William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— San Clemente! she repeated fervently. — But it was the upper church you visited? Yes, with its lovely ceiling. We knew Prior Mul-looly so well, you know. It's comforting to know it's all owned by Dominicans. Poor man, martyred by being thrown into the sea with an anchor tied around his neck. But we hope you did not descend all the way? because someone (and she often spelled out words which she considered unsuitable when Hadrian was anywhere near), — someone has built a p-a-g-a-n temple right square underneath it. A smelly damp dark little stone room where they went to worship the sun. Wasn't that stupid of them? But of course, they were all repressed, weren't they. .

Here and there he saw the fat woman from the boat, clutching her three-penny pamphlet on the Modern Virgin Martyr, that or some other, clicking her Machine, and though he was relieved enough when she fled at the sight of him, he wished it might be with something less than the look of terror she wore when she did so. Once he saw Father Martin, coming out through the Bronze Door, and almost hailed him. But Father Martin was at that moment joined by another priest and the two went off with their heads nodding and bowed in convocation, leaving Stanley to stare at a pale girl carrying a copy of Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread.

He might have got down to work. He should have, since the day he hoped and now could plan on for playing his composition for the first time, in the church he had dreamt of unnumbered times, lay not far off. He even tried, once or twice, to sit down at the practice keyboard and go through the copying he had done on the trip over: but a minute after Stanley had sat down to the printed keys, staring at an empty wall in the room in Via del Babuino, the whole place seemed to sway, the flat keyboard to rise under his fingers, the wall itself to be studded with rows of rivets binding its overlapping plates. The fingers of both hands drew up in frail fists, and a rash of irrelevancies crowded his mind to obscure the idea that possessed it. Sensing mistakes in the work before him, he did not find them. He did not really seek them out in fact, but might suddenly look up with some memory in his mind like that of oriental carpets made with a conscious flaw, in order not to offend the creator of Perfection by emulating his grand design.

Thus the one hollow face his memory tried to force upon him was always promptly transfigured, quickly weighed with flesh to come up the fat woman, or something enough like her, refusing him, and leaving him with his anathema on his own lips, — et eum a societate omnium Christianorum separamus. . Or Father Martin, turning away, — et a liminibus sanctae Matris Ecclesiae in coelo, et in terra excludimus, et excommunicatum. .

— But dear boy, you can't want to go that Sunday, why that is the day of the canonization, this little Spanish martyr, and We have tickets. . you can't want to go to Fenestrula that Sunday. — But I do, I… that. . that's the day I want to… to celebrate my. . the canonization in my… in this way with my work, I… you understand, he finished abruptly with the appeal which never failed to her, for in a last resort of charity, Mrs. Deigh always "understood." He found himself spending more time at her place in the Via Flaminía; for though with her prominent nose she did not really resemble the fat woman from the boat, whose mean features clung desperately together as though in fear of being lost in the expanse of that face, there was a fullness in Mrs. Deigh's acceptance which counterbalanced and finally outweighed altogether. the distant rejection of the fat woman.

Stanley shifted on the edge of a Queen Anne chair, and hitched his shoulders up. The scapular which Mrs. Deigh had made herself, and given him, itched under his shirt. He caught the glare of Mrs. Deigh's wrist watch, and looked down at his own.

— Of course, dear boy, if it's what you want, she said, and sighed. — We know how important your work is, and that is as it should be, but We had hoped. . The chain rattled. -Yes, I…

— Well then, perhaps this afternoon We shall drive together to see Cardinal Spermelli, he was acquainted at Fenestrula. If We dare leave Our Hadrian for that long a time. . she added, and shook her head.

Hadrian was not, as Stanley vaguely suggested one day (thinking about something else) her son, but an aging bull terrier, once white, and now suffering a severe skin infection he'd got from a dye she used when she tried to make him match a yellow velours gown she often wore in public. Stanley had learned to watch his step around the place, after almost trampling the poor old fellow one day he was up and around, for though Hadrian wore a hearing aid and so certainly heard Stanley coming, he moved with that perilous assurance of old age everywhere, taking for granted that way would be made for him. Not that Stanley did not watch his step anyhow: he'd also come near enough to trampling Dom Sucio, and the look he got for that was tempered by anything but senile infirmity. It was in fact quite venomous. Now whether Dom Sucio had seen him, when he saw the little figure cavorting in a window display in the Corso Umberto costumed as one of the Nibelungs, in some sort of Wagncrian panorama got up for German and Scandinavian tourists, Stanley did not know, any better than he knew if he dared report it to Mrs. Deigh; for the little man certainly guarded his interest in her with as much jealousy as the Nibelungs showed for their treasure hoard, and he never failed to fix Stanley with a look which sent shivers down that un-Siegfriedian spine, as he did now, entering.

— Dear Dom! she cried, — We are off to see Cardinal Spermelli, We think Stanley will like him arid We know he will like Stanley, — he always likes young boys, especially musical young boys. Stanley simply cannot wait to see his area musarithmica. Is he well?

— His what? Stanley got in.

Dom Sucio sat down on a needlepoint footstool and shook his head gravely. — White ants, he said.

— What?

— White ants, dear lady.

— But Dom Sucio. . you told me that white ants had invaded the Vatican, the very Papal archives, but. .

— They have eaten through the six-foot thick wall of the Cortile del Pappagallo, they have eaten a number of books and a cardinal's ceremonial cape, and the Swiss guards have reported the spearhead of a new attack swarming across the very piazza of Saint Peter's.

— But Cardinal Spermelli?

— He complains of a feeling of burrowing in his right leg. He has worked for so long you know, dear lady, always seated in the same chair. The chair collapsed yesterday.

— Oh! Mrs. Deigh moaned, rising, — We hope it will not be as bad as the time he had the bee in his stomach. Come, come dear boy, she said to Stanley, and he followed her out.

— We do wish that you would get your hair cut, dear boy, said Mrs. Deigh as they set off.

It seemed advisable, under the circumstances, that Stanley wait for her in the Automobile. She was gone for a good half-hour inside the yellow portico where they stopped, and he sat patiently licking the ragged edge of his mustache in the Automobile's kaleidoscopic interior. At the foot of the large single seat, facing the peep-hole and oncoming traffic over the chauffeur's shoulder, was placed what appeared to be a prie-dieu. Its petit-point seat was even worked with the initials I H S, but this, Mrs. Deigh told him, was Hadrian's "little chair," and it was here that Stanley sat now, as the chauffeur helped her back into the car, and they set off again for the Via Flaminia.

After she had got settled, Mrs. Deigh handed him a letter, — for Fenestrula, dear boy. . And he could hardly thank her. But she sat staring up at the damask ceiling, clicking her teeth, so he tried to look out through one of the lighter portions of stained glass. Finally settled, with his knees drawn up under his chin, and staring as best he could through the Saint's breechclout in the martyrdom of Saint Stephen depicted on his right, as the car slowed, and halted in traffic, he suddenly cried out and almost went through the damask roof.