William Gaddis - The Recognitions

The broken cries from the next cage had stopped, given over to heaving and groans.

— What! You and I, what!

— Listen to me, Basil Valentine said, suddenly closing his grip on the wrist he'd recovered, without taking his eyes from those of the lioness. — Do you remember, when I told you that the gods have only one secret to teach? Neither was looking at the other. Over Valentine's shoulder, the blond woman reached the child who had run to her. She was bent down now, listening, her skirt drawn tight, her jacket full with the weight of her breasts, her face alive with attention. — Were they really fighting? she asked, still inclined over the child, being led back to the next cage where the pumas were, in her voice that tone children accept as awe, delighting to shock the innocence of those who awe them. — That secret, do you remember? said Basil Valentine still holding him tight there and still looking, himself, into the cage of the lioness. — What Wotan taught his son? the only secret worth having?

— But how were they fighting?

— The power of doing without happiness, Basil Valentine said.

— See? said the child. She saw. She pulled the child to her, and looked quick into the other faces before the puma cage. They were all men. They all found her upturned face instantly, caught her dark eyes, one with a smile, one grinned an intimate recognition, until seeking escape she found herself looking into eyes familiar from a minute before, eyes not drawn to her by this instant of leveling, but still fixed on her, eyes which made no response at all. So she continued to stare at him, where he stood held in Valentine's grip there, for moments, finding sanctuary where she could recover all so abruptly assaulted, in eyes which shared nothing, recognúed nothing, accused her of nothing: but those moments passed and, recovering, she groped for escape. But that lack of response held her, that lack of recognition no more sanctuary than the opened eyes of a dead man, that negation no asylum for shame but the trap from which it cried out for the right to its living identity. She clutched the child by the shoulder, as one essays handhold climbing from a pit, and turned to stare into the cage of the pumas, reddening over her face and neck and, though none knew it but she, to the very breaking-away of her breasts.

The sun was visible, white, in a sky which showed no premonition but in its fleeting neighborhood. The fat woman had followed it, from her chill seat near the seals to another, facing the sun, though she did not look up so far, no further than passing waist-levels, mouthing behind her damp wad, or the faces of children. — Frerra jacka, frerra jacka, dormay-voo? one sang. — What's that? asked the smallest. — Soney malatina, soney malatina. . — What's that mean? asked the smallest, and the string of the balloon slipped from her finger. — It don't mean nothin stupid it's French, and lookit you lost the balloon already.

How old Valentine might have looked, to someone who'd shared with him the cruel familiarities of youth. Or are there moments of intimacy, of which only strangers are capable? of which those known, and suffered over years, could never conceive, so seeking for their own reflection in the attrition of familiarity. So the fat woman, mouthing — grot-zy, grot-sy. . behind her damp wad looked up as though she might in that instant know the history of every line around his eyes but only lacked the time to set it down, set it down anywhere, even in her own; or set it down in prescience, not magic, not art, but only history before it happened: not age as mere accom- plishment, but in performance, living out what would be lived out, age knowing itself, earning itself in that instant and gone. Until all she could have told, if she'd been interrupted a moment later, surprised? indignant? mouthing — grott-sy, probably all she could answer would be, — How old he looked, just then, throwing that gray glove into the ashcan when he came out of the cat house.

— What now? the sun? A priest of Mithras, was it? Come along, my dear fellow, I'll tell you why Mithraism failed, the greatest rival Christianity ever had. It failed because it lacked central authority. It spread all over the country with the Roman Legions, but Christianity was a city religion, and power lies in cities, remember that. And what was it you said? A man's damnation is his own damned business? It's not true, you know. It's not true. Why, good heavens, this suicide of yours? Why, like Chrysippus then? feeding figs and wine to an ass, and dying of laughter? Look! look there, in the sky where it's still blue, that line? That white line the airplane's drawn, do you see it? how the wind's billowed it out like rope in a current of water? Yes, your man in the celestial sea, eh? coming down to undo it, down to the bottom, and they find him dead as though drowned. Why, this. . pelagian atmosphere of yours, you know. Homicide, was it? What was it Pascal said, There's as much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and others?. . no, but that was Montaigne wasn't it.

He stooped a little, finding his way up the steps to the street.

At the corner the three children stopped, to look at a deer hung there by its hind feet, to remark, — Lookit where they stuck the paper flower!

From down the block two women approached. — And I just haven't been the same since the Morro Castle. . the tall woman said, and laughed. — And I wish I could, but I can't, this dismal cocktail party tonight, my husband has to go, he's her editor, and I'm his wife. We're going to miss the Narcissus Festival in Hawaii again this year, I told him we'd just have one of our own. .

Basil Valentine's hands were clenched deep in his coat pockets. — Now? a Turkish bath? he muttered. — Well don't worry, those fragments, I'll be there tonight, I'll be at Brown's. And he looked up, as though watching something blown on the wind.

Ahead, the three children approached a figure sprawled on the sidewalk, and a little boy on a tricycle wheeling round it. — What's that? asked the smallest. — A man, what's it look like? — It looks like a Sanny Clans. What it's wearing, it looks like it was a Sanny Glaus suit, don't it? — How could it be a Sanny Glaus? It don't have a wite beard. — But it's getting a beard.

Valentine's look was not so steady: he raised it every three or so steps with that sort of blank surprise of a man glancing up to where he has been used to seeing a mirror upon entering a room, and finding a blank wall. — At Philippi? he murmured. — Yes. . Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then. Like the sky, his eyes remained unclouded, but (perhaps it was the sky beyond him that did it) simply darkened, evenly, assuming a hard solidity and the enduring texture of gray, as the sky itself was doing, as one might have seen, looking up at them both.

The tall woman turned her friend in at a door before the stubble-chinned figure sprawled on the walk in front of her house, — Right under the dining-room window, in fact, right here, as she remarked, — in front of God and everybody. She almost tripped over the tricycling child, but got the rail and down the steps to say, — My husband says that's when you have to be careful, around lunchtime, that's when most of them jump, when the streets are full of people, they do it then for the publicity.

Above her the sky darkened. She did not look at it, but went in with her eyes on her own hand laid out at elegant length on her friend's fur; while behind her, outside, the tricycle wove smaller and smaller circles, as its rider watched over the left shoulder how close the rear tire could come to the fingers on the pavement.

By late afternoon it was snowing.

The flakes were small, blown neither one side nor the other, nor falling direct to earth, but filling the air with continuous movement.