William Gaddis - The Recognitions

He drank off the whisky in his glass, lightened the anchor which held him still. Beside his hand lay a pair of black gloves and a gold cigarette case, next to the half-finished cocktail in its long-stemmed glass, smeared red at the lip. Engraved on the gold in generous longhand was the word Jean. There was still time.

He lit a cigarette. His hand was weighted down with a full glass, and he relaxed slightly, looking down at his ringless fingers. He took the cigarette in his left hand and rested his slung-up elbow on the bar. The muffler got in his way. There was still time to destroy it. If he telephoned Esther, he might get her husband; if he called him, Esther. He looked quickly over the room again. There was still time to destroy the muffler before it sprang the trap which he had laid himself, before Procrustes appeared to fetter him, with no more than a shock of recognition, to the bed of reality, stretch him or cut him down to fit, release him then, and publish him abroad. He drank down half his drink, and tucked the green muffler under his jacket collar. Walking (so he believed, quickly) toward the telephone booth, his fingers sorting the change in his pocket for the right coin, he rehearsed his conversation. — Esther? Listen. . yes, it's me, I told you I'd come back. .

He rested against the side of the booth, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, lifted the receiver and dropped his coin. Before he could dial, he heard

(—And so I says to him, you can't ever tell what she's going to do, she's so psychological. . (—Nobody asked me, but / could have told you. .

— Hello, Otto said. -Hello?

(—Hello, said another voice, a young woman, — darling, is that you?

— Hello? Hello?

(—1 think we got a crossed wire, would the other parties mind hanging up?… So then he says to me. . where was I…

Otto hung the receiver back on its hook, and clung to it himself. The door opened, and the light went out. Then as he started to the other telephone booth, he pressed his wrist against the breast pocket of his jacket, for assurance, the papers of identity, the money, the manhood implicit there. His wrist pressed against his chest. There was no interruption. There was no weight of that presence more familiar than his own bones, all he felt now with his wrist.

The left hand leaped from the sling as he tore open his jacket with the other, and the bandaged wrist worked frantically down into the empty pocket, where his fingernails snagged rolls of dust. Then the left arm fell limp in the sling.

When he felt the empty pocket he had said no, quite clearly in the tone of no, of absolute rational denial. He repeated it again, this time not the thud of negation but no with a shape to it, rising in the middle, a convexity of complaint and disbelief. His upper lip quivered and he raised his right hand, and put his forefinger along its length to stop it. Then he turned quickly into the other telephone booth, dialed, and stood bent rigid before the mouthpiece. — Hello? he said. He gripped the receiver and listened. He heard a clock ticking. — Hello? hello? Then he heard a sound which froze his hand on the receiver, and he stood paralyzed with it jammed against his ear: it was the sound of someone salivating, lips opening and closing, the tongue dropping in fluid from the roof of the mouth.

He left the receiver swinging at the end of its cord, and turned seeking support, as he had in the subway threading a slow career down the veering deck where a man in shirtsleeves, swinging from pole to pole with tattooed arms, called out, — Hey buddy, could you tell me what's the name of this ship we're on?. . and a spattering of lights signaled their next port of call. He disembarked with the man's question filling his mind: unanswered and un-diminished it lay there, static and insistent as a piece of ugly furniture, its place appointed, only to be dislodged by another more hideous when he stepped out on the quay, — Merry Christmas, hey, who got sick on your tie?. . and climbing the mole, — You're looking good too. Who's your embalmer?

— You're going to be the richest woman in the graveyard, said the bartender, smiling. — How long since you're back?

— Two days, she answered, turning her head, smoothing her blond hair back over the separate mink pelts swung at her shoulders. The upper part of her face was attractively drawn, the lines of her forehead and nose simple and sharp. Her mouth, and below her mouth, lay heavy, and the jaw no forceful prominence but thickset.

Lips parted, left eyebrow raised, he looked at her, but the eyes themselves stared out in an intent lunacy graduated by lust: he heard his own voice as one hears a voice far down the beach during a hesitation in the surf. The untended amplifiers threatened Aïda, and they drank. — My arm? he murmured. — Nothing, a scratch. . and as he lowered his glass swept his forearm along his chest to feel only the corrugations of his ribs. He offered a cigarette with cool clumsiness, brandishing the sling. — Yes. . they're a regular occupational hazard down there, you know.

The bartender laid the bill face down before him; and he glanced at it as though it were a splinter cast ashore, raising his eyes to the tinted horizon, and her indefinite profile afloat there, while his voice came on from far down the beach where the edge of the sea receded, to gather force from the mass and crash in again.

— As a matter of fact, I've just recently finished writing a play, he went on, and took his eyes from her image in the glass to that of the figure beside her whose familiarity he acknowledged without haste: rather, he approached it carefully, with the controlled enthusiasm of a painter advancing upon an unfinished portrait put away for months while he has, all that time, studied it and completed it in his mind. Slight alteration of an eyebrow, a touch at the lips, embellished with a slight flaring of the nostrils, and he'd turned and presented this portrait to her.

Her voice came in gusts, bringing them closer. — I don't think you really ought to read a play, it spoils it when you see it… But somehow when I own a book, it's almost like I'd read it… In the Modern Museum of Art, it was supposed to be a painting of a woman and he told me it was very valuable, but even my knees are better than hers were. . The music had not stopped; had, in fact, been pounding its way into A'ida all this time, and by now reached "The dance of the little Moorish slaves." — Isn't just the word poem beautiful. .?

Staring into the loose top of her dress, he stroked his mustache with a fingertip, and sat closer, to hear, — I couldn't live without Christmas… as her knee came against his and lay there in warm confidence, like the plain gold cross whose stem sprang from between her breasts. — Yes, I turned into a Catholic when I got married. . Shoulders drawn back, the cross climbed from between the cumulous embankments. — But then I got a divorce and I don't know if I'm still one or not. He gave me this. . The cigarette case was snapped open and closed in metallic rumination. — It's all he ever gave me, it's supposed to be gold but I have to go and have it redipped every two or three months, I keep it because it's a kind of a sacred memory, that being the only time I was married and all.

— I know what you mean. He squeezed her knee in gentle affirmation. His eyes settled on the bill, and seeking something more pleasant rose to the tinted mirror which showed his hair mussed, the green muffler askew: but neither hand dared leave its duty, to the casualty, and the casual prey. — Back to Central America, he heard his voice echo, minutes later, — South America, really. Boru and northern Polivia. . And he sat staring into the mirror at the person who had made this statement. He waited; as one may in polite conversation, for it to be corrected. But the figure he saw there in the glass made no such effort, simply sat, as though facing destiny on equal terms at last.