William Gaddis - The Recognitions

"There are many Manii at Aricia.'

In patiently prolonged collision with the sea (to such an untropical degree of frankness that a concrete length of seawall is necessary to separate them), and then retreating up the hills, lies the Central American port of Tibieza de Dios. Shiploads of iron beds, houses of broken bannisters whose paint is unable to tell to the querulous eye of the foreigner (for no native would question) what was its original color, indeed has forgotten itself, the streetlights bare electric bulbs strung on wires, it has the transient air of a ragged carnival never dismantled. The population is largely black. It is governed by descendants of Spain who live on the central plateau, given work by an American fruit company whose white employees live between ten strands of barbed wire and the sea, and its modesty and sophistication are at once satisfied in acres of brilliant calico provided by the Tibieza Trading Company, a family of seventeen Chinese, all male, and all different shapes, whose veranda card game never ends.

Traffic often consists only in the gay orange garbage carts, pas-sengered by black vultures who ride rocking in mistrust on top, or follow running, half in flight, behind. In the postprandial heat of midday no human inhabitants may be seen at all (except for the card players) and passers-by in the streets hardly nod acquaintance, for they are dogs, vultures, and occasional horses moving with easy poise, looking neither right nor left, as though on their way to appointments as casually futile as the tides. When the afternoon rain is over, black stirrings begin again, and the natives appear in such states of disintegration that a bit of string knotted round the wrist or neck seems to indicate that even these parts would be lost unless tied on.

Drift in suspension, the only sounds were the dry bird-calls of old men selling peanuts, — Mani. . mani. . that and the sea. Now, after three days of rain, it was brown, green further out, and the horizon a hard line of blue against the gray sky. The steel braces of the pier were rusted to ankle thinness at the water line, and the sea crashed in around it against the seawall with merciless finality, piling its fullness into reckless weights of water and hurling that in, tirelessly. At first sight, that seawall looked ridiculous, a pitiful barrier which the sea could easily swarm over to obliterate this frail town. But again the water was abruptly smashed into whiteness and hurled back upon itself.

Otto, though as yet he did not know it, was on his way to Tibieza.

At that moment his airplane sat like a great sow on the field at New Orleans, bulging from end to end and barely containing the weight of its long belly from the ground. Otto was an even color of yellow. This was interrupted in his clean-shaven face by the two ghastly pits of his eyes, staring out in exhausted possession. His hands, both free and one noticeably whiter, both shook. He had imagined, at other times, himself outwitting scores of the finest minds of international detective forces, casually committing deeds of stupefying audacity, of inhuman daring. . (just then, as a uniformed porter passed, his hand shook so raising a cigarette to his lips that he rested it on his knee, and turned again to stare at the book he held propped against the chair arm).

He pressed his wrist against the bulge of his wallet, to assure himself that the crammed wallet, and his ticket for Balboa airport, in Panama, were still there. His flight was announced. He went out to the field. Mail was loaded. Luggage was loaded. A white-crated dog, spurting with excitement, was loaded. Startled by the immensity of the airplane as he stood beside it, the air and his whole inner body were suddenly shaken by another airplane taking off before him. Abruptly, then, the fury of the other rising airplane was gone; and a frail bird flew by, in silent dignity, and in the opposite direction.

Otto noticed that one wing of his airplane looked curiously bent. A man in uniform passed. Otto almost spoke to him about it, then caught himself. Or perhaps the man in uniform knew the thing was bent suicidally? did not intend to do anything about it? It would be quite a job, straightening it. Otto looked at his watch. Obviously there wasn't time. It looked tremendous.

The great body throbbed on the ground. He sat in the womb of this furious animal. Then worse, it moved across that ground with desperate purpose, angry to leave it. Something lifted it, and it roared away from the sane hardness of earth into nothing. Smoke swirled past the windows: not smoke, but a cloud. There were the clouds below, moving restlessly over one another while the absurd silver animal hung above them motionless. From it, Otto looked out on the white fields below in a nervous exhaustion at being so enclosed, as though, could he get out there and sit down for awhile, everything would be solved. But it went on, hanging without self-consciousness as though it had forgot this preposterous thing it was doing. Heavier than air, it tore into a cloud, angrily shook itself through, conscious again. Frail, wings quivering with effort as unnatural as the bird's glide is harmony, it shifted, dropped, scaled over shallow green water and came down on Mexico for a rest, recollected its fury, gathered it, and tore away from the ground again with the frantic speed of one possessed, afraid to look back, as though to hesitate, to doubt for an instant, would lose all that illusion was making possible.

Below the sea lay still and hard as a field of lead.

Otto looked behind. Reassuringly, the tail assembly was following, though he could not see its full profile broken by the figure clinging to it, throwing the plane off balance. Beyond lay that giant curve, two colors, nothing more, separated by the surface luster of their meeting: the quiet limit of the world? It went on suspended up there, finally over Guatemala, whose twisting highways looked to him like the course of his own life. Then on the right, alarmingly close, stood a volcano, losing its quiet smoke against the green sky. It stood out of space, in time like a thing seen in memory. Not to be touched or known in any way, it ignored him, beauty which would admit no tampering, to be lost in the horror of intimacy. With every effort of his eyes it grew less real, more distant, as the airplane flew on, like a fragment of time itself scrambling through eternity.

Several thousand sensible feet below, on what had appeared a surface of lead, the Island Trader trundled south-by-west on the surface of the Caribbean sea. This vessel was a bare two hundred feet long, and its dirty hull, which kept it to a speed of seven knots, drew thirteen feet of water. Twin screws labored it forward. It had been built in Copenhagen in 1924 as a private yacht. Some time since it had seen the Atlantic, or even the North Sea: sheltered by the chain of the Antilles, it fared nobly upon a sea whose surface was like glass, as the Caribbean was now. The Island Trader was returning from Florida, where it had carried seven thousand stems of green bananas. The Honduran mess boy stood on deck watching the sun set. Jutting from the porthole beside his head, long toes of one black foot engaged those of another in contest, tugging at one corned toe whose compatriots were busy protecting it. The boy seemed tempted to leave the sunset and attend this contest for the winner. From inside, a voice sang, — Littel girl, please leave my bachelor room. .

The sun had melted into the shape of a keyhole on the horizon, and the Island Trader moved as though enclosed by the sea and the dull beauty of the sky, with only a glimpse, through that open door, of the outside, real world o£ fire.

A shout of the mate's voice and the contest ended, abruptly the feet were withdrawn, to reappear a moment later in the door frame where Fuller paused to press them into shoes. — He callin me, Fuller said. — Mahn, I hope he not goin to be vexed again. This was because Fuller sat next to the mate, at the end of the table, at meals. Though immense bowls of mashed potatoes, platters of meat and fish, chops, croquettes, and many vegetables were served, the mate's diet never varied from pigs' feet, cooked roots, and banana chips. This'choice was all that reached Fuller, unless he interrupted the silent prandial industry beside him to ask for something else. When the mate was vexed, Fuller dared not hazard this interruption. He did his best with what was left in the three serving bowls, when the plate beside him had been loaded with pigs' feet, cooked roots, and banana chips. Such fare was difficult, for Fuller had no teeth. He had sold them in Tampa, Florida, to a rising young buck with social aspirations, left behind, like Crassus below, admonished, — Say, did the taste of gold make thy mouth good?