William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Just this one, this last one. And I'll pay you for this one, I know I never paid you before, but I'll pay you for this one, I'll pay you whatever you want.

— Listen maybe I never thanked you right for all you did, but you know how much it meant. I can pay you now. I can pay you. You've got nothing to lose, and I've got everything.

— Everything, and I… and you. Look at you. What is it? What are you doing, what are you doing to yourself? You like fine, I said you look fine but not like you, fine for somebody else but not like you.

Benny reached out to take his arm again, and a nail in one of the broken crates tore his sleeve.

— You're the only one who can do this for me. You're the only one who can save me. One more. And we can forget the whole thing, as though it never happened.

The silk foulard stirred on the wind. Then Benny turned away too, leaving the cone of light empty, to east and the city where the flood caught him and the ebb bore him away, as though from an empty beach and no trace on it at the feet of the figure pausing for an instant to look at the tide's recession and then going on, gathering driftwood.

When tsther came in alone she paused in the entrance to the living room; then she jumped, startled. — I didn't see you, I didn't see you standing there. She turned on a light, and stood in the middle of the room taking off her hat, looking at his back. — Posing there, she said finally, and dropped her hat on a table, — like he used to. Like an old man.

Otto turned from his reflection in the glass window, streaked into visibility by the spring rain. — Yes, he said, looking to the floor between them. — More than a year.

— What?

— And he used to warn me against youth. Did you know that? The trap of being young. He warned me about it. He said that youth is a trap that.

— Please, I don't want to hear any more about it.

— But. I just can't believe, a whole year's passed,and I'm still.

— Otto, if you spend all your time fretting and. fooling around…

— But I've got to get hold of some money.

— And this obsession you have about money.

— Yes but money, you need money to…

— You seem to take not having it as a reflection on your manhood.

— But money, I mean, damn it, a man does feel castrated in New York without money. And this, I mean you say he puts plenty in your checking account, but it, I mean for me to, well not take it out and use it but to let you actually pay.

— Otto, you know I've never understood why you've never looked up your father. If he lives right in New York, and you've never seen him. And I should think he could give you some money.

— But I don't.

— And it would probably help clear up this obsessional neurosis you have about.

Gordon: When we lose contact with the beloved one, we lose contact with the whole world.

— What are you writing?

— Just something I thought of. For this play. Otto had followed her in, and he sat on the foot of the bed which had become a refuge, no longer a beginning but a desperate end, no longer a vista of future conquest but sanctuary where failure in all else made this one possession unbearable, unearned and come too soon. — It's all like a play, a bad play with nothing but exits and entrances. And your work, your novel, he mumbled contentiously. — You haven't.

— My what?

He looked up at her. — Who is this guy Ellery that you keep seeing?

— He's in advertising, and he's very interested in analysis. Haven't you thought of going into.

— Analysis! Haven't we been over that enough?

— I was going to say advertising.

— Advertising! Do you think I've sunk that low? And what. what do you go out with him for anyhow? You're going out tonight?

— Yes.

— But why?

— It does me good to be seen in successful company.

Otto cleared his throat. He was staring at the floor between them. He raised his eyes, slightly, enough to reach her feet flattened on the floor with her weight. He mumbled, — Sometimes I wish I was old, an old man.

— Otto?

— What.

— You. Oh nothing but, I liked you better a boy, she said from the closet where she stood putting on her slip:

The women who admonish us for our weaknesses are usually those most surprised when we show our strength and leave them. -I… — We… — You…

— Esther?

— Ellery?. Oh, Otto? Otto went away, says Esther from the closet where she stands, taking off her slip. — He went to Central America, to work on a banana plantation.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out — My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tent-maker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

— This place needs a good airing out. One look at that room in there and anybody can see that your husband.

— My husband.

— He.

— I…

The music is Mozart's, the Concerto Number Seven in F Major for three pianos. — I wish. Esther says. In a feverish conspiracy of order the notes of the music burst from the radio in the other room where it is dark. They thrust there in the darkness against hard surfaces and angles as sharp as themselves. Possibly molecules are rearranged, set dancing, in a sympathy which lasts no longer than the duration of the note; possibly not, but there is the lighted doorway, to be entered in a concerted rush, the naked soles of a man's feet hung over the end of the bed, calloused and unlikely targets. — I wish. Esther says. Her hand moves quickly, but too late, where she has been pausing, holding cloth. Her breast, bared, and not especially full but standing out, centered and still, is very real to her and to no one else: her hand moves there quickly but too late as a note from one of three pianos strikes with the purpose of a blade, and has entered with the cold intimacy of a penknife in the heart. — I wish.

— You don't think he'd walk in, do you?

— He?

In the dry-season haze, the hills were a deep blue and looked farther away than the sun itself, for the sun seemed to have entered that haze, to hang between the man and the horizon where, censured and subdued, it suffered the indignity of his stare. The heat of day was as inert as the haze which made it visible; and it only mitigated with the dissolution of the haze in darkness.