The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —You know who I envy? Anselm broke in on them impatiently. —I envy Christ, he had a disease named after him. Hahaha, hey Stanley?

  Stanley pretended not to hear. He looked up from his cold coffee and said to Otto, —But if Mister Feddle saw a copy of a play by Ibsen, if he loves The Wild Duck and wishes he had written it, he wants to be Ibsen for just that moment, and dedicate his play to someone who’s been kind to him, is that lying? It isn’t as bad as people doing work they have no respect for at all. Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of . . . recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it and, it shouldn’t be sinful to want to have created beauty?

  —Why don’t you go home and read Saint Anselm before you talk like this? said Anselm sitting forward, opening his eyes which he had closed as though attempting sleep here. —“The picture, before it is made is contained in the artificer’s art itself,” he said. “And any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself.”

  —Saint Anselm. Dig him, said the haggard face bobbing over the back of the booth. —What are you trying to prove?

  —I’m proving the existence of God, God damn you. Saint Augustine says a man who is going to make a box has it first in his art. The box he makes isn’t life, but the one that exists in his art is life. “For the artificer’s soul lives, in which all these things are, before they are produced.”

  —Where’s God? In the box?

  —You dumb son of a bitch . . .

  —What’s your favorite song, Anselm?

  —Nola. Now screw, will you.

  —I wish I had written The Wild Duck, Stanley said.

  —I’m high, man.

  —On what?

  —On tea. We been balling all night. Have you got any? Hey Saint Anselm, have you got any charge? The haggard face hung over the back of the booth like a separate floating entity, rolling the eyes toward Max, to say, —He’s in training. To be a saint.

  —I notice he doesn’t eat meat, is that the reason Anselm? Max asked. —So that your body won’t . . .

  —What God damn business is it of yours?

  —Save the bones for Henry Jones . . . gurgled the haggard face.

  —Anselm, preaching leftovers of the bleak ruin of Judaism, Max commenced with sententious ease, —a watered-down humanism . . .

  —Cause Henry don’t eat no meat. Hey Anselm, I got something for you.

  —What are you supposed to know about religion? Anselm turned on Max.

  —As Frazer says, Max explained indulgently, —the whole history of religion is a continuous attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find sound theory for absurd practices . . .

  —And what does Saint Augustine mean when he talks about the Devil perverting the truth and imitating the sacraments?

  —This sacrament will go the way of all the rest of them, Max smiled. —It won’t be long before they’re sacrificing Christ to God as God’s immortal enemy.

  —Hey Anselm, listen to this, Daddy-o noster. Daddy-o, up in thy way-out pad. You are the coolest, and we dig you like too much . . .

  —The god killed, eaten, and resurrected, is the oldest fixture in religion, Max went on suavely. —Finally sacrificed in the form of some sacred animal which is the embodiment of the god. Finally everyone forgets, and the only sense they can make out of the sacrament is that they must be sacrificing the animal to the god because that particular animal is the god’s crucial enemy, responsible for the god’s death . . .

  —Crucial! . . . Anselm spat out.

  —Thy joint be right, the squares be swung . . . the haggard face continued, reading from a scrap of paper.

  —And what does Justin Martyr mean, when he says “the evil spirits practice mimicry”? Anselm demanded. —Crucial! . . .

  —Help us to score for some scoff today, and don’t jump us salty if we come on like a drag, cause like we don’t put down other cats when they goof . . . the haggard face went on in the silence straining between Anselm and Max. —For thine is the horse, the hash, and the junk . . .

  —God damn you! give me that God-damned thing! Anselm burst out, swinging round and tearing the paper from the loose fingers; and the haggard face dropped out of sight, to bob up once more with, —Cause face it . . . and disappear again, as Anselm tore the shred of paper into smaller and smaller bits.

  —Look Anselm, Max said coming up to him, —why don’t you be reasonable? You’ll end up like Charles, this pose of yours . . .

