William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— He's on, said Mr. Schmuck's assistant to Mr. Schmuck. Then he turned to Mr. Schmuck's musical director. — You're right. Verk-lärte. .

— You're right. Walpurgis. . Mr. Schmuck's musical director commenced.

— Shut up, said Mr. Schmuck, — so 1 could see the lady dancing.

Out there, she turned and bobbed an undulant front, blossoming at its tips in phosphorescent roses.

— What do you want to get mixed up in that for? It's the same goddam handkerchief and the same goddam cannonball in the same goddam vacuum.

— Travel, Ellery muttered. — See why the other half lives.

Six months: Elmira was one postmark, and her lips formed the words silently. The marking on the other letter was indecipherable, though the stamps were Spanish, and she held it up to the light, lips tightening as nothing interrupted the translucency but the jumble of a florid hand. There was no return on it. She put it aside, and took the first letter with her on her trip across the room, there to press it up under her armpit as she adjusted the radio with one hand, and tuned in her new hearing aid with the other. Then she sat down, resting her head back, lips twitching again on "six months," the letter gripped still unopened in her hand as the radio warmed up to Sweet Betsy from Pike sung in Yiddish, and she stared at a crack in the ceiling. By daylight, the crack appeared to have just lengthened another whole inch or even more, and Stanley almost bounded out of bed for his string measure. Then he sank back under the blanket (his sheet was packed), closed his jaws tight on the throbbing tooth to hold off the image it conjured as well as the pain, and then lay waiting, as though for instructions from above on something near at hand which he could not quite grasp, and with little time remaining him to do so. His forehead creased with the effort of trying to think clearly what it might be, and as the effort rose to that part of his face his jaws relaxed and immediately the pain in the tooth penetrated him sharply, and the image, close upon it, intruded.

Within the half hour, he was wandering among hospital corridors.

— But baby, taking that one to Is chia would be like taking an ow-wel to A-thens, he heard, approaching her door, and he stopped. — And don't permit me to leave without the key to my box, all those brrrr-beautiful things, I just couldn't show up over there na-ked.

He heard someone say, — Agnes, I'm glad you're all right. . and then,

— Baby do you call that all rwight? all strung up like an exhibi-bition in a shop window! Cru-wel boy!

Stanley stood there, after a glimpse at the group round her bed, pressing the deep pain in his jaw, listening.

— Arny baby you must try to stand up, or they'll put you in a little box here and you'll never never never see the normal outside world again. Arny-marney-tiddley-parney, what have you got in your pocket?

Then he heard her voice, giving someone an address, her mother's address, on the Via Flaminia in Rome.

— Rubbing alcohol! You should be spanked!

Stanley turned away with sudden resolution: he had heard of there being a chapel in Bellevue, and set off to look for it, rescued from the prospect of actually seeing her, by the more abiding, and surely more prudent reflection, that he might burn a candle for her recovery. And he was well on the way to doing so, moving through the corridors with apprehension, as though afraid of being hustled into a ward, or a straitjacket, himself. But as he came down that hall, where the three western faiths have their depots, he was stopped dead by an apparition in a red and white candy-stripe bathrobe emerging from the synagogue, her face so abruptly familiar, delicately intimate in the sharp-boned hollow-eyed virginity of unnatural shadows, like those priestesses ot Delphos in subterranean silence transfixing what might have been fear on a face in the light but there paralyzed in prophecy (until one of them was raped: then they were replaced by women over fifty). — Hello, Stan-ley, she greeted him as she had always, as a stranger whom she knew.

— But… I didn't kno\v you were. . Jewish? he said, and looked even more surprised, having meant to say, — I didn't know you were here. .

— It is so beautiful in there, she said, and smiled, as one foretelling death by falling pillars, death at sea.

Zealous, importunate, he pressed her. — But here? he recovered.

— She has always been just here, but just here, Stan-ley, she said to him; and then lowered her eyes and turned her face away. — But now they are going to send her away.

— When? he asked quickly.

— Yesterday, or today, so soon. She looked at him, in an instant looked about to cry.

— Where? Stanley asked her; but she looked at him. — Wait, he said, and started to speak rapidly. — You, you see you can come with me, yes, can't you, you can come with me. He took her wrist, and she looked at him. — You see because. . yes and then everything, then you'll be save. . safe I mean, you'll be safe. . Now. . wait, first. . He pressed the pain in his jaw, as though to communicate its urgency. — This, I have to take care of this first, I have to go to a dentist but then I'll come back and we, and you'll be… all right. You see I… we're going away. . The question lay only in his eyes, searching the large still pupils of hers.

After that he moved with compulsive certainty. And only on going through the pales outside, pressing his jaw but carrying his head up, and passing the delegation which had forestalled his intended visit, he remembered that he had not asked for his glasses and then, that he had not lit a candle.

— Arny-parney-tiddly-marney, he passed quickly, — stand up! What ever made you try and telephone your wife, even if the line was busy?

The telephone was still ringing when Maude got in. She'd heard it from the hall, and almost broke her key trying to fit it in upside-down.

— Yes, what? she said breathlessly into it, — I? Me?… As she spoke her eyes rose slowly to meet those of the figure gently swinging in the bedroom door. — But you. . why did you choose me? she brought out finally. — But no, no… no, she cried, and even with the last word the telephone was back silent where she'd got it, and she stood with her weight on it staring and still, as though supported by those eyes which held her across the room. It was only in wilting, as the energy which the telephone, so long silent, had flooded her with, ebbed away, and she came to rest in her spinal support with a twinge, that the bond of their eyes broke, and she ducked round the suspended figure, into the bedroom to take off her coat. And the baby hung there, sitting silent in a sort of breeches buoy which she had made from a pair of Amy's shorts and some cord, a breeches buoy pulling neither to ship nor shore, moving gently, never more than enough to intensify the repose of its occupant whose only activity was to fix Maude and hold her with clear blue eyes.

In the bedroom she stood looking vacantly at the thing curled on the dresser top: only that morning, trying to find her bank in the telephone directory, she had come helplessly upon the Guarantee Truss Company, thrown the book down, and never called to find what remained of her tiny bank balance. And here the thing lay, a circle of swathed steel tapered, to broaden an end in a cushion which rose just enough from the top of the chest to liken it to an open hood, and the whole tensely coiled length a cobra in devious wait: and she hurried past it jabbing a hand to the light switch.

The kitchen sink was stacked with dishes. On her way in there with the baby, she tripped over a pair of Arny's shoes which she kept out, empty, in the middle of the floor.