William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Something bit her, perhaps, she said at that moment, answering a question from the man half turned from Stanley, and a reproachful smile touched her face, still looking down. Then they were both silent. He only appeared to have glanced at her, and he went on, staring straight ahead.

— Of course Huki-lau isn't dead, she's. . The tall woman whispered something. — Which is just as bad. / don't see how it happened, she's had her belt on every minute she's been over here. There was a goat, in Spain, though, with designs on her. You could see in his eyes.

— How tired you look, like he looked sometimes, like an old man, with nothing left before you to regret. And are you old? or are the scars still unhealed down your front. Raise your left hand. . you can't, it sits there relishing another scar. She laughed, a sharp sound, and left it between them, looking at her own hands on the table. She was wearing a simple dark gray suit, with a long unbroken skirt and a short cape. She had nothing on her hair.

He muttered something.

— What? You're joking. And she laughed again. His right hand had come down on the table, and she took it in hers, and laid her left hand over both. Still, he appeared to bite the gold seal ring on the other, staring ahead.

— Still…

— Today? In Assisi, she went through and through and through the gate. No one appeared in person, granting indulgences. No one, in a "heavenly brightness shining," no one, do you remember? When no one was at the door? Now granting indulgences, O friars minors, is he in Purgatory if he drowned? Down, on a rope, did he tell you that story? Drowned, in the celestial sea come down the rope to. undo the anchor caught there on a stone with no one's name on, and a date, inclined against the bottom by the darkness, and so no wonder that the anchor caught, and he came down the rope. If there were time…

— Listen. Just tell me. .

— More you know? His blood on the leaves, I saw it. But no thorns? that's someone else then, for I saw him delivered, down. Yes, streaked with no one's oil and delivered, down, that damned black androgyne who held him back and lost him, down. .

— I may not see you again.

She did not raise her eyes.

Stanley swallowed with self-conscious effort and pretended, to himself, to find his place in the book before him. At another table, a group had settled to worry the most recent dogma, that of the Assumption. One of them said, — There's a perfectly good scientific explanation…

— And then when we drove back, a monk drove with us. She had her belt on then, but I didn't watch. .

— She would have died of asphyxia at fifty thousand feet.

— You hear things, about life in monasteries.

— Or if she'd gone fast, burned up like a meteor.

— Will you marry her?

Stanley looked up at that, eyes wide but the lids drawn upon them in disbelief, as though trying to hide what he heard from himself; and hide what he saw, for her eyes were wide, and no lids discernible.

— Marry you! the man said, and he withdrew his right hand from under hers.

— All right, Mary was a Jew, wasn't she? A Jewish woman, if she went bodily to heaven, how does she eat?

— This little piece of dirt, enclosed in lifetime plastic forever. Does a plastic lifetime last forever?

— Is there a kosher kitchen in heaven?

— You see, he put it there, and he did not take it away. Stanley stared at her. His own expression, and even the movement of his hands, commenced to follow hers, then those of the man when he answered, then his face hers and his hands those of the man, except intricate muscles tried round the edges and round the eyes, and the corners of his mouth, to rescue his own face from that unguarded openness, and his hands quivered.

— Marry you! Me!

— For he put it there, and did not take it away as he promised, as he always had done before, as he promised.

— Me!

— Take the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. You try to preserve Mary from the taint of Original Sin, then what about Elizabeth? You can go all the way back.

— Of course we met the people who make these things. Religious novelties, and mostly plastic. And she even admitted openly she was a convert. But my husband can tell a Jew a mile away.

— So Mary Herself told Saint Anthony of Padua her body remains incorruptible in Heaven.

— Saint John of the Cross said. .

— Listen! Listen…

— Where there is no love…

— This is the last time I will see you.

— But why do you do the things you do? Why do you live the life you live?

Stanley watched his shoulders hunch forward, watched one hand grip the other, and though he could not see the watery blue eyes, his own by now lay open with the same implications of desire as those wide dark eyes he sought.

— Because… do you understand? the Cold Man said, speaking with quiet clarity for the first time, — because any sanctuary of power. . protects beautiful things. To keep people… to control people, to give them something. . anything cheap that will satisfy them at the moment, to keep them away from beautiful things, to keep them where their hands can't touch beautiful things, their hands that. . touch and defile and. . and break beautiful things, hands that hate beautiful things, and fear beautiful things, and touch and defile and fear and break beautiful things. .

— Oh no, she said to him.

— Because there are so few. . there is so little beauty, there are so few beautiful things, that to preserve them, to keep them. .

— But to make more. . beautiful things?

As they looked at each other, Stanley looked at them both, helplessly suspended between their eyes, waiting for what each sought in the other.

— Now… if there were time. . she said softly.

— And you are going into a convent, you are going into that. . that life, he insisted suddenly, and she shrugged her shoulders, looking down once more.

— Or what other? For there she will become a bride.

— Tomorrow, yes it's arranged, an audience, it's the best thing, tomorrow.

— So soon!

— Tomorrow, yes. It's all arranged.

— Tomorrow she will. . kiss the Fisherman Ring? If there were time, to ask him questions about Purgatory.

— I had a book of his once, by mistake…

— To kiss Saint Peter in the Boat, tomorrow?

— Here you are! Listen, listen to this, this letter from my wife, Don Bildow burst out, dropping square in front of Stanley at the table.

— No, no, no. .

— Listen. My daughter was all swollen up when I left, remember? And we thought it was… we didn't know what it was, remember? Well do you know what it was?. . what it is? She's pregnant! That's what this letter from my wife says, and she's only six. Do you hear me? What am I going to do? What are you looking at me like that for?

Stanley was silent, he was staring at Bildow's face, but vacantly, as though far beyond it. — It's the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli.

— But have you read Justine? In that he desecrates the wafer right inside her.

— Give me that! Give me that thing! Don Bildow snatched the book from Stanley's lap.

— My husband's sitting up in the hotel room now, with a book by some laousy Chinaman, and a bottle of Scotch.

An Italian boy entered and joined the next table, where he offered a group of American tourists for sale.

Further on, two American senators were drinking whisky and arguing whether or not Sweden had a king.

— He says he's practicing the gentle art of sitting and forgetting. My God, I'm tired.

Don Bildow was trying to tear the book up. First he tried to break the spine, but he could not. Then he got half the pages in one hand, but he could not tear them. Finally he held the book against him, and started to rip out about ten pages at a time. The table behind his narrow back was empty, and then Victoria and Albert Hall, and Rudy, and Sonny, and Buster, and Big Anna, the Swede, and two others descended on it, and set to discussing the problems of the train trip to Paris, if Rudy and Frank were both in states of Grace they could not share the same compartment. The pages continued to rip. A faint male voice protested, — Caprew. . A woman's voice said, — Kike. Don Bildow sat at the table ripping the pages out of the book, about five at a time.