William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— And the oddest joke about the Pope, I don't understand it at all.

— I mean Chrahst, I can't have lost him.

— Flo-flo?

— Florence, baby.

She was not really surprised, in the bedroom, to see him lying there in (the green wool shirt, that and nothing else. She turned quickly to close the door and bolt it: it seemed to take her an age to reach it.

— President McKinley had one

— I can play The Stars and Stripes Forever, or Violets lying under the piano

— The far lockaway rocker room story

— And the garbage cans

— The Pope

— The Swiss

— The Wright brothers and the ships of the Russian navy

— Loved him — This time it was a kitten

— Hated her

Most penetrating, just outside the door she closed, unmocking, — Some sleeping pills that my mummy sent me up for, I know which bottle it is if you'll just lift me up.

Esther held to a corner of the Bureau stepping out of her shoes, and she pulled off her skirt. Then she reached to turn out the light.

— Don't. Leave it on.

The woollen sleeve scratched her uncovered shoulders, her legs gave, soft against the hard tense muscles where she strained her hollowness to him. — Are you going to… take this off?

— Yes, in a… minute. His cold hand wrenched her shoulder down.

— But now, I don't know. . whether I dare. .

— No, you just. .

— But what are you, I thought only little boys,

— It's all right, I,

— But what am I supposed to do? she cried.

— You, just. . watch, he said breathlessly.

The long streets were straight tunnels of wind charged with snow which bit the skin of any out struggling against it, the paving hard-packed with that snow, its whiteness gone under a thousand dirty wheels, spotted and streaked from leaking oil-pans, dug here and there by a desperate heel. The undisciplined lights, most of them red for they hung before bars, shone through it, instructed by the tireless precision of the traffic lights turning green to red, red to green, halting precarious passage, releasing it.

Down the subway steps came a figure on all fours, and those who glanced at it looked away, or stopped to stare, almost as little able to stand up themselves though, if they had gone down like he was, they would have been as unable to move with his forceful ease, down, to drop his coin in the slot with his lips and pass through the stile, out onto the platform and, with hardly a minute's wait, onto a train.

— Arthur! What are you doing? Get up on your feet.

He turned his head, to look up and see a small woman in a black silk dress, tight up to her throat, a woman three times his age, who had lived twice the years she had given him since she gave him birth. He looked at her.

— Get up on your feet, I say. She clutched at the black-and-gold book in her lap, and nothing else moved but her thin lips as she spoke in low intensity, — Get up this instant. Where did you get that furpiece? You stole it! Get up this instant. Suddenly she reached out, and though he was very near her thin knees, with a motion as slight as an animal's evasion, and as seemingly careless, he avoided her hand. She clutched the book again. — Get up on your feet this instant, I demand. The train roared on. He looked at her.

Mickey Mouse semaphored annul. — It can't be that late. She held it to her ear. — I think it's stopped, she said. — He can't have stopped, she said, halting under a streetlamp.

— Wait here. There's a cab. Abruptly, she was alone, and she sank back against a building, watching him run toward the curb at the corner, where he slipped and fell. Behind her, one of the indistinct shadows articulated itself.

— Oh no, stop!

— What happened? he asked, brushing snow from himself with one hand, supporting her with the other.

— He stole my purse. .

— But let me go, I can catch him. .

— Oh no, she said, clinging to him. — He stole my purse. He stole my purse, she cried, all of her weight on him, laughing and crying at once.

He looked round desperately; then his whole expression, and his bearing, changed. He murmured something, and without much difficulty guided her up the cathedral's steps, and he took her in.

— Can you kneel? They were struck down by that vast silence, dropping like a weight from stone arches out of all reach; they struggled to the surface again, and it was penetrated with a bell's ringing like a rapier through stone. — I can't breathe, she said. She fell back in the pew, pulling at the front of her dress as her coat fell open.

He stared before him at serenity which, transfigured in light, seemed to move for him. — Could you take communion? he asked her, shaping the silence which lay between them, cutting a hard bit out of it to pierce her.

— I… it isn't. . not now, she whispered, hacking his silence into shreds of shale, irregular fragments of its weight thrown against him. He started her to her feet, toward the liberation of the nave's channel which flowed in one direction from which the silence seemed suddenly to be gathered and hurled back with all its weight upon them.

— qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. .

She fell over against him, dead weight.

— miserere nobis…

He supported her, as she regained her feet.

— dona nobis pacem. . He turned and followed her, where she ran from the rapier that struck behind them, out through the gigantic doors which spilled them together into that unholy night.

He might have caught her had he not fallen on the steps, a thing which she, for all her gyrations, somehow managed not to do. He did not reach her again until almost a block away where she stopped, breathing hard, under a red-lighted doorway. Even then, before he could hold her, she was inside the bar, where a battered man ran his hand over his uncared-for chin and stared at them, and the bartender came forward.

— Now I'd like a martini, she said, speaking clearly, seating herself.

— But Agnes…

— And you, sir?

— Nothing. A glass of water. Agnes…

She looked at him, glazed, without recognition.

— Agnes. .

The bartender tapped his fingers on the bar, waiting.

— Agnes. . He looked up at the bartender, surprised. — Oh, here, he said then, and handed over the twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. — I'm sorry, that's all I have. Agnes. .

The bartender walked slowly toward the back of the bar, looking idly at the bill. — What'sa matter, you never saw American money before? said his battered client. — I see it alia time. I'm Santy Glaus.

— Agnes, please. .

— I'm going to a hotel, she said, straight before her, to no one, a she set down her empty glass. — I'll write him a letter.

The bartender had taken the bill over to hold it under a desk lamp which he turned on beside the cash register.

— Agnes, wait a minute. . She got down from her stool.

— Wait a minute here, you two. Stanley turned. The bartender had him by the arm across the bar. — Wait a minute. Stop her.

— Agnes, wait. .

— I can't stop her. I'm Santy Glaus.

— Agnes, my glasses. You forgot to give me my glasses. .

A few minutes later Stanley stood, eyeless enough in this reduction of Gaza, waiting for a patrol car. — You could tell it a mile away, the way the front of it's smeared, said the bartender to the patrolman who held Stanley's arm. — He had a dame with him, but she beat it. Thanks, Mac. He went back inside; and the patrolman turned his attention to his charge, to where the falling snow clotted the mustache, and gathered in the folds of hair on the back of the round head, silently, with a tourist's dull curiosity, the patrolman gazed as a tourist might upon the pitted figure of a saint in indefatigable stone, left insensibly exposed in the weather a century too long.