The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (108 page)

—I wish I was an old man! he burst out at her, and then lowered his eyes again, his pale hand inside his coat holding the thick packet there. —Because . . . damn it, this being young, it’s like he said it was, it’s like a tomb, this youth, youth, this thing in America, this accent on youth, on everything belongs to the young, and we, look at us, in this tomb, like he told me it could be, like he said it was . . . And Otto raised his eyes to see nothing moving in her face.

—Yes, you came here for him, didn’t you, she said quietly. —You only wanted to see him, didn’t you. And you came here hoping to find him? Well he isn’t here. He was here. But he isn’t here now.

—Where, he was? here?

—I said he was, but he isn’t here now, she answered steadily, watching Otto look everywhere round the room, waiting calmly until he brought his bloodshot eyes back to her, to say, —He’s gone.

—Where, do you know where?

—No, she answered and paused, looking at him for seconds, before she said, —Yes I knew, you’d come for him, because, from the first it was like that, and you took me to get closer to him, to take what you thought was the dearest thing he had, and you . . . trusted him, didn’t you . . .

—Do you think it’s you I mistrust? he said suddenly looking up to her face; but then he looked away slowly, as from the light of a candle after knowing the light of a self-consuming indestructible sun, carefully as though in fear of extinguishing that candle, though it flare up in determined self-immolation, demanding to be saved from itself. —If I did then, he went on trying to speak clearly, —if I didn’t trust you then, I mean mistrust you, then, I wouldn’t have learned to mistrust myself and everything else now. And this, this mess, ransacking this mess looking for your own feelings and trying to rescue them but it’s too late, you can’t even recognize them when they come to the surface because they’ve been spent everywhere
and, vulgarized and exploited and wasted and spent wherever we could, they keep demanding and you keep paying and you can’t . . . and then all of a sudden somebody asks you to pay in gold and you can’t. Yes, you can’t, you haven’t got it, and you can’t.

—Where have you been asked to pay in gold? she asked quietly, when he finished the outburst which left him breathless staring down, as if uncertain if he knew what he’d said, and sought to recover it at their feet. —Otto? He looked up and stared at her. —Tell me, who’s done this to you?

—I . . . he mumbled, looking away again, —I guess I’ve done it myself, he answered in a whisper, as Mr. Feddle bumped him, passing in the other direction, empty-handed.

And though aware of someone at her side demanding her attention, she waited, looking at him, waiting for his eyes to return to her.

—Esther, have you got a copy of the Diuno Elegies? Rilkey’s Diuno . . . ?

—“Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” Anselm repeated, in a rapture of delight, —“und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz . . .”

—Shut up, Anselm.

—It can’t be, Don Bildow repeated, staring at the open page of the small stiff-covered magazine in his hand, as the words of the first line under Max’s name formed on his lips, “Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic . . .” —He wouldn’t have dared.

—“Ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein . . .” Hahaha, that’s Max’s poem? Die erste . . . haha, hahahahahaha, from the
Duineser Elegien
von Max Rilke, hahahaha

—Esther, have you got a copy of Rilke? these . . . elegies?

—I have, she faltered (for it was not true), —but I’ve lent it.

—But not Rilke, he wouldn’t have dared, Don Bildow repeated, as though it might be a matter of opinion, or a rumor which, traced down, might yet be retracted.

—Ask him to show you his
Sonette an Orpheus
, you’d love it.

—Shut up, Anselm, said the stubby poet darkly, motioning to the man in the green wool shirt.

—
You
should have known, Bildow cried out at him as he slogged toward them.

—Whut?

—This, this . . . poem, this thing of Max’s, you wrote that essay on Rilke last spring, you . . .

—Rilke, but that was on Rilke, Rilke the man, an essay on Rilke the man . . .

—Max Rilke. “Weisst du’s noch nicht?” . . . Anselm howled,
waving his magazine in the air, wrapping something around his neck. —Christ, don’t you know Max by now? Like that shirt he cut up and framed, he called it a painting, “The Workman’s Soul”?

—Shut up . . . was repeated, but Don Bildow was staring at Anselm dumbly. Then, —Shirt? he whispered.

—And these pictures he’s showing now, the abstract paintings he’s selling now, don’t you know where he got them? Max Rilke Constable, Anselm went on, laughing. —Didn’t you know where he got them? that they’re all fragments lifted right out of Constable canvases?

—My God, my dear, excuse me, said the tall woman, —but that creature has my furpiece . . . She set off toward Anselm, sundering numerous conversations as she crossed that room.

—D’you know what happened when Caruso died? Science cut open his throat to see what made him sing. D’you know what
that
means?

—Do we know even half of what’s happening to us?

—And do you know why the French are so honest? because there are so few words in their language they’re forced to be.

Otto had moved slowly across the room, vaguely, sideways, steps backwards, picking up a glass half full, getting nearer the door of the studio, as though in that darkness might be the figure hidden there working, still there and silent from two years before.

—Hello, Rose said looking up to him with a smile.

—Oh! he startled, to see her there sitting on the floor. —And . . . you?

—Yes.

—And you, then you’re Esther’s sister?

—Rose. And she continued to smile while he looked at her almost wincing as though seeking something there in her face. Then, —You look like the doctor, she said. —Except the doctor was not so old.

—The doctor? You mean the doctor who came to . . . to see Esther?

—Yes, Rose said, and turned her face away suddenly. —To kill her beautiful baby.

—But the . . . I mean, they told you about it? Esther, about . . . a baby?

