William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— The whole cabin was filled with the most God-awful stench, said the tall woman sitting over an aperitif nearby, — simply all his vitamin B pills had melted. He takes them for hangovers.

A girl to his right said, — All the drawers were full of empty Bromo bottles when she left. Have you read this? It's Firbank.

Then just as Stanley was about to step forward, a man with a smooth unpliant oriental face, tight but not tense, and moving only faintly at the corners of the mouth as he approached, came forward from another table. He was quite short, and wore a trench-coat. They greeted one another with apparent surprise, and the man in the trenchcoat started to speak as he sat down.

— Fenn és. .

— Speak English, you idiot. .

At the sound of that voice, even muffled as it was behind the clasped hands, Stanley remembered, and his lip trembled. The whole night came back to him, and he lowered his face and sat down half behind the column, opened Anselm's book and stared at a page: "If we had stopped for even a minute then, a minute of silence. ." He closed his eyes tightly, and his head was filled with the roar of the subway train. Now he almost drew his hands up to find if his shirt was unbuttoned, to button it as he had been doing then; instead he only shivered, as he had been shivering then, and as a woman's voice near him came out with, — There are little electric lights on the graves, and you pay by the hour, just like they were candles burning down. . Stanley heard echo the voice of the woman on the subway embracing him and the man who stood with the handkerchief before his mouth, as he sat with hands clasped there now. — Up where Keats is buried, or is it Shelley?. . Her voice, and the tangled mass from under her skirt embracing them both in the intimacy of horror, out onto the platform where the liquid blue eyes froze above the white handkerchief: —Those, my dear young man, are the creatures that were once burned in witch hunts. .

— The stench, everywhere. .

Stanley wiped his face with his hand, as he had done that morning, waking suddenly, looking at the palm, dropped it, and listened.

— It could not have been more simple, more inviting, the man in the trenchcoat was saying in a low tone. — He invited me there, in fact, to see the mummy. He had made one himself for me! Oh, but with such ingenuity, it was really a masterpiece. .

— Really, my dear fellow. .

— I confess I did not have heart to finish our business so immediately, I spent a few minutes congratulating him. He became very angry when I appeared to question the. . authenticity? of this thing, but he was very proud. I saw in his eyes, he was very proud, when we finished our business together.

They sat silent for a moment, and the man in the trenchcoat twitched a little at the corners of his lips, gazing at the ceiling, as though he were fondly recalling some pleasant encounter with the past. Then he shrugged, and added, — The Spaniards, however, they are not. . sane, of course.

The man with him had hardly moved, except to shift an elbow to make way for a glass on the table before him. He sat staring past the door of the cafe from vacant light blue eyes.

— You don't look well, said the other. — You are more haggard than when I saw you, over there.

— I don't sleep well.

— You did not sleep well then.

— Even as well as… then. — Cigarette? — No.

— You no longer smoke.

— No.

After a minute of solicitous silence the man in the trenchcoat said, — And you do plan to go back? He got no answer but a faint nod. A waiter appeared with more wine, and some Gorgonzola cheese. — Yes, you are then? certain you want to go back? For there is still time. .

— What. . business is it of yours! Certainly I'm going back. Still he barely turned his face from the hands clasped before it, for this outburst of impatience, and quickly muffled them there again.

— Your lip is badly scarred? The man in the trenchcoat twisted again round the ends of his mouth. — You know it can be fixed, of course, he murmured, listening, watching with glittering eyes.

— What did you mean by that? Going back, why not. What did you mean?

The shoulderstraps on the trenchcoat shrugged slightly. — Nothing. Of course, rumors?

— Yes, yes, yes, the other whispered with sharp impatience behind his hands. — And after your reports, eh? Watching over me. . yes, little things like, the moment I show some dismay over our paintings being dumped for dollars, did you tell them that too?

— Please, of course. .

— Yes, which proved conclusively that I must be working for the restoration of the crown. . aphhh. . this kind of logic. . Certainly I'm going back, why not? where. . what else? he whispered staring straight ahead. Then he lowered his eyes slowly, and sat studying the cheese on the plate at his elbow.

— Of course, I meant to say, I understand you. .

— Of course, you explained that once. No. .

— I meant only to say, things there are not going well, nothing is going well there. Everything there, the corruption has spread. . His voice tailed off, he sat silent with his small glittering eyes, startled when the cheese was suddenly pushed toward him with an elbow.

— There, try some of that, taste it, corruption put to good use. .

And they were silent again, the man in the trenchcoat did not touch the Gorgonzola, finally he said, — Tomorrow? There is one more? they told me, a priest?

— Dressed like one.

— And you, you will indicate him to me, you will not mistake him?

— Yes I, I'll point him out to you. I won't mistake him, his companion muttered behind his hands, drew them aside and appeared to spit something from the end of his tongue. — If you think you can take care of it then, on the street, in daylight?

— Of course. . the man in the trenchcoat murmured, then, — A Veres költö. . you remember that. .?

— You? The clasped hands fell away for a moment, with a sparkle of gold, and the scar on the lip drew it into what appeared to be a sneer. — The poet stained with blood!. . He drew his hands up again.

— Or. . you?

— Enough. .

— You will be on the train tomorrow night?

— Yes.

— I should like a last good dinner, before we go back. Eh? The Piccolo Budapest? Eh?

— Yes. Early. About seven.

— You are. . going back, then? the man in the trenchcoat said, and studied the profile beside him.

— Yes, yes, and now good night. Good night.

— The personal affairs no longer take precedence, eh? Good night. Until tomorrow? Under Saint Peter's Umbrella. . eh?

Stanley looked down at his book quickly.

— And have you ever seen anything so frankly hideous as this, the tall woman's voice took up. — A piece of dirt enshrined forever in clear lifetime plastic. My God!. . with a certificate of Miraculous Origin and the Seal of the Church. A piece of dirt from the church of Cana in Galilee, where they turned wine into water, my God. My husband's picking up all sorts of things, you can see the state he must be in after what happened to Huki-lau. .

A distant voice said, — I don't care if Joan of Arc was a witch, that hasn't a thing to do with it…

And another, — Of course everyone knows that the Franciscans were canonized for the very things the Waldensians were burned alive for. .

And then Stanley looked up as though he had been struck. A waiter stood before him, and he whispered, — Cafe, hoarsely, trying to look round the dirty apron to where the voice had come from he had so certainly heard. When he saw her, she was already seated, and although so close, in the chair which the man in the trench-coat had left, she had not seen him, and she did not look round, but down at her hands on the table. At that instant Stanley might have leaped up, or cried out, or simply spoken beginning with some overladen conjunction, as though to continue a conversation of minutes or hours before: and it was not her company that stopped him but the absolute, absolved quiet on her face, in spite of the small sore which disparaged the delicate line of her lip.