  —Like Charles! And you, what . . . be reasonable! Anselm got to his feet. —This pose! this . . . Gott-trunkener Mensch, yes, you . . . be reasonable! That’s what they called Spinoza, your prince of rationalists, damn him, you know what they offered Spinoza to conform? A thousand florins. “Conform outwardly” they told him, but what did he do, he changed his name from Baruch to Benedictus. The prince of rationalists!

  Max had taken a step back, and another, smiling as though embarrassed for Anselm, as Anselm came on. —And what did they do, they damned him, the lens-maker Spinoza. They excommunicated him, right into the darkness of reason. The Schammatha, they damned him in the name that contains forty-two letters, they damned him in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and the Tetragrammaton, in the name of the Globes, and the Wheels, and the Mysterious Beasts . . .

  Max was backing toward the door, toward the man in the checked suit who said, —To tell the truth I wouldn’t dare go in there, they’re all nuts. —I’m freezing to death, said his companion.

  —In the name of Prince Michael and the Ministering Angels, Metateron, Achthariel Jah, the Seraphim, the Ofanim . . . Anselm went on shrilly as Max backed out into the night. —The trumpets dropped, they reversed the candles, Amen, there’s the Schammatha, damned right into the darkness of Reason . . . and he stood quivering in the empty doorway for a minute, indifferent to the eyes turned on him. Then he spat in the street and came back to the table where Otto had just stood preparing to leave. —Here, take this, Anselm said to him, holding out his magazine. —There’s a special article in it, Can Freaks Make Love? with illustrations, a “rare photo of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, with two of their natural children . . .” He slumped in his chair again, and after a moment started to whistle, rasping through his teeth.

  —What is that? what you’re whistling, it’s Bach isn’t it?

  He looked up at Stanley, and after a moment, —Yes, he admitted, —the seventy-eighth cantata. His elbow rested on The Moan of the Tiber.

  —An aria? Stanley asked to his empty face.

  —“We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps” . . . a duet, Anselm said vaguely, watching Stanley stir the cold coffee, with a lifeless chill in his eyes. —Sung by women, by women’s voices . . .

  Stanley gasped, lifting the spoon from the coffee cup. —What is it? he whispered, as the thing slipped back into the coffee. He raised it out again.

  —Ha, ha, hahaha . . .

  The alarm clock strung to Mr. Feddle’s neck went off.

  —What is it? It’s a . . . he held it in the air, unable to move, staring at it.

  —You can use it for a bookmark, Stanley. For when you read Malthus. Hahahahaha . . . look at what Stanley found in his coffee.

  —Anselm, did you . . .

  —Hahahahahahahahaha

  Mr. Feddle shut the clock off with one hand, finished his beer with the other, bowed to three people, stumbling away from the hollow desperate laughter behind him, out the door where he bumped the man in the checked suit who said, —There, there he goes, out the other door, the side door.

  Above emptied streets, the roseate heaving persisted; above bodies contorted with sleep, strewn among the battlements erected in this common war without end, some wrenched as though in the last embrace, spoke with tongues, untended and unattended, extended limbs and members to come up against t
he thigh of another fallen, and be similarly still, or rise distended to enter the warm nest again and swim in the dark channel, committing the final assault in the anonymity of exhaustion, hearts emptied of prayer. But the blood-luster of the sky witnessed that the battle was not done, though all were slain: it shone like the sky over the Campagna where Attila’s Huns met the Romans in engagement so fierce that all were slain in deed, extreme but inconclusive, for their spirits continued the battle three nights and days over the field of unburied dead.

  In the bar of a midtown hotel where the rear guard bivouacked among chrome and glass, scarred, alert, at battle stations (for there’s no discharge in the war), Otto rested his left arm openly before him, raised one eyebrow, turned his lips down at the corners, flared his nostrils, and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. He spilled his drink. —Better give me another, he said. —Irish.

  —You’ve had enough, Jack.

  —Will you give me another drink?

