William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— He wasn't drunk just now, when he was in here, Brown answered looking up at each of them.

— He wasn't eh? Oh dear, I shouldn't like to run on him drunk then, eh? Ho ho, hmmph. . Oh dear no. Can't have that sort of thing.

— And if he comes back? Valentine's tone rang with a summons.

— If he comes back. . Recktall Brown commenced, looking down before him.

— One has the police?. . Crémer said with a shrug. — Après tout, charge de défendre. .

— Shouldn't hesitate a moment. . mmph, calling them in. Might get about it right now. This sort of thing, don't you know. Can't have it, don't you know.

Basil Valentine murmured something, smiling with the slight distortion his lip compelled, and started to turn away. Recktall Brown swung on him and demanded, — Where are you going?

— If you can spare me for a moment, Basil Valentine rasped, — I thought I might put some ice on this. . swelling. And he touched the lip with a fingertip and left them.

— My, he's a bit. . mmph. . rather touchy tonight. Eh? Mmhp. . yes. We all are a bit. . mmp. . eh? I beg your pardon, miss. Eh?

— Is it true the British Museum has a toupee that George the Third had made for himself out of his mistresses'. .

— I daresay. . mmp! What was that, young woman? Ghood heavens! Ghood heavens!. . He towered over Miss Stein for a moment and then got by her, though from the disparity in their presences and the haste he made in his escape, he might have stepped over her. — Ghood heavens. . eh? he addressed Crémer's pinched back. — The damnedest. . presumption. Mmmph. . going upstairs are we, eh? Ummp. There's a pretty thing. German, I should think. Eh? Polychrome wood, fifteenth century or so. Saint John Baptist, eh? L'minp. Shame he's lost an arm here. Damn shame. He paused for a moment there on the landing, running a finger over the coarse-grained marrow of the break, and then followed the heels up the stairs before him muttering, — Eh?. . The armor? good heavens, no one wants to look at armor. .

Miss Stein returned to her companions to say, — Talk about how polite the English are supposed to be, he wouldn't even answer me. Just the same, I should think a thing like that would scratch. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

There was a clanking sound from above, but no one turned to the balcony to see that the headpiece had been lifted from the suit of armor up there. No one, that is, except the sharply bearded sharp-eyed man at the other end of the room who, despite his attentive conversation, had been watching the activity aloft since it had begun.

The bearded young art critic was speaking in French, managing it with such urbanity, indeed, that his little friend (the one cheered on earlier as resembling an oeuf-dur-mayonnaise) told him later, with demure awe, that he had not been able to understand a word of it; no marvel of ignominy, really, for the harassed Lyonnais who was listening could not understand a word of it either, and attempted, at aspirate intervals, to swing things in his own direction with commentaries in a series of grotesque syllables which might, in Lyons, have passed for English by default.

This impressive bout drew the attention of someone who believed himself to be talking to an Egyptologist named Kuvetli, and (perhaps it was the fluttering of the plump hands over there, and the impassive mien before him) became so familiar as to draw a simile upon mimicry among the butterflies, citing, for his thesis, — The female of Papilio cynorta, in the Uganda. . while over his shoulder the Egyptologist sought a face he could not locate. Basil Valentine had, all this time, been holding a cloth-covered ice cube against his upper lip, raising it now and then to look at the chipped tooth inside, and staring at his image in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.

Someone banged on the door, as someone had been doing at impatient intervals for some time, a guest apparently unable to make the stairs for he had directed them above with some irritation at the second assault, and now he cried out, — All right, damn you. He dropped the cold pack into the sink, saw the swelling gone down somewhat, peeled up the lip for another look at the tooth and then drew it down firmly, catching his own eyes in the glass. And since the intimacies of catoptric communion were by now as strange to him as any others (he was always prepared for, and satisfied with what he saw in the glass, in those numerous but brief encounters when he hunched toward it, washing his hands, his face an established proposition, his mind busied elsewhere with still mutable concerns), he stood now reflecting his face more absorbed than that most dubious mirror-gazer of our acquaintance; and it took another attack on the door to sunder Basil Valentine from this conspiracy of chin and eyes, the straight nose and high bones which were his face. He turned, adjusting himself behind, under the ventless jacket, and before, at the weighted waist, and came out, without a look in either direction until he'd arrived among people.

He took some brandy immediately, and managed to avoid a conversation on whether the names of soft drinks spelled across the sky were desecrations of the House of God; a man who said, — In dthis kenntre no ouonne toks ovv dthe ouor becose ovv krissmess?. . and a young woman who said something about King George III which he hoped, vaguely, he had not understood aright, as he looked anxiously over the room.

— Et ce vieux moricaud. . où se cache-t-il?. .

— Because Mister Schmuck wants to have one made just like George the Third…

Valentine stopped beside a dark man who barely reached his shoulder, and before he'd noted the peaked sharkskin suit or the glazed eyes asked, — Where's Brown? Have you seen Mister Brown?

— I fear you too are at the wrong party? Perhaps. .

Basil Valentine moved quickly. He touched another elbow, — Have you seen Brown? Mister Brown?. .

— Men den himmelske rustning. . hey?

Then Valentine stopped short, staring more than half the length of the room at a stout fluttering figure, plucking the point of a black beard with one hand, disposing the other in riotous gestures on the air, and lor all his apparent weight, moving with admirable agility upon his toes. — Good God! Good God no! — Say, old man, where you been hiding, eh?. . Missing all the fun, what?

— What?

— Jolly old rascal, isn't he! sweating up there like a… mmp. Just came down for a bit more of this cognac, eh? Good heavens yes, have to keep up, don't you know.

— Brown's. . up there?

Some of the guests were leaving, with over-shoulder looks of last-minute anticipation, — We'd hate to miss anything. . Some had left. Some appeared rooted; and even those that continued to move did so with a buoyant vagueness, sustained on the flood of heat filling that vast room like a natural element. Thus Basil Valentine's eyes, like those in the tapestry vacant, remained attached to the capering figure with the black beard beyond simply because it moved with such mimetic extravagance: a spell which he might break in an instant, as he well knew, by summoning his gaze to the right, near the Christmas tree, where a conversation on Cheops' prophecies, or the improbability of a Fourth Dynasty mummy (—There were none, properly speaking, until the Eighteenth. .) was most certainly taking place. So much for his unbroken gaze; for now, in like manner, he was aware of sounds from the balcony above, scraping sounds, and the slight shocks of metal against metal, an affliction momentarily worse to whose relief the habit of intervention threatened to betray him, but he stood firm, giving the R.A.'s voice the same glazed attention his eyes gave the cavorting beard beyond, waiting, glamorized, for the shock which would break the spell. Even then, lapsing voices allowed the radio to penetrate with what sounded like dissonant caterwauling, (The music was Ravel, L'Enfant et les Sortileges.)