William Gaddis - The Recognitions

He took a case out of his pocket, opened it, and caught his quivering lower lip with his teeth as a jarring of the boat hit his hand against the rail and sent the gold-rimmed dark glasses down into the white water. He stood clutching the emptied case tightly, looking over the bow to where it tore that water open, as though there must be some way of recovery.

— Too bad, said a cheerful voice beside him, a fiercely sun-pinkened American. — Looked like a nice pair of glasses. Otto closed the case and put it into his pocket. — Why don't you throw the case in too? asked his witness.

— I can use it for something, Otto said, surly, defensive.

— Carry pills in? said the traveler, and laughed again. — Hot as hell, isn't it. It'll cool down when we get out a ways.

— Possibly, said Otto, and walked aft.

The mirror in his cabin was smaller than he would have liked, framed in wood covered with thick green paint. He looked at his luggage. It was all there, with Wanted-on-Voyage tags tied to the handles. Then he thought to look at his fingernails. Not as a man does, the fingers turned in upon the palms, but like a lady, at the back of the extended hand so that she may admire the slim beauty of her fingers. Otto admired the taut dark figure of his hand, forgot to look at the nails and had to look back again (fingers turned in upon the palm). He was immediately troubled about covering that fine hand with a bandage. Still, injury might have been to the wrist: in which case the white gauze would go splendidly across the base of his hand, set off the dark length of the fingers like a lady's evening glove. He made certain that he had two extra packages of Emu which he would offer (preferably to ladies), casually indifferent to their choking fumes. He considered unpacking, but there was no hurry. The sling he had fashioned was in the top of the small suitcase. There would be time that evening to try it again, to decide where the bandage would go, where the wound was.

The sun moved down toward the sea, its redness heightened in hurry to be gone, moving as though pursued. The land was far behind, a soft haze behind the slowly curving wake of the boat, a white wake already floating with garbage where white birds dove and lifted themselves away. Otto saw none of this. He had started to post the Italian print on his wall (Lady of the Junipers), thought of Jesse's words, shrank, put it out of mind. He thought of his wallet, and pressed the bulge under his coat with his wrist. His hair, like his nails, was grown just the right length. The mustache, sparse and golden, the same. He tightened the knot in his tie and pulled down the skirt of his jacket. With the smoke from a fresh cigarette he blew a perfect circle against the hard surface of the mirror, where it clung growing larger and thinner around this image of his importunate face.

Up the coast of the New World the ship bearing ten million bananas ground out its course, every minute the waste heaving brokenly around it more brilliant as the moon rose off the starboard bow and moved into the sky with effortless guile, unashamed of the stigmata blemishing the face she showed from the frozen fogs of the Grand Banks to the jungles of Brazil, where along the Rio Branco they knew her for a girl who loved her brother the sun; and the sun, suspicious, trapped her in her evil passion by drawing a blackened hand across her face, leaving the marks which betrayed her, and betray her still.

America is the country of young men. — Emerson

— Nothing, said Maude Munk.

— Nothing? Arny Munk repeated.

— Nothing, she confirmed, dropping ice cubes into a glass. — The same things. They ask the same questions they've been asking for three years. Was I conscious after the accident, and if I wasn't how could I have reported it all to the police, and did I have pains in my back then, and if I did why don't the hospital records show it. Then my doctor and their doctor argue, and my lawyer and their lawyer argue, and the cab driver who was driving the cab I was in lives in Detroit now. I wish you'd put your shoes away somewhere when you take them off.

— Well I could tell them your personality's changed. And you never used to drink before that accident. It used to upset you because I drank.

— It still does, Arny. Terribly. And you don't have pains, like I do. Today I even asked the judge, Would you have two operations and wear a spinal brace if you were malingering?

— Maude look, you're spilling your drink, he said, righting the glass which tipped toward him in her forgotten hand. The radio offered cocktail music, When Buddha Smiles.

— What is it? Are you tired? Arny?. Oh, I just wish you got tired doing something you liked.

— You don't make a living doing things you like.

— But selling. and year after year. and. things like last week.

— Maude.

— Does your father know about that? Or does he just pretend he doesn't know, and he's glad you've sold another order, playing cards in a hotel room where they send naked women in for your out-of- town buyers. And all the time your father's such a fine dignified old man. Why if my Daddy ever.

— Maude.

— Anyhow, my Daddy was a man.

— What do you mean by that? Just because I have a rupture.

— I don't mean your old rupture. It's just that. She looked at him a moment longer, got up and freshened her drink, and turned the dial on the radio. Finally she asked, — What are you reading? Arny? You're not even reading, are you.

— Maude.

— As though you were all alone. Sometimes I come into the room and you're sitting here with a book open, but you're not reading. You're just sitting looking at the page, but you're not reading? Are you lonely?

— that looks better, smells better, tastes better, and is better, said a young man's voice on the radio.

— But how can you be lonely? I'm here.

the next number on our program, the Academic Festival

Overture, by Tschaikovsky.

— Arny, have you filled out the papers?

— What papers?

— The papers, what other papers. For the Red Heart Adoption Center.

— It's the Sacred Heart. Red Heart's a dog food.

— Well anyway, have you?

— Yes Maude.

— And can we go up and get it in the morning?

— We may have to wait.

— How long?

— Maude, please don't have another drink.

— A little brand-new one, Arny. It will make everything different between us again, won't it? for you? I mean for me, it will make us more like we used to be, won't it?

— Is dinner ready?

— Do you want chutney?

— Chutney?

— With the curry.

— Yes.

— Then you'll have to go out and get it. There isn't any.

— Never mind then.

— But I want chutney.

— I'll wait while you go out and get it. The walk might do you good, he added, looking up at his wife's eyes, wandering past him wed to nothing. — There's someone at the door.

— Oh Herschel, I forgot, Herschel called and you can't get him off the telephone until you make some kind of date with him, he said he'd stop in…

— Are you going to answer the door?

— Herschel!. Arny, it's Herschel, and… he has a girl with him!

Outside the door stood a young lady adjusting a garter. Her companion watched. — Anyhow, come in, said Maude. Herschel waited until the garter was taken care of, the stocking smoothed over the knee, the skirt over the thigh. Then he said:

— Baby! looking up to see Maude for the first time, and he offered both his hands. Herschel was tall, and had always been handsome. He had been the handsomest boy in his home town, and the only one in that part of Ohio to own dinner clothes. His picture, in dinner clothes, still stood in the photographer's window on Front Street where, faded and fly-specked, it continued to exact a certain prestige, for it was some years since he'd been home. — I brought along a little two-legged friend, he said. — Arny and Maude, I want you to meet.