William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Are them the ones that lit it? came a voice from behind a red beam.

— You better get home to bed, Jack, the policeman said, turning to Wyatt.

— There aren't any cabs.

— Come on. I'll give you a lift, Father.

They drove uptown, in silence except for the constant static voice on the radio at their knees repeating its esoterics, signal thirty, signal thirty. car number one three seven, signal thirty.

Wyatt handed the policeman a five-dollar bill when they got out, and the policeman said, — Happy New Year, Father.

As he fitted the key in the door, Esther murmured, — I feel so old. He let her in, to the darkness and the scent of lavender. She sat down and said, — Leave the light off, as he crossed to the bright shaft of light that came from the drying lamp set up before the portrait in the studio.

— Wyatt, she said, — can't you say something to me.? Even if you don't believe it?

He did not appear to have heard, standing over the portrait. He turned off the hot lamp, lifted a small ultra-violet hand lamp and stood tapping his foot, waiting for it to warm up. There were sounds of Esther standing in the dark room, and her footsteps. The violet light gradually rose to its lurid fullness, and showed his drawn face and level unblinking eyes turned upon the portrait. The smooth surface was gone under the violet light: in the woman's face, the portions he had restored shone dead black, a face touched with the irregular chiaroscuric hand of lues and the plague, tissues ulcerated under the surface which reappeared, in complaisant continence the instant he turned the violet light from it, and upon the form of Esther who had come, looking over his shoulder, and fallen stricken there on the floor without a word.

Wyatt picked her up, and carried her across the dark room to the bedroom. — Don't try to carry me, she whispered, as he got her there and laid her down on the bed, losing his balance and coming down almost on top of her, where she suddenly held him. Then Esther reached out with one hand and turned on the soft bed lamp. He held her face between his hands, his thumbs meeting above her eyes, and drew his thumbs along her brows. Her eyes opened, bloodshot and the whites almost possessed by the flesh round them: his eyes above were still and hard, looking down unblinking. She reached up to catch his right hand and stop it, so that only his left thumb moved along her brow. — You look like a criminal, she said gently. His smile seemed to draw her lips together, her upper lip caught under her lower. — Why? she whispered. -Why do you fight it all so hard?

— There's still… so much more to do, he answered, as his smile k ft his face.

— So much what? If… you can't share your work with me. but does that mean you can't share anything? She moved under him, and put one hand up to his rough cheek. He did not answer. — You looked like a little boy, with the flames all over your face, she whispered.

— It was terrible, he commenced, — and that woman… 1

— A lonely little boy, getting upset over silly people.

— But Esther. when I realized how much you've talked to them, told them about me, about my father and. my mother, and guilt complexes and that dream I have that comes back, and saying that I needed analysis badly, and all sorts of… He paused. She was not crying.

— I had to talk to someone, she said. She scratched the palm of his right hand with her fingernails. — I wish. she said, moving under him. His right hand closed on her fingers, and they stopped.

He stroked her hair.

Then she moved so quickly, raising herself on her elbows, that her dress tore. — Do you think it can go on like this? she said loudly. His tight black jacket, unpadded and unpressed, bound his arms, but he did not stop to take it off; and then her eyes closed, his thumbs on the lids, and they shared the only intimacy they knew.

— What do you think about? she asked him, as they undressed.

— Think about? he repeated, looking up confused.

— Just. now, she said.

— Not thought. I don't think of anything, but. He drew on his cigarette, which was half smoked away. — It was strange. There were sapphires. I could see sapphires spread out, different sizes and different brilliances, and in different settings. Though some of them weren't set at all. And then I thought, yes I did think, I thought, if only I can keep thinking of these sapphires, and not lose them, not lose one of them, everything will be all right.

She turned out the light. — That must mean something. Like your dream. Your dream isn't hard to understand. Certainly not. after tonight.

— There's always the sense, he went on, — the sense of recalling something, of almost reaching it, and holding it… She leaned over to him, her hand caught his wrist and the coal of tobacco glowed, burning his fingers. In the darkness she did not notice. — And then it's. escaped again. It's escaped again, and there's only a sense of disappointment, of something irretrievably lost.

He raised his head.

— A cigarette, she said. — Why do you always leave me so quickly afterward? Why do you always want a cigarette right afterward?

— Reality, he answered.

— Reality? Otto repeated. — Well I always think of it as meaning the things you can't do anything about. This was an argument which many women might have welcomed; and, from the way he raised one eyebrow, it might appear that many had. Nevertheless, Esther continued to stare into the cup before her. — I mean. Otto commenced.

— I think he thinks of it as…

— Yes? he asked, after pausing politely.

— As nothing, she said. — As a great, empty nothing.

Before Otto could look (or try not to look) as uncomfortable as this made him, he was startled by her looking him square in the face across the table, to ask, — Do you like him?

— Why, yes, he answered, looking down, in a tone which she might have taken for insincerity, had she not been able to see his embarrassment. — I mean, I don't really know him, he went on she looked back into her empty coffee cup, — but I… he is sort of hard to get to know, isn't he.

Esther nodded. — Yes, she said, and looked up for what he would say next.

— I mean, I can't imagine that anybody really knows him really well. Except you of course, he added hastily, offering her a cigarette.

— I'd better not take time, she said.

— And I mean, Otto said, lighting a cigarette, — I think you can learn so much from him. I mean I think I can. I mean little things that you don't learn at Harvard. Like the way he was talking about the Saint Jerome in El Greco's painting being the real Saint Jerome, the neck and chest all sort of drained of decay, and the sort of lonely singleness of purpose of insanity. That kind of thing. And he doesn't talk down to me, he just sort of… talks, like. well we were talking about German philosophy, and he was talking about Vainiger, and something about how we have to live in the dark and only assume postulates true which if they were true would justify.

— Romantic, German. Esther murmured.

— Yes but, and then Fichte saying that we have to act because that's the only way we can know we're real, and that it has to be moral action because that's the only way we can know other people are. Real I mean. But look, there's something, I mean do you think he minds me. taking you to lunch like this? Esther looked up and smiled across the table for the first time in some minutes. — Because you know, I wouldn't want.

— I think he'll be grateful, she said.

Otto turned for the waiter, whom he'd been having trouble reaching since they sat down. He'd brought her to a small restaurant which, with excess of garlic in everything but dessert and coffee (though it lingered even there), and very dry martini cocktails served by disdainfully subservient waiters one and all in need of a shave, sustained a Continental fabric that would have collapsed entirely without the expense accounts of the publishing world. — His mother breathed for him before I married him, said the woman at the next table, who was seated nearer to Otto than Esther was. — His job is to scrub the kitchen and the bathroom.