The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —My dear boy. . . . he heard from the passage, and waited, holding the door, until there was a snort, and heavy footsteps, receding. Then he opened the mirrored cabinet door, got out a pair of clean drawers, gazed at the blue suit unworn since his mother’s funeral, hanging there, swinging gently as though to recall him to it, and turned his back quickly. He got on the clean drawers, hopping about on one foot and then the other, informally, as though pursued by puffs of wind from different and unexpected directions. He hesitated over the trousers he’d been wearing, fell back on the bed pulling them on, and was out and up the passage a moment later, the drawers and the wet towel wadded into a bundle which he threw over the side when he reached the deck.

  It was dark, night swelling and falling around him, and there was a moon. He clung there staring at it. And in its light the ship seemed to fleet over the surface scarcely touching the water but to break its crests, a spectacular unreality which sent a shudder of excitement through his emptied frame, fleeing with no more weight than the weak ship’s lights above him. He clung as though to save himself from going over, not falling, but simply going over the side and out onto that swarming brilliance where everything would be all right at last.

  When he would look back over it all, what had happened, and what was yet to happen, this was the last moment of the voyage that he honestly, clearly remembered.

  Father Martin’s face was illuminated full from an uncurtained porthole, standing with his back to the rail on the First Class deck. Up the steps, Stanley started to rush toward him when a light sprang up in the face of the man talking to the priest, a light cupped in one hand against the wind, to show the face strong in profile, the eye shining from its surface. The light went down, drawn by a cigarette, flared up as the man shrugged, and went over the side a red speck. —Of course I still am, my dear fellow. We’re both probably working on the same thing now.

  —You haven’t changed, the priest said after a pause.

  —Semper aliquid haeret . . . you remember?

  The priest turned his back and went up the deck. Had he followed him, Stanley might sooner have found what he was after, for a few yards on Father Martin was stopped by a hospital attendant to whom he listened for a moment and then followed quickly. But the shadow remained at the rail and Stanley turned away from it, and soon got lost.

  In a bar, Don Bildow caught his coattail. —I didn’t know you were on board! . . . I want you to meet Miss Hall. Mrs. Hall? Mrs. Hall.

  —How do you do, excuse me I . . .

  Don Bildow, in a threadbare light brown suit, yellow and brown necktie, and plastic-rimmed glasses, stood up looking translucent. —Wait . . . he said, turning his back on Mrs. Hall.

  —But I can’t, I . . .

  Don Bildow was clutching a recent copy of the small stiff-covered magazine which he edited, and, from the stains on the cover, it looked as if he had been carrying it for some time. From his eyes, it looked as if he had had a good deal to drink. “Mrs. Hall” was watching him critically from behind. —Listen Stanley, I’ve always thought of you as a . . . somebody I can . . . somebody I share a lot with . . . said Don Bildow with a hand on Stanley’s shoulder, appraising him for some mutual infirmity, —and I . . . listen Stanley, have you got any Methyltestosterone? I’m with this girl, see? This Mrs. . . . this girl, and she . . . you know she wants me to go up to her cabin with her now but I haven’t got . . . I didn’t bring any Methyltestosterone, I mean I had some but my wife . . . I left it . . . Have you got any?

  —I . . . excuse me, I don’t even know what it is, I have to go. Stanley broke away from the limp grasp, and turned a few feet away recalling, thinking he might have asked Don Bildow if he had seen her; but Don Bildow was back deep in conversation, telling “Mrs. Hall” about —My little daughter, she’s only six and she was all swollen up when I left, I shouldn’t have left I know it, I have terrible guilt feelings about it, all swollen up in the middle . . .

  —And you’re the young man who wanted to trade some Dramamine for some Phenobarbital?

  Stanley turned to the tall woman, automatically held out his hand as he was accustomed to do when something was offered.

  —But what do you need them for, you’re all right, the tall woman’s husband demanded. —You can walk, I can’t even walk.

  —They’re not for me, she said to him, —they’re for Huki-lau . . . now where did that boy go?

  At the door, Stanley had to wait a moment.

