William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Brown!

The panoplied figure reached the landing in one fall, taking a long time, so it seemed afterward to those who saw it happen; and making a good deal less of noise than they might have expected, hitting head-on at the turn, attacked by shadows leaping to meet it, withdrawing as it dropped away from the wall and hung, for a moment when the whole room silenced and all the eyes were brought into one equation, the quick eyes stilled, and the still eyes of the wart hog, the face in the youthful portrait, the blind eyes of Valerian stretched on his rack and the all-seeing eyes of the pale underclothed figure in the middle of the low table, those and the eyes in the tapestry, turned in the other direction, alerted.

— There, of course, I disagree with Dante, came on a voice from the far end, restoring the unconscious balance, rescuing what was alive from what was not; and enough voices to deliver one another from the isolation of separate identity took up and spread in a slow Wave toward the broken weight poised on the edge of the landing, whose clinging shadows leaped away as it moved, and re- peated their concerted attacks as it fell from one step to another, stifling it in their last embrace at the bottom.

— Good heavens!. . they've knocked the thing down the stairs, d'you see? Heavier than one might have thought, eh? The white-haired gentleman approached. — Good heavens, I… daresay. . there's someone in it.

Behind him, Basil Valentine crossed himself quickly with the third finger of his right hand; then touched the bend of his forefinger to his lips as he approached.

Clattering down the stairs in his grotesque shoes, which looked like they'd been built especially for participation in some sport, possibly one on snow, or in marshland, or some such sodden surface, that grimpen, perhaps, where is no secure foothold, came M. Crémer, to plant those remarkably equipped feet among the Aubusson roses, and hold forth the broad-bowed thick-lensed glasses which his host had left behind. He was talking at a great rate, and in his own tongue, so no one stopped him, and no one paid him any attention.

Behind him, a tall unexaggerated man stood on the step holding a damp double-breasted suit coat; and there were others, crowding between this one and the polychrome amputee, as wide-open eyed, and as silent, a reticent concord which might have been mistaken for reverence but for the immoderate curiosity which had shone in the eyes of Saint John Baptist ever since he had first been put out in the weather some centuries before.

Then the tall woman reached up to catch a naked earlobe, and cry, — Oh!. . I've lost my baby's breath… a line which did attract some attention.

Resounding in the regions beyond the staircase, the crash had ' straightened Fuller up on his kitchen stool forthwith. It was a minute before he could get out, for the dog wanted to get out too. It commenced to trot up and down the room, nervously sensing something amiss with that intuition which Fuller knew all too well, and seeing it active now, became the more alarmed. As the dog scratched at the door leading to the hall and the great room, Fuller slipped out another, up the kitchen stairs to the second-floor halls, round to the balcony and out slowly to the front stairs, where he paused at the newel and looked back, abruptly aware of a vacancy. Then his eye caught the cigar, half-smoked and gone out but not before it had burned a long scar on the rosewood chest. He picked it up, licked his thumb and rubbed the burnt place but it did no good: and at that moment, from the corner of his eye he realized what was missing at the end of the balcony, and carrying the half-smoked cigar he got to the stairs and almost fell in his hurry to get down them.

— Les pieds, voyez vous, les pieds de cette armure, il a trébuché vous savez. . M. Crémer harangued his audience, so effectively that it grew moment by moment, as he waved the broad-bowed glasses in the air, and pointed with his other hand to the foot-pieces of the armor, — Et sans les lunettes alors. . Les pieds? les pieds, voyez vous? des Boches, pas vrai? Voyez vous quelle gaucheríe allemande. .

— Good heavens, said the R.A. somewhere in the shadows there under the balcony, — all well and good he tripped over his feet because they were German, don't you know, but how did he get into the damned thing to begin with? eh? eh? he demanded of no one.

Of all the figures gathered there beneath him, Fuller knew only two, meeting now over the headpiece where Basil Valentine knelt on one side to put forth a hand and withdraw it as quick, for the throat was covered with blood running from a corner of the mouth, though that was all of the face that could be seen, the throat, and the heavy chin, and a sagging corner of the small mouth. What had happened was, that in the fall one of the hooks which held the beaver in place had come undone; perhaps it was not fastened properly at the outset, or possibly it had not been fastened at all. And so the beaver of the helmet was knocked askew, and the visor above jammed even more tightly closed, as the figure still kneeling there when Valentine withdrew found out, trying desperately all of a sudden to get the thing open.

Fuller stared at Basil Valentine, down on one knee, the hand he'd pulled back from the unbroken throat resting now on the taces, those plates meant to afford a loose protection round the thighs where they clung now full and rigidly distended. The breastplate and the backplate had not been drawn together, though they were as tight as they could be, their gaps bulging with mounds of while shirting and a split side of the blue vest from which somehow the penknife had escaped, and lay there on the floor at Valentine's foot. And one of the greaves had come half off too, and the broad foot-piece with it, exposing a small foot splayed in a silk sock, where the wrinkled white line of the clock on the black silk ridiculed the thickness of the ankle it covered, and it was there that Basil Valentine thrust two fingertips, waited a moment, shifted them and thrust them harder, behind the tendon there, waited again and withdrew them to figure a cross quickly at his chest as he stood away, taking a step back which Fuller repeated on the landing above; though both of them now were watching the figure still kneeling at the head, and both of them were in retreat, Fuller clutching the half-smoked cigar, up the stairs, down the hall, and Valentine stepping backward, slowly at first, when he started to speak. Waving the charred fragments before him, he took a step over the head and stood above it.

— Wait! Wait! he cried. — Wait!

The sound of this voice again, and the sight of him, worked on them immediately. The pool around him emptied, and no sooner did it flood from the rest of the room than it emptied again, the fraud of what had seethed for so long there as undersea discovered as the stopper of the tank was pulled and they poured out in a continuous stream, while he stood over the broken hulk shouting them on, — Wait! Listen! Wait!

Basil Valentine still clung in the shadows, watching him.

— Like me to stick around for a bit, old man? Anything I can mphht do d'you spose, eh? Before the mmmp who-do-you-call-'ems come, eh? The R.A. stood at his elbow.

M. Crémer, on the other hand, was suddenly in a great hurry, but found time to say, — II faut que je parte, je viens de me rap-peler d'une. . heh heh assignation vous savez, mais le Memlinc, voyez vous, le Memlinc, je veux 1'acheter vous savez. .

— Blasted little. . mphht. Good heavens, eh? Probably willing to go as high as two and six at that. .

— A n'importe quel prix, vous savez. . Crémer cast back, being swept away now.

— Good heavens! the R.A. said, still at Valentine's elbow, — begins to sound like he might go to three shillings. I say, if there's nothing more I can do here but confuse things, don't you know, I mphht get on my way I spose. . You seem to be in pretty close touch with this. . mphht our host laid out here, eh? Ring me up tomorrow, let me know what hospital they stick him in, eh? There's a good fellow. Like to send along some flowers, don't you know. And that mppht van der Goes canvas in there. . mphht like to mpht come to some terms, eh? Yes, well ghood night, eh? Ghood night. . goo night, goo night, goo night. .