William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Nothing, go on, she said, fascinated.

— Nothing, I was just going to say. that passage in Cicero's Paradoxa, where Cicero gives Praxiteles no credit for anything of his own in his work, but just for removing the excess marble until he reached the real form that was there all the time. Yes, the um. masters who didn't have to try to invent, who knew what. ah… forms looked like, the um. The disciple is not above his master, but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master.

— Who said that? she asked after a pause, still looking fixedly at him.

— Yes, Saint Luke. He was the patron saint of painters.

— Was?

— Well I mean I guess he still is, isn't he. Otto closed the book and stood up looking for a place to put it.

— Is that all? she asked finally.

— All what?

— About Flemish painters?

— Well Esther, I like them, and the… I mean the discipline, the attention to detail, the separate consciousnesses in those paintings, the sort of… I guess it's both the force and the flaw of those paintings, the thoroughness with which they recreate the atmosphere, and the, I mean a painter like Memling who isn't long on suggestion and inferences but piles up perfection layer by layer. But, well it's like a writer who can't help devoting as much care to a moment as to an hour.

— Otto. She got up and came toward him.

— But God devotes as much time to a moment as He does to an hour, Otto brought out abruptly, as though defending himself, or someone very close to him. She stood before him, looking into his face querulously.

— Esther.

— Do you have a cigarette? she asked, stepping back. He fumbled and gave her one, lit it for her, then got the package out and took one for himself.

— Esther, look, is something wrong? he asked as she sat down on the couch and started to turn pages of a book, without looking at the words.

— Nothing, it just gets… I don't know, she said, and started looking at the pages, running her thumb down the lines as though seeking an answer there. He stood over her, blowing out smoke, as though the cigarette were an occupation in itself, until she said, — Here's a lovely passage, it's something of Katherine Mansfield's, a review she wrote. She held it up and he took it as though he might find some solution there himself. — It's too bad, such a lovely thing hidden away in an old review.

— Yes, he said, covetously, and read it again. He got out his pencil. She saw the book in his pocket and asked what it was.

— Spinoza, Otto answered taking it out. — I'm glad you reminded me, he lent it to me a long time ago, and just asked me if I'd leave it here.

Esther thumbed the pages. — Did you get all the way through it?

— Well, I mean not all the way really. We were talking about quiddity once, and he…

— About what?

— Quiddity, what the thing is, the thing itself, and he said that Kant says we can never know…

— Is this all you talk about? Quiddity, philosophers.

— But Esther.

— Doesn't he talk about himself to you?

— Well, I mean in a way he's always talking about himself, but he, you know, for instance when he said, But aren't we all trying to see in the dark? I mean. you know.

— I know, she said, staring at her hands. — But he must say something about me?

Otto stood looking down at her hair, at her shoulders and the curve of flesh at her neck. He laughed, a slight, nervous, and confidential sound; and when he spoke his voice was more strained with casualness than before. — As a matter of fact, today he said sometimes he felt like the homunculus that ah, I forget, the Greek god of fire made, and then um another god criticized it because he hadn't put in a little window where they could see its secret thoughts. She did not move, and when she remained silent Otto repeated his nervous sound of a laugh. — I mean, he didn't mean anything, you know. What?

— I know, she repeated in a whisper.

— He didn't mean.

— Do you know what it's like?

— What what.

— Do you know what it's like? Living with someone like him, living with him, do you know what it's like? Do you know what it's, like, being a woman and living with him?

— But Esther.

— To come into the room, and see him staring, without blinking, just staring, not an insane stare but just sitting and looking? Last night he was sitting there, that way, and the music on the radio, I can still hear the announcer's voice afterward because it was such a relief, it was the Suite Number One in C Major of Bach, and afterward all he said was, such precision. Such precision.

— But that's true, it's. Otto came down on the sofa beside her.

— Yes but it isn't human. He put a hand on hers. — It isn't a way to live, she said in the same dull voice, her hand dead under his. — It isn't… is it strange that he has ringing in his ears? Is this dream of his strange, this damned damned dream he has? That after an hour's silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness. That's all, it took him an hour to work that out. Strange? that he can drink down a pint of brandy, and be just as he was before. Nothing happens. Nothing happens, except he blinks even less. Yes, a… man of double deed, I sow my field without a seed…

— Esther, you mustn't get so…

— When the seed began to blow / 'Twas like a garden full of snow.

— Look, it won't last, he said taking both her hands. — He can't just go pn, like this.

— I know it, she said, moving her hands in his. — Sleeping, clutching his throat with both hands. I found him that way, when I got up in the night, sleeping on his face with both hands to his throat. I took them away, and when I came back, back from the bathroom he was like that again. Or jumping out of bed in the middle of the night, barefoot, and he comes back muttering something in Greek, apologizing, he'd gone to look up the word accusative. No, no, argue? We can't even argue, he goes into the studio there and finishes the argument alone, I hear him behind the door, answering me. Damn all this business, these shapes and smells, I heard him one night, and a wife, he said, trembling before everything that doesn't happen, weeping for everything we'll never lose. Do they really know each other, do they really give anything to each other? or is all they have to share this. same conspiracy against reality they try to share with me?

— And. then what? Otto asked, when she paused, and her hands stilled.

— He said, You can change a line without touching it. She was silent until Otto started to interrupt, then, — Is she surprised? I heard him say. Why, I have to tell her why, good God do I always have to use words when I talk to her? Is she surprised to see me when she comes in? when she wakes in the morning and sees me there? She's never been surprised. Everywhere, Esther said looking aip slowly, — everything, as her eye caught a shiny magazine on the low table, — even there. There's a story in that about a girl who goes to Spain, during Holy Week she meets the mother of a man she was in love with, then one night when she's seen one of those holy processions with the Virgin in tears going by, she meets her old lover with his wife, the girl who took him away from her, and she forgives the girl.

— Yes, but that sounds.

— But all he could say is, What a… what rotten sentimentality, I can still hear his voice. What a vulgarizing of something as tremendous as the Passion, this is what happens to great emotions, this is the way they're rotted, by being brought to the lowest level where emotions are cheap and interchangeable. Has there ever been anything in history so exquisitely private as the Virgin mourning over Her Son?

— But Esther, don't you see that? Don't you feel this. this way we're all being corrupted, by…