William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

— Right up the wall. And why that's exactly what I was doing when I saw the hands were tearing to pieces. He was too big. I couldn't keep it up or the hands would be all torn to pieces by the time I got him up there. Oh, oh, oh, oh, it was terrible, and terrible, and discouraging from a scientific point of view, the way the nail just tore it apart, left hand, right hand. . maybe I should have used smaller nails? That's the way I left him, with his trouser-cuffs dragging in the dirt.

— Stop it.

— There we were, in the pure quintessential light of the sun.

— Hmmmnph. .

— On the mountaintop.

— Transmogrification.

Then, — Look! came in Mr. Farisy's hoarse whisper of confidence. — See? the hammer? I keep it all under my mattress. See the nails? Nails! one by one. I've taken them from the shop, one by one by one, ten-penty, twenty-penty one by one. We'll do it on the door frame, I measured it. I know how much you weigh. I looked at your chart. We'll do it scientifically. If they burn you afterward, one by one, ashes don't show scars, left hand, right hand, twenty-penty, thirty-penty, clink, clink, . listen!

— Mabutone, said Miss Inch the nurse, — or Methyltestosterone Mucorettes, between the upper lip and gum above incisors.

— Oops!. .

— Take his arm.

— Luminal?

— Sedamyl.

— You have a guest. Your son. .

— He's not big enough.

— Not you, not you. Doctor?. .

— Try Palagren or Passiphen, or Pento-Del or Phanodorn. .

— Reverend, your son?. .

— Ooops!. .

— The sun?

— Seconal or Sedamyl, Tolyphy or Tolyspaz. .

— Wait a minute. . wait a minute…

The refurbishing job which "Dick" had brought about in the church had been an extensive one. To begin with, the bell had been replaced with an electrically driven sound system which not only rang out the hour in more dulcet tones, but summoned the congregation on Sunday mornings by playing familiar hymns especially recorded for the purpose, and broadcast from the church spire in lively resonant notes originally drawn from a novochord, or something similarly up-to-date (it is true, there were days when the wind behaved badly that it sounded like a Hawaiian guitar).

The hole in the roof had, of course, been repaired; and the interior done over in taupe and white. The gilded organ pipes had disappeared; and so had all of the harsh angles of woodwork; instead, eyes and voices were lifted to smooth turns and flexures in taupe, and two bullet-shaped chromium lights trained on the pulpit, whence the President of the United States was exhorted with benedictions for the first time since the assassination of James A. Garfield. The oaken boards, where hymn and verse had been posted during services, were no longer necessary, for programs were now printed up every Sunday, detailing not only the service but other church activities. The programs sometimes ran to three or four pages, not counting the front which bore a "nice" (slightly Gothi-cixed) likeness of the church itself.

Sturdy brass basins had taken the place of the wicker baskets for the offertory (not, in this illuminated Protestant world, of course, the tendering of bread and wine for Divine approval before their consecration; but here, according to custom, that equally exquisite and perhaps more realistically inspired moment of communion, when "Dick" received the brimming basins from the ushers, and solemnly held them up somewhere over his head in a gesture of intercourse of the most intimate dimensions imaginable to those who had contributed).

On the whole, the congregation looked rather younger; and it is just possible that "Dick's" "bad habit" might have had something to do with this. It seemed he had, at the outset, perceived that an entirely virtuous man, even one of the cloth, occupies an untenable position in society; and sensed the wisdom in giving one's neighbors some small vice upon which to latch their rancor at the absence of larger ones. Had his wisdom grown of years as well as wit, he might have gone a step further with his logic and had the good sense to conduct this vice in private, thus giving it the aura of secrecy, and so something to be spoken of in whispers among the townsfolk: but no. He did not give them that satisfaction. He let himself be seen in public, smoking his small cigars. Now for one thing, there were certainly members of this community who did believe an entirely virtuous man possible, men who themselves had shrunk to those proportions; and then among the ladies, there were some who had no intention of considering this a minor vice, but felt every bit as strongly about tobacco as did England's first, and Scotland's sixth, King James, whose Bible they retired to read in the clear dry air of their fathers, and the fathers before them, piqued in their solitude, it is true, on occasional Sunday mornings when the wind was wrong, and that air shimmered painfully with crystal tones and clear glissandos from the chaste spire turned campanile, where the new minister, whose forebears, it was generally known, sprang from somewhere in New Jersey, prepared to lead off with Hymn Number 347 in the Pilgrim Hymnal, —O God be-neath thy guid-ing hand. . Our ex-iled fa-thers crossed the sea. . Still, a number of gray petrous visages continued to appear, drawn on by a habit which they called duty, and perhaps, though none would have admitted it, a sort of perilous curiosity roused by this young man who invoked flesh and deity alike in whistling tones which bounced off their northern souls like shiny stones scaled over still water. As for those whistling punctuations, they were first credited to some electrical distemper in the public address system, for there was now a microphone mounted on the pulpit through which "Dick" managed to convey, if not severe awe, moments of anxiety, and if not wonder, moments of acute embarrassment; if he could not tender mystery, he could arouse curiosity, rewarded with ceremony if not ritual, inspiring, if not hope, then sincere desire, if not faith, allegiance, if not charity, tolerance.

In keeping with the general spirit of refurbishing (for even the arrow at the entrance to town had been changed to point the real direction of the imminent curve, a kindness to strangers though it caused some confusion at first for the natives), the weathercock atop the spire had been exchanged for a cross, and "Dick" ministered wearing a pallium (he called it a "surplice"). All this, what elders were left him bore very well; and he was quite popular among the young people. They asked him weighty questions: one young lady, whether he would approve her reading a current novel, entitled SENSATION (it was one of those books called "bitter satire" by those who think life better than they find it, and "inadequate" by those who find it a good deal worse than they had thought); and he did not say no. (He was waiting, and would in vain, for it to appear condensed in the Reader's Digest.) It was the same girl who had asked him earlier if a passage she showed him from Katherine Mansfield were sacrilegious: something which mentioned the soul being "set before its Maker, hatless, disheveled and gay, with its spirit unbroken. ." And though this was a sensation which had certainly never occurred to him, "Dick" indulged it in what he, with Saint Peter, regarded as the "weaker vessel."

In spite of all "Dick" had done to brighten things up, the parsonage held a sense of bereavement about it. His heels clicking on the floors (for he wore metal taps, to save leather so he said) echoed sharply and came back to him in creaks in the woodwork. And he found himself, when he should have been busy culling a sermon, standing instead at the window of the dark downstairs room which he never used, staring through evergreen branches at a distant shrouded hill; or, as he sat quietly going through letters, or the church's business, bent forth from his chair, listening, staring at nothing, listening to and then for, creaking sounds from other parts of the house. And one afternoon in the bright upstairs room he had chosen for his study, he dozed off, in the midst of considering plans to co-operate in a large (interdenominational) campaign to dispatch airborne Bibles, via hundreds of free-floating balloons, to a part of the world where they were, presumably, desired. He awoke at dusk sitting bolt upright, startled by silence, looked around where nothing moved, unable even hours later to shake from his head (which he literally tried to do) the sound of a child crying, which he thought he had heard.