William Gaddis - The Recognitions

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

— Hey Barney, let's have another here. First today.

— Hey Pollyotch, the woman called. — Hey Sanny Glaus.

— Why don't you drop dead?

— Don't give me none of your hocus pocus.

— Yeh.

— And who are you going to be miserable with New Year's Eve? asked Mrs. Bildow on the telephone. Esther, at the other end of the line, accepted this kind invitation for herself and her husband.

Mrs. Bildow laid the instrument back in its cradle and looked out the window of the sidewalk-level apartment. She could see four legs. — Don, she called. — Do you think she's all right with him? What's his name, Anselm? Outside, the four legs retreated, out of her sight.

It was a dark afternoon. To the north, the sky was almost black. Anselm rounded the corner with the little girl by the hand. He stopped there, met by a friend. — Hey Anselm, I've got one you'd like, old man.

— One what?

— Is it all right to kiss a nun?

— What do you mean, for Christ's sake?

— Sure it's all right, as long as you don't get into the habit.

— Ha, hahahaha. Anselm turned his thin face down to the little girl. She looked up. He had a bad case o£ acne. — Hahaha-haha.

— I knew you'd like that.

Anselm nodded, and looked serious again, as he had rounding the corner. He looked wistful.

— What's the matter with you, anyway?

— Afternoons like this, Anselm commenced, looking to the dark sky between the buildings to the north, — afternoons like this, he repeated, — I think about girls.

— Happy New Year, if you'll pardon the expression.

— Goodbye Esther, tell your husband.

— Good night, I…

— Happy New Year, if you're sure you can't come?.

— No, Esther's voice came back on the smoke with theirs, — we've decided to go to a little Spanish place Wyatt knows about, just the two of us, good night and thanks, happy New Year.

— Good night…

— And happy New Year, I…

Then the smoke in the room stopped moving, the door closed on the draft, and the room hung with silence; until Esther came back in, moving the smoke around her, and speaking, — Well, that's over. She stood unsteadily.

— If you wanted to go to their party, Esther.

— Party?. It's always so frightening we thought we'd just hide at home this year, that's what she said. If you call that a party.

— I wouldn't have minded staying here, if you'd wanted to…

— Go alone?

— Well, I… there's some work I wanted to finish.

— Work, she repeated dully.

— The woman called about that picture in there, it's all done, it just needs a coat of varnish.

— You were varnishing it when we came in.

— Yes, I did a little… as a matter of fact it's done, he admitted.

Esther sat slowly against the edge of a table. The brightness of her eyes fluctuated, glimmering to dull, as she fixed them on him and away. Finally she said, — It was like you were trying to… escape. He started a motion with his hand, but did not make a sound nor look up from the chair he sat in. — I didn't think you'd mind, they're not. they're a nice couple, and the boy with them…

— Who was he?

— I've never met him, his name's Otto something. He just showed up, he said he'd been at a party uptown, at some playwright's house, he left when it got too noisy and some woman kept calling him Pagliacci. you liked him, didn't you.

— Yes, he was. he's quite young, isn't he.

— You might have offered brandy to someone else, besides just him. And yourself, she added. Her idle hand reached the new typewriter on the table, a Christmas gift (she had given him an electric razor), and her finger made a speculative stab at a key she would never use: she looked at the paper, where she had imprinted a. — Poor Don, you might have been a little nicer.

— Nicer? I talked to him, I tried to talk to him.

— I heard you, I heard you saying.

— Did you hear him?. An extensive leisure is necessary for any society to evolve an at all extensive religious ritual. did you hear all that?. You will find that the rationalists took over Plato's state qua state, which of course left no room for the artist, as a creative figure he is always a disturbing element which threatens the status quo. good God, Esther. Did you hear us discussing quîddity ? and Schopenhauer's Transcendental Speculations on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual? and right into the Greek skeptics.

— And I heard you with this. Her voice rose, she held up a small stiff-covered magazine, — And I couldn't believe it, I thought you must be drunk or… I don't know what, I've never heard you that way, that. being rude. You're grinning now as if you still thought it was funny, pretending you didn't know he was an editor of this, that he wrote the piece in here on Juan Gris.

— Esther, please.

— And ran this whole symposium on religion they had. Wyatt, it just wasn't like you.

— What wasn't? People like that.

— All that about mummies, you know very well what I mean, when you said that ideas in these pages are not only dead but embalmed with care, respecting the sanctity of the corpse, I heard all of it. Some daring person appears in one issue to make the first incision, you said, and then runs off to escape stoning for his offense against the dead, and then the embalmers take over. The staff of embalmers, a very difficult clique to join, do you think he didn't know you meant him when you said that? Like good priests dictating canons for happy living they disdain for themselves. You were actually referring to his piece on Juan Gris, weren't you, when you said the corpse was drained, the vital organs preserved in alabaster vases, the brain drawn out through the nostrils with an iron hook, I heard all of it… the emptied cavities stuffed with spices, the whole thing soaked in brine, coated with gum, wrapped up and put in a box shaped like a man. Esther brandished the hard roll of paper, and then dropped it on the table, looking for a cigarette. — Why you picked on him.

— I don't know, Esther, there was something about that translucent quality of his, that round chin and thin hair and those plastic-rimmed eyeglasses, that brown suit.

— He can't help what he looks like.

— Hasn't he got a mirror? And that yellow necktie with palm-trees on it. There's just something about soft-handed complacent fools like that pontificating on…

— He's not complacent, Don suffers a good deal.

— I suppose he's given you every heart-rending detail.

— He talks to me. He talks to me more than. She stopped to sniff, and lit her cigarette.

— More than what?

— Never mind. Do you know what it looked like?

— What what looked like.

— It looked like all of a sudden you were trying to impress that boy Otto.

— Impress him?

— You were being. really, you were being just too clever and. coquettish.

— Esther, good God! Esther. He got to his feet.

— Do you think he's homosexual too? she asked calmly.

— Otto? How in heaven's name. what do you mean, too?

— Nothing, she said, looking down.

— Too? Listen. good God. His hands dropped to his sides.

— Well why you should be so nice to a conceited pretentious boy, and try to make a fool out of a nice person like Don when he wants to talk to you about things that interest you, and his wife.