The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (104 page)

—My mummy sent me up to get some sleeping pills, but I can’t find the lady who . . .

—Now don’t you bother the nice lady, said Agnes, rummaging in the bottom of her large purse, taking out a French enameled thimble case. —I have some right here. Is three enough? You just take these down to Mummy. And I’ve already written him. She looked up at Stanley.

—Thank you, lady. Where’d you get the funny watch?

—Why, Mickey Mouse is my loyal faithful friend, said Agnes. —I can always trust
him
.

—What have you got the funny things sticking on your face for?

—Where . . . Agnes raised her hand, to feel the strip of tape at her temple, put there to discourage wrinkles when she lay down. —Oh my God, and they’ve been there . . . why didn’t someone . . .

—What are they for, lady? the child asked as Agnes tore them off, and opened her compact.

—Go along down to Mummy now, for God’s sake.

—He would understand, if you went to him, Stanley said, handing the letter back. —If you went to him and . . .

—I couldn’t face him. To ask forgiveness . . .

—Is a sublime test of humility . . .

—And he’s really rather an awful person I think . . .

—And from your inferiors an even greater trial.

—I want to do something, and . . . but don’t you think I might just
send
him something? Maybe some sort of nice gift . . . yes, something nice and you know fairly expensively nice for his daughter?

—I think, Stanley commenced soberly, —that really, for your own good . . .

—Oh, let’s stop thinking about it for a little while, she interrupted. —I just get so . . . tired of the terrible things I get in the mail. She smiled up at him briskly, and tightened her grasp on his hand. —Tell me about your music, Stanley, this long whatever-it-is that you’ve been working on for so long. Oh, and your tooth? I’m sorry, I forgot to ask.

—I think it went away, the toothache, it didn’t last, but my work, it’s an organ concerto but it isn’t finished yet.

—But you’ve been working on it for months.

—For years, he said. —And you know, I look at the clean paper
that I’m saving to write the finished score on, and then I look at the pile of . . . what I’ve been working on, and, well I can see it all right there, finished. And yet, well . . . you know I never read Nietzsche, but I did come across something he said somewhere, somewhere where he mentioned “the melancholia of things completed.” Do you . . . well that’s what he meant. I don’t know, but somehow you get used to living among palimpsests. Somehow that’s what happens, double and triple palimpsests pile up and you keep erasing, and altering, and adding, always trying to account for this accumulation, to order it, to locate every particle in its place in one whole . . .

—But Stanley, couldn’t you just . . . I don’t know what a palimsest is, but couldn’t you just finish off this thing you’re working on now, and then go on and write another? She ran her hand over his, resting on the chair arm there; and Stanley called her by her Christian name for the first time. —No, that’s . . . you see, that’s the trouble, Agnes, he said. —It’s as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it’s as though finishing it strikes it dead, do you understand? And that’s frightening, it’s easy enough to understand why, killing the one thing you . . . love. I understand it, and I’ll explain it to you, but that, you see, that’s what’s frightening, and you anticipate that, you feel it all the time you’re working and that’s why the palimpsests pile up, because you can still make changes and the possibility of perfection is still there, but the first note that goes on the final score is . . . well that’s what Nietzsche . . .

—All I know about Nietzsche is that he’s decadent, that’s what they say.

Stanley withdrew his hand, and it hung in air for a moment, like an object suddenly unfamiliar, which he did not know how to dispose of. —He was, because of . . . well that’s the reason right there, because of negation. That is the work of Antichrist. That is the word of Satan, No, the Eternal No, Stanley said, and put his hand in his pocket.

Agnes Deigh looked at her own hand on the arm of her chair. Two of the tanned fingers rose, and went down again; and when she looked over to where the critic had joined Benny on the couch, and sat, smoothing down the back of his hair, her face took the expression of the man she looked at, one of contemptuous, almost amused indulgence, though she did not have the dark hollows in her face, nor the brow and the forehead worn so with this expression that it looked natural; rather she looked uncomfortable, saying, —Those two look like they’re discussing the same thing we are, and he should know, that one . . .

