William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— In church, said Benny.

— But Anna baby, came a voice from the end of the couch, filling the gap of Ellery's marveling silence, — they boiled Sir Thomas More's head for twenty minutes just so it would hold together, before they stuck it up on London Bridge. .

— Right there, said the tall woman, nearer Esther, — in front of God and everybody. That's the way those things always happen. Do you think I have on too much perfume? I have sinus trouble and I never know. Isn't it warm in here.

— Well, your furpiece. . Esther began, turning to face her.

— I know, my dear, but to tell you the truth I don't dare put it down anywhere. — I'm sure it would be safe in my bedroom.

— Oh, then you're Esther. My dear I'm sorry, I didn't mean. .

— It's all right, you're probably right. I don't know a lot of the people here myself.

— Tell me Esther, has he come yet?

— Who?

— Your guest of honor, of course. .

— Do you know him?

— Hardly. But I've seen his picture so many times. And I own his book. I heard him speak once, about families, I mean about having children and that sort of thing. I can't bear them myself. I mean bear them, literally you know, she laughed. — A tipped uterus, you know. There seem to be so many nowadays, you run into a tipped uterus wherever you turn. .

They both turned hopefully to look across the room, where the door opened. — My dear he is probably someone quite notable. You have to be, to go about with an alarm clock strung around your neck. .

— Mendelssohn Schmendelssohn, someone else said. — I'm talking about music.

— Wasn't that silly of me, said the tall woman, watching Esther cross the room toward the couch. — Telling her a thing like that when here I am two months gone. It just goes to show what habit will do.

— I think Sibelius' fourth is his best.

— Fourth, schmorth; it's his only.

— It just goes to show that you can't trust nature.

Across the room, Mr. Feddle already was engaged, inscribing a Copy of Moby Dick. He worked slowly and with care, unmindful of immediate traffic as though he were indeed sitting in that farmhouse in the Berkshires a century before.

Maude looked up and said, — Isn't it funny, how dark it seems over there, I mean where they are, do they make the corner dark or did they just gather there because it's dark there. . Then she saw that the heavy-set man was in uniform, and said, — Oh. What are you? — Army Public Relations, he said, looking up again at the group in the dark corner. — They look like something out of a Russian novel, he said. — Chavenet, said Maude, looking up at him with wide unblinking eyes. — Yeh, him, said the officer. — Just because I'm not an intellectual don't mean I don't read books. Together they stared across the room; and Maude, feeling his warm hand on the back of her neck, relaxed somewhat.

A few years before, someone who had once seen one rather unfortunate print of Mozart (it was in profile, the frontispiece in a bound score of the Jupiter Symphony printed in Vienna), and soon after looked once at the profile of the man now standing stoop-shouldered across the room in an open-collar green wool shirt, remarked that he looked (for all the world) like Mozart. Safe away by a century and a half, this was repeated often, most especially by those who persisted as his friends, wished to say something complimentary about him, and had never seen the frontispiece to the Vienna-bound Jupiter Symphony.

— I know him, the tall one, Maude said. — He's been around a long time.

He looked up, as though he might have overheard her, and he looked offended; but if she had seen him more often, anywhere, and in any circumstance, she would have realized that he always looked offended. Bildow, who was talking, looked slightly offended. So did the stubby young man whose belligerent interest was poetry. They might have been offended by the conversation immediately beside them, a group as unattractive as their own but in another way: crackling with brittle enthusiasm, these guests pursued one another from the Royale Saint Germain (across the street) to the Deux Magots; out to the Place des Vosges and back to the Flore; across the river to the Boeuf sur le Toit and back to the Brasserie Lipp (—It was Goering's- favorite place in Paris you know); briefly to the Carnavalet and back to the Reine Blanche (—That's where I saw how tough the French police can be. .).

— And laundry so expensive, eighty francs a shirt. .

— Of course none of us had baths in our rooms, but there was a charming boy from Virginia whose bathtub was always free after eleven in the morning. .

— I managed very well, just washing in the bidet. .

Wherever encountered, it seemed that their one achievement had been getting across that ocean once, and getting back to retail wares which they deprecated but continued to offer, all they had in stock at present though a sparkling variety was on order (—Cyprus sounded like a marvelous place, I heard that they have these trumpets there, and at night when they go to bed they put one end out the window and the other end. .).

— We didn't get time to do Italy this time, anyhow it's really more important to get to know one place really well, we were in Paris for almost a whole week. .

Each one inclined from wistful habit to say, — Well I've only been back a couple of weeks, and… or, — I just got back recently, and… or, — Well I've only been back a little while, but. ., realizing in the back of their minds that seasons had changed since the!r return, that the same season they had spent there was approaching again here, realizing, in spite of those vivid images which conversations like this one refurbished, that they were back, and their wares not for sale, but barter only, and in kind.

— I guess it was Corfu I meant, anyway when you walk down the street in the evening you hear these really mellifluous sounds from these trumpets. .

— Well we were there when our ambassador laid a wreath on the grave of the unknown soldier. He dropped to his knees, and everybody in the crowd was so touched by his reverent act, then he fell flat on his face…

— You're talking about my hus- band! cried the one who had thanked Esther for her lovewy party, in passing, paused then to make a face at Don Bildow over their shoulders, and went on.

— I never saw anything like that, even at the Au Soleil Levant. What was it?

— The Duchess of Ohio.

Bildow turned his unimpressive back. — There isn't a good lay in this whole room, said their stubby companion, with a look as though recalling some severe unkindness done him privately years before. It was, in fact, a look he seldom lost. The tall stooped one undid the next button of his wool shirt, and said, — What about Esther, what about her?

— It's funny you never knew her. She was around a lot, before she got married. That summer your wife shot herself, Esther was all over the place.

— I was at Yaddo, said the critic. He smoothed the hair on the back of his head, but it stood up again immediately he lowered his hand; and the likeness to the Mozart print was remarkable again, not for the heavy and long upper lip, and the prominent nose, but the weight of the hair which he wore as consciously as the eighteenth-century man, though not for reason of that infestation of daunted vanity known as fashion, but for his own unintimi-dated reason: it made his head look bigger, inferring its contents to be a brain of the proportions which Science assures us we all might have, if we had wings. — I heard you sold out, he said to Bildow.

— What did I have to do with it? You know how much it costs to run a magazine.