William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— No one knows who I am.

It was a full minute before he moved; and when he did he burst to his feet, as though to shatter this irregular surface of space enclosed by merciless solids. — No one in this house knows me, he brought out; but his mouth was so dry that the words came to pieces before he got them out where his own ear could resolve them, and he stood sucking the inside of his mouth in upon itself, plying the barren, abruptly unfamiliar hollow with his insensible tongue until its features dissolved, and he could repeat, — None of them knows who I am.

But even before these words were out, something else had assailed him. He began looking wildly round the room, where shapes refused to identify themselves, and endured only in terms of the others, each a presence made possible only by what everything else was not, each suffering the space it filled to bear it only as a part of a whole which, with a part standing forth to identify itself, would perish.

— Who was here? he whispered. Already the inside of his mouth was afloat with saliva, so that he swallowed, raised the pool on his tongue and exhausted its surface on the roof of his mouth and swallowed again. — She was here, he said, gripping his chin in his hand.

Starting again, the blood on its course had set every interior surface of his body stingingly aflame with the thrill of its own existence; and he stamped his feet, and shook his hands in the air. — This. . this… he whispered hoarsely. Then he grabbed one hand with the other and gripped it tight as he could, until the balance of that was out and he exchanged them, gripping the second with the first, and finally got out of the room with his hands interlocked before him, the fingertips of each one straining in upon the bones of the other.

There had been a good deal of noise in this last hour or so, books thrown and dropped, the type-metal words smashed into their meaningless components, doors banging, and all these fragments were recapitulated now in the thunder, as he broke out into the hall and down the stairs repeating, — Don't you know me? Don't you know who I am? You know who I am. Don't you know who I am?. ., words which broke the surface, and followed one another as discordant articulations of his heavy breathing. Reverend Gwyon had gone out a minute before, hatless, across the bare boards of the porch so heavily that they seemed not yet to have recovered silence, when he reached them and made out Gwyon's great figure striding down the slope toward the carriage barn. He followed precipitously, sliding and slipping on the soaked pores of the snow as though it were the headlong incline of twenty-five years past; and before he'd reached the bottom he did fall, headlong, so that the crust of the snow gashed his cheekbone and, for the moment he lay there, smothered his rehearsal, — You know who I am. Don't you know who I am? Don't you know me?. .

The rain was coming down the more heavily for the saturated surface which awaited it; and he was drenched when he gained his feet. Just then there was a crash of thunder.

Gwyon had already made the carriage barn and thrown the door open. There was electricity there, and Gwyon stood just inside, his great hand on the switch and his thumb jamming it back and forth, back and forth, with no consequence but a snap. —Damnation, Gwyon muttered; and then, aware of someone behind him, said, — The bull. I came down to make sure of the bull. . But Gwyon had hardly got the words out of his mouth before his upraised arm was grasped in the dark so heavily that it almost pulled him over; and the lightning followed so fast on the words that followed, that both were gone, and the transformation was complete, when Gwyon heard,

— Father. . Am I the man for whom Christ died?

Louder than laughter, the crash raised and sundered them in a blinding agony of light in which nothing existed until it was done, and the tablet of darkness betrayed the vivid, motionless, extinct and enduring image of the bull in his stall and Janet bent open beneath him.

Then it seemed full minutes before the cry, pursuing them with its lashing end, flailed through darkness and stung them to earth. Water fell between them, from a hole in the roof. The smell of smoke reached them in the dark.

With no warning uncertain flicker, the light came on. Before them, a metal wash-tub lay on the floor with a square hole riven through its bottom. The door was charred and smoking around the hinges and the lock.

Then the shadows round the walls were set dancing in duplication, each steady dark shape mocked by a distorted image leaping round it, as the Town Carpenter appeared with a lantern and stood swinging it in the door. — There now! he said; and though his voice was not loud it rang with confirmation, as he entered and walked over toward the bull's stall. — There! he said, swinging round, and the lantern with him, — There's a masterful pizzle for you!

The bull shifted on its feet, sounding its weight on the board floor, and turned its head from them and withdrew.

Gwyon was gone. They both turned to the door at the same moment to look; and by the time they reached the door together, Gwyon's figure showed halfway up the slope toward the house.

— There now, said the Town Carpenter, nodding and swinging the lantern out. His coat had come open to show long-underwear buttons to the waist. He'd pulled on his trousers and galoshes to come out, and the trousers were on backwards. — It's that I came down to look at, he said, swinging the lantern toward the balloon stand, which was as good as he'd left it. Then he held the lantern aloft, over the figure poised in the doorway of the carriage barn.

— There, he's fallen!

The Town Carpenter reached out and seized his arm. They could both see Gwyon on the ground up near the house.

— He's fallen. Will you let me go help him?!

— And would you humble him, the Town Carpenter answered without relaxing his grip, — by helping him back to his feet?

He hung there in the Town Carpenter's hand until Gwyon had recovered and mounted the porch steps. Then the Town Carpenter opened his hand slowly, eyes fixed on him, until he suddenly wrenched away and ran up the hill laughing.

The Town Carpenter lowered the lantern and looked into the barn again, murmuring. Then he snapped off the electric light, pulled the door closed, and trudged up the slope hitching the binding front of his pants as he went. At the kitchen door he raised the glass chimney, blew out the lantern and went in, pulling a light cord as he passed, straight over to his pot on the cold stove. There were voices, or a voice, in the dining room, or down the hall, he did not know and did not listen.

— "Away, to hell, to hell!" Do you remember that?

The Town Carpenter rolled up his sleeves, took a piece of yellow soap from the metal sink, and dipped his hands into the pot.

— "Oh, might I see hell, and return again, How happy were I then!" Yes, yes, that's it! Back there!

The Town Carpenter found the soap among folds in the bottom of the pot, lifted it out, and dried his hands. — Something amiss, he murmured as he pulled out the light, — we must simplify, as he tramped toward the back stairs.

Janet came from behind the door of the butler's pantry. She stopped when she heard the voice down the hall, or in the din- ing room, she could not tell, but stood for a moment listening, thoroughly wet, her skirt torn, her hair matted down. Then she came on.

— Yes, back there, that's the place! They're waiting! Yes, the harrowing of hell. That's it. Then wood splintered, in the dining room.

Janet found him alone there. He had just split the top of the low table under the window down the middle. — What is it? Janet asked calmly, coming closer.