The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —That’s funny, then you . . . we both studied . . .

  —What have you two accomplished? they heard behind them. —Dear, just sitting here and holding hands. I thought we had fearfully pressing business. Basil Valentine approached rubbing his hands together. He kicked the crumpled reproduction on the floor, and paused over it to smooth it out with the narrow toe of his black shoe. —Oil of lavender, eh? he said, looking down at it. —Mansit odor, posses scire fuisse deam, he said kicking it aside. —You must remember your Ovid, my dear Brown? He touched his smooth temple and smiled as he sat down. —“An odor remained, you could tell that a goddess had appeared.” He took his eyes from Brown, and looked across the table. —But what are you looking at me that way for? Come, we have work to do. Hubert van Eyck . . .

  —Why should he rate a quarter of a million? Brown interrupted.

  —I was about to tell you: because he never existed.

  —But he did, he did, came sharply across the table.

  —All right, my dear fellow . . .

  —He did, he did, of course he did, who . . . why, the Ghent altarpiece, the Steenken Madonna . . . ?

  —Who the hell, what is this? Who? He never existed but he painted the what? . . . sting . . .

  —All right, have it your way, Valentine went on, speaking across the table, paying Brown no attention. —After all, we will have to have it your way, won’t we. If one of his paintings is to appear?

  —But he did.

  —All right, he did, Brown broke in again, sitting forward. —Now that’s settled.

  —It’s not settled, yet. But it will be.

  —But to say he didn’t exist, to say Hubert van Eyck didn’t exist?

  —God damn it, stop. Stop arguing with him, Valentine. You’re just trying to upset him.

  —Don’t you understand? But don’t either of you understand? Basil Valentine brought both hands up before him. —There are authorities who still insist that Hubert van Eyck is a legend, that he never lived at all, that Jan van Eyck never had an older brother. As a matter of fact, I’m one of them myself, but, wait. He held up an arresting palm. —Now don’t you understand? If a painting appears, a signed, fully documented painting by Hubert van Eyck, they’ll be proved wrong. The others, the . . . experts and art historians who have been insisting that there was a Hubert van Eyck will pounce on this new picture. They won’t question it for a moment, because it will prove their point, and that’s all they care about. It will prove that they’ve been right all this time, and that’s all they care about. The painting itself doesn’t matter to them, their authority is all that’s important. And the dissenters? He dropped his hands, sank back in the chair and smiled across the table. —Even I may be brought around, you see.

  Recktall Brown grunted an assent, and Valentine took out a cigarette and passed his case open across the table. It was snapped closed, and the worn inscription caught the light. —This? what’s this? may I read it?

  —If you can, Valentine said.

  —Yes, it’s difficult . . . Varé tava soskei me puchelas . . . cai soskei avillara catári . . . Gypsy?

  —Why yes, a Hungarian dialect. Valentine’s face almost showed surprise, as he took the thing back and slipped it into an inside pocket. —But you don’t understand it? “Much I ponder why you ask me questions, and why you should come hither.” A gift, he added, cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and went on speaking as though to find recovery in his own words. —Van Eyck? and what did you think I was going to suggest? another Jan van Eyck?

  —But, no but . . .

  —Yes, another Virgin and Child and Donor? You could do that. Paint Brown in the place of Chancellor Rolin. Lovely! on his knees at a prie-dieu, before the Virgin and Child. A pious monument to his Christian virtue as a patron of art. We’d have to take off his glasses, and get him a haircut. You wouldn’t mind running around in a tonsure for a while, Brown? But that ring . . . His eye caught the double gleam of the diamonds. —We could hardly have such vanity flaunting . . .

  —What are you talking about? Brown demanded. —We decided he exists, this Herbert . . .

  Valentine shrugged wearily, and went on in his irritating monotone, —Yes, we are, I suppose, basically in agreement. Now here is the point. Some time ago the will of a man named Jean de Visch was found. It is in the public domain, available as substantiation of this . . . project. The will mentions a picture by Hubert van Eyck, which goes to prove, supposedly, that such a picture was painted. Another Virgin of some sort. Proves it well enough for your purpose, at any rate. Now when they tore down that house in Ghent they hoped to find some of Hubert’s work, hidden somewhere. They didn’t. But there was a scrap of paper. It was regarded as a curiosity, and then it disappeared and was forgotten. It was a letter signed by Jodoc Vyt, the man who commissioned the Ghent altarpiece, commissioning a work by Hubert van Eyck. I can get hold of it for two thousand dollars.

  —You can get it for less, Brown muttered.

  —Perhaps I shall. Basil Valentine smiled at him. —You never begrudged me a commission?

