William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— What?

— You've never told me much about it.

— About Munich?

— And that boy you knew there that you spent so much time with.

— Han? I didn't spend a lot of time with him.

— You worked together, and drank together and traveled together.

— Traveled?

— That night you spent together at Interlaken, from what you've told me of that.

— We were there for almost a week, waiting for a look at the Jungfrau, it was hidden every day, I told you about that. And the day I left for Paris, early in the morning standing on the railway platform I looked up, and there it was as though it had come from nowhere, and at that instant ihe train came in right between us, good God I remember that well, that morning.

— But. But he had turned and gone into the studio, and she went to the kitchen, stopping only to change the station on the radio. They were silent through most of supper, as though in deference to a symphony of Sibelius which reached across the room to jar them into submission, for neither of them would have confessed, even privately, to liking it.

Sensing the thought, If he does not love me, then he is incapable of love, — I wish. she said. Moments like this (and they came more often) she had the sense that he did not exist; or, to re-examine him, sitting there looking in another direction, in terms of substance and accident, substance the imperceptible underlying reality, accident the properties inherent in the substance which are perceived by the senses: the substance is transformed by consecration, but the accidents remain what they were. The consecration has apparently taken place not, as she thought, through her, but somewhere beyond her; and here she sits attending the accidents.

Her lips did not move, neither did the words laid out there on the stillness of the white page: the faculty of reading suspended in her dull stare, the syllables remained exposed, hopelessly coexistent. Then one caught her eye, drew her on through another, and so through six, seven. When her wet tongue clicked t, she looked up and the poem died on the page. — Did you know he was homosexual? she asked.

— Ummm.

— I didn't know it until Don told me today.

— Who?

— Don Bildow, he edits this little magazine, the.

— He's homosexual?

— Oh no, he isn't, Don isn't, don't you listen? He told me that this. this. She held up that Collected Poems, shunning to speak the poet's name. — Did you know it?

— What? Yes, I've heard something like that.

— Why didn't you tell me?

He looked up for the first time. — Tell you?

— You might have mentioned it, she said and put the book aside with its cover down.

— Might have. why would I mention it? What's that to do with.

— When we were sitting here listening to him read, it didn't occur to me, it's funny, it never occurred to me about him, pictures I've seen of him, and his poems, the things he says in his poems. and I'd wanted to meet him. Esther's eyes had come to rest on the floor, and the shadow thrown there from the chair, meaningless until it moved.

— And you're surprised?. upset over this?

— I'd wanted to meet him, she commenced, following the shadow's length back to its roots. — Meet him? And now a thing like this… I don't understand, you Esther, you're the one who always knows these things about people, these personal things about writers and painters and all the…

— Yes but…

— Analyzing, dissecting, finding answers, and now. What did you want of him that you didn't get from his work?

Esther's eyes rose slowly from the floor the height of her husband's figure. — Why are you so upset all of a sudden? she asked him calmly. — Just because I'd mentioned Han.

— Han! he repeated, wresting the name from her. — Good God, is this what it is! That stupid. Han, why he… after all these years, a thing like this.

— And that painting you gave him, you've never given me.

— Gave him? It disappeared, that's what I told you. "You give it to me to remember you, because we are dear friends, this Memlinc you are making now. " He asked me for it, but it disappeared before it was even finished, when they arrested the old man, Koppel, that's what I told you. He subsided, muttering something, he'd picked up a piece of string and stood knotting it.

She murmured, her eyes back on the shadow's busy extremity, — You've told me.

— That stupid. Han, he went on, — in his uniform, pounding his finger with a beer stein, "You see? it couldn't hurt me. " At Interlaken, what else was there to do but drink? Snowed in, waiting, "There's something missing," he says, he hadn't shaved for three days, the blank look on his face, ". if I knew what it is then it wouldn't be so missing. " I've told you.

— Oh, you've told me, she said, impatient, looking up at him for a moment, then back at the shadow. — I don't know what all you've told me, what little. New England, all right, you're the Puritan, all this secrecy, this guilt, preaching to me out of Fichte about moral action, no wonder a thing like this upsets you, when I mention a poet I've wanted to meet and he turns out. you don't want to talk about it, do you! she pursued him, where he had got almost across the room, about to escape into the studio.

But he stopped in that doorway, reaching a hand inside he snapped on the bright light which flung a heavier shadow across the floor to her. — Listen, this guilt, this secrecy, he burst out, — it has nothing to do with this. this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour. what is it? What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.

— Wyatt, these romantic.

— Yes, romantic, listen. Romantics! they marry cows and all kinds of comfort, soon enough their antics betray them to what would have been fatal in the work, I mean being obvious. No, here, it's competence right here in the world that's rewarded with romantic ends, and the romantics battling for competence, something to eat and carfare home. Look at the dentist's wife, she's a beauty. Who's the intimate of a saint, it's her Jesuit confessor, and the romantics end up anchorites in the desert.

Esther stood up, turning her back as she spoke to him so that he could not evade her question with a look, or by turning away himself, but was left with, — Then tell me, what are you trying to do? And she picked up a magazine, and came back to a chair with it, not looking up to where he took a step toward her from the brightly lighted doorway.

— There's only one thing, somehow, he commenced, faltering, — that. one dilemma, proving one's own existence, it… there's no ruse people will disdain for it, and… or Descartes "retiring to prove his own existence," his "cogito ergo sum," why… no wonder he advanced masked. Kept a salamander, no wonder. Something snaps, and. when every solution becomes an evasion, it's frightening, trying to stay awake.

Though his voice had risen, still Esther did not look up, but sat quietly turning the pages of the magazine, and when she spoke did so quietly and evenly. — You've told me, all your reasons for letting year after year go by this way while you. work? And even this, look. This magazine your company puts out, look at this picture, this bridge, it's something your company did, designed by Ben somebody, I can't pronounce it, the road bridge at Fallen Ark Gap.

— Do you like it? he asked, suddenly standing beside her, anxiety still in his face and sounding in his voice, but a different, immediate anxiousness.