The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  He turned another page. A fine-sprung coil of brown hair lay in the inner margin. Basil Valentine leaned down to blow at it. The hair did not move. He made a sound with his lips, and flicked it away with a finger. Then he read for less than a minute more, closed the book abruptly and bent down, searching the floor for the coil of hair. He found it on the carpet, put it into an ashtray, opened the book again and gazed at the page. There was a faint hum, from the corner where the phonograph had shut itself off. His gaze shifted to the ashtray. Then he moved quickly, to stand, take the coil of hair from the ashtray, into the bathroom and drop it into the bowl. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands, studying his face in the mirror as he did so.

  The expression of anxiety which he had worn all this time did not leave him as he returned to the living room, tightening the cord of his dressing gown, and taking the gold cigarette case from its breast pocket. Snapped open, without taking out a cigarette he snapped it closed again and stood looking at the inscription worn almost smooth on its surface. —Damn him, he whispered. —Damn him. He turned to look at the Vulliamy clock. It was adorned with a cupid. He loosened the cord of his dressing gown.

  A few minutes later Basil Valentine had exchanged his black pumps for a pair of equally narrow black shoes, the dressing gown for a blue suit, and he returned pulling at the foundations under his trousers. Among the books at the back of his desk, he pushed aside La nuit des Rois and quickly found the copy of Thoreau. He pulled on his coat, and on his way out opened a panel closet and took out a large flat envelope. He paused in the doorway to look the room over quickly, and then locked the door with two keys, leaving the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola open on the desk, where the fly had already alighted before the second key turned in the lock.

  In the street door below, he paused to look in all directions. A slight drizzle had commenced. He came forth damning the wind, the hand with the gold seal ring holding his hat on as he hailed a cab with the other.

  The wind from the river was quite strong. It was, in fact, strong enough to support a man; and this, at a corner on Gansevoort Street, is exactly what it was doing. The man himself, on the other hand, did not seem grateful. He was talking to the wind; and, as occasional words took shape from the jumble of sounds he poured forth, it became evident that he was calling it foul names. At this, the wind became even more zealous in its attentions to him. He hit at the skirt of his tattered coat as it flew up around him, addressing it somewhat like this, —Gway gwayg . . . yccksckr . . . until, its caprice satisfied, the wind flung him round a corner and went on east.

  Abandoned, he swayed, and fortunately found a wall with the first throw of his hand, instead of the face of the man who approached, for he had struck out at just about that level.

  —Here, my good man. Could you tell me whereabouts Horatio Street . . . good heavens.

  Thus called upon, he took courage: the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, —Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answer was,

  —Stand aside.

  —Here, don’t goway. Here, how do youfffk . . . He licked a lip and commenced again, putting out a hand. —My name Boyma . . . he managed, summoning himself for the challenge of recognition. —And you must be Gro . . . go . . . raggly!

  He seemed to have struggled up on that word from behind; and he finished with the triumph of having knocked it over the head. He did in fact look down, as though it might be lying there at his feet. It was such a successful combat that he decided to renew it. —Go . . . gro . . . gorag . . . His hand found a wrist, and closed thereon. Bells sounded, from a church somewhere near. —Go . . . ro . . . grag . . . But the sharp heel of a hand delivered to the side of his head stopped him, and he dropped against the wall with no exclamation of surprise whatever.

  The door was opened to the length of a finger.

  —You . . . !

  —I . . .

  —How . . . how did you find me?

  —It hasn’t been easy. You might put Rouge Cloître out here on your bell, at least.

  —Rouge . . . put what?

  —The name of the convent that took van der Goes in, you know. May I come in?

  —Oh, why . . . yes, yes come in.

  —I’m not disturbing you? Basil Valentine asked, entering the room. —Coming at such an odd hour?

  —Yes it is, but no, not if . . . you don’t need the sleep?

  —Unfortunately I do, I need it badly, Valentine answered with a smile. —Here, I brought down these van Eyck details. And your Thoreau. I went off with that quite by mistake.

  —That, thank you for that. And you . . . your . . .

