William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— You've only got two cameras up there? Morgie asked. They stood looking at three selective screens. Ellery nodded. — I don't think I'd call this even a B show, even for morning, Morgie said.

He was watching the close-up screen where a four-year-old girl, extended at the practice rail, smiled a personality smile into the wrong camera. Ellery looked at his watch.

— And look. What the hell are they doing now, is this part of this show? Ellery was watching that screen, where the facade of an ugly church quivered into focus. The image moved to the squat steeple, and turned up to follow the spire to its top. — There's a guy up there, there's a guy climbing up it…

Someone handed Ellery a telephone. — That's right, telephoto on number one as soon as you get number two camera set up down in the street, got me? Cut an announcement in right now, got me? First-hand coverage of a stark human drama, take it from there. Get the church in, nice if you can get a shot of the service going on but don't bust that up, got me? That's it, that's it… he went on, watching the screen. — Lift it a little, get the bells in…

— See if they can get the whole goddam cross in, Morgie whispered.

— Ladies and gentlemen, Necrostyle, the modern scientific aid to civilized living, interrupts its regular program, Today's Angels, to bring you on-the-spot coverage of a stark human drama. .

The close-up screen flashed into life again with the figure of a man mounting the shingled spire toward the cross. Ellery stood silent, gripping the telephone. — But wait a minute, he said. — Wait a minute. .

— Let it roll, let it roll, Morgie said beside him. — It's terrific.

— Wait a minute. .

— You can almost see the sweat on his face, Morgie said beside him. — Coming over like a dream.

— It's too bad they didn't get some pancake on him before he went up, said the old Alabama Rammer-Jammer man. — But that light blue necktie…

— That light blue necktie. .

Morgie took a step closer to the screens. He held his breath. When he realized that the man beside him was holding his breath, he commenced to breathe self-consciously. The man beside him realized this, and he commenced to breathe self-consciously.

Then at the same instant they both stopped breathing again.

— Our camera seems to be having some difficulty. . We're sorry, friends, but because of the crowd which has gathered in the immediate vicinity there on the sidewalk it looks like we are going to be unable to bring our camera in for a close-up. .

— Like a dream, said Morgie, as they breathed again.

When the scene was obliterated in favor of a sleek-haired oily countenance, they turned to one another. — Where's Ellery?

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— Where's Ellery?

In the background, an electric organ played The End of a Perfect Day.

… no harmful after-effects. For men and women over forty, start living again, with Pubies. .

— He must have gone out, do you think it got him down?

And so remember, friends, when you come to the end of a perfect day. .

They went out to the bright corridor where, after a moment, Ellery appeared from an office. He was walking very slowly and staring at the floor. — I just had to see B.F. for a minute, he said when they joined him, and he stood there by the door and lit a cigarette.

— Like a dream, Morgie congratulated him. But Ellery did not raise his eyes. From the office they could hear a voice. It was B.F. on the telephone. — Hello, hello Ben? Listen, there was a jump a few minutes ago, it… what? No, this was a man, off a church up in the Bronx, he… Yeah, that's the point, it was one of our own men, a guy named Benny. . what? I don't know, something must have went wrong. I know you can't hush it up, but try to keep us out of it… Yeah, they can play up this other one then, the woman. . Inside the office B.F. hung up the telephone. He stared vacantly for almost a full minute. Then he clicked his lips and took out a cigar.

Ellery blew a heavy ring of smoke toward the floor. It rolled, getting larger, dropping more slowly, and settled round the toe of his shoe.

All this time Morgie was talking. — You handled it beautifully, it came over like a dream. But look, what's the matter, did it upset you? A thing like that? Look at it this way. Those things happen. This happened. We happened to be there. What the hell, it's all in a goddam day's work. Come on, he said as they started to walk down the corridor. Ellery dropped his cigarette and paused to step on it. — Come on, I'll buy you the best lunch in town. You'll bounce back.

— Twenty-one? said the Alabamarammerjammerman.

— Twenty-one Ellery?

— Twenty-one. One after another the flashbulbs burst and, in the gray light of that day, seemed each time to arrest an instant of riotous motion as lightning freezes motion and then, in the dark again, the persistence of vision retains that imaee of abandon which could not have sustained itself, as it did here, on the winter pavement, alter the newspaper photographer had bundled up his equipment and hurried into the hotel, hoping to make the sporting final.

The morning mail was late, for the falling body had struck the mailman, setting off a pattern of inconvenience which intruded upon many loutines. Outside that hotel of faded Edwardian elegance which, having become a landmark, was about to be torn down, the body lay in a pose of reckless flamboyance, a gratuitous gesture annoying such passers-by as the tall woman who was leading a poodle and saying to a friend, — Her name is Huki-lau, that means fish-picnic in Hawaiian, isn't that cute? She used to bite her nails right down to the quick, analysis is doing her a world of good. Oh God! Look! No, don't look.

Discovered breathing, she was taken away on a stretcher instead of the pinewood crate which was already half unloaded.

The hotel room itself proved so rewarding that the newspaper photographer telephoned for more flashbulbs, and asked the city desk to send over somebody with shorthand. He said the reporter with him had just been taken sick by the fumes. Then he hurried back down the hall, took a deep breath, and entered that melange of smoke, whisky, and roses, where he paused only to sweep some of the letters into a pile with his foot as graphic witness to the story which would say that they were ankle-deep all over the room. The bottles he did not have to rearrange at all, their hollow necks protruded everywhere. As for the roses, he could not have done a better job if he'd taken a month to it. They were festooned dead, dying, and two or three dozens still in bloom, wherever that desperate ingenuity could contrive, and the hand reach. — Roses… he would say later (when someone was trying to recall a line of poetry that contained "Roses, roses. ." to use in the caption), — Roses till hell wouldn't have them. The bathroom, especially, was entirely transformed. There was no place to sit down at all.

But when he returned to his office, the newspaper photographer found an atmosphere of tense gloom which even his prize plum could not dispel. The managing editor, the feature editor, and the foreign editor were all gazing at a story from their own columns. There were two pictures: in one, a little girl in long white stockings; but they were looking at the other, a man with a round face whose limp flabby quality was belied by an exquisite mustache and penetrating eyes beneath a sharply parted widow's peak. — That bastard, one of them muttered, and which one was not clear, for all of their expressions reflected the same feeling. — That dago bastard.