Rose looked up at him. She was smiling again; but it was a different sort of smile. —Not a real baby, she said, in a low tone of confidence. —For Esther made it up, she only made it up.

—Made it up? But I mean, is that what he said? the doctor? that it was a . . . I mean, what do they call them, a hysterical pregnancy? Is that what he called it?

—Yes, Rose confirmed after a thoughtful moment, moving her
lips as though fitting the words to them in recall. —So he said, when he killed it, for so he killed it. Those are the best babies, she said, as Otto looked away from her and stared out into the room. —Are they not? the best babies, for they do never grow up, she went on, —and when they die they go where nothing happens, and there they remain in suspense forever . . .

Her sigh lingered as he stared out into the room, listening to the tall woman, watching her attentively as though every word and movement of hers were extremely important, though he did not hear a thing she was saying, —Aren’t they charming? Baby’s breath . . . taking a jeweled spray from her purse and fixing it to an earlobe. —My husband gave them to me, he says a woman can lie so much more convincingly when she wears jew-els, she went on, affixing the other. —I just gave him some money and told him to go out and buy himself something and promise not to look at it, she finished, snapping her purse. —We have to go on to another God-awful party later. She cleared her throat, looking round, and took up again, —Did you meet that very . . . healthy-looking Boy Scout master? Except for his nose, possibly. I overheard him say that the Boy Scouts had hit him with a sidewalk.

Maude Munk had not moved. She said, —I haven’t seen Arny for hours.

—Late hell, it’s morning, said the man in uniform.

—It’s always morning somewhere . . . She looked at a windowless wall.

—That’s Longfellow. I may not be an intellectual, but I know my American poets.

—Is it? she murmured, surprised without interest.

—That was
Hannah the Horror of Hampstead
, Mr. Crotcher intoned from his armchair bastion, to no one. —Shall I sing something else?

And the woman in the collapsed maternity dress, who had been talking to the tall woman, went right on to the girl with the green tongue, —You see all the fat ugly little men with beautiful girls? All the wrong people have the money now, that’s because ugly people make money because there’s no alternative. When you’re ugly nobody spoils you, you see reality young and you see beautiful things as something separate from you you’re going to have to buy. So you start right out thinking money. Since the old aristocratic system where you inherited looks and manners and taste with your money . . .

—Quick, gimme a piece of paper quick, Anselm said grabbing Otto by the shoulder. He wore the furpiece circling his face, knotted under his unshaven chin. —Hahaha, did you hear what just happened?
I want to write something down, quick. He had jammed his rolled magazine into a hip pocket with the stethoscope. He was too excited with pleasure to notice Otto’s face, an anxious expression, but a vacant anxiety, and the more abandoned for being features inured by conscious arrangements where, only now as in sleep, nothing happened. Otto’s pale hand delved in his left jacket pocket, came up with his father’s note, some papers, —Wait! . . . wait a minute, not that . . .

—Gimme that picture! . . . Everything about Anselm changed in an instant.

Papers dropped between them. And Otto stood staring, at the pale, quivering, empty left hand so long out of use.

—Where did you get it? Anselm demanded, half in a fury and half in a rage, as though he’d never seen, never before tonight, what was able to take his breath away: he picked it up from the floor staring at the glossy surface as though unable to contain the whole figure in his apprehension, seizing at details, the chair, the wallpaper, finally the delineating blemishes on the shadowed white, in a manic silence of search which led him to her face and left his own in a helpless show of fury and dismay. —I’d . . . you! . . . he hissed, looking up at Otto.

—Esther, I’ve just heard the campiest limerick about an a-
mee
ba and the queen of
She
-ba . . . a frail voice cried.

—You . . . Anselm hissed.

—But, listen . . . you can’t . . .

—Are you the lady who wanted to hear about Pablo and his kitten?

—You . . .

—But how do you think I felt . . . ? Otto burst out at him, and reached to catch his naked trembling lip under a yellow forefinger.

—Pablo was this scientist . . .

—And it murmured, ich liebe, ich liebe.

Then Anselm laughed, a choking hysterical sound, broken for an instant with a whimpered, —Sssuccubus . . . until he got his voice, —And when they took her to Bellevue and she knew they were going to undress her, she stopped screaming long enough to take out her falsies, and then she started in again, there, there, there! . . . his face was almost touching Otto’s.

—In . . . she in, Bellevue? The whisper burned both their lips.

Then a word ruptured Anselm’s mouth in a concussive sound which laid them at arm’s length: for both had brought up hands and stood so until, only Anselm did not move but followed his words with his eyes only, —yess, find her, find her, he hissed at the
face gone in profile, and then that lost to hair and collar, and the soft convolution of an ear, —find her and be damned.

Sounds rose about him; still Anselm did not move. With another look at the likeness in his hand, he shuddered and stuffed it into a pocket, then stood there alone gazing with an expression of revulsion at the orchid wilting upside-down on the graceless trunk of the figure moving like something afloat, bearing the signature of the jungle deeper among its shadows.

—But nobody’s ever physically proved that the earth
is
in motion.

—Einstein says
he
can’t believe God plays dice with the universe.

—Well I have a friend who’s a physicist, he’s been converted. He writes songs now.

—Claims he’s a serious musician. Be-bop, if you call
that
music.

—Just so what she writes rhymes, she calls it poetry.

—One of them goes, “With the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and you-hoo-ho-hoo, What wonders the five of us could do . . .”

—Painting like she was having an orgasm, if you call that art.

—If you call
this
living . . .

—If you call that love . . . ?

Sounds echoing, not from the vibrant reaches of the jungle, but the jungle floor itself, constