William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Not to me, but to our Lord He healed you.

— There now, he mumbled in assent, — not after that.

— You must not talk so about these things, she said. — You must not, he must not, they must not. .

— Do you recall the queer little salesman selling brushes, the Town Carpenter began, opening a new conversation since he'd lost track of the old one, — and told Reverend he was a Manichee. .

Janet carried a bowl of oatmeal away through the door. Directly she was out he got the fork she'd taken from him and came back to his pot on the stove. He leaned down to blow off the steam, and then speared twice, each time coming up with a boiled potato. He quick wiped the fork on his trouser knee, then looked at it, and at the spot on his trouser knee, with a look near guilt, and thrust the tines of the fork under his shirt to wipe them clean there. When Janet came back, the fork was where she'd laid it; but she took no notice of him eating the one or the dog standing over the other boiled potato waiting for if to cool. She stood, wringing one hand in the other, and her eyes were very wide.

— There now, what is it? the Town Carpenter demanded, watching.

— He's come.

— What is it, now?

— He's here. As he said he would come.

The Town Carpenter hung there, imbibing Janet's excitement. She sought another bowl.

— Another bowl? he demanded, confused. — Someone's here?

— He's come back.

— So it's not the weightless show of a priest was here, him or the Manichee brush salesman. Is it… is it…

— He. .

— Prester John?

— Prester John! Janet repeated. — If Prester John is young and old, and warm and cold, and breathes and does not breathe alive, wears blood on the hand, and sees with eyes not open. Maran-atha!

— He's come! There now, the Town Carpenter said. — Feed him. Feed him well, it's a long j o urney. Here, a potato, take a potato. . But she was gone, with another bowl of oatmeal. — There now, no disrespect after that, the Town Carpenter muttered going toward the outside door. — He'll come down. I'll wait for him there, he said to himself; but he paused in the door till Janet returned to the kitchen. — There, he murmured to her, — no disrespect, you know. "I am but a lump of clay, but I was placed beside a rose and caught its fragrance. ." He stood a minute looking at Janet busy over the metal sink, squinting his eyes up with looking at her. Then the dog followed him out the door and down the lawn toward the carriage barn, carrying its hot potato.

He'd only got halfway down there when her voice on the air stopped him, and he turned. — And he, has he eaten? she cried.

— That one, he won't come near, the Town Carpenter called back to her, and he motioned toward the fence below which led away from the carriage barn and coursed the pasture's bounds. Title to that piece of land, long disputed with a neighbor, fell to his bull who spent the days there and had gradually become a familiar, encouraged by the girl and the old man with a feed box and even, finally, a stall in the carriage barn. Now Janet came out unwrapped in the cold morning and down the slope with long strides to the fence, where she made a moaning sound that brought the bull from out of sight immediately. The bull was all black, the weight well up in its forequarters sustaining those swells of muscle mounting in the great swell of the neck. Its approach was effortless, not a movement wasted, because every bit of it was in movement, movement which absorbed the weight of it and became motion coming forth here on legs as slender they looked as a man's wrists swinging beneath. It came on at an angle to its path, which gave it a sense of drift as though suffering the wind to carry it along from behind; and the great weight of it was not apparent until it came close by, when even its breath dashed on the cold air fell with weight, and a hoof no longer adrift, but exerted to break the crust of the winter ground, made its force volitive, standing still.

Janet had watched its advance with a look of familiar wonder which almost broke her face into a smile. Now it was before her she stirred the feed in the box there with a square hand of hers and gazed with two eyes into one; and which of them made the gentle sound that rose between them wasn't clear as she caught a finger in a curl above the eye, and then left the bull at the feed box, sobering her face as she turned back for the house, and the bull raised its head, and watched her go.

The Town Carpenter raised a two-by-four, and nailed it carefully slightly out of line. — O pirate ships of the drunken main! O monster cruisers of wicked gain!. . there now. He's finally got here.

Once in, Janet made across the kitchen for the dining room, there picked up the empty oatmeal bowl from the empty place at the head of the table, and stood staring at the figure across. — He's come, she murmured, and advanced an empty hand in the air. Then her gaze shortened to her hand there, which she squared round to meet it, to look at the palm, and return to the kitchen. She put the empty bowl in the sink. Then she slipped on a pair of gloves, took a slip of emery cloth from her skirt pocket and knelt rubbing her chin, her cheek, and her upper lip.

The sun was high enough now to fill the dining room with its light, over the dark dining table, and the low table under the window, and warm on the back of his neck when he woke moving nothing but his eyelids, opened upon the bowl of cold oatmeal before him, and nothing there else but a spoon. He did stare at the bowl and the spoon for a moment, or a minute, in that waking suspension of time when co-ordination is impossible, when every fragment of reality intrudes on its own terms, separately, clattering in and the mind tries to grasp each one as it passes, sensing that these things could be understood one by one and unrelated, if the stream could be stopped before it grows into a torrent, and the mind is engulfed in the totality of consciousness. Al-Shira-al-jamânija, consider the Dog Star: death? or Islam. Then perfect diamonds, and so across that brink of unbearable loneliness, and fully awake, startled only with the quiet, and the sunlight bearing flecks of silent motion. If there had been a dream, it was gone back where it came from, to refurbish its props, to be recast probably, possibly rewritten, given a new twist to put it across, make it memorable to the audience and acceptable to the censor, all that, but the same old director, same producer, waiting to dissemble the same obscenities before the same captive audience, waiting, again, the first curtain of sleep. He smiled, looking at the oatmeal, and as he did so reached up a hand as though to feel the smile on his face, and fix it there; it was gone when he looked up to the end of the table and saw it empty, and as immediately occupied it from memory but memory which, so suddenly assailed, leaped too far back, and brought forth the Emperor Valerian blinded, in taut agony, flayed under the hand of Sapor, the Persian emperor who battled Christianity in the name of the sun prophet Zoroaster, whose god, Ormazd, lord of light and goodness, wars ceaselessly against Ahriman, and the hosts of evil.

This house had a sense of bereavement about it; though no one had come or gone in a long time. The corridors rang with oppressive familiarity and, perhaps it was the distance that each step covered, the sense of diffusion persisted, diffusion from essential childhood, moving too fast too slowly, rested physically, arriving too soon without expenditure or the pulsations of effort, filling too much space and thus less instead of more powerful, less capable of hiding.

He was inclined to pause, passing the maimed hand upraised of the noseless Olalla, with his hand upon things, affirming their mass; and each weighed enough in return, resisting his touch, to affirm its reality, to belie, that is, the realities which had taken its place.