The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —Yes, what are you doing with that? . . . Where are you? he repeated, when he reached the hanging bulb, whose glow barely cast his shadow on the stone floor. He paused, and thought he heard nothing. —Where did you go? Where are you? he demanded of the walls. —Here now! He looked down at the hand he held before him. It was quivering. Then he thought he heard a faint scraping sound, and he followed it on tiptoe until he reached a small room whose sole illumination came from the space of gray sky in the window well out of reach up the wall. And there, sitting on the floor with the painting propped up before him, was the man.

  —Here now, you . . . what do you . . .

  The man looked at this intruder hanging in the doorway with a hand on either side of the door frame, steadying. He stared attentively, but from a face with no expression at all, neither surprise, nor curiosity, nor interest, nor any betrayal of intelligence at all. Then he returned to the painting, and the blade in his hand made scraping sounds on the canvas, barely more distinct than they had been from farther away.

  —What are you doing to that picture? You there! . . . But the Irish thorn-proof was already beginning to sag precariously, with doubt, or possibly plain weariness. The delicate scraping continued. The painting showed a man in religious habit kneeling before a crucifix suspended in midair. —Do they know you took that picture? Do they know what you’re doing?

  —They? the man on the floor repeated dully, without looking up.

  —They, the . . . the monks, the brothers up here, up there, they . . . I thought . . . The protest began to fail, as the intruder got in against the wall and quieted his breathing. Finally he brought out, —You don’t have very good light. He stared at the moving blade. —Do you.

  —That’s all right. The blade went on, removing the corner of a windowsill, a high small window much like the one in this room. There were no chairs, but a table against one wall was laden with pots and bottles, sticky pools and spots and some bread. —I can’t see very well anyhow.

  —But . . . but you . . . isn’t it cold? . . . to be sitting on the floor? The scraping continued. —And you . . . who are you? The scraping continued. —I . . . my name . . . my friends call me Ludy. People who know me call me Ludy.

  —That’s all right, said the man on the floor, still not looking up, his voice dull and even. —People I’ve never seen before in my life call me Stephen.

  The Irish thorn-proof hitched slowly down the wall, and Ludy came to rest on his heels, squatted inside the small room.

  When the damaged portion of the windowsill had been scraped away, Stephen turned and stared at him again, but with no more interest than before. Once turned so, his eyes did not move after details, but stared lifelessly for a good half-minute before he turned back to his work. After studying the painting with this same look, he commenced a meticulous attack on a table leg there. —Are they after you?

  —Are who? . . . after me. Who?

  The man shrugged over the picture. His lips were drawn tight, as though in concentration on his work; nonetheless there was something regular and mechanical about his movement, as the blade moved and its sound was the only one in the room.

  —Who? . . . after me.

  He stopped and put the blade down on the floor, rummaging in pockets until he found a bent cigarette wrapped in yellow paper. He lit it, and asked, —You’re not wanted? The thick smoke rose over his face. It clung to the squared hollows of his cheekbones and curled slowly in the hollows of his eyes. He shrugged again, and returned to the painting. Blue smoke from the coal of the cigarette ran up its yellow length, broke round his nostrils and rose over his eyes, still he made no move to take it from his lips as he worked.

  Ludy came forward, elbows on the thorn-proof knees. —Wanted? he repeated. —I? . . . I don’t understand. I . . . I’m afraid you don’t understand. When I followed you I . . . I took you for a thief.

  —That’s all right, Stephen said quietly, and no expression appeared on his face through the smoke. He went on working at the table leg in the painting, but he muttered —A thief . . . under his breath.

  —But of course, now I see . . . you’re an American too, aren’t you. I started right out, calling to you in English, it’s funny, I never thought . . .

  —It’s all right, Stephen brought his voice up enough to say. —I’m lived as a thief. Don’t you know? All my life is lived as a thief.

  —But you’re . . . you’re working. You’re an artist?

  —Yes, and lived like a thief. Then he turned his face up again, abruptly, though the cigarette retained its ash. —You’re looking at my diamonds, aren’t you.

  —Well, I had noticed them. Ludy cleared his throat. —They’re very nice, aren’t they, he managed to say.

  —They were a present, this ring. A present from the Boyg, was it? Yes. There. Why did you come here? What do you want of me?

  —Well, you know, a little conversation in English for a change. And the tourists here. I didn’t expect tourists. Women.

  —Girls . . .

  —And those awful girls from the Embassy. Coming right in. Right into the monastery. Eating here. They ate here. Did you see them?

  —One of them gave me some cheap cigarettes.

  —But you, being here this way . . .

  —What way?

  —Just . . . just working here, I mean. Living here, Ludy said looking round the stone walls again. —Do you live down here?

  —No.

  —Am I disturbing you? Your work?

  —No.

