly! No earthly difference, as you say. No earthly difference, at all. For someone who tells stories about evil spirits who deceive good people by keeping the path to Paradise littered with filth, no earthly difference at all, she went on nearing the door. — At least you spared Camilla that! she finished, and was gone. Gwyon left the table a moment later, with a mutter of apology to his son, though he did not look up at him, and went out to the porch, where he stood looking straight up at the sun.

On pleasant days, such as this was, Aunt May still went out to tend her hawthorn tree. This afternoon, when she came in from it, she was impressively silent. Gwyon might have thought it was the Italian incident, but she said quietly, — I saw a moor hen this afternoon. (The moor cock was their family crest.) — And no male anywhere in sight. I have not seen a male moor hen for years.

Though slow, she still moved with energy. Her world had finally shrunk to her books and her hawthorn tree. When questions of foreign suddenness were asked she looked up startled and afraid, as though some worldly circumstance might intrude upon her preparations for departure. As the days passed, she sang in a weak voice which she believed maintained a tune, a hymn which, as she remembered, came to her from John Wesley, expressing her divine longing, ready sometimes, it seemed, like Saint Teresa, "to die of not being able to die."

— O beautiful aspect of death What sight on earth is so fair What pageant, what aspect of life Can with a dead body compare, came her wail on the vivid spring air to the ears of living things.

She put an old smock over her housedress and tied a shielding bonnet to her head. Over the morning grass alive with creatures smaller than its own blades her old garden shoes trod. A robin took to the air before her as she approached the hawthorn tree, torn from the ground and lying flat, pink blossoms among the weeds. Her voice in its singing stopped in disbelief. Frantically she raised the tree and pushed it back into the open earth at a dead angle. Then she came back to the house, and before she reached it the tree had fallen again.

Heracles had got loose the night before. The Town Carpenter, who met him outside the Depot Tavern, brought him back, and tried to replant the tree. But it was no good. The tree was dead before the week was out, and so was Aunt May.