William Gaddis - The Recognitions

Like everything else, the road was flat stones turned up on edge for footing, and he was soon up behind the town. The only sound to reach him where he'd stopped was the regular tinkle of a bell, resting up against the jaw of a burro chewing somewhere near. He stood there as though this betrayal of rural tranquillity had engaged his whole attention, as though some innocent line from the Eclogues had turned up for the first time since he'd left Vergil behind in a dusty schoolroom and never read Latin again anywhere but on public buildings. It was an expression of rapt, almost beatified innocence, one seldom seen but on the faces of men carrying on some vile commission underhand, or something which they, for childhood's shame, consider vile. Then he realized that he was being watched.

An encounter with a lunatic in the wilds of Portugal is described somewhere by George Borrow, the figure discovered sitting alone, on a stone, and staring, as the most vivid interview with desolation that that intrepid spreader of the Gospel ever suffered: something like this froze the distinguished novelist now, looking up from the small cloud of steam he'd raised before him, to the figure seated motionless up the hill, outside the arch of a four-door square gothic ruin. It might once have been a tower, or a chapel, at this remove from the monastery below, or nothing at all to do with it. And sitting there staring down was Stephen. He hastened to button up the Irish thorn-proof trousers and approach with a greeting to belie his embarrassment.

— Look!

Startled, Ludy turned to look. Seeing nothing, he asked, — What?

— The sky. If no one ever painted it until El Greco did? Look at it, the Spanish sky.

And glad of an opportunity to escape the strained face and the eyes, Ludy stared out at the sky. He stared; and found himself trying to find something to fix his eyes upon, but every line led him to another, every shape gave way to some even more transient possibility. And he stood there trapped, between the vast spaces before him and the intricate response behind to which he almost turned, seeking some detail for refuge, when the voice in strained calm over his shoulder stopped him, gave him, at any rate, separate fragments to hang one sense upon while he suspended the torment of loss through the other.

— The Pleiades are rising, now, now is the time. The Greeks put to sea now, in their system of navigation this was the time they put to sea, with the Pleiades rising, and I have to go on. It wasn't so simple,

— I see, you're. . going away somewhere?

— My father was a king. Did you know?

— Oh? ahm, yes and. . Ludy fumbled. — Ahm, and where is he?

— Yes, where is he? "Kings should disdain to die, but only disappear" somebody said. He took me up like this once, and he showed me the world like this. Yes once, remember "I was that king, and all these things were mine! See, Ananda, how all these things are past, are ended, have vanished away, ."

And with this, Ludy was suspended, doubly bereft: the silence, untroubling a minute before, became as empty as the sky; and as he'd sought the sky with his eyes for something to fix them on, now he did that and listened too, for something to break through the tearful vacancy which was tolling his senses one by one until, in this absurd anxiety mounted in him from the consciousness at his back, he abruptly saw himself darting his eyes' attention everywhere, sniffing, clutching at anything, even grass, to taste, speaking to hear. — And where was that? he brought out listening. — Yes, where did you live? he waited, for any answer and getting none twisted about, ready to repeat the question with no reason but to rescue them both from silence, as a sound broke in his throat, to be swallowed, and he listened.

— I? in a world of shapes and smells. The things that were real to other people weren't real to me, but the things that were real to me, they. . yes they still are.

And listening, the strain in the voice was there but it was different, an extreme concern but without anxiety, intent, but without those shocks of frenzy which had backed him against the stones yesterday, in that cold cell where the eyes turned up from the canvas struck him back into the arms of the old man in the door. — I saw you this morning, looking out my window, what happened down there?

— I woke up and I thought it was evening, Stephen answered immediately, but then he paused, as though still uncertain and trying to remember. — And there was a sound of clanking and scraping, it sounded like the port of a ship swinging open and closed. It was strange, a strange feeling, I could almost feel the room roll and go. Then I reached out my right arm to straighten the shade on the floorlamp, it was crooked, but half the arm was asleep. Right along its length, and the tingling made me drop it, but I got it up again and I straightened the shade. But the shade kept quivering. When I let it go it kept quivering and that made me nervous, so I reached out to stop it again. But it kept quivering. I watched it, and I began to realize that it was quivering with a regular rhythm, a regular beat, and beat, and beat running through it, and I felt my heart pounding in the back of my head with that same beat. And then the whole table began to throb. When I looked at it it stopped, and when I looked away it began again. I closed my eyes. The only thing I knew was my heart beating as though it would break through my collarbones. And then I came out. I came out and the sky wasn't getting darker, it was getting light. I'd slept the night through there.

