William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— like the Negro of the Narcissus!

— Huh? — You have to be so careful below Fourteenth Street, baby. There are certain words you just can't say. And imagine, you've known Agnes's brother' all this time and never introduced me! And were you a soldier-boy in the late hate too?

— I… what?

— And I didn't know you knew her husband too. No one knows him. Even though he has the same name she has. The same last name, I mean. He took her last name when they were married, wasn't that sweet? because nobody could pronounce his. Before they were married she called him Mister Six-sixty-six, because that was the number of the first hotel room she took him to. Didn't you meet him then?

— No, is he here?

— Oh no, no baby. They haven't been out together since the gas stove exploded. When they got married they both wanted to write. Everything was fine until the books came out, then they found they'd written about each other. That was the only reason either of them wanted to get married, to study the other one. They used to sit and ask about each other's childhood, and all kinds of things, and they both thought the other one was doing it for love. Now they just watch each other's sales, and whoever's ahead takes all the cream at breakfast.

— Is she…

— When they have breakfast. Together.

Otto strained for another look. He heard her saying, — It's absolute heaven, the people are so poor they work for almost nothing. We had a maid who did the laundry too and do you know how much we paid her. Under the loosely fitted white dress she wore an open-top brassiere (They all wear them like crazy down there, she said) bringing her front up to where it could be seen with little difficulty. On her browned wrist, complemented with gold in all the garrulous ugliness of the Modernism heresy, was a Mickey Mouse watch. Otto was perturbed by the flourishing color of her skin, which the dress and (the trouser-seat curtain parted again and he saw her fingernails) white nail polish set off to better effect than the rumpled linen and the black silk sling did his own. He ran a fingertip over his golden mustache. — She doesn't look like she quite belonged here, he said. — That white gown.

— Baby what about you in your jungle suit?

— That's not what I meant, in the Village I meant, in that gown, it's so sort of formal. Otto faltered to a finish, awaited comment, and only heard someone say, — That's the plot, briefly. Now do you think I can call myself a negative positivist? — I think you'd be safer calling yourself a positive negativist.

— Everyone knows why the Bildows stay married, said a deep voice. — He's impotent with anybody but her. — You know the real reason? she was challenged. — It's because neither of them wash.

— Is it true, Arny and Maude are going to adopt a baby? Otto asked.

— Poor Arny, they've been trying for years, but they always feel too awful in ihe morning, poor Maude.

— Boy or girl? demanded a girl's voice behind them.

— A boy. Oh Hannah, said Herschel, — Baby. He looked afraid and unhappy, as though this plainly unattractive girl were someone to escape and forget. She stood firm, in the peasant's dress of the Village, a soiled man's shirt tucked into denim pants on a bunchy figure composed of separate entities, calves, thighs, chest, and head, like a statue of soft stone whose blocks have been weathered apart.

— He's probably a homosexual, said Hannah.

— The baby? Herschel asked helplessly.

— No, the father. He's the one who wants a boy isn't he?

— Do you know Arny?

— Arny who?

— Arny Munk. He's the one who's going to be the father.

— No.

— Then how can you say.

— It's psychologically obvious, that's the only reason queer men want boy children, to perpetuate their own kind.

— Hannah, please.

Hannah muttered an unpleasant sound in greeting to a tall stooped figure in a green wool shirt, who was about to go on across the room when she saw the book in his hand. — What are you doing with that, The Trees of Home? Reading best sellers?

The stooped figure stopped plodding and turned on her; so did his stubby companion, who stood looking slightly injured (he was a poet, with eye trouble, and since everything but the printed page was brought to a focus before it reached him, the world was simply a series of vague images and threatening spectacles, which he faced with lowered eyes as though seeking a book at hand to explain it all); he said, — A best seller! The guy that wrote it submitted it to a board that showed it to a cross-section of readers, the reading public. So the reading public doesn't like the lousy end, so he puts on the kind of lousy end they suggest, and it's published. A best seller, for Christ sake.

— I'm reviewing it, the stooped man said, and started to plod off.

— You read it?

— No, he said over his shoulder, — but I know the son of a bitch who wrote it.

— That poor bastard, Hannah said after him. — He wants to go to Europe. They both do, the poor bastards, ask them why. They won't see anything, they're both myoptic. Where you going? she said to Herschel.

— I was just. Hannah.

— Have you got your tattoo yet? she asked in a humorless tone.

— No.

— How's your writing?

— Movie magazines, simply all sex, Herschel answered, making an effort, — the most obvious perversions. I'm writing a whole series now on movie stars and God. They're all exactly the same. They all believe that Something is carrying us on Somewhere, and they simply reek with the most exquisite sincerity.

— You mean you interview them?

— Baby, I just make a few notes on them and write these heart-to-heart confessions. The publicity agent looks it over and signs her name to it. She never sees it.

— She? Otto asked.

— She. These are lady movie-stars.

— What happened to your senator? Hannah said.

— The last speech I wrote for him, he never saw it until it appeared in the Congressional Record, and I said simply all the wrong things. Now he's being investigated and he's quite put out at me. Imagine! I'm simply going to have to write a novel myself.

— You write a novel! Who'll read a novel with no women in it?

— But baby, there will be, I'll do it just like Proust did, write it about simply everyone I know and then just go through and change boys' names to girls, I know the perfect Odette.

— You ought to go back to analysis. Or have a vagotomy and get it over with. Just because your analyst killed himself.

— He didn't kill himself, it was an accident.

— An accident! He ties a rope around his neck and climbs out a window, but the rope breaks and he falls forty-six stories, so it's an accident?

— Hannah, I'm going, going to get a drink, Herschel said turning on the room, no idea where he was going, but away.

— I didn't know he was a writer, Otto said.

— Writer! He ghosts. He just ghosted some army general's autobiography. A writer!

Otto looked after Herschel. — I'd say he was a latent heterosexual, he said, immediately regretted wasting such an inspired line on Hannah, and resolved to repeat it later to someone who would repeat it as his own. He even tried to think quickly of a spot for it in his play.

— Dissociated personality, said Hannah soberly. — He's not sure who he is any more, whether he's anyone at all for that matter. That's why he wants a tattoo, of course. Simply a matter of ego-identification.

— So that when he wakes up he'll know it's the same person he went to bed with, said a young man who had been standing with his back to them, turning now his unshaven face.

Herschel was coming toward them, leading a nice-looking confused boy toward the door. — You'd better go, he was saying, — on account of Agnes. Come on, baby. She asked me to help you go, she says you bore the tits off her and you wouldn't want to do that. But as they reached the door Agnes Deigh was between them with an arm around the boy. — But darling where are you going? You're not leaving? You can't leave now, it's so early. She plucked this petal back, and Herschel, mumbling something about her bosom, stumbled confusedly after.