William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— But you read it beautifully. I… I didn't know you could.

— Nor did I, she said.

— Where did you learn it, to read German?

— Just now, she answered.

— You don't understand it?

— Not the words, she answered. — It is very beautiful.

— I learned in this book, he said, taking it from her, and he stared at the cover. — Die Brüder Grimm. He handed it back. — Shall I tell you what they mean, the words?

She smiled to him, in answer.

— "In olden times, when wishes still availed, there lived a king, whose daughters all were fair, but the youngest was so fair. "

Her lips followed his voice from the page, — aber die jüngste war so schön, dass die Sonne selber.

— "That the sun itself. " He stood over her, looking down at her shoulder, and he stopped. — Wait, he said. — Have you. have you got. you don't have to go now?

— No, she said looking up, her eyes widely open. — I'm here.

— Will you sit up there for a minute? He gestured to the far stool, and went to the wall where he pulled one canvas after another aside.

She sat, her head half turned; and her face emptied of the curiosity and life of an instant before. If anything of life was left, it was a vague look of yearning, but that without expectation. All that moved in the room were his eyes, and his arm, touching with a pencil at the monochrome on the soiled surface of the gesso, pausing, rubbing the lines away with his thumb.

Suddenly she turned. — What's that?

— Be quiet. What?

— That. You were working on a piece of wood, and here is a piece of canvas.

— Linen, he said. — Be quiet. Turn your head back. Where it was. Where it was, damn it.

— When?

— There. Yes, yes, he said in a hoarse whisper. She was silent, beyond the outlines which she fitted perfectly enough to have cast them there in a quick reflection done without intent, without knowing. Some time passed. With each motion of his hand the form under it assumed a reality to exclude them both, to empty their words of content if they spoke, or, breathing, their breath of that transitory detail of living measured to one end; but left them, his motions only affirmations of this presence which projected her there in a form it imposed, in lines it dictated and colors it assumed, and the accidents of flesh which it disdained.

— Draw the cloth up, he said. — There, draw it up there. Just that part.

She turned, as quickly as a thing is dropped, and broken. His eyes were fixed part closed as though looking into a strong light. — A part every day, she cried, laughing, for his arm had stopped moving. — That's the way you wash when you have no tub, you wash a part every day, Monday is for the feet, Tuesday is knees day, Wednesday is thighs day. She stopped speaking, and hid her face away from him in embarrassment. He had not been looking at her arm or shoulder, or the line of the bone around her eye, not just a part but at her.

— Thursday? he asked, smiling, from the stool where he sat.

She got up, shedding the length of blue cloth to the dirty floor between them. She came and stood over him. She stood with a hand on his shoulder, gripping him there, bending over him, and her small breast spilled toward him, breaking its shape easily.

— It's my picture! You're making a picture of me!

— Do you think so? he asked quietly.

— Why does it look so old? A picture of me that looks so old.

— It's a study. The next picture, the next. painting I'm going to do, this. little.

— You.

— I

She had both arms around his shoulders; and the breath denied by the form before them came the more quickly. He straightened up and stood, straightened her to her feet and turned away from her. — That's all, he said. — We'll stop for today, very much the way he always said it. He took the soiled thing down from the easel. — I have to work on this, he said, approaching the large finished painting which stood on the floor almost between them. — Can you help me lift it up.

She stood staring at him, as though to stop his motions with the seizure of her eyes.

— Esme?

She lifted the other end of the thing, and they raised it. He picked up the knife again.

Kinder- und Hausmärchen lay at her feet, one of half a dozen books in the place. — How beautiful she is, no longer me, Esme said, looking at the prolonged figure in the painting, — for she is dead.

Over the emphatic drawing and the underpainting, translucent colors were fixed in intimate detail upon the established forms, colors added separately, unmixed on the palette, layer upon layer, constructed from within as necessity disposed these faces emptied in this perfect moment of the transient violence of life.

Round the closed eyes of the Virgin, where she looked now, the highlights were not opaque colors on the surface, but from the light underpainting tinted with ultramarine.

— Dead before death was defamed, she said, — as it is by those who die around us now, dying absurdly, for no reason, in embarrassment that the secret, the dirty secret kept so long, is being exposed, and they cannot help it, cannot hide it longer, nor pretend as they have spent their life in doing, that it does not exist. Yes, the blue, the beautiful blue of Her mantle there. How abashed they are to leave us, making up excuses and apologies with every last breath, so ashamed are we to die alone. How shocking it will be to see the day come again, out where they are, where the law does not permit him to sell lilies.

She moved away, to pull on a dress, and a coat, and treading on the length of blue cloth she approached him again from behind, where he stood in the strong light with the knife, and raised it to the face laid with closed eyes near the top of the composition.

— Before death was dishonored, she said, watching his hand move, — as you are dishonoring it now.

He continued to work. For some minutes there was no sound but the scratching of his blade. Then he turned round, raising his eyebrows in a mild surprise at the empty room, drawing his nostrils at the delicate scent which had returned and remained (for the brief pungence of the Venice turpentine had penetrated and was gone), as affirmative of recognition as the sight of blood, as the blood gush- ing on every Friday from the stigmata of Francesca de Serrone, blood with the odor of violets.

On the door, locked and bolted, she pinned a sign: Do Not Disturb Me I Am Working Esme. What worse thing could have happened, than had happened that morning. She had hidden the needle, the good silver (No. 22) needle with the glass syringe, in the black metal box on the wall over the sink. Who would think of looking there? Who, but a man in uniform. He entered carrying a flashlight, to walk past her and open the black box there on the wall over the sink without hesitating. He turned his light into the box, wrote something on a pad, then took the needle out and handed it to her. — You shouldn't put things in here, ma'am. It's liable to interfere with the meter. He saluted her hand-to-cap and went away.

She sat with a piece of white paper before her, the penholder's end in her mouth like a child told to write a letter home, being watched writing it, the letter to be read by her familiar jailer before it is mailed home. Over the paper she followed the course of an ant, pursuing its frantic flight with the scrupulously cruel point of the pen, leaving behind a trail of black crossing and recrossing until the ant escaped to the rust-colored arm of her chair.

How were they all so certain? calling her "Esme": they knew she was Esme when she did not know, who she was or who Esme, if both were the same, every moment, when they were there, or when she was alone, both she. But she could not deny that they were right, for who would be making that denial? and if who could not be no one, it must be Esme. She thought now of undressing; and the thought was too much to bear, to undress alone, and stand there naked alone; with nothing, even shadows in this bare room, to cover her.