  —After you, Senator.

  —After you, Mister Senator.

  —Senator, you’ll be doing me a great service if you’ll go first and help me out, I can’t even see the door, sir.

  Stanley saw her pass, outside on the deck, running. —Excuse me, I . . .

  —What? . . . Senator?

  —Excuse me, sir, I . . .

  —Oops! . . .

  —I’m sorry, I . . .

  She was not in sight, but Stanley hurried in the direction she’d gone. He dropped the sticky pills into his pocket, found the tooth, and ran clutching it. Rounding another corner, he saw her feet through a flight of steps; but when he reached them, and got up them, she was gone again. He stopped to get breath. A man in a dinner jacket approached, and Stanley, thinking, stopped him to ask for the ship’s hospital.

  —You don’t look ill, my boy. Stay out and get a little air, thet’ll straighten you up quicker than all the ductors . . .

  Stanley ran on over the metal plates, and finally he did reach the ship’s hospital, but she was not there. At any rate he did not see her when he came in. Few of the beds were occupied, and round one stood a screen against which shadows moved, and he went there.

  From within came the steady murmur of Spanish, interrupted but unbroken by subdued words in Father Martin’s voice. Stanley stood listening to the confession, bound, not understanding its features but only what it was. Then the murmur subsided, broke in a cough, took up again more rapidly and abruptly ceased. There was silence. The shadows on the screen moved, and then Father Martin’s voice took up, a monody hardly breaking the reciprocal sounds which bound the ship in motion, no more pressing or importunate, and no more faltering than the movement of the ship itself into the darkness. Bells sounded somewhere, clear tones which penetrated the misereatur, hard separate sounds which signaled the Latin syllables with consequence: Stanley was counting them. For no reason, he had never learned the simple system of ship’s bells and seven might be any hour; but now each one pinioned his tension, waiting for the next, listening, as he waited watching the shadows, for one of them to take form and move of itself. Then the bells stopped and left him swaying on the firm undulations,

  —Per istam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam . . . He smelled oil, or it seemed, burning oil, —indulgeat tibi Dominus . . . the shadow of an erect thumb drew out elongated on the screen. —Quidquid deliquisti per oculos . . . Then he saw her, moving slowly and more clear as she approached the light, her dress wrinkled and torn at the bosom, hair in disarray, and catching light her eyes were wild. —Deliquisti per aurem . . . the voice came on with intolerable slowness, and that because its progress seemed to draw her on and restrain her at once. —Deliquisti per manus . . .

  When she broke and ran toward the screen Stanley stayed her no more than a shadow thrown across her. Nor did her body when she flung it forth heaving with sobs, seem to disturb more than a shadow so suddenly fallen upon him the figure laid out there, exposed for the last touch of forgiveness upon the flesh where all of its impulses reared in one. And like a ragged shadow her hair almost covered his lined face, and her left arm round his head and his shoulder in her other hand so forcefully that it appeared to rise slightly from the bed, nothing moving but her lips on his ear, —Oh yes . . . her voice broke but she would not leave it, —Oh yes, oh yes . . . Oh yes . . .

  The left hand of the man on the bed came up slowly. It moved as though with life of its own into the shadow of her thigh, and there under a final hieroglyph of veins it came to res
t.

  Then there was no sound, of voices nor of any voice: and without, her shape flung down there appeared no longer dirigible. The only thing to bind time together was the reciprocal motion of the ship: yet in the moments of the prow dropping forth into a trough far ahead and shaking the fragments of its advance down in shudders all about them, Stanley had long since begun, repeated every motion of battle, every twist of the past convulsed nights, every skirt and dash in this sciamachy brought up firm now with Father Martin’s hand on his shoulder until he straightened himself back to its force, straining away at last, rending away his spoil and leaving a dead man laid out in the light.