  —You’ve had enough tonight. Go home and sleep it off.

  —Have I had enough? May I buy you a drink, madame?

  —Come on, Jack, don’t start any trouble. Leave the lady alone.

  —I’m talking to her, not to you.

  —Come on, fellow. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

  The man in the checked suit came in the street door as Otto, clutching Can Freaks Make Love? rolled in his right hand, strode from the bar into the lobby of the hotel.

  —You want to buy some pictures?

  —Pictures? Otto asked, turning.

  —Girls, you know?

  —Just girls?

  —Yeh, what’sa matter, you queer? He started to thrust back into the envelope the pictures he had half displayed, tangles of white limbs.

  —Don’t I know you? Otto stared at the young man, the hat on the back of his head, the extinguished cigarette stub in the corner of his mouth. —You don’t know me, Mac, the young man said quickly. —You don’t know me. You want these or not.

  —Let’s see them.

  —What’s the matter, you don’t trust me? I can’t bring them out here. A buck for the pack.

  —All right, here. Here. Otto handed him a one-dollar bill.

  In the men’s room, he opened the envelope. A sailor banged the door, coming in, and Otto went into a booth. He stared at the first picture; and then sat down, staring at it. He turned it up, and looked at each one, his fingers quivering against their glossy surfaces, at each one quickly, ascertaining the face, unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the unfamiliar maple chair she sat on, curled in, the Venetian blinds, the wallpaper, the upholstery pattern on the chair, her fingernails, the lines of her knuckles, the irregular dent of her navel and the two full blots swelling toward him, detailed blemishes on the expanse of her flesh, which delineated it but could not bring it to life in any variety of pose and exposure, obstacles at which his gaze stumbled, passing over the shadowed white in a silent mania of search which led him helplessly to her face, and deserted him there, fixed by the mouth which stigmatized his hunger, fixed by the eyes which knew him, and did not move.

  Aware of silence, he stared at these blemished rubrics, WARNING! ALL SO-CALLED PROPHYLACTIC TUBES . . . NOT SANITU . . . GENUINE!, on the metal door before him, conscious only now the sounds of it ceased that the sailor had been sick in a wash basin.

  —Hey, come on out, you want a good browning?

  He sat, paralyzed by silence, suddenly cold and in detailed motion, shivering. The metal door before him banged, and rattled on the latch. —Hey, come out of there, what are you doin in there, poundin your pork?

  Another door banged.

  —O.K., sailor. Be a sport. Get the hell out of here.

  He heard that; and heard the scuff of shoes on the tile floor; and listening, heard nothing.

  Out in the street, he paused as two men came toward him from one direction, a woman from the other. She walked slowly, looking at him in apparently careless interest, a look of appraisal.

  —Pardon me, he said. She stopped. —Are you . . . are you . . .

  —Trying to make a pick-up? she asked him.

  —Yes maybe but it isn’t that bad, it isn’t that crude, it isn’t just for that, it’s that maybe you can . . . that I need . . .

  The man in the checked suit stopped, stayed by Mr. Sinisterra’s hand.

  Otto stopped swaying, stayed by the woman’s hand on his wrist. —Come along with me, she said. He started to withdraw his hand, to take her arm, and he felt his wrist caught in a chain. —But what’s this? I . . . I mean you . . .

  She gave the nippers a slight twist, and repeated, —Come along with me.

  —I knew it, said Mr. Sinisterra, standing behind a refuse can.

  —A cop?

  —It sticks out all over her.

  —It sure does. She’s got a front like a cash register. We’re screwed. If he has any of the queer on him we’re really screwed. What are you going to do?

  —Be quiet.

  —Where you going?

  —I’m going to church.

  —What the hell are you going to church for?

  —To confess.

  —To confess this? to tell them . . . why Jeez what’s the matter with you, them priests have a pipeline right into the cops . . .

  —Be quiet. You think I’m a half-wit? I’m going to confess a sin.

  —What sin, for Christ sake?