—You know what I thought of immediately just now when I looked up and saw them? Stanley said, earnestly. —I thought of El Greco before the Inquisition, arguing the dimensions of angels’ wings. He looks like an Inquisitor, that dark fellow. People laugh at arguments like that now, and how many angels can dance on the end of a pin. But it’s not funny, it’s very wonderful. Science hasn’t explained it, and you know why, because science doesn’t even understand the question, any more than science understands . . . You know, Agnes, this concerto I’m working on, if I’d lived three hundred years ago, why . . . then it would be a Mass. A Requiem Mass.

—Einstein . . . someone said.

—Epstein . . . said someone else.

—Gertrude . . .

—Of course you’re familiar with Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. Have you ever observed sand fleas? Well I’m working on a film which not only substantiates it but illustrates perfectly the metaphor of the theoretic and the real situation. And after all, what else
is
there?

—Who
was
it that said, “a little lower than the angels”?

—That? it’s in that poem about “What is man, that thou art mindful of him.” That was Pope.

—Which one?

At this point, Anselm, in a shirt torn at the shoulder, his hair tousled and on end, unshaven, and clutching a magazine and two books, appeared in the door. No one seemed to notice him; and he stood there silent for some time.

The music had got quite loud. —There, you see? said someone more loudly, —I told you. It
is
Handel.
The Gods Go A-Begging
, so there!

Benny’s face was fleshy. Moreover, though it was not puffy, it seemed to be flesh recently acquired, and his expressions seemed, if such a thing were possible, to have difficulty in reaching the surface or, once arrived, to represent with conviction the feelings which had risen from within. So it appeared; though it may be that this want of precision pervaded the source itself, and his amorphous façade faithfully expressed confused furnishings, broken steps mounting deep stairwells, rooms boarded up, in disuse, and rooms of one character being used for new and timely purposes in the interior castle, whose defenses were not yet adjusted to the new tenancy but being constantly hastily altered in the midst of skirmishes, before that battle which would be the last.

—God is love, telling that to a Welsh Corgi in labor, isn’t that divine? the girl with Boston accents laughed, and Benny, who had
heard her remark about a lost horizon, drew away from where she toppled near his end of the couch, pulling the book to him as he did so. It was a book on bridge design, largely the work of Robert Maillart, and his finger marked a picture, diagram and description of the bridge at Schwandbach. He had picked it up after his words with Esther, and sat trying to appear absorbed with it while he collected himself. But he was interrupted by the figure in the green wool shirt who had joined him on the couch with, —I hear you’re in TV. Smiling with effort, and already perspiring freely, Benny answered, —That’s right, what can I do you for? . . . offering a cigarette, which was accepted without thanks.

They were being watched by the two who remained posted near the door, where they would be the first to greet, and snare, the guest of honor. Don Bildow, apparently supported upright by the lusty design of his necktie, watched through plastic rims. —What’s he talking to him for, that television person? —He’s just giving him a hard time, his companion answered, the same baleful satisfaction glittering under his brows, that poetic look of inner contemplation, charish, shot through with beams where some, his mirror among them, read a charismatic luster: all very well for the dust jacket of some slim volume (though no such had appeared), or the moment of inspiration itself, reflected in the eyes of someone else’s wife, but, for moments like this, scarcely practical, for he could see nothing clearly more than a few feet away. —He said he was going to ask him for a job writing TV scripts.

It was evident that Benny was having a hard time. He’d just given his glass a brave, unsteady toss in his hand, and started to stand up, but he was stayed by the critic’s hand, put forth in an annoying gesture as though to soothe where the irritating voice continued, speaking then of television as corrupting tragedy, now of the writer’s integrity, of human suffering . . .

