The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (107 page)

They were being approached by a short shiny figure in a gray sharkskin suit who was, himself, being hounded by someone saying, —Are you the guy who’s telling people that our company puts drugs in its dog food so dogs get addicted to our brand . . . ?

—Oo, coño . . . I was warned about this sort of thing, the Argentine said, escaping in Ed Feasley’s direction. —Excuse me, do I intrude? We became separated while speaking of . . .

—Battleships, said Ed Feasley wearily, and taken in charge, he left Otto staring into an empty glass. He did not even raise his eyes when someone beside him said, —She told me there was food in the kitchen, but I went in and there are two lunatics in there, one of them’s almost naked and the other is buttering him.

Stanley’s voice droned steadily as a distant undercurrent, —Yes but just let me finish . . . to Agnes Deigh. —I’m not trying to say I’m exempt from it, this modern disease, he went on with an insistence which prevented him from seeing that she was more than tired, was in fact exhausted in a sense so severe that it was physical only in its trembling expression. —That’s what it is, a disease, you can’t live like we do without catching it. Because we get time given
to us in fragments, that’s the only way we know it. Finally we can’t even conceive of a continuum of time. Every fragment exists by itself, and that’s why we live among palimpsests, because finally all the work should fit into one whole, and express an entire perfect action, as Aristotle says, and it’s impossible now, it’s impossible, because of the breakage, there are pieces everywhere . . .

Suddenly Otto’s hand shot up to his inside breast pocket: one might have thought he’d been bitten, so involuntary had this reflex become.

—A nation of watchmakers, can you imagine any country better qualified to make atom bombs?

—Oh God, to be in Europe, anywhere in Europe, even in France . . .

—Maude, is this yours? Big Anna was wearing it under her shirt.

—Even in Mauberge, even in a coal mine.

Otto’s face expressed nothing: unobserved, his features apparently had no reason to arrange themselves one way or another. His brow was level and without lines, his lips together and even. But slight marks of agitation drew up round his eyes when he raised them toward the door, where Esther stood with a woman wearing an orchid upside-down, and two or three others clustered about the guest of the evening, who afforded a spectacle of sartorial sloppiness and postural dilapidation consistent with the humility which he offered, in his soul-searching best-selling book, to share with others. At that moment Esther caught his eye with a querulous look which drew Otto’s face up in immediate confusion, and widened his bloodshot eyes; though why, he could hardly have said, as he turned and pretended to be speaking with the woman in the collapsed maternity dress who had just said, —Monasteries are a good thing for America, they help keep the homosexuals off the streets.

Then Otto saw Anselm, who was whistling with soft harshness through his teeth, and watching Stanley. Otto looked away quickly, as though fearing to be recognized, and accused of something; but Anselm kept whistling, and watching Stanley.

—This self-sufficiency of fragments, that’s where the curse is, fragments that don’t belong to anything. Separately they don’t mean anything, but it’s almost impossible to pull them together into a whole. And now it’s impossible to accomplish a body of work without a continuous sense of time, so instead you try to get all the parts together into one work that will stand by itself and serve the same thing a lifetime of separate works does, something higher than itself, and I . . . this work of mine, three hundred years ago it would have been a Mass, because the Church . . .

—But dear man . . . came from across the room, the woman with the orchid upside-down.

—And it would be finished by now, because the Church . . .

—But my dear Mister . . . Pott is it? her voice came on as she stood spilling part of her drink on his shoe and burning Don Bildow’s sleeve with her cigarette, —
I
am a
birthright
Friend.

As Anselm approached behind him, Stanley heard the vague harsh whistle, half turned, and then talked more rapidly and more directly to Agnes Deigh, who listened with strained attention. Anselm walked with slow careless indifference, bumping people as though they were pieces of overstuffed furniture. —Come on baby, one more glass of nice gin and we’ll find you the cutest doctor, why you look good enough to eat! . . . oww . . . Anselm bumped, bumped the girl with the bandaged wrists who went on, —We’ve been thinking of getting a two-toed sloth instead, they just hang on the shower-curtain rod all day and you don’t have to do a thing.