— Yes, you. . look rested. Ludy said that looking up at him intending, with the look confirming the word, to escape both; but the word — Rested! repeated, closed on him and he stared lost darting among the contrivances of the face before him, until it turned away, and released him on a hoarse whispered, — Rested?

— Yes, you were going into the church this morning? and then, the old man…

— He wouldn't let me in.

— Yes but. I shouldn't think he could tell you…

— Standing out there on the porch with his keys, he was looking at the dawn himself, and he wouldn't let me in. Rested? when I thought I'd found a place to stop. But he wouldn't let me in. What did you think we were doing, arguing, if he wouldn't let me in.

— Well to tell the truth. .

— All right, that's a way of putting it. "To tell the truth." All right but, finally if the things that were real to other people, weren't real to me? and if… never mind. But it almost ended that way. If he'd let me in it might have, ended that way.

— Why wouldn't he let you in?

— No, you don't understand? being real just like that? It wasn't so simple. "To tell the truth," I like that though. "To tell the truth. ." Listen, here's part of it: He sent me on. Go where you're wanted, he said.

— Yes, if you've. . killed a man. . Ludy withdrew slightly, — to give yourself up…

— Killed a man! that? That, that, there's no fruit of that. Killing a man, no that's got nothing to do, it ends right there. Stephen was looking down into the palms of his hands, trembling opened before him, the thumbs crooked in and the skin drawn tight bringing color to the lines: he looked, as though searching evidence for acquittal in hands which like the heart, knew their own reasons.

— 1 didn't mean. .

— What?

— But there was something else I meant to ask you, I…

— In a killing like that, you don't get permission, you don't seduce, you don't agree. You don't even touch. So there's no breaking faith theie. In a killing like that, they don't consent, he finished in a harsh decisive whisper, dropping his hands slowly, and then taking up again, his voice became clearer, the words more rapid working out their own logic. — Go where you've sinned, and give yourself up, do you think I mean the police? Why do you think he sent me away then, just like the old man sent me on. Do you think it's that simple? I did. And it wasn't. They wouldn't let it be, they weren't. . children. And now, to start it again. I've been a voyage, I'll tell you. . "To tell the truth. .?" yes, but not yet. I've been a voyage starting at the bottom of the sea. I willingly fastened the tail to my back, "I'll scratch your eyes till you see awry, and all you see will seem fine and brave. ." Good God, what a luxury he was! A journey like him sailing off the Cape forever, the Germans dressed that up, though, with a woman, but it's not that simple. Corne into Toledo at night, it's monstrous, with only the stars, the heaps of broken buildings, all weight and shadow, and you'll never see it that way again, after you've waked the next morning and walked through the town all laid out under foot in the daylight, and where were you wandering the night before? It's all different by daylight. Find Valencia, with the sky brocaded with fire, in the heat of the summer, there's a telephone exchange there Sangre, I liked that. The women fanning themselves in the trains, fanning down into their crowded bosoms, that old woman's face like La Mancha after the July harvest. There are pieces spread everywhere. "A souvenir of New York," he'd ask me for, or "Give me some money for medicine," always medicine, and he'd show me a swollen leg before he'd play the guitar, and say it was his heart gone bad, that old gypsy looking at my frayed cuff, and he said he could have it fixed nicely, he'd a friend a tailor. It fit him, too. Hiding money in another pocket at the last conscious minute, and then the next morning searching everywhere for it, the shame of it!. . and then finding it, so carefully put away, and out to celebrate the husbandry of the night before. Commuting between disasters, and always the land and the sky, and now, starting it again? I'll tell you how cold it is in the desert at night, and they think Africa's only the heat of the sun! I was only there because I wasn't anywhere else. You'd see a town with two walls overlapping, and a man disappear into the wall, everything regulated to the gait of a camel, an ass hobbled on a brown rock hillside and palms at the bottom. Do you wonder why I'm telling you all this? Do you believe me? Here…