William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— What is that? what you're whistling, it's Bach isn't it?

He looked up at Stanley, and after a moment, — Yes, he admitted, — the seventy-eighth cantata. His elbow rested on The Moan of the Tiber.

— An aria? Stanley asked to his empty face.

— "We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps"… a duet, Anselm said vaguely, watching Stanley stir the cold coffee, with a lifeless chill in his eyes. — Sung by women, by women's voices. .

Stanley gasped, lifting the spoon from the coffee cup. — What is it? he whispered, as the thing slipped back into the coffee. He raised it out again.

— Ha, ha, hahaha. .

The alarm clock strung to Mr. Feddle's neck went off.

— What is it? It's a… he held it in the air, unable to move, staring at it.

— You can use it for a bookmark, Stanley. For when you read Malthus. Hahahahaha. . look at what Stanley found in his coffee.

— Anselm, did you. .

— Hahahahahahahahaha

Mr. Feddle shut the clock off with one hand, finished his beer with the other, bowed to three people, stumbling away from the hollow desperate laughter behind him, out the door where he bumped the man in the checked suit who said, — There, there he goes, out the other door, the side door.

Above emptied streets, the roseate heaving persisted; above bodies contorted with sleep, strewn among the battlements erected in this common war without end, some wrenched as though in the last embrace, spoke with tongues, untended and unattended, extended limbs and members to come up against the thigh of another fallen, and be similarly still, or rise distended to enter the warm nest again and swim in the dark channel, committing the final assault in the anonymity of exhaustion, hearts emptied of prayer. But the blood-luster of the sky witnessed that the battle was not done, though all were slain: it shone like the sky over the Campagna where Attila's Huns met the Romans in engagement so fierce that all were slain in deed, extreme but inconclusive, for their spirits continued the battle three nights and days over the field of unburied dead.

In the bar of a midtown hotel where the rear guard bivouacked among chrome and glass, scarred, alert, at battle stations (for there's no discharge in the war), Otto rested his left arm openly before him, raised one eyebrow, turned his lips down at the corners, flared his nostrils, and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. He spilled his drink. — Better give me another, he said. — Irish.

— You've had enough, Jack.

— Will you give me another drink?

— You've had enough tonight. Go home and sleep it off.

— Have I had enough? May I buy you a drink, madame?

— Come on, Jack, don't start any trouble. Leave the lady alone.

— I'm talking to her, not to you.

— Come on, fellow. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

The man in the checked suit came in the street door as Otto, clutching Can Freaks Make Love? rolled in his fight hand, strode from the bar into the lobby of the hotel.

— You want to buy some pictures?

— Pictures? Otto asked, turning.

— Girls, you know?

— Just girls?

— Yeh, what'sa matter, you queer? He started to thrust back into the envelope the pictures he had half displayed, tangles of white limbs.

— Don't I know you? Otto stared at the young man, the hat on the back of his head, the extinguished cigarette stub in the corner of his mouth. — You don't know me, Mac, the young man said quickly. — You don't know me. You want these or not.

— Let's see them.

— What's the matter, you don't trust me? I can't bring them out here. A buck for the pack.

— All right, here. Here. Otto handed him a one-dollar bill.

In the men's room, he opened the envelope. A sailor banged the door, coming in, and Otto went into a booth. He stared at the first picture; and then sat down, staring at it. He turned it up, and looked at each one, his fingers quivering against their glossy surfaces, at each one quickly, ascertaining the face, unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the unfamiliar maple chair she sat on, curled in, the Venetian blinds, the wallpaper, the upholstery pattern on the chair, her fingernails, the lines of her knuckles, the irregular dent of her navel and the two full blots swelling toward him, detailed blemishes on the expanse of her flesh, which delineated it but could not bring it to life in any variety of pose and exposure, obstacles at which his gaze stumbled, passing over the shadowed white in a silent mania of search which led him helplessly to her face, and deserted him there, fixed by the mouth which stigmatized his hunger, fixed by the eyes which knew him, and did not move.

Aware of silence, he stared at these blemished rubrics, WARNING! ALL SO-CALLED PROPHYLACTIC TUBES. . NOT SANITU. . GENUINE! on the metal door before him, conscious only now the sounds of it ceased that the sailor had been sick in a wash basin.

— Hey, come on out, you want a good browning?

He sat, paralyzed by silence, suddenly cold and in detailed motion, shivering. The metal door before him banged, and rattled on the latch. — Hey, come out of there, what are you doin in there, poundin your pork?

Another door banged.

— O.K., sailor. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

He heard that; and heard the scuff of shoes on the tile floor; and listening, heard nothing,

Out in the street, he paused as two men came toward him from one direction, a woman from the other. She walked slowly, looking at him in apparently careless interest, a look of appraisal.

— Pardon me, he said. She stopped. — Are you. . are you. .

— Trying to make a pick-up? she asked him.

— Yes maybe but it isn't that bad, it isn't that crude, it isn't just for that, it's that maybe you can. . that I need. .

The man in the checked suit stopped, stayed by Mr. Sinisterra's hand.

Otto stopped swaying, stayed by the woman's hand on his wrist. — Come along with me, she said. He started to withdraw his hand, to take her arm, and he felt his wrist caught in a chain. — But what's this? I… I mean you. .

She gave the nippers a slight twist, and repeated, — Come along with me.

— I knew it, said Mr. Sinisterra, standing behind a refuse can. — A cop?

— It sticks out all over her.

— It sure does. She's got a front like a cash register. We're screwed. If he has any of the queer on him we're really screwed. What are you going to do?

— Be quiet.

— Where you going?

— I'm going to church.

— What the hell are you going to church for?

— To confess.

— To confess this? to tell them. . why Jeez what's the matter with you, them priests have a pipeline right into the cops. .

— Be quiet. You think I'm a half-wit? I'm going to confess a sin.

— What sin, for Christ sake?

— Pride, said Mr. Sinisterra, removing the mustache from his lip, and putting it into his pocket. — And to burn a candle.

— For who you're goin to burn a candle, said the man in the checked suit, stepping back to look at his companion, his simple face falling into one of the few expressions it afforded, complete bafflement.

— For Johnny the Gent, said Mr. Sinisterra, walking on. — He had humility.

The music was the Sorcerer's Apprentice, threading into the lobby as though seeking a listener, for the bar was empty.

It came forth as though lunging from a coil hidden beyond the portieres, trailing and lunging, as though these notes reaching the lobby now had been audible in the bar moments before; and, sitting in the bar, one might have followed the single course of the thing from behind, to behold it rearing over its prey.

Then it struck. Mr. Pivner stirred, started, woke in alarm, to recover all that he could in this unfamiliar chair, his newspaper, which had slipped to the floor as he read, ZOO ESCAPES INCREASE, HUNT MADMAN Police believe that they are on the trail of the man, apparently insane, who broke into the Bird House at Central Park Zoo last week in an attempt to turn loose the specimens on display there. Theft was discounted as the motive. The lunatic, described as a tall Negro of uncertain age, was seen by Bertha Hebble, a cleaning woman, as she passed. .