  —And . . . how long have you been here? Finally Ludy got no answer but the scraping. The leg of the table was almost gone. —You see, since you . . . since you’re familiar here, I thought you might tell me some things about the place, since you speak English. It’s a very wealthy monastery, isn’t it. Why, I’ve seen cloth of gold, and seed pearls . . .

  —The lay brother Eulalio speaks English.

  —Him! I know it, but he . . . I didn’t come here to talk about typewriters.

  —Why did you come here?

  —Well of course, something . . . an experience of a spiritual nature . . . possibly. Stephen looked up at him blankly. —A need for spiritual . . . something more spiritual than typewriters, Ludy finished, and shifted his hams on his heels. He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes from the blank gaze. —And when he does get enthusiastic about something spiri . . . something about the place here, this Brother Elālio, it’s even worse, he went on petulantly. —You can’t explain to him that you don’t shout about beautiful things, you don’t try to . . . you know what I mean.

  —You suffer them, Stephen said evenly, and the blade went right on, and the smoke rose against his face filling its hollows.

  —Yes, why I was listening to the bells out there one morning, the campanilla, and he showed up and tried to raise his voice above them to tell me how beautiful they were. He’s up and about early, isn’t he. Why, he was showing me a chalice of some sort and he got so excited about it I thought he was going to jump on my shoulders. I couldn’t appreciate it properly after that, of course. I wonder if they know what a nuisance he makes of himself, just because he speaks English, if you can call it that, prying around everywhere. Smoking. I didn’t think that was right at all, a monk smoking cigarettes in my room. I almost reported him. Prying around . . . I suppose he’s been through all your belongings too? Waving them in the air and spitting on the floor . . .

  —That’s how he found the pistol.

  —The what? Found what, did you say?

  —In the drawer. I had a pistol in the drawer, and he found it that way.

  —A pistol? . . . Well, that . . . that must have put him off, a . . . a gun?

  —He looked quite disappointed.

  —Scared him, yes a . . . a gun like that . . . in a monastery.

  —Oh no, no. He just looked shy, and then he looked at me and closed the drawer. He didn’t say anything. He just looked disappointed.

  —Yes . . . yes, I . . . I see. L
udy cleared his throat, and looked up so sharply at the profile before him that the impact of his glance seemed to knock the long curve of ash from the cigarette, for nothing else moved there. Then he looked down at the painting, and asked who it was.

  —Navarrete . . . Juan Fernández.

  —Oh . . . yes.

  Stephen had leaned back from it, to spit the cigarette on the floor and reach for the bread on the table. He sat there chewing the bread with no more apparent sense of what he was eating than showed in his eyes for what he was looking at, though the half-loaf was gone quickly, and he was back at the picture with the blade.

  —Navaretty, he was a monk too, was he? Ludy showed his interest in this religious by bringing his weight from his hams forward on his toes.

  —He studied with Titian, the man bent over the painting muttered, working the blade more busily now. —Titian’s paintings in the Escorial, he saw them when he went there to paint for the king, and his whole style changed. He learned from Titian. That’s the way we learn, you understand.

  —And you, you’re . . . restoring this work? Ludy bent closer, got no answer, and went back on his heels against the stone wall. —You ought to have better light for such delicate artistic work, he said. —Especially if you can’t see very well.

  —Yes, ver-ry careful, it’s very delicate . . . Stephen hunched more closely over the picture with his blade. —But that’s all right. That’s what they say about Leonardo now. Doctors say it, eye doctors. You’d be surprised. That’s the secret of her enigmatic smile.

  —What? Whose?

  —The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa . . . whose! he muttered impatiently, without looking up. —Science explains it to us now. The man who painted her picture couldn’t see what he was doing. She didn’t really have an enigmatic smile, that woman. But he couldn’t see what he was doing. Leonardo had eye trouble.

  Ludy watched the blade approach a bare sandaled foot.

  —Art couldn’t explain it, the voice went on clearly, but low as though he were talking to himself, as he worked the blade. —But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf. He didn’t even know they were clapping for him at the first performance. They didn’t have an applause-meter, you understand. Somebody had to turn him around to the audience so he could see them clapping for him. Then Stephen turned his face up abruptly. —I have passed all the scientific tests, you understand, he said earnestly, his voice taking tone for the first time. But when he repeated, —You understand . . . stopping his work to reach down another of the small loaves of bread, he spoke with the same dull voice. Though the loaf was hard-crusted, it broke easily between his fingers. The bread crumbled because of its fine gray texture. He crammed half of it into his mouth, offered the other half to Ludy, who shook his head quickly, and then threw it back up on the table. As he chewed, a thoughtful expression came to his face for the first time. Though he may only have appeared thoughtful because his eyes, directed at the painting, were focused far beyond it. He chewed on.

  —There was a Beethoven Street in my home town, said Ludy. —We pronounce it just like it’s spelled. Beeth-oven.

