William Gaddis - The Recognitions

The sound of singing seeped through the smoke. The singer was not singing for the group, but to himself as in encouragement. If ever a tattered dahlia bloomed in that brown plot, it was Herschel. His lyrics remained the same, though the tune was under no such restriction:

— I'm going down to Dutch Siam's, yes I am, yes I am he sang from the floor, where he sat playing with his feet like any village idiot. He had not left his corner since introducing Max, Hannah, and Stanley, giving them all Christian names which he supplied himself, to a blonde Miss Adeline Thing. Those three were dumbfounded, then livid, and clamored to give Adeline their correct names; not bothering to ask hers they retired.

— Yes I am. (he was very drunk), — yes I am.

Miss Thing was across the room, as far as she could be from him in that place, — He is pretty far gone, isn't he? Otto said; and as they turned to look he added, — I'd say he was a latent heterosexual.

— I'm sorry, said an old lady at Max's arm. — Have you seen my husband? The old fool's probably drunk.

— Oh Mrs. Feddle, no he's not at all drunk. He looks fine. I was so glad to hear that things are working out. Life should be a lot easier for you now.

— Well, she said, weary, — it costs money to have things published, you know. She scanned the room, while Otto retreated to the bookcase.

When among people he did not know, Otto often took down a book from which he could glance up and note the situation which he pretended to disdain. One evening he had read seventeen pages in Thomas of Brabant's On Bees that way. Now he found himself staring at Robert Browning:

Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford — She, to bite her mask's black velvet — he, to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

— Oh God! Agnes Deigh screamed with delight. — Darling! Her laughter seemed to clear the room of the smoke that hung like marsh gas, for long enough to glimpse her abandon before the tall Swede who had just arrived to hand her a key. — It's to my box, said, — and you mustn't lose it ever. I just don't trust myself, that's all. Why at any moment I'm liable to open that box and take out those divine dresses, those brrr beautiful bits of lingerie. Sometimes I just have to put them on. But if you have the key you won't let me give in, will you?

— But tell us about Rome, darling. Paris.

— I had the most divine trip back. You can't imagine anything more ghastly. On the very same boat with the right arm of Saint Ignatius of Loyola! Isn't that just too camp? You can't imagine, traveling with a relic. Victoria and Albert came with me. You can't imagine the contretemps we had when we landed.

— Tins of opium that he was trying to put onto himself with adhesive tape my dear, and in the heat of the cabin they blew up of course, simply blew up everywhere, and there they were covered with broken tins and that horrid sticky plaster everywhere, and poor Victoria had to drop a bottle of Chanel on the floor and smash it, just to cover up the smell. She's still sick with trench mouth. She got it kissing the Pope's ring.

— But what shall / do with the key, darling?

— Just keep if. hidden until I come screaming to have it. Wasn't that wild? On the very same boat, my dears, with that odious right arm, I met the person who stole my passport in Venice. Can you imagine being introduced to yourself? You can't. Poor boy, they took him right off to prison, even though I offered to keep him in my custody. They wouldn't let me keep him. Isn't that divine? I hear the most touching stories about life in prisons.

— When did you get back?

— Just this very morning. And do you know the filthy trick they played? There I was, at Rudy's apartment, I left all my luggage there covered with the most adorable stickers from everywhere, my dears, every chic hotel you ever heard of. And when I came back tonight they had put all my bags out into the hallway, but do you know what they'd done? You cannot imagine. Simply torn off all those divine labels and stuck the most horrid vulgar things on, all over my beautiful bags, simply covered with labels from Shredded Wheat packages and Kotex boxes, isn't that the most vile thing?

— But Friday night. You'll have your dinner clothes?

— Never never again. I lent them to a divine young Sicilian boy on the way over. He committed suicide in them and I just didn't have the heart to ask for them back.

The smoke settled quickly, the guests were found again and knitted together with tendrils of conversation. The flat girl said, — A eulogy on a Wall Street man who lives in Westchester: Birth and commutation and death, that's all.

— Copulation, said Stanley, indignantly loud, cutting the asthmatic laughter she had earned. He was staring at the girl on the couch.

— Why Stanley, Agnes Deigh admonished from the chair below him, and reached a spray of white fingernails soothingly toward his face. But the consecrated mind thrust the vagrant heart aside. — It's "birth and copulation and death," he said to the profane girl.

— But she's joking, darling, said Agnes Deigh as her hand reached his trembling chin.

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair too — what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms?

Otto looked up, avoiding the eyes of Max. She was watching him, suddenly, still hidden on the couch. Pretending he had not noticed her, he let a few pages slip under his finger and continued.

He never saw, never before today, What was able to take his breath away, A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.

And she was alone. The sight of her had startled him: looking out at nothing, her lips silent and almost smiling while the rest chattered, her body still where everyone else shifted, conscious only in herself while all the others were only self-conscious. Alone on the couch, and alone in the room like the woman in that painting whose beauty cannot be assailed, whose presence cannot be discounted by turning one's back, but her silence draws him to turn again, uncertain whether to question or answer. Otto put the book back in the shelf, and started toward her. Then a tweed arm was around his shoulders. Beside him someone was saying, — There was a woman in Brooklyn who used to do it, but I think the police got her. She charged two hundred dollars. And someone else said, — Is this the first one she's ever had? You can't let it go much longer than two months. — She might make something on the side, a third person said, — You get two dollars an ounce for mother's milk these days.

— Someone has been very cruel not introducing us, said the owner of the tweed arm. Otto freed himself and set off again, as someone in the other group said, — I'm surprised she's never been in a mess like this before.

Through the smoke, among the bumping buttocks and wasted words, he arrived. She looked up and smiled. — May I get you something? he asked her. He had taken out the cigarette package and put the last remaining cigarette between his lips, which were dry. — I'm sorry, it's my last, he said, struggling to light it, and then in confusion, — Oh I'm sorry, I should have. He stood gesturing at her with the fuming cigarette.

— I'd like a cigarette, she said.

— But I… here, take this. He had forgotten the casual stance, the raised eyebrows, lips moistened, slightly parted. His mouth was dry, and palms wet with perspiration. — I'm sorry. Let me get you one.

— No, I have some I think, she said, and reached for her bag on the floor. — My name is Esme, she told him when she sat up with a cigarette.