  —My coat? Yes, it’s wet. I’ll take it off in a moment. First I’d like to wash my hands, Valentine went on, turning toward a door, —I had a rather disagreeable encounter on my way here. The room was the kitchen; and with one look at the sink, he returned to say, —Are you aware that there’s something growing in here? A delicate plant, growing right up out of the drain?

  —Oh no, but that, it must be a melon then. Some melon seeds washed down . . . here, here’s the bathroom here.

  A minute later, Valentine’s voice came from there. —A towel?

  —Yes, here, use this.

  Valentine came out, drying his hands on a wad of cotton waste. —It’s pretty stuff, isn’t it, he said smiling again, and threw it into the fireplace. —And tell me, it’s your habit to cover up mirrors? as they do in a house where someone’s died?

  —The one in the bathroom? it’s only . . . something drying. But you, he asked Valentine suddenly, —don’t you get tired of the image you dodge in mirrors?

  —I don’t dodge. Valentine had not lost his smile. He took off his coat, and put it with his hat on the bed, where he sat on the unmade edge and leaned back against the rumpled covers, hands clasped round one knee. —So, you’re working, are you? he said agreeably. —You’ve been at it all night?

  —All night, I’ve been working all night. I just finished it.

  —What? could I see it?

  —It’s this one, this big one here.

  Valentine got up to help him move it out from the wall, and stand it face out against the inside of the door. He offered his cigarette case, lit their cigarettes, and studied the painting for some time before he said, —Brown won’t like this, you know. The face there, how badly you’ve damaged it.

  —But the damage? It isn’t as though I’d done that. A hand was flung up before him. —The painting itself, the composition took its own form, when it was painted. And then the damage, the damage is indifferent to the composition, isn’t it. The damage, you know, is . . . happens.

  Valentine shrugged. —I know, of course, he said. —But I doubt that Brown will. It will cut the price down badly.

  —The price! What’s that to do with . . .

  —Good heavens, I don’t care about it. But your employer is rather sensitive about those things, you know. After another pause, without taking his eyes from the painting, Valentine stepped back, and the figure behind him moved as quickly as his own shadow in the glare of the bare light above them. —It’s magnificent, isn’t it, Valentine said quietly. He stood entirely absorbed in it, and when he spoke murmured as he might have talking to himself. —The simplicity . . . it’s the way I would paint . . .

  There was no sound after his voice, and nothing moved to move him; until his eyes lowered to the shadow streaking the floor beside him: at that Basil Valentine turned abruptly and cleared his throat. —Yes, a splendid sense of death there isn’t there, he went on in the tone usual to him, more forceful and more casual at once. —Death before it became vulgar, he went on, walking down the room away from the painting, —when a certain few died with dignity. And the others, the people who went to earth quietly like dung. Eh? he a
dded, turning. He threw his cigarette into the fireplace, lit another without offering one, and blew the thin smoke out compulsively in a steady stream. —Yes, there is what you wanted there, isn’t there, in this painting?

  —Almost . . .

  —Almost? Valentine repeated. He brought up the cold brilliance of his own eyes, to drive the feverish stare fixed upon him down to the floor between them. —Almost what?

  —The . . . strength, the delicacy, the tenderness without . . .

  —Weakness, yes. Valentine kicked a book on the floor at his feet. —Pliny? what, for his discourse on colors? Yes thanks, I wouldn’t mind a little of that myself, cognac is it? He held out the unwashed glass he was given while the bottle-neck clinked against it, but still looking at the damaged painting. —You do work fast, don’t you. Yes, van der Goes was a fast painter himself, but one, the Portinari triptych I think it was, took him a good three years. But after all this is rather different isn’t it, you know where you’re going all the time. None of that feeling of, what was Valéry’s line, that one can never finish a work of art? one only abandons it? But here there’s none of that problem, is there. Eh? What’s the matter.

  —If one minute, first you say, or people say It’s beautiful! and then if, when they find out it isn’t what they were told, if it’s a painting when they find out it was done by, or rather when they find out it wasn’t done by who they thought . . .

  —No, no, not this evening, or not today is it? No, really, we won’t settle that here now. It’s not . . . not the point, is it. Drawn by his eyes, Valentine faltered for the first time. —Or if it is the point? the whole point? And he looked away, to the damaged painting.

  —What you said, about signing a picture? About that, that being all they care about, the law . . .

