William Gaddis - The Recognitions

the Holy Ghost by Jan van Eyck), were found in the trunk of a car in Chicago. Far across the sea, the axiom that aesthetic value is not enhanced by ownership was once more disproven: a caretaker of the Victoria and Albert Museum had in twenty-three years taken home nineteen hundred and sixty objets d'art hidden in his trouser-leg.

Spring came everywhere, as though for the first time.

And for the first time, civilized use was found for the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, where a native son hurled himself effectively down the slope of two-ton blocks. In South America, with seventeen dead and 4,990 in need of medical attention after Rio de Janeiro's pre-Lenten festivities, Holy Week itself moved toward a comparatively peaceful close. Three hundred lepers were reported marching on the capital city of Colombia from their colony at Rio Agua de Dios. Nine Pilgrims were trampled to death, and twenty-five injured, jamming the gates of the Shrine of Chalma in Mexico. A Baptist minister in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, burned two copies of a new revised version of the Bible because it substituted the words young woman for virgin, and a Lutheran minister said they were both wrong: the word should be maiden. In Chicago there was a crime every 12.5 minutes. Some chickens exploded in a town near Hanover, Germany (they had eaten carbide dropped by British troops on maneuver and drunk water). The Sheik of Kuwait asked that posters portraying the Venus de Milo not be shown in his domain, not prudish about her undraped bosom, but because Islamic law punishes the thief by chopping a hand off. The right arm of Saint Francis Xavier arrived in Japan by air. In Moscow, Pravda asked, Where has Noah's Ark disappeared?

In Hungary's capital, the newspaper Esti Budapest complained that children were not being taught to read and write in the state welfare schools: a painful confession, in the face of the strides being made in progressive education by her most redoubtable political antagonist, so far off, in the New World, where that intrepid young patriot at the Essex County Boys Vocational and Technical High School in Newark, New Jersey, soared to new heights of enthusiasm when asked to write his country's national anthem, . the Stears Sbangle baner.

Oho see can you sing by the doon ter lee rise Who's so brightly prepaid as the twiylight least evening. Who saw stars and bright strip threw the merilla file Where the ram what we watch where so ganley strening And the rock that red clar bom boosting in air Gave thru thu'r the nite that are flage was stild their Oo sake of that stear sparkle baner yet quake Over the home of the free and the land of the grave.

+ In a corridor outside a private room in the Z— hospital in

Budapest, two doctors talked.

— Napok óta nem aludt.

— Hetek óta.

— Seconal, Lurninal, Somnadex, mindent megprobáltunk. Meg amerikai szereket kényszerüsegükben.

— And you still do not sleep? said the man in the trenchcoat, inside.

— No.

— Your voice is clear, not strong perhaps but clear. He stood with his plump hands clasped behind him, looking out the window, his back to the figure on the bed. When he turned, the round flare of the trenchcoat's skirt broke unevenly in front with the weight of the pistol in the pocket. — And the eyes are clear, he went on, — not strong perhaps, but clear.

— Yes, the eyes, the voice. . my mind is clear, everything is clear but if I, cannot sleep? Everything is clear, my mind has never been more clear, do you hear me? My mind has never worked faster or… or more clearly, but this. . this. . without sleep, thinking, thinking, but none of it… without sleep?

— They say it cannot last very much longer, the man in the trench-coat said, and shrugged his shoulders slightly. The corners of his lips twitched, but otherwise his expression did not change at all.

There was no pillow on the bed, and the head lay back, the chin thrust upward and the whole profile sharp and hard in its features. The hands lay separate on the counterpane.

— Nincsen oka. . the words of one of the doctors drifted in.

— Yes, there's no reason, it isn't reasonable that. . there's no reason, no reason! he brought out gasping, the watery blue eyes still on the white ceiling, a vein at the temple showing itself in throbbing. — Someone laughed, he gasped after another moment, — the Hapsburg lip, yes! We did our work there, you did didn't you? You did meet Martin, in Rome?

— On the street "in broad daylight." It was the work of a moment, the man in the trenchcoat shrugged again, rounding out the circle of his skirt as he lifted the weight in the pocket, coming closer to the bed. — How loose the ring is on your finger, he said. — You will lose it.

— Don't. . touch me, don't. . don't be so close!

He looked down for a moment longer at the face almost full before him, the strength in the profile gone, drained out through the narrow chin. Then he returned to the window murmuring, — A pretty thing, the ring, the gold. And your family crest, in America?

— My family crest in America is… hahhgh, my family crest, eh? Eh, my dear fellow? Remember? remember saying "Thank God there was the gold to forge"?

— You should not try to laugh so, said the man at the window.

— Eh? eh? my family crest in America, eh? Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequiores. . eh? We cannot insure against inherent vice. No, damn it, I'll have it through, this time. You see? You see how clear. . how clear my mind is? But still with no reason. . no reason, it can't… t… He had struggled to raise his head; and then he cried out rigid with terror, gripping the neatly folded counterpane at his chin. — There! there! take it… His voice abruptly regained peremptory control, but he spoke the three words as one, — Take-it-away. . take-it-away. .

The man in the trenchcoat stood over him. — But. . what? All he saw was a delicate coil of hair on the white sheet drawn quivering up to the chin, and idly he reached to remove it.

— Yes yes that, take it away take it away…

With his other hand the man in the trenchcoat signaled the figures in the door, where a doctor spoke to the priest who had just entered, — Nincsen oka nem aludni. .

— What is it, what is that smell, oil? oil? what is it, where is it?

— Of course it has not been easy, but we have arranged that a priest comes to see you.

— Yes, yes here, here he is, yes but no reason, it can't. . no! no!

— Nézzen rá, nézzen a szemére…

— … indulgeat tibi Dominus. .

— Do you remember? Aut castus. . Martin? Martin? damn it, damn you, do you remember! Aut castus sit aut. . aut. . yes, sit aut pereat, you see? how clear my mind is? Aut castus. . you see?

— Nincsen oka, nincsen oka, nincsen oka…

— … deliquisti per oculos. .

— Martin! Martin! Damn it! Damn you! You see, how clear. . do you remember? Be pure or perish, aut. . aut pereat, do you see?

— Quidquid deliquisti per manus. .

—. . et pereat! do you see?

On a caned veranda, Fuller blew a slow cloud of cigar smoke at the rising sun. From this bungalow, situated at an extreme end of what had recently become the Pilot Project, he could see the sun both rise and set, and greeted both occasions in this same manner.

But finally the sun was full in the sky, and still the usual figures did not appear, the pale young man with an arm in a sling who set his helpers a slow pace, approaching — with the vitameen pills and the littel wite boxes… in the morning; and at evening ap- pearing once more, to accumulate from one after another of the bungalows, the specimens, — a peculiar thing to go about collectin, still he conduct it all very proper and decorous. Seem I recall the face of this young mahn so put upon with the littel wite boxes. Once I have a mahn in my eye, I do not forget him.