  —Pride, said Mr. Sinisterra, removing the mustache from his lip, and putting it into his pocket. —And to burn a candle.

  —For who you’re goin to burn a candle, said the man in the checked suit, stepping back to look at his companion, his simple face falling into one of the few expressions it afforded, complete bafflement.

  —For Johnny the Gent, said Mr. Sinisterra, walking on. —He had humility.

  The music was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, threading into the lobby as though seeking a listener, for the bar was empty.

  It came forth as though lunging from a coil hidden beyond the portières, trailing and lunging, as though these notes reaching the lobby now had been audible in the bar moments before; and, sitting in the bar, one might have followed the single course of the thing from behind, to behold it rearing over its prey.

  Then it struck. Mr. Pivner stirred, started, woke in alarm, to recover all that he could in this unfamiliar chair, his newspaper, which had slipped to the floor as he read, ZOO ESCAPES INCREASE, HUNT MADMAN Police believe that they are on the trail of the man, apparently insane, who broke into the Bird House at Central Park Zoo last week in an attempt to turn loose the specimens on display there. Theft was discounted as the motive. The lunatic, described as a tall Negro of uncertain age, was seen by Bertha Hebble, a cleaning woman, as she passed . . .

  —I beg your pardon sir, the young gentleman who you were waiting for has not come in yet. It is getting quite late, and . . .

  —I must get home. I must get home, but I want to write a note, said Mr. Pivner, standing. He went to the desk, and the music lurked as he wrote. Then he put on his hat, which he had been carrying, and turned toward the revolving door, which the manager set in motion, and said —Good night, as the music towered in ambuscade’s tense imitation of silence.

  Sticking from an ashcan halfway down the block he saw a cane. He looked about him quickly, to establish his loneliness in fact; and when the four notes struck in finale he was beyond reach, moving slowly, escaping again in unconscious defiance of something which he did not understand, affirming with each step an existence still less comprehended, so crowded were its details, so clamorous of worth, until heeded, and then speechless as the night itself.

  VI

  “Des gens passent. On a des yeux. On les voit.”

  The sky was perfectly clear. It was a rare, explicit clarity, to sanction revelation. People looked up; finding nothing, they rescued their senses from exile, and looked down again.

  Behind the bars which kept children out of their cages, th
e two polar bears moved continuously without touching each other, the male in an endless circuit, down to the front where he half reared, dropped and returned to his mate who stood swinging her head back and forth, timekeeper for their incarceration, clocking it out with this massive furred pendulum. —He’s doin that every time I come here, swingin his neck, a little girl complained, straining at the outside bars. A little boy asked, —What’s their names? The female turned toward the rock cave, exposing the people to the filth of her unformulated rear. A young Negro stood and stared. A fat man in a yellow and brown necktie aimed his light meter, and stepped back to adjust an expensive camera.

  —You thought I’d gone to Lapland, didn’t you.

  —My dear fellow, I hadn’t the faintest notion where you’d gone, Basil Valentine said without turning from the bears’ cage. His voice sounded strained and a little weary. He was wearing a double-breasted gray coat, slightly fitted, fully buttoned, a gray hat with a rolled brim, gray gloves, and his tie was striped black and dark red. The polar bear approached looking him over, reared at the bars, sex apparent wobbling among fur drawn into spines by the water, and retired, gone green up about the neck. —But you do look rather better this morning, Valentine added, as though needing the makeshift of this observation to turn around, and look. —Where’ve you been?

  —I? In a Turkish bath. Good God but it’s cold.

  —If you would put on an overcoat when you come out . . .

  —What difference would that make, it would still be cold wouldn’t it?

  —You know, Valentine went on, as they came out of the arcade, —when I look down to your feet, I’m almost surprised to see them there, on the ground. I half expect empty trouser-cuffs blowing in the wind.

  —Yes. I hate the cold.

  —Shall we go down and buy you an overcoat? To see you hunched up, with your hands in your pockets . . .