  —Modern forgeries, forgeries of modern painters, Valentine dismissed him quickly, but looking about the room found only the man and the damaged painting to draw his eyes. —And be careful, he said, forcing the ease in his voice. —If Brown should decide that there’s as much money in modern painters as there is in his old masters, no, it’s not funny, he’s already threatened you with van Gogh . . . He had commenced to pace the room, and paused to draw to him, with a toe of a black shoe, a detailed drawing which he picked up and studied. He held it up between them and said, —A remarkable likeness.

  —A study, from the . . . last work.

  —Yes, I see. And reversed, the mirrors? Backwards, like a contact print. Exactly like, and yet a perfect lie. The thing dropped from his fingers and he laughed. —You? the, what was it you said, the shambles of your work? What a pitifully selfish career! being lived, as you said? by something that uses you and then sheds you like a husk when its own ends are accomplished?

  —Yes, but if the gods themselves . . .

  —Is it worth . . .

  —If they cannot recall their . . . gifts, to . . . redeem them, working them out, do you understand? living them through . . . ?

  And Valentine turned quickly from those eyes back to the damaged painting leaned against the door, to murmur, —On second thought I believe I would have put another figure or two there in the lower left, the sense of ascendance in the upper part of the composition would gain a good deal . . .

  —You?

  —and the blue is rather light isn’t it. I think if I’d done it myself I would have used a more . . .

  —But you didn’t.

  Basil Valentine turned on him slowly, and studied him for a few moments before he spoke. —My dear fellow, he brought out finally. —If you are this sensitive to any sort of criticism, I didn’t come down here to . . .

  —Why did you come down here?

  —I came down to ask a favor of you. But if you are so painfully sensitive to criticism, such a self-conscious artist that . . .

  —No I, it’s just, listen, criticism? It’s the most important art now, it’s the one we need most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don’t you see? not the “if I’d done it myself . . .” Yes, a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions but not, no, listen, what is the favor? Why did you come here?

  Basil Valentine had dropped a cigarette on the stained floor; and stooping to get it, a suspender button at the back of his trousers came off, and he straightened up feeling half his trouser-seat hanging and the other half binding high. —That Patinir? he said. —The painting that Brown has just inside the door, hung opposite that idiotic portrait. I wanted to ask you if you’d mind making a copy of it for me. He put his hands in his pockets, to hitch his trousers up square, and spoke rapidly. —It wouldn’t even have to be a perfect copy, you know, since the original doesn’t exist. You didn’t know? Brown had the painting heavily insured, and it was destroyed in a fire. At least he had the evidence that it was when the insurance company’s experts came. He’d sawed off one end of it and he showed them that, pretty badly charred but not so much that it couldn’t be identified as all that was left of the original, which he’s waiting now to dispose of again, “in secret” of course. Yes, what’s the matter? what’s funny?

  —These. I’ve done the same thing with these.

  —What do you mean, the same thing? sawed the ends off and . . .

  —Kept them.

  —What? What for?

  —Proof.

  —Proof? Basil Valentine stepped aside quickly as he passed, and watched him pull canvases away from the wall.

  —This! he said holding one up. —Do you see? It was going to be a study, it was a study for this . . . this new work, this van Eyck.

  —But what? The Annunciation? Valentine hitched up the sagging side of his trousers. —And it’s not turning out what you wanted? But it’s an old thing. On linen? What is it? and this, these, earrings? Who is she? These old Byzantine-looking hoops, what is it? Who is she? This? a study for a van Eyck?

  —No, but for what I want.

  —What are you talking about? And this, what is it? It’s exquisite, this face, the reproach, like the faces, the Virgin in other things you’ve done, the reproach in this face. Your work, it’s old isn’t it, but a little always shows through, yes something, semper aliquid haeret? something always remains, something of you. But what are you talking about? Valentine found the feverish eyes fixed on him. —Here, this . . . I’ve brought down these pictures, these photographic details of, here, if you’re going to bring the critics back to believing in Hubert van Eyck? And the, why we may enshrine your arm in a casket right over the door here? in Horatio Street? like Hubert van Eyck’s right arm over the portals of the church of Saint Bavon’s in Ghent? But what is it? what’s the matter? what are you talking about, this proof? to prove what? Valentine demanded.

