William Gaddis - The Recognitions

He silenced as two young men passed. One of them was saying, — tsa great sperchul achievement.

— You see what I mean. Valentine hailed a cab. — It seems to follow quite consistently, he went on as they got in, — people so bound to reality usually have something physically out of order about them.

Black-shod feet together on the shifting floor of the cab, he moved closer and took the vase. — It's a fake, you know, he said holding it up in both hands. — Are you surprised?

— In a way, it… but it is beautiful.

— Beautiful? Valentine lowered it to his lap. — It suggests beauty, perhaps. At the sudden draft on him, he looked up. — Yes, do roll your window down. You don't look well at all.

— I just. had to have some air.

— Are you free for dinner?

— Well, I don't usually. don't you have anything else?

— My dear fellow, there's only one engagement that cannot be broken, and I don't plan it for some little time. Come along up to my place for dinner then, and you can pick up these photographic details.

The cab halted, started off as though to accomplish a mile in a minute, and halted abruptly twenty yards on, where the driver exchanged twilight expletives with a bus driver. The sea of noise poured in, striking the leather seats, penetrating the occupants with thrusts of chaos, sounds of the world battling with night, primordial ages before music was discovered on earth. — I know your name. I've tried to think where.

— The Collectors Quarterly? Basil Valentine suggested easily; but his eyes turned, incisive, searching.

— No. Longer ago. Further away than that. But I've lost it now.

— You don't mean the ninth century Pope? Valentine sat back, relaxed, his tone cordial. — There was one by that name, but alas! he said, turning, to smile, — he reigned for barely forty days. He took out the cigarette case, and it opened in his hand. — Well?

— Brown told me, you see, he mentioned that you were. that you had studied with the Jesuits.

— Dear heaven! Basil Valentine almost laughed aloud. — For Brown, that probably has the most weird connotations, the most frightening implications. My dear fellow.

— But you did. for awhile you did train for the priesthood?

— In a manner of speaking. You have something of the priest in you yourself, you know.

— Damned little.

— Far more of that than the renegade painter.

— Are they so… separate then?

— My dear fellow, the priest is the guardian of mysteries. The artist is driven to expose them.

— A fatal likeness, then.

— A fatal dissension, and a fatal attraction. Tell me, does Brown pay you well?

— Pay me? I suppose. The money piles up there.

— Why?

— The money? It… binds the contract. It's the only thing he understands.

The clear eyes of drained blue no longer darted with assumed pleasure but glittered steadily, like water frozen so quickly. Valentine clutched Tertullian in his narrow lap. — You don't dislike him, do you.

— No.

— No. In fact you rather like him. And this contract? — Contract? Yes, a debt… a debt which the person to whom you owe it refuses to acknowledge, is impossible to bear.

— And the money?. Valentine was studying every line in the face beside him, details suddenly broken with a constricted sound like laughter,

— The money? you. can't spend love.

The cab had stopped at a light and people were passing around it: the voice of a girl penetrated in clear Boston accents, — Somerset Maugham? Haha, hahahahaha, Somerset Maugham my ahss.

— Money buys privacy, my dear fellow, said Basil Valentine, leaning across his lap to roll up the window. — It frees one from the turmoil of those circumstances which the vulgar confuse with necessity. And necessity after all… what are you laughing at?

— Something earlier, something I thought of earlier but I didn't laugh then, when I thought of, when you were talking about, a novel? Writing a novel, We don't know what you're thinking, you said. I thought of Momus and Vulcan, I thought of my wife then. You remember the homunculus that Vulcan made? and Momus said, You should have put a little window in him, so we could see his innermost thoughts. And I remembered. listen,

— You're married?

— What happens? In this novel?

— What happens? Basil Valentine turned his full face.

— To me. The cab jolted to a start.

— Why, to you? Good heavens, I haven't the faintest notion. Valentine laughed shortly, looking ahead again. — I was about to say earlier, of necessity. but tell me, when you were a child.

— Necessity, yes. Yes, a hero? John Huss.

— Huss? Hardly, today, eh? John Huss? Someone's said, you know, anyone who accepts a martyr's part today is a coward. And you? what happens to you? he went on hurriedly. — I suppose you. well, let's say you eat your father, canonize your mother, and.;what happens to people in novels? I don't read them. You drown, I suppose.

— That's too romantic.

— Novels are romantic.

— As though, death could end it?

— Have it/your way, there is a step after death then. Valentine sat back and clasped his knee with folded hands. — After all, my dear fellow, you are an artist, and nothing can happen to you. An artist does not exist, except as a vehicle for his work. If you live simply in a world of shapes and smells? You're bound to become just that. Why your lií'e, the way you live…

— Yes, I don't live, I'm… I am lived, he whispered.

Valentine turned to see him gripping his face in the breadth of a hand, whose finger-ends had gone white at the temple. — But, do you know how I feel sometimes? The hand dropped to clutch Valentine's arm, and Valentine looked up into the feverish eyes. — Like… as though I were reading a novel, yes. And then, reading it, but the hero fails to appear, fails to be working out some plan of comedy or, disaster? All the materials are there, yes. The sounds, the images, telephones and telephone numbers? The ships and subways, the. the.

— The half-known people, Valentine interrupted easily, — who miss the subways and lose each other's telephone numbers? Cavorting about dressed in the absurd costumes of the author's chaotic imagination, talking about each other.

— Yes, while I wait. I wait. Where is he? Listen, he's there all the time. None of them moves, but it reflects him, none of them. reacts, but to react with him, none of them hates but to hate with him, to hate him, and loving. none of them loves, but, loving…

— Loving?

The cab swerved suddenly. Basil Valentine was thrown against the window beside him, where he caught himself on his elbow. The man they had almost hit had seemed to hang in the air before them, the empty face a terrible exposure of nakedness.

— Idiot!

Basil Valentine's face in profile showed the vein standing out beneath the hat-brim, a face strong, unsympathetic, bearing all of the force which sympathy lacks, in lineaments (shaded now under the black brim of this Homburg) which belied childhood and youth.

— Idiot, he repeated, sitting back, unaware of the feverish stare fixed upon him.

Then the driver burst out over his shoulder, — You just try drivin a cab, Mac, if you think it's such a fuckin easy job.

Basil Valentine leaned forward. He was livid; but his voice was controlled. — I have no faint intention of wasting an instant considering such an absurd pastime. Now turn around and keep your obscenities to yourself, before you do run down someone as stupid as yourself.

— Listen Mac, don't give me any of that, who the hell are you, this is a fuckin free country.

— Pull up over here, driver.

The cab came to a precipitous stop. Basil Valentine looked at the vase, the eggs, the books, and chose the books to be seen with, carrying in the street. He read the meter as they got out, and was reaching deep into his change pocket when the cab roared away. — But you. you really hate people, don't you, came the voice beside him.