  —How do I know it isn’t faked?

  —You haven’t made a habit of doubting my word either. But look at it this way. If it is not genuine, why should it exist at all?

  —If it exists, why should I buy it?

  —You are inclined to oversimplify, aren’t you Brown? To insist on carrying us back to Rome, where for all their ingenious vulgarity they never managed to evolve blackmail, at least there’s no word for it in Roman jurisdiction. They depended so heavily on the Greeks, and the Greeks apparently had no word for it either. No, it’s taken our precocious modern minds to devise this delicate relationship between human beings. You might call this blackmail in reverse. You see, if you don’t buy this slip of paper it will be destroyed.

  —And he can’t paint the picture without this scrap of paper?

  —He can. Of course he can. But with this attached to it, it will be irreproachable. He paused. —This isn’t a thing to scrimp on, and you know it.

  —All right.

  —Well?

  They both looked across the table. —It isn’t the first time I’ve thought of it, he said, watching the brandy he swirled in the bottom of his glass. —A Virgin by Hubert van Eyck.

  —An Annunciation.

  —Yes, he said, holding the glass up. —Isn’t that an exquisite color? The cc o. of the sixth heaven, jacinth. I remember a story my father told me, about the celestial sea. Instead of bedtime stories he used to read to me. The same things he was reading.

  —Now this Herbert picture, Recktall Brown said, interrupting.

  —When I was sick in bed, he read to me from Otia Imperialia. The twelfth century, Gervase of Tilbury, when people could believe that our atmosphere was a celestial sea, a sea to the people who lived above it. This story was about some people coming out of church, and they saw an anchor dangling by a rope from the sky. The anchor caught in the tombstones, and then they watched and saw a man coming down the rope, to unhook it. But when he reached the earth they went over to him and he was dead . . . He looked up at both of them from the glass. —Dead as though he’d been drowned.

  —All right, my boy, is there anything else? Anything you need to go ahead with this? I had to buy him a God damn expensive egg-beater a couple of months ago, Brown said, turning to Basil Valentine, who stood up saying, —I have a number of photographs, blown-up details of the brushwork, you know. The foreground figures in the Ghent altarpiece, the Steenken Madonna . . .

  —Or imagine heaven and earth joined by a tree, he went on, as Valentine reached over and picked up the book he had laid before him, some time before. —The sky is a roof, with windows in it for rain to fall through. People live up there, you see. And if you climb up high enough you can visit them. They’re just like you are, he said, turning to Recktall Brown.

  —The hell they are, Brown said, getting to his feet. —Do you want to talk any more about this Herbert picture you’re going to do, or
. . .

  —But I am, he said. —I am. He looked from one of them to the other, from Recktall Brown to Basil Valentine, who stood over him. He looked bewildered. —Someone, who was it? said maybe we’re fished for?

  —Come along, my dear fellow. I’m going downtown, I’ll drop you off.

  —Or the seven heavens of the Arabs, he said decisively, making a hemisphere with one hand, which trembled as he held it forth. —Emerald, white silver, white pearls, then ruby, then gold, red gold, and then yellow jacinth, and the seventh of shining light . . .

  Recktall Brown looked at his cigar. It had burned on the bias. —Look at this God-damned thing, he muttered. —This is the way they make cigars today. It’s the way they do everything today, he said, and threw it into the fireplace. —Everybody but him, he added, and, walking over, put a hand on his shoulder as he got up.

  —That vase, he said, motioning toward a glass-enclosed bookcase.

  —That’s not a fake, it’s real. Early Netherlands ceramic.

  —Can I take it? For a week or two.

  —What do you need it for, it’s damn valuable, Brown said.

  —Lilies . . .

  —Lilies, they’re expensive here too, Brown went on, leading him toward the door slowly. —Fuller used to bring them in here by the armload, all held up by wires. I don’t like them, they make me sick to my stomach. I told him to quit it. Nobody likes lilies much, why don’t you use some other kind of a flower?

  —In an Annunciation . . .

  The dog followed them on one side, Basil Valentine on the other.

  —Those little oak frames I got, I’ll show them to you the next time, the ones with velvet inside them.

  Basil Valentine Held out the book he had picked up from the table before the fireplace. —Your Thoreau?

  —Why . . . why yes, I . . .

  —Hardly fifteenth-century reading. Though I’m as far in the other direction, I’m afraid. Valentine picked up the book which lay with his coat. —Dear Tertullian, he muttered. —And I suppose you’re going to have your usual vulgar gathering this Christmas eve, Brown?