Benny had hardly looked at the face of the man who was talking to him: in contrast to his own it was a detailed fortification, every rampart erected with definite purpose, their parapets calculated to withstand repeated assaults from any direction, tried in innumerable skirmishes where many had approached so close as to tumble between scarp and counterscarp, an arrangement so long in the building that, though every bit of it had been erected for defense, in finished entirety it assumed aggressive proportions; inviting strategy, it might only be taken by storm.

All this time, Benny’s smile had not failed. His smile was his first line of defense. But even as he’d started to his feet, that defense was being abandoned, and so it remained, unmanned, as
empty as gaping breastworks relinquished before unexpected onslaught.

—So tell me the truth, the harassing voice went on, as its owner came far forth from his walls, openly besieging. —Do you guys really give this same crap to each other you’re giving to me, pretending it’s a cultural medium? or do you just admit you’re all only in it for the money, that you’ve all sold out.

Benny’s smile was gone. He sat silent for a moment, studying the features of this attack. Then he said, —Why do you hate me? Did I ever do you a favor?

The critic straightened up, unprepared for this sally, without time to recover his own walls, he withdrew instantly behind contravallations of mistrust.

—Tell me the truth, what do you want from me, you fine-haired son of a bitch, Benny said to him evenly.

—All right, for Christ’s sake . . .

—What are you supposed to be, an honest man just because you don’t have a necktie?

—Relax, relax . . .

—I will like hell relax. Who are you, anyhow?

—Now listen . . .

—You listen to me. I’ve just taken a lot from you. I’ve taken a lot from people just like you. Just like you. That’s tough, isn’t it,
just like you
, that this town is loaded with people just like you, the world is loaded with people just like you. The honest men who are too good to fit anywhere. You’re one of the people, aren’t you. Look at your hands, have you ever had a callus? You don’t get them lifting glasses. Who are you, to be so bitter? Have you ever done one day of work?

—Look . . .

—And now I understand. And you talk to me about life, about real life, about human misery, Benny went on. He was not speaking loudly, nor fast, still the cold but vehement and level tone of his voice drew several people to turn around, and listen and watch. The other sat his ground with a patient sneer. —I offered you work, and you were too good for it. We buy stuff from guys like you all the time, writing under pen names to protect names that are never going to be published anywhere else, but they keep thinking they’ll make it, what they want to do, but never quite manage, and they keep on doing what they’re too good for. It’s a joke. It’s a joke, Benny repeated, and it was now that his voice began to rise. —I know you, I know you. You’re the only serious person in the room, aren’t you, the only one who
understands
, and you can prove it by the fact that you’ve never finished a single thing in your life. You’re
the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that’s
real
. What is real, then? Nothing’s real to you that isn’t part of your own past,
real life
, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal, . . . spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don’t know what real life is, you’ve never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But
life?
Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself?
Life!
You poor bastard. Benny started to laugh. He knocked an empty glass from the end of the couch, and Ellery put a hand on his shoulder. The stubby poet had come up beside the man at the other end of the couch, who was silent, looking at Benny, and the sneer almost squeezed from his face. Most of the people in the room were aware that something was happening, and had half turned, giving it half their attention, waiting to see if it deserved all. Benny started to stand up. —Come on, we’ll get a drink, Ellery said to him, an arm across his shoulders. —All right, Benny said. Then suddenly he swung around again.

—Go on, you lush, said the stubby poet; but Benny did not regard him. He stood over the man who as quickly recovered his sneer to look up.

—How do you make your living? Benny demanded.

—Come on, Benny. Leave the poor bastard alone.

—I just asked how he makes his living.

—The hell with him. Come on, Ellery said.

—I just want to know how he makes his living, is there anything wrong with that?

—He’s a critic. He writes about books, or some God damn thing. Now come on. But Benny pulled from Ellery’s grasp on his shoulder. —How long is it since you’ve seen the sun rise? he demanded. Then he went on, —How you would have done it. That’s the way everything is, isn’t it. How you would have done it. Not how it should have been done, but how you would have done it. When you criticize a book, that’s the way you work, isn’t it. How you would have done it, because you didn’t do it, because you’re still afraid to admit that you can’t do it yourself.