William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— I wouldn't drink any more of it if I were you, Wyatt?

— Ah?

— I said. didn't you hear me?

— I was listening to the music.

— Can you understand it?

— The music?

— The words.

— Sangre negro en mi corazón… I can't speak Spanish.

— Wyatt, couldn't we go?

— You want to leave now?

— I mean go, go to Spain, couldn't we, together?

— What?

— Oh don't. never mind, no. You couldn't take me there traveling, with your mother there. No, you. Morocco, following ants through the desert to see if they're guided by the stars, more Moroccan than… I don't know, I wish. where are you going?

— Men's room.

She watched him cross the room unsteadily. He stopped at the bar. There was an elderly man with large features behind the bar, the waiter joined them, and then a stout and very pretty girl came from the kitchen. Esther watched them all talking and laughing, watched her husband buy them all three a drink, saw them raise their glasses, saw him pound his heels on the floor with the pounding heels from the music on the record in the dark juke-box; and a few minutes later the waiter approached the table opening another bottle. Earlier the waiter had stood over them and detailed the plot of a moving picture he'd seen that afternoon. His English was very choppy, and before they knew it he was describing the moving picture he'd seen the day before. These were very enthusiastic descriptions, as though they were details from his own life. He said his name was Esteban, and he came from Murcia.

— But. did we order this? Esther asked, as he pulled the cork from the bottle.

— Oh yes. El señor, your husband. Es muy flamenco, el señor.

— What?

— Is very flamenco, your husband.

They watched him, standing now bent over the dark juke-box beside the pretty stout girl from the kitchen, saw him straighten up, laugh, and pound the floor again with his heel.

— You understand what it mean, flamenco? — Yes, she murmured, watching him cross the room toward her, with his head up. He paused to say something to Esteban, and came on, looking at the floor. A chill touched her shoulders, and was gone. When he sat down, she said speaking quietly under the music, — How handsome you were just then.

— What do you mean? He paused, filling his glass.

— The way you were standing there, when you hit your heels on the floor, with your head up. Were you doing it on purpose, looking so arrogant?

— You. make it sound theatrical.

— No, but that's it, it wasn't that, up on a stage, not just you being arrogant, not just your expression, it was. you had the back of your head thrown back and kind of raised but still your face was up and open in… I don't know, but not like you are sometimes now. She watched the glass shake slightly in his hand when he started to raise it, and he put it back on the table. — Wyatt, it's. sometimes when I come in and see you looking down and looking so lonely and. but just now, it was the whole man being arrogant, it was towering somehow, it was… it had all the wonderful things about it, that moment, all the things that, I don't know, but all the things we were taught that a man can be. He said nothing, and did not look up, but took out some cigarettes. — Heroic, she said quietly, watching him light a cigarette with his head down, and then in the same tone, — Could I have one too?

— What? he asked, looking up quickly, and his burning green eyes shocked her.

— A cigarette? He gave her one; and filled her glass while she lit it. She stared at his squared fingers gripping the thin stem of the glass, and after a minute asked, — What does flamenco mean?

— Flemish.

— Flemish? I don't see…

— From the costumes the Spanish soldiers wore back, after the invasion of the Lowlands in the seventeenth century. He sounded impatient and nervous, answering her. — Strange clothes, the gypsies took them over, so they. called them flamenco.

Esther leaned toward him at the table, with a smile of intimate confidence, and starting to put her hand to his said, — Do you know what, Wyatt? I didn't even know Spain had ever invaded.

— Listen., he said. He'd withdrawn his hand on the table top automatically. — That's what it is, this arrogance, in this flamenco music this same arrogance of suffering, listen. The strength of it's what's so overpowering, the self-sufficiency that's so delicate and tender without an instant of sentimentality. With infinite pity but refusing pity, it's a precision of suffering, he went on, abruptly working his hand in the air as though to shape it there, — the tremendous tension of violence all enclosed in a framework, in a pattern that doesn't pretend to any other level but its own, do you know what I mean? He barely glanced at her to see if she did. — It's the privacy, the exquisite sense of privacy about it, he said speaking more rapidly, — it's the sense of privacy that most popular expressions of suffering don't have, don't dare have, that's what makes it arrogant. That's what sentimentalizing invades and corrupts, that's what we've lost everywhere, especially here where they make every possible assault on your feelings and privacy. These things have their own patterns, suffering and violence, and that's. the sense of violence within its own pattern, the pattern that belongs to violence like the bullfight, that's why the bullfight is art, because it respects its own pattern.

He stopped speaking; and after a moment Esther, who was looking down now too, repeated the word, — Suffering. suffering? Why. don't you think about happiness, ever?

— Yes, did you hear what that woman said?… I think it's the artist is the only person who is really given the capability of being happy, maybe not all the time, but sometimes. Don't you think so?' Don't you think so?.

— And what did you say?

He put down his empty glass. — I said, there are moments of exaltation.

— Exaltation?

— Completely consumed moments, when you're working and lose all consciousness of yourself. Oh? she said. Do you call that happiness? Good God! Then she said, It was terrible about Esther's analyst, wasn't it, for Esther I mean. No, good God no, people like that.

From the other end of the room came the flamenco wail, — Sangre negro en mi corazón.

— Do you know that Spanish line, Vida sin amigo, muerte sin testigo?

— What does it mean? she asked quietly, her eyes still turned from him.

— Life without a friend, death without a witness.

— I don't like it, she said quietly; then she caught his hand before he could withdraw it: she felt it pull for an instant, then go rigid in hers. — I'm sorry they upset you, she said, — but they've been very kind to me, both of them, when I… needed friends. I have talked to them about you, I've talked to them about a lot of things, and things I can't talk to you about because you just won't talk to me.

— What things? he mumbled when she paused, as though obliged to.

— Well, my writing for instance, I know it's nothing to you but it is important to me, and what do you say?. partial to the word atavistic.

— All right, Esther, he said and suddenly got his hand back from her.

— If all you can say is…

— All right, listen, I have ideas but why should I oppress you with them? It's your work, and something like writing is very private, isn't it? How. how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they must break and you must get the pieces together and show it before it breaks again, or put them aside for a moment when something else breaks and turn to that, and all this keeps going on. That's why most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper accounts, no adjectives, no long sentences, no tricks they pretend, and they finally believe that they really believe that the way they saw it is the way it is, when really. why, what happened when they opened Mary Stuart's coffin? They found she'd taken two strokes of the blade, one slashed the nape of her neck and the second one took the head. But did any of the eye-witness accounts mention two strokes? No… it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened? unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this… all this. Listen, there are so many delicate fixtures, moving toward you, you'll see. Like a man going into a dark room, holding his hands down guarding his parts for fear of a table corner, and. Why, all this around us is for people who can keep their balance only in the light, where they move as though nothing were fragile, nothing tempered by possibility, and all of a sudden bang! something breaks. Then you have to stop and put the pieces together again. But you never can put them back together quite the same way. You stop when you can and expose things, and leave them within reach, and others come on by themselves, and they break, and even then you may put the pieces aside just out of reach until you can bring them back and show them, put together slightly different, maybe a little more enduring, until you've broken it and picked up the pieces enough times, and you have the whole thing in all its dimensions. But the discipline, the detail, it's just. sometimes the accumulation is too much to bear.