  —Listen, this, if I wanted to go on with this work, myself? And to clear up the other things I’ve done? The Bouts, the van der Goes? If I want to tell them, and I have the proof, off every one of them, a canvas or a panel, I cut a strip off the end when it was done, and I have them.

  —Where? Valentine asked quickly.

  —Yes, they’re safe.

  —Where? Valentine repeated.

  —And that will be proof, won’t it.

  —Proof? Valentine stood up. —Do you think it’s going to be that easy? Yes, do you think they want to be told? Any more than Michelangelo’s Cardinale di San Giorgio? Yes, he’d kept aside an arm from his “antique” cupid, and he went to get the Cardinal’s help starting his career, showed him the arm from the statue to prove he’d done it, do you think the Cardinal thanked him? Valentine picked up his glass and finished it. —Do you think it’s that simple? Why . . . He put a hand out to the shoulder before him. —That you can do it alone, that simply? He withdrew his hand slowly. —But you’re wet, your jacket’s damp. You’ve been out?

  —Earlier, just before you came, for a walk . . .

  —But you told me, when I came in you said you’d been working here all night.

  —Yes, but, I went out, I’ll tell you, I went out, I took those fragments,
those strips from the ends of the paintings, where they’d be safe.

  —Where? Valentine demanded.

  —I took them up . . . where I used to live.

  —Where you haven’t lived for, two years is it? To your wife, your wife, so you trust her? You trust your wife to watch over them?

  —She doesn’t even know. She wasn’t there. Only her sister, yes her sister, we hid them.

  But Basil Valentine had turned from him, to pace to the end of the room, where he stood looking at him, at his impatient eyes, and the crumpled damp black jacket hanging from his shoulders. —Your wife, eh? He paused, but spoke more rapidly as he went on, —The Rouge Cloître? Yes, and where’s the mother superior? Who keeps house for you here, then? This floor, how do you keep it so dirty? Why . . . so you trust her with it, do you? these fragments that are so important. And here, this van der Goes, what happens to her face in that, eh? All the rest of them, yes, the men, you out of your mirrors, you’re there half a dozen times, backwards? Drawing death and modeling it under your own hand, but what happens to her face? Oh, the damage doesn’t respect the composition? No, not a bit, not a bit of it. He stopped; the vein stood out like a bulb at his temple. He touched it with a fingertip, dropped his shoulders back against the empty irregular brick mantel, and lit a cigarette. Immediately the draft caught its smoke and drew it up the flue behind him. —And this, who’s this in this study on the easel? It’s old, isn’t it. Your wife?

  Standing under the bare bulb, facing Valentine, he started to speak, but all he said was, —She . . .

  —Yes, or your mother?

  —Yes. My mother, he admitted in a whisper, looking back at the picture on the soiled gesso, his face drawn up in lines of confusion as though he had just remembered.

  —Yes, is it? Valentine muttered. —The Visitation, then? He laughed. —A Stabat Mater? No. No more, thank you. Suppose . . . like Nicodemus I come down here? Yes, the Pharisee Nicodemus in Saint John, that . . . least reliable of the gospels? “Except a man be born again”? Yes, verily, “. . . Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Valentine coughed and cleared his throat. He’d snatched up his coat before he seemed aware of the clouding of anxiety which had risen in the eyes fixed on his sudden movements, an expression near a wince drawing up the face, and the figure seated unbalanced on a high stool, retreated there from avoiding him with the alert caution of a shadow, the crumpled shoulders sunk unevenly and still. Nonetheless Valentine pulled on his coat, but slowed, and his voice recovered its sharp ease. —You want to get on with this work, don’t you. But we might go up together sometime, and have a look at that Eden? The snake there, he laughed, gripping his lapels and lifted his overcoat into shape at the front. —The snake of consciousness? And there she is, Eve, the woman. The same woman, personalizing everything. Good Christians, good targets for advertising, because they personalize everything. A deodorant or a crucifix, they take it and make it part of them. He picked up his hat, dropping his voice to an irritating monotone. —What was it, in Ecclesiastes? God hath made man upright, but the women have sought out many inventions . . . ?