William Gaddis - The Recognitions

Reverend Gwyon reached the head of the table, and stood at his place. His nostrils worked for an instant. There did, in fact, issue from the kitchen the smell of frying fish.

— In the painting by Memlinc you know, the painting by Mem-ling, Valerian in the painting by Memlinc…

— How many kings are there left in the world, then? Right now, today, how many kings are there left? The blue woman was drawn to full length, as her master extended an empty glass across the bar.

— I'd rather work for a living, said the small man with beer, staring up at the sign Law forbids cashing welfare checks on these premises.

— Counting the Pope of Rome? asked the man furthest from the storm, at the end of the bar.

— I said kings. He's no more king than that coconut, the Pope isn't.

— He's a kind of a king, the Pope is. Anyone who holds a temporal sway is a king, so the Reverend said.

— And when did he say that?

— In his sermon speaking on the Druids. That is why the Druids made the oak tree the king of trees, because it was so often struck by lightning, and that was a sign of divine favor. — And when was the Pope of Rome struck by lightning?

— The divine right of kings, have you never heard tell of that? You may ask the sexton.

The Town Carpenter, who had been silent for some minutes, snared the word kings from somewhere, and lowered his eyes from the buck to find other, less dusty, glances directed toward him. — Kings, he responded, — second-hand kings and all sorts of useless people you find at it today. There now, just look at the way people travel today, they've no sense of voyages at all. I set off on a voyage myself a while ago, a voyage of discovery, you might say. The train was going a good sixty miles an hour and I got to my feet and pulled the emergency cord. You could see nothing at that speed. And do you know, they put me in prison? Yes they did, without a word of apology. It was in prison I lost these, he went on, motioning to his empty mouth. — I went to sleep, and the man in the prison with me, a dangerous man you could see in his eyes, he stole my teeth while I slept. Let him choke on them!

— Do you know how he holds his temporal power, the Pope of Rome? the strangler demanded, having choked the blue lady dry while the Town Carpenter spoke, taking advantage, now, of the gap while the Town Carpenter drank. — Money from right here in America, money from right here in the United States is what keeps him in power.

— Donations. .

— Donations! Do you think he heats his fine Vatican palace, all the eleven hundred rooms of it, with donations? For one thing, he's sponsored by an American bread company, I know for a fact.

— Go to a train station yourself, the Town Carpenter continued, pushing forward his empty glass, — or a bus station. Go to an airport and look at them, the miserable lot of them with their empty eyes and their empty faces, and no idea what they're doing but getting out of one pot into another, weary and worried only for the comforts of the body, frightened only that they may discover something between now and the minute they get where they think they are going. There now, I've been to the airport myself, where the airplanes leave for Cairo and Damascus, and would you believe it to look at the people who go to Cairo and Damascus, the washed-out faces, and you see them come in from Cairo and Damascus and do they look any different? They might have been around to the corner grocer and no more, from the look of them. What they can tell of Cairo and Damascus is no more than I can tell of my train trip, sixty miles an hour and no toilet in sight, that is what they know of Cairo and Damascus. He recovered his glass, full, and raised it. — Have you ever had trench mouth? asked the small man with beer. — At first I thought it was only a sore throat. .

— He signed a contract for fifty thousand dollars a year, I know for a fact. When he gives the Lord's Prayer, now, every time he comes to the part about "give us this day our daily bread" he says, "Give us this day our daily slo-baked enriched oven-crust thin-sliced…"

— Ah, that's a joke, an old joke, said the man farthest from the storm.

— A joke! A joke, is it!

— Trench mouth can be fatal, they say, if it gets into your throat and the glands you have in there. .

— I'll tell you the truth now, the Town Carpenter went on, his voice resonant with this confidence, — they've never been to Cairo and Damascus. With all their tickets and their passports, and their fine luggage all stuck up with advertising, they've never been out of their own bathrooms. It's so easy to go anywhere today, he said, and paused to look round, to see if any lips other than his own were moving, — that a fool can go anywhere, and it's the fools who do. There are men who have been around the world a dozen times, and they've never discovered anything but one inconvenience and one belly upset after another. Voyages have lost their meaning, it's so easy today, he finished, looking out over the top of the head of the small man with beer, whose eyes were on a level with the top button of his underwear, who said, — I should be in bed like the doctor told me, and no alcohol.

Beyond the glass three figures, who had crossed the street to avoid the Depot Tavern, passed in the storm. — The Ladies, someone said.

The Town Carpenter saw them too. — There they go, he said. — I offered to sing at their Christmas supper tonight at the church, a nice temperance song. The Toast. Do you know that one?

— By the woes of the drunkard's mother, By his children who beg for bread. . he began in a low voice.

— I wouldn't dare go home now, said the small man with beer, gazing through the glass. — I'd catch my death.

— A joke? said the man farthest from the storm, studying the blue woman upside down. — Do you know the one about the little nigger boy meets the Catholic priest on the street and he says, Hello Father. So the priest says, Did you call me Father? The little nigger boy says Yes Father and the priest says, Are you a Catholic? So the boy says, I'm a nigger, ain't that bad enough? Everyone laughed but the Town Carpenter. He'd gone to the men's room.

— You're carrying a dead body, the strangler retaliated, — and you ask him how much you owe him, and he says nothing. Is he dead?

— I'm the kind of a man that likes to be a poodle, said the small man with beer, watching the Town Carpenter return with the dog which had followed him in there, and waited.

— A poodle?

— If I'm going to be a dog I want to be something I like. He took a temperate sip of his small beer, and turned to the plate glass. The wind had gone down, and the snow continued to fall. — Do you think the sun will ever shine again? he asked no one.

The wind had gone down; and without its driving force the snow came on in residual particles, remnants of violence left moving loosely in the air, with no apparent direction. It had not settled heavily round the parsonage, because of the slight and exposed elevation, but every crevice and corner was packed as though the wind had come from every quarter in its brief paranoid career. The snow was packed round the dining-room window where, well inside, Reverend Gwyon's face reflected the slight clearing of the sky with raised eyebrows. The dining table, where he sat resting both hands before him, was an oval to which leaves might be added to accommodate a dozen people, though no such need had risen in years. Just the reverse, in fact, might better have served the interests of economy implicit everywhere, not a penurious economy but "sensible," sensible that is to waste, superfluity, extravagance, which might here have dictated that the table contract its surface even further, to the strict necessity of one man's setting: and for another man than this, it might well have done so (considering the withering glances of most of Gwyon's forebears, many of whom ate in the kitchen when alone, one of whom, long before the coming of the incandescent 'lamp, took his meals to a small upstairs closet, as its floor still showed, or the dour John H. (whose picture was nowhere to be seen) who, after he had reached his majority, was never known to eat indoors again). Not that Gwyon ever sat down to a groaning board, or ate with smorgasbord perambulation: there was seldom more than one monochrome dish at a time before him. But so much did his presence require this large open surface before him, that when he was joined at a meal he glanced up incessantly as though aware that the table was crowded, and, when his guest sat on his right hand, each time Gwyon turned his attention in that direction he would grip the edge of the table in the other, supporting the balance which this alien presence threatened, or sit staring straight ahead, steadying the thing with both hands planted flat upon it. So he sat now, muttering a steadying, — Hmmm, every few moments, and raising his glance like an eccentric weight, unsure where it would drop.