  —I get more business done at those than a month in an office. This picture you’ve got now, he went on, turning, —as soon as you’re done with it call me, I’ll send down for it. And be careful with that vase. It’s going to be a damn good auction, he said to Valentine. —You remember that Queen Anne sofa upstairs? There was enough perfect inlay in that to make two sofas and two chairs, part of the original in each one. Some smart guy says it’s a fake, and you show him the original piece.

  —Rather like Osiris, Basil Valentine said, pulling on his coat.

  —What’s that?

  —They cut Osiris up in fourteen pieces, and later Isis modeled his body fourteen times, with an original piece in each one.

  —Like a saint?

  Basil Valentine smiled, lifting his coat by the lapels as he straightened it. —Precisely, my dear fellow.

  Recktall Brown had taken a pigskin pad from his pocket. —Glassware, he mumbled, —for this auction. I’ve got some beautyful glassware, it’s been in a manure pile out in the country, gives it that nice glittery effect, colors like you see in bubbles, that old glass has. Some wop taught me that trick.

  —Italia irredenta. Basil Valentine reached down his hat. —That fine Italian hand, he said wearily, —which has taught us to make antiques by inflicting every possible indignity and abuse upon beautiful objects. He walked on toward the outside door.

  Brown put the pad back into his pocket. —Be careful of that vase now, he muttered. —And don’t forget what I told you. He nodded ahead of them. —Be careful of him.

  —I . . . I wish you hadn’t said what you did, he said, as Brown put the diamond-laden hand on his shoulder. —About her.

  —About who?

  —Her. Esme.

  —Come on, my boy. Is she a good model for you?

  —Yes, yes, she . . . why she can sit for three hours without moving.

  —No needle marks on your Annunciation’s arm, now.

  —But you . . .

  —She’s a nice little piece, my boy, I know that too. But don’t let that get in the way of your work. Don’t let nothing get in the way of it. Here, don’t forget your eggs.

  —She says it’s because she hasn’t got any stomach, he said, smiling.

  —Who?

  —Esme. She says that’s why she’s a good model, because she hasn’t got any stomach.

  Recktall Brown stood in the hall, tapping his foot, until the outside door closed. Then he turned and went back to the vast room they had just left. The dog watched him approach, and got up when he came near, moving her stump of a tail slowly; but he stopped before he reached her, and she sat down. In the middle of the room, Recktall Brown took out a cigar and looked around him. He looked at the extensive wool tapestry on the wall to his right; but all their eyes were looking past him, in the other direction. He looked at the refectory table, where books and publications lay accounted for, and nothing moved. Then he turned abruptly, as though someone in the room with him had gone the instant his broad back was turned; but his youthful portrait was there, hanging silent as everything else. He raised his head, and looked up at the balcony where he saw the back of a rosewood chest, and the suit of armor standing patiently before the deed it had waited centuries to commit.

  —Fuller! he shouted.

  Then he turned toward the fireplace, and raised his cigar to the array of uneven teeth that had framed his cry. He looked at the Latin inscription over the fireplace, and bit off the end of the cigar. At his feet lay the crumpled reproduction from Collectors Quarterly. He noticed it, as he did anything which broke the pattern of the Aubusson roses, and with some effort he stooped over and picked it up. In four steps, he reached one of the leather chairs, where he sat down on the arm and raised his leg far enough to lay the crumpled paper against it. The unlighted cigar made erratic motions as it moved in his teeth, and he stared through the thick lenses, smoothing the picture out against his broad knee and its ample trouser with a wide thumb, which he exchanged, abruptly, for the edge of his hand.

  His cry had risen to the balcony and beyond, into other rooms and withered, finding them empty, down a corridor then, to break against the wall and rebound, fractured, into the last crevice where it found asylum, embraced, however unwillingly, by Fuller’s consciousness. Having written REKTIL BROWN on a piece of paper and put it into his drawer some time earlier, Fuller sat on the edge of his bed in the windowless room, in sagging white underclothes, rubbing a yellow figure (drawn against the prospect of a cross) with his moist palm in the darkness.

  —Don’t tell me you’ve come out without a coat?

  —Yes, I . . . I must have left it behind.

  —Or don’t own one, is that it?

  They walked toward the corner. It was almost dark. Basil Valentine talked. —There was an eighteenth-century Spanish bishop named Borja, who said “I don’t speak French,” when he was addressed in Latin. I think of him whenever I meet our remarkable benefactor. That portrait, you know. Did you notice the ears? How erect and sharp they are, sticking right out. He tried to have them corrected, brought closer to his head, years ago. A cheap operation, and he goes to the plastic surgeon every week now, sitting under a green lamp there for hours. The cartilage is gone. It’s quite useless.

  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.