William Gaddis - The Recognitions

On the table at his elbow, among bottles of aqua regia, alcohol, benzine, nitric acid, something known in the trade as "dragon's blood," a pair of shears, some beeswax, some resin, some mastic, some amber, some steel plates, and some oil of lavender whose springtime fragrance pervaded the room, lay two exotic passports, and a copy of the Theologia Moralis of Alfonso Liguori, on top of Bicknall's Counterfeit Detector for 1839. He had opened a large bottle of a solution of potassium permanganate, and sat now carefully daubing his face and neck with this brilliant purple, throwing the silver medal which hung at his throat over his shoulder.

— Thank God he took down his washing anyhow, he heard her mutter.

— What do you mean my washing? What washing?

— Them twenty-dollar bills you had hanging all over the place to dry.

— If you smeared any! He turned a face, which was minute by minute blooming with the flush of youth, threateningly to the doorway. — That's just the way they picked up the greatest artist that there ever was, he went on, returning to the mirror. — Jim the Penman, he drew every bill by hand, for twenty years he was a success. And what happens? Some dumb grocery clerk smudges one of them with a wet hand. When he was tried, you know what the defense was? He was an artist. Any of his work was worth more as a work of art than what the government was shoving. An artist, a real artist.

— Don't you worry, I didn't smear any of your worthless paper. Worthless, worthless paper, she muttered at the sink.

— Worthless] he cried. — Do you know how hard I worked on that? Do you know where I got the paper to print them? What do you think it was, old newspaper? Well it wasn't, there was two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of paper hanging up there. Do you think I'd do a cheap job after the work it was to make those plates? Did I ever do a cheap job? Worthless paper! That was two hundred and fifty one-dollar bills, bleached to print the twenties on. It took me almost eight years to make those plates, he added.

— That was a nice way to spend your time in prison, God knows.

— That's right, those are hand-engraved steel plates, you don't see them any more. None of your cheap photo-engraving. He started to fold a packet in brown paper, but appeared unable to resist taking out a bill, which he turned over in his hand murmuring, — You don't see work like this any more, as he looked into the challenging face of the seventh President. Under the packet lay the current issue of the monthly National Counterfeit Detector, where reviews of his work had not appeared in many years: in this work, anonymity advanced with worth, just as it did in the vignettes on the currency itself. The Father of His Country was crumpled, folded, and offered in the most piking and meretricious traffic millions of times a day, infinitely better known and worse treated than McKinley and Cleveland, far more readily summoned than the five thousand times remote Madison, still less than kin, ten thousand times removed, with Salmon P. Chase, if more than kind with him in coveting supreme office, a recognition never granted to that Secretary "of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, who made the five hands down without even getting a haircut.

— You don't see work like this any more, he repeated. — Everything's cheap, everybody does things the quick cheap way. This is one of the only crafts left. Look at the eyes, there's none of that dead quality you see in a cheap job. Look at the sensitive lips, he murmured laying the bill back with the others. — I don't waste my time like a lot of people I know.

— Don't talk to me about wasting time, she came back at him. — If you had the kind of pains like I do. Go out and catch cancer yourself, and see how smart you are then.

— Cancer! Indigestion, that's what you've got.

— And another thing I want to talk to you about before you get yourself all made up like a circus clown. Where are you going anyway? she demanded, appearing in the doorway as he opened a bottle of eserine and took out an eyedropper.

— I'm going to make a meet, he answered shortly.

— To make a meat. That's nice.

He filled the eyedropper and turned to her with exaggerated patience. — I'm going out to meet a passer, to hand this stuff over to him. It's all arranged and paid for.

— Such nice friends you got. Socially I should meet them.

— You should meet them! I don't even know him myself, I don't want to know him, I don't want him to know me. They're the ones who get picked up first. If he doesn't know me, he doesn't know where he got the stuff, he can't talk. It's always trouble with the middleman and the passers that get you pulled in. I don't even have any middleman. Everything's middlemen. Everything's cheap work and middlemen wherever you look. They're the ones who take the profit. Thirty dollars a hundred while I get eight. After the way I work? Look at those three plates, that's hand-engraved on steel, they'll never wear out like these zinc plates in a cheap photoengraving job. He tilted his head back and raised the dropper. — This guy I'm going to meet, he's going to identify me by I'm almost blind with my glasses., She watched a drop of eserine fall into his left eye, while he went on, — Do you think I can take chances? How many men do you think there are in this country who can pick up engraving tools and do what I can do? There's hardly half a dozen, and they can hardly come near me. Even them, they either work for the government or they're in jail. And do you think nobody knows who I am? The minute they spot a piece of this stuff, they've got it under a microscope. They've got work of mine they picked up thirty years ago, and they can compare it. They're not dumb, with a microscope in their hand, the Secret Service, they can find the smallest resemblance, even after thirty years they can see my own hand in there, a little of myself, it's always there, a little always sticks no matter what I do.

She stood supporting herself on the door jamb, and looked at him wearily; sniffed, and raised her eyes as though looking over distance in the landscape of his kingdom, the strong-scented landscape of Sheol. Finally she said, — So keep your friends to yourself, but let me tell you, when the doctor gives me morphine for my pains, what happens to it? Right out of the house it disappears. Who steals it? Your son, that's who steals it. From his mother yet.

— He's not mine, he's yours. I don't claim him. Does he ever go to church? No. He hasn't got any morals, he hasn't got any talent.

— So who ruined him? So who stood over him when he was a baby, and says, My ain't it wonderful his first two fingers are the same length, so he could pick pockets, trying to teach him how to make his fingers like scissors, picking pockets. So who stood over him and says, My, with sensitive fingertips like that I could feel the tumblers fall in any safe in the world. So who was it give him Daddy's signet ring, like he was a prince of somewhere, except this signet ring it's got a little knife in it, to cut pockets open yet.

Her husband turned to look at her. His was an odd look, for one pupil had shrunk almost to a pin-point, swimming in eserine which he wiped away. — Those things were primary courses, like any kid gets in his first grade school. Do you think I wanted him to be a bum? So I taught him some basic things, how to use his hands. Did he ever learn anything? Did he ever try? No. He never worked a day in his life, like his father. You had his moral side to bring up. That's a mother's work, all those years I was away you had him here to bring up his moral side. Look how it come out.

— So who's crying over spilled milk? It's no good to talk about, all I want is he stops stealing his mother's morphine. I go through his pockets, even, looking for it, what do I find, seasick remedy and chewing gum I find.