  Together they staggered down decks, down steps, companionways, passages, nearly fell in the pool shifting just before their own door, and once inside it was as though they’d never left: buff-painted metal walls studded with double rows of rivets, metal above transected by a steel I-beam, steel under foot in plates lapped with rivets, the closed door flush and no way out but the ventilator, and this whole severe enclosure of angles driven by vibrations, in motion with no direction, it was more than as though they had never left it, as though they could never leave it, and had never been anywhere else. Stanley looked at his wrist watch, as though knowing what time it was might confirm something.

  —Why did you take me away from him? she asked quietly.

  Stanley looked up from the watch face to hers, and gaped at her. —But he wasn’t . . . he isn’t . . . you . . . That’s all he could say; but she was still waiting, standing still against the roll of the ship and staring at him, her plain dress wrinkled and torn at the breast where he’d torn it, and on her face a look like she’d had that day he found her in the hospital, a day in his childhood it struck him now. He took one step toward her and raised his hand. —Now . . . and he stopped as though something had caught in his throat: he had started to tell her to lie down, as though that could ever be an innocent proposal again, and a pain of a novel and intimate sort shot through him from behind to confirm the cleaned empty feeling his weak legs supported in witness.

  —Why?

  Stanley recovered the step he had taken forward, back. He saw streaks glistening on her face, but not tears. They were streaks from the anointed face she had thrown herself upon. And throwing both hands before him Stanley burst out, —But why did you . . . who was he? . . . how did you know who he was?

  —He was? . . . she repeated, and —Oh, he was. She put fingers to her forehead and lowered her eyes, and then let her hand go down to an ear and stop at the empty lobe. —For he knows who I am, though he had so little to share . . . so precious little. And did you never know him? she asked, raising her face to Stanley, —his eyes, not the eyes of a lover, no, never but once. He brought lilies when selling them was against the law. Against the law? . . . to sell lilies? Still touching the lobe of her ear, she was looking away from him now, and went on, her voice low, —Not a lover, not looking to find what was there but for what he could put there, and so selfishly take it away. But he didn’t! He didn’t! He didn’t! she cried, and she threw herself on Stanley.

  He fell back against the door, and his arms raised, prepared of their own accord to fight, for he was not, found themselves supporting her, sobbing in weak broken cries which were caught up in desperate gasps for breath. But even these sounds so close that his own chest shook with them seemed far away as he dragged her across the steel plates, staggering, catching his foot on a riveted seam, and ready to smash his head on the floor before her weight could pull him down on the bed with her distant sobs, for the sound of his own heart engulfed them both, the steel room shuddered with its pounding, a half-measure and then a full one, and both of them shut inside it, locked in the riveted steel enclosure, a heart in motion with no direction.

  —Let me out! she screamed, and he pushed her, catching himself on the sharp corner of a metal bureau as she fell back on the bed, the port side rising behind him, and she hit her head against the rivet row, and the crucifix fell and stabbed her shoulder.

  It was the crucifix Stanley recovered first, and he stood there with it in his trembling hand staring at the drawn yellowed legs, rigid, hard-muscled straight to the toes, and then, the chest raised stiffly motionless, the chin thrust up and the unseeing eyes wide open. He had stopped breathing. The trembling crucifix lowered from his fixed gaze and he was staring at her, only a blur before him.

  Her head lay over on one shoulder, lolling gently against the steel behind her, eyes closed, and she whimpered. Faint streaks and blotches had begun to show on her pale face, and Stanley bent over her. He started to talk loudly as his heart took up again with the engines and the whole thing of metal angles straining against each other enclosed overtook him, —Listen, listen . . . listen to me . . . He dropped the crucifix beside her and took her shoulders. Her head fell forward. —Listen to me . . . He laid her back on the bed, got her legs up, and then pulled the crucifix out from under her and put it over beside her head. He stared at her still face for a moment, then got up and got a glass of water. He looked for a towel, found none, and so he dipped his fingers in and drew them over her forehead, saying now, —Listen, you can’t have . . . I didn’t mean . . . you can’t have hurt yourself, you . . . listen . . .

  She opened her eyes staring straight at him, and said finally, —Will you always keep me here?

  —No, no, I . . . because even I, I can’t stand . . .

  —Will we go to him now?