—Hey Stanley, where’s your instrument? Anselm asked coming up behind him. He’d taken out a dirty pocket comb with some teeth missing. —Here, middle C is missing, but if you can find some toilet paper I’ll accompany you in “We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps” . . . didn’t you bring your instrument?

—And I don’t read Voltaire of course, Stanley continued, his voice quavering as he forced it, —but somewhere I came across some words of his, “If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.” That may sound irreverent, but . . .

—It sounds downright God damned heretical, Anselm said behind him.

—But . . . even Voltaire could see that some transcendent judgment is necessary, because nothing is self-sufficient, even art, and when art isn’t an expression of something higher, when it isn’t invested you might even say, it breaks up into fragments that don’t have any meaning and don’t have any . . .

—You sound like Simon Magus,
invested
, for Christ sake, Anselm said, putting a dirty hand on Stanley’s shoulder. —Why don’t you go see his heart, they’ve got it in the Bibliothèque Nationale. You might understand him. By osmosis.

—Simon Magus? Stanley said, turning, confused.

—Voltaire, for Christ sake. He patted Stanley on the shoulder. —How’s your crack, Stanley? he asked him. Two people turned, raising eyebrows in shocked interest. Agnes Deigh pretended to be looking for something in her large pocketbook.

—Why, what . . .

—The crack in your ceiling, what do you think I mean.

—Oh, I didn’t know you . . . it’s a little longer, three-eighths of an inch longer, I . . .

—What the hell have you got in your pocket? Anselm said, nodding at Stanley’s side jacket pocket, which bulged, and weighed the jacket down on that side. —I’ll be God damned, Anselm said, reaching into the pocket before Stanley could step away, —a cold chisel. I heard this but I wouldn’t believe it.

—Well, I came up on the subway, and . . .

—Bathysiderodromophobia! What did I tell you! said an onlooker. Anselm looked up, his eyes narrowed. —And what’s that in
your
pocket?

—A stethoscope, Anselm said, —what does it look like.

—Anselm! What are you doing here? They looked up to see Don Bildow. —Where is . . . you’re supposed to be taking care of . . .

—I took her to a movie, and left her there until I come back.

—To a movie! But . . . what movie, where, where is she, how could you . . .

—All right, I’ll tell you the truth . . . well, don’t worry about her. It’s a good show, it will do her good.

—But you can’t . . . couldn’t do a thing like that . . .

—Don, an excited young man interrupted, grasping his arm, and nodding at someone across the room, who stood looking at a copy of the small stiff-covered magazine. —That poem, that poem by Max, he says it isn’t by Max at all, he says . . . well come over, quick.

Anselm said, —What poem? and followed them across the room, rolling his magazine now with the cover outside (
Pin-Up Cuties
) with one hand, picking up a drink with the other, and already showing the yellowed edges of teeth in a grin.

Stanley looked after them bewildered; then he saw Esther, whom he did not know, approaching Otto, and attempted an irresolute signal, saying —There’s Otto, I still have the twenty dollars he lent me, I haven’t needed it . . . His signal went unseen; he listened at a strain of music, and returned to Agnes Deigh, whose eyes were closed. —And do you know what Handel had inscribed inside the cover of his harpsichord? Musica Donum Dei . . . they still have it, he finished in desolate consolation, looking up, embarrassed at the prospect before him, the flesh abandoned by the lights of the discriminating will.

Very near him, the tall woman had just caught her husband in time to prevent him from confessing (to some “total stranger” as she would tell him next morning) that he had two psychoanalysts, neither known to the other, whom he played off against each other and managed to keep ahead of them both himself. —Our bene . . . one of our dear friends, she interrupted, as Stanley attended with
fugitive interest, —has the most exquisite Queen Anne sofa which he’s hinted he might be willing to sell, for a
price
of course. Of course there’s nothing we need less than a Queen
Anne
sofa, she went on pleasantly, including the total stranger and, with an icily cordial smile, Stanley’s gape, and then she turned a rueful look on her husband, —but it might rather help things along, to buy something tonight from your employer . . . ?