  —If you’re going to make loaded dice, you have to make them perfect first. You can’t just load ordinary dice, they have to be perfectly true, to start with.

  —Ahm . . . yes, what I meant to ask you . . .

  —I’ve passed all the scientific tests, Stephen murmured, picking up the blade again and bending over the picture. —With science you take things apart and then we all understand them, then we can all do them. Get things nice and separated. Then you can be reasonable. Leonardo just needed glasses. That’s the enigma. He got busy with the scraping again.

  —I meant to ask, who’s this a picture of?

  —This is Saint Dominic. He thrashed himself three times a day.

  —What?

  —He invented Rosaries. Our Lady revealed the Rosary to him.

  —You’re Catholic, then?

  —Once a possessed person confessed that anyone who’s constant to the Devotion of the Rosary will surely be rewarded with life eternal. But you’ve probably read Ganssenio’s Vita Dominici Ordinis Praedicatorum Fundatoris.

  —Why no, I . . . I’m afraid I haven’t . . . run across it.

  —You may have forgotten it, Stephen reassured him, going on busily. —It’s all in chapter five, De auctore Sanctissimi Rosarii, ejusque efficacia. Now do you remember?

  —Ahm . . . vaguely, but . . .

  —He enclosed nuns too, he went on without looking up. —Strictly cloistered. Most of the Inquisitors were Dominicans.

  —Ahm . . . this, Ludy commenced, bringing his weight forward again to inspect the picture, —this little figure of . . . the figure on the cross here is interesting, isn’t it.

  —That’s Jesus Christ.

  —Why . . . yes, yes of course. What I meant was . . . Ludy cleared his throat. Stephen straightened up, and held the blade before him as though it were a brush, and he was sighting some line along its tip before adding another touch to the canvas. Ludy sniffed helpfully. —This crucifix, what I meant was, the figure isn’t . . . it looks alive . . . He sounded embarrassed, at having got into this, but he went on, —A little . . . almost a live little mannequin . . . ahm, responding to . . . ahm . . . you see a great variety of ahm in paintings of the Crucifixion, the expressions on the face, don’t you, some of them show an agony that is downright ahm . . . you can hardly say human, but . . . and then some of them . . . I mean to say, others . . .

  The man sitting on the floor brought out another yellow paper cigarette and lit it. —In some of the cheap prints He just looks bored, Stephen said, and got back to work with the blade. —Have you seen El Greco’s?

  —I . . . I don’t think I’ve come across it. Ahm. There’s an El Greco painting here, isn’t there. Here in the monastery, up in the. . . . one of those rooms, a picture of ahm . . . there’s a white bird coming down . . .

  The blade stopped. Stephen darted a look at him, an instant in which the same leer Ludy thought he had seen on his face reappeared, but he got immediately back to work, even more busily, the cigarette smoke clinging to his face. —The Descent of the Holy Spirit, he said, a suddenly hungry tone in his voice. —He studied with Titian too. We all study with Titian.

  For almost a minute, there was nothing but the rapid scraping of the blade, and Ludy came forward further and further until he almost went off balance. —But . . . he finally brought out, —the foot here, it’s almost gone. You . . . why are you taking it away, it . . . this whole part of the picture here, it’s not damaged.

  —Yes . . . Stephen whispered, —it’s very delicate work. Why you can change a line without touching it. Yes . . . “all art requires a closed space,” ha! remember Homunculus?

  —But wait, stop! What are you doing? Ludy brought a hand up as though he were going to interpose. —You can’t . . .

  Stephen turned to him sharply. —Be careful now, he said, as Ludy dropped his hand and sank back against the stone wall. —I’ve passed all the scientific tests, you understand. And I have a lot of work here, very delicate, strength and delicacy . . .

  —But you can’t . . . Ludy protested weakly.

  —That El Greco up in the Capilla de los Tres . . .

  —Yes . . . ?

  —I’m going to restore it next.

  —But you . . . there’s nothing wrong with it at all, it’s . . . it’s in fine condition, that painting.

  —Yes, he studied with Titian. That’s where El Greco learned, that’s where he learned to simplify, Stephen went on, speaking more rapidly, —that’s where he learned not to be afraid of spaces, not to get lost in details and clutter, and separate everything . . .

  —But you can’t, they won’t let you just . . . take that painting and . . . and do what you’re doing . . . Ludy was rising slowly, the Irish thorn-proof back against the stones, sliding upward w
ith his weight as he drew away from the figure on the floor, still busily working the blade. But his stare was transfixed by the squared hands, one of them gripping the picture with the long thumb along the top, the other blinking the two diamonds from the middle finger as the sound of the blade went on. Ludy closed his eyes, and opened them again, as he neared his height, and sniffed. —You . . . He was looking at the face, where nothing moved but the curls of thick smoke against its hollow surfaces. And then he cracked his head against the stone wall behind, so startled that he threw both hands up before him.