William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Why am I here? I'm here because I'm not any place else. Now look. .

— Now listen, you and me. . Wait! What are you doing? You don't want to open the windows. .

Nevertheless, the floor-length windows were swung open, and the sounds of Alphonso del Gato rose to them, mounting on a chorus of Francisco alegre. . ole!

— You don't want to get mixed up with that flashy piece of goods down the hall, Mr. Yak repeated, addressing Stephan's back, at the windows. — See?

Nevertheless, awhile after everyone else had lunched on garlic soup, a simple cocido, dead fish, and an orange, and the blue angora sweater nowhere in sight in the small dining room, Mr. Yak, slipping down the passage between doors closed upon afternoon slumber, glanced in the dining room, and there saw his friend at a table, the blue fluff catercorner. She was biting his thumb.

Reproach filled Mr. Yak before he knew it, and he almost mistook his step; but there would be time enough for all his words of rebuke, warning, and censure: now there was work ahead, and he hurried toward it, feeling chilly and grown old.

As for Marga, she was a discreet person: there was a building in the Calle Ventura de la Vega where, up a flight, a dim shuttered room afforded but one furnishing above necessity, a mirror, mounted along the length of the bed, which that afternoon reflected with a fertile vigor undiminished by repetition liberties taken upon every natural part of her but her coiffure, though that, to be sure, was a crown of artifice whose consequent fragility she had good reason to protect: only in descent from the exposed and cultivated brow did the remontant powers of nature prove how, as the poet wrote, the natural in woman closely is allied to art.

— I saw you. . Mr. Yak said that evening, standing in the spotted robe, holding his hair in his hand before him, and he looked weary. His day had been a busy one, inveigling the old párroco on the one hand, fending off the importunate Señor Herrnoso Hermoso on the other. But more than the day's fatigue showed on him. The instant he pulled off that shock of black hair, a heavy decade of years weighed his shoulders down, and now his eyes, as though another day's application had exhausted their glitter, showed with a dullness which, but for the impatient promptings of his voice, might have been construed as disappointment. — Listen, we… we have work to do, and you, behaving like this, it's like cutting your nose off in spite of your face, he said. — You're not a bum.

— Stephan.

— What?

— No, I… I just said that, I just called you that, so you'll get used to it. Mr. Yak lowered his eyes wearily, to the floorboards whose different lengths effected an unsteady parquet.

If the orange-colored cloth of that coat could be so quickly supplanted in memory by its leopard collar at full length, both disappeared from attention and memory alike when the coat was drawn open and nothing but Marga beneath it, for she wore it as a robe de chambre, or rather de couloir, on that last-minute trip between her room and the toilet, managed, like all of her public appearances, with a decorum which greatly enhanced her license in private. There, except for the armoire across the room mounting something the proportions of a pier glass which would have demanded taxing, if not unnatural, exertions, for its full employment, there was no mirror in her room to confirm one sense in what four others were making possible, no confirmation for that most immediate sense, that most used, most depended upon, most easily deceived, none but her lips too close, separated, teeth biting silence, and eyes demanding correspondence in closing.

— I heard you. . Mr. Yak said next day. — I heard you in there last night. And now look at you, look at your eyes, you're getting this French influenza like everybody's getting, that ought to put you in bed a while and take care of yourself, see? Because in a day or two we're going to bring it in, for the mummy, see?

If she heard the heart pounding in the dark, or felt it shaking the whole frame she embraced, every beat splitting the head she held between her hands, the jaw rigid then shivering on gasps for breath, while every beat of the heart surged the flow more weakly and ebbed to withhold the life she drew forth, she gave no sign of knowing in the dark, the first time, the second, the third and her knee raised to manage gently insistent manipulation with her toes, to continue the rehearsal and then in a rush repeat the performance, no more sign than the animal trainer putting the sick dog through its paces.

Two days later, when Margà had left for the country (a family wedding), Mr. Yak had his arrangements almost made. The párroco in San Zwingli was properly awed, the sacristan thoroughly intimidated, and Señor Hermoso Hermoso, convinced with such happy importance that he knew what was going on, had given up trying to find out. He had even at one point, and quite unwittingly, put Mr. Yak onto something most pertinent to the project, in a casual cafe conversation which turned to a local method for aging fine lace, a process Mr. Yak now considered employing to add some dozens of centuries to the linen bandaging, before it was finally baked on.

— So what we want to do, we want to bury it somewhere, in the ground, see? Listen. . are you listening, Stephan? How do you feel, you feel better? Listen, then what you want to do, you go there where it's buried, and wet it down, see? You know what I mean, wet it down? I mean, like. . like you stand over it and wet it down, see? You do that a lot of times, then you dig it up and hang it in the sun, and it's got that nice yellow aged color that makes it look real old, see? You listening? Come on, get your head out of under the covers. You got to come out with me and buy this linen bandaging so we get the right kind. See? Come on. You feel better. You're all well now. Come on, get your head out of under the cover.

The mound on the bed shifted, but remained silent, and Mr. Yak leaned forward to put a kindly hand on what he believed to be a shoulder. There was a growl from inside.

— Come on, you want to come out in the fresh air will do you more good than this here. . Mr. Yak shook the mound, and the growl grew louder. Finally a cautious aperture appeared, with an eye behind it, and a clear voice said, — Go away.

— Good. You're not in a delirium any more anyway, Mr. Yak said, letting go the shoulder, and he sat down beside the bed, re- lieved. For these past two evenings, Mr. Yak had returned wearied enough with the work of the day, to the even more taxing demands of this friendship he had formed from the depths of what he could by now believe to have been the kindness of his heart. And just as there could be no doubt, after touching his forehead, but that Stephan had been ill, there was even less doubt of his delirium after listening to his conversation: Salamanders and Sylphs, and Mermaids, a regular Carnival, but wait, not carne vale. . Ave carne!. . Salve!. . macte virtute esto! — Did you want me to end like Descartes, then? Larvatus prodeo, retiring to prove his own existence, and he kept a Salamander. She came to visit him like mine did then. But now. . Copulo, ergo sum. Eh? Carne, O te felicem!

And Mr. Yak had shaken his head, and muttered something about "that flashy piece of goods down the hall," at which he was instantly threatened with blindness as happened to Stesichorus, — for slandering Helen.

— What an affliction, Mr. Yak muttered, but to himself, and thinking of himself, not Stesichorus.

— Why, proving one's own existence, you'd be surprised what a man will do to prove his own existence?. . pursued Mr. Yak out the night before, crossing himself. — Why, there's no ruse at all that people will disdain, to prove their own existences. .