The total stranger mumbled something about a Cadillac that smelled like a phobia inside; and Stanley, again abashed by the cordial dismissal in the tall woman’s smile, and the weary bravery in the superciliary shadow of her look, sought refuge in more immediate terrain, anticipating it as unlit as he’d left it, and so doubly startled at being so sharply fixed in the illumination of both eyes upon him.

Beyond, someone was engaged in writing a criticism of a work which contained forty-nine one-syllable words to seven of two syllables; thirty-one words of Anglo-Saxon origin to five of Latin and one-eighteenth of Greek. It was
honest
, this person said.

And beyond, Otto fled himself from one of Esther’s eyes to the other, and found himself in both. —You don’t look well, she said to him. —Come, where we can talk . . . leading him across the room toward the door of the bedroom. —It’s as though I knew you were coming . . . The bedroom door was locked. She turned to the other door, still holding his arm. —Oh Herschel, I’m sorry . . . She closed the bathroom door and they turned back. —What did you say?

—Like a jungle, Otto repeated, looking into the room beyond her. —A jungle where you’ve lived in the dry season, and you come back in a wet season . . . His voice tailed off and he stood there trying to assume no expression at all as her eyes searched his face, to find no betrayal but a quirked eyebrow which started to rise, and did not.

—What’s happened to you? she asked him.

—Nothing, I . . . I’m tired.

—Nothing! She caught breath. —You’re different. You’ve changed.

—I guess I’m just tired, he repeated.

—Do you want to stay here tonight?

—Here? he said, looking at her as though not understanding.

—Here. With me.

—But Esther, I . . . I don’t think it would be . . .

—All right.

—I mean I just think it might . . .

—All right, I said.

—But . . .

—Please. If you don’t want to then don’t talk about it.

—Oh damn it Esther, I didn’t come here to argue with you, he said in a hoarse whisper. —Why are you looking at me like that?

—Where have you been all this time? She asked him that gently, as though prompting him to the question he should have asked about himself, of her: for she had the answer ready enough, as he may have known, looking down at his own thumbnails instead of into her eyes where he might have read it.

—Just . . . around, he mumbled.

—But what have you been doing to yourself? she came on, forced to recover the moment.

—Nothing really, not much of anything, I . . . He looked up at her with an attempted smile. —Looking around, there just hasn’t seemed to be much worth doing.

—Is it worth going on like this, alone? just to find out what’s not worth doing? she demanded with an involuntary abruptness, and as he looked down again, —Even your smile isn’t alive . . . and she stopped, lowering her own eyes as though someone else had spoken. Then she looked up quickly, as though to ascertain him there, before she went on, —And you, I suppose you have something . . . crucial, something crucial you have to do before you can . . . But Esther stopped speaking again, for in his face, she saw that he had not.

The place did present aspects of foliage, shifting and dank, the florist’s window flooded perhaps, its tenants afloat in slithering similitude; or the jungle: for at that instant the room was pierced by a raptorial cry like that of the bird descending.

—That? that’s Max’s poem? Anselm laughed, crying out, —“Wer, wenn ich schriee . . .” that?

They looked toward the door, saw only the paunchy guest of the evening moving toward it, in an unsteady rasorial attitude as though following a trail of crumbs to the great world outside. Mr. Feddle approached, looking rather reckless, gripping
The Vertebrate Eye and its Adaptive Radiation
.

Otto’s hand jerked, and then moved furtively to his inside breast pocket as half a step back he looked frankly down Esther’s figure. Her eyes drew him up quickly. —I just thought . . . remembered, you? are you all right? I mean, I heard . . .

—What?

—I don’t know. Nothing. You hear things.

—What are you talking about?

—Well you, that you needed a doctor?

—A doctor came this afternoon, and . . . I saw him.

—But, and then, you’re all right?

—I’d rather not talk about it.

—But all right, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .

He had started to move away from her but Esther was speaking to him, her voice going on as though she had not stopped, —Because you’ve done the same thing, you’ve spent all your time too, you’ve put all your energy up against things that weren’t there, but you put them there yourself just to have something to fight . . .

—Esther . . .

—So you wouldn’t have to fight the real things. She spoke with great rapidity at him. —And now you say you’re tired? At your age, because you’ve been trying to make negative things do the work of positive ones . . .