  —Yes, I . . . no, you . . . now, now you have to rest for a minute for a little while. Now we, listen, both of us have to . . . where did I . . . Where did you put that . . . that rosary I gave you, that . . . those silvery beads I gave you, where are they? . . . because we . . .

  She just stared at him. Stanley got up and started looking frantically round. In a pocket, a hand as frantic as his eyes found the tooth, and two sticky pills clinging to its wrapping.

  The rosary was Italian, of silver filigree beads, with a filigree cross at the end of it. He saw it in a heap on the bureau where he’d just come from, and brought it back to her, going down on one knee beside her. —Listen, now we both . . . after what we’ve both . . . listen, the Angelic Salutation. The An-gel-ic, Salu-tation, do you remember it? Ave . . . listen, repeat it with me. Take this . . . He thrust the rosary beads into her hands, still on her belly. —Ave Maria . . .

  Her torn dress was pulled to the tip of her breast, which lay still as though she were not breathing. The beads lay over her motionless fingers with their colorless nails. She stared at him.

  She stared at him through four repetitions, her breast just as still, the beads unmoved by her fingers and their colorless nails, the streaks on her face reddening. Then she burst into laughter.

  The port side came down with a shudder; and Stanley went back on his heels: he’d never heard such a sound, thrown down on him from every side from the metal walls. All he could say was, —No! . . . No! . . . until he did manage to get hold of the crucifix. —No, now . . . now listen, you . . . Him who . . . He who . . . whose love was so great . . . whose love for us was so great that He gave up His life . . . He . . . He . . .

  —He! . . . she cried out, —then take me to him!

  —No, I mean, not him, I mean . . . here. Stanley thrust the crucifix into her hands raised before her, the beads in a heap in her lap. For the moment his hand held it, his fingers trembled on the rigid yellow figure. The new significance his own body had given it made him dizzy, and he swallowed with the effort sea-sickness cost him.

  She was staring at it too. Her eyes shone brilliantly, and she gripped it with great excitement. Stanley stood up before her. He watched her, waiting for her to confirm him in some transfiguration of faith, what, he did not know. She raised her eyes. They were glittering from her hollow face.

  —This h-horrid thing, she said, and threw it at him.

  Stanley reached automatically to catch it, but the instant his fingers touched it, they stiffened and it fell.

  —Your terrible
little man with nails in him, she cried, —your muttering and your muttering, and that . . . terrible thing. She stood up. —For love? For love? Oh never, never, never. I know whose love must save me as I must be for love. And you cannot keep me from him. You cannot keep me from him. You cannot, nor Him dead with nails in, not for love.

  There was a knock on the door, and before Stanley could open it or hold it closed, there was the fat woman filling the doorway. —My dear boy, my book, I lost it and I must have lost it here. My book about our little Spanish saint?

  She stared at Stanley and beyond him. Stanley found the yellow three-penny pamphlet on the floor, and got it.

  —But I won’t take it if you’re reading it, the fat woman said, standing curiously still in the rocking doorway. —The lovely child! . . . preferring death to sin. I liked the part . . .

  —Here, take it! Stanley said.

  —I liked the part like where she’s getting ready, for First Communion? “Take care of your tongue,” the priest told her, “for it’s the first part of you to touch the body of Our Lord . . .”

  The fat woman stood there, filling the doorway. She had a small mouth, lips lined with a coral shade, which she pursed impatiently. She stood there, curiously still.

  The rosary flew through the air.

  —Go fuck yourself!

  Stanley turned his head slowly. He saw no features, only livid red streaks. The silver filigree beads rolled all over the floor. He leaned over to pick up the crucifix.

  —You are possessed, said the fat woman. Stanley brought his head up slowly before her, as he recovered the crucifix, afraid of the expression on the coral lips, afraid the fat woman would knock him down in an attack on the figure behind him, whom she’d just judged: but the fat woman was looking straight at him. She watched what he was doing, and as he stood, fixed her small eyes on his. The coral lips continued to twist silently. Then she turned from the doorway and went up the passage, the yellow three-penny pamphlet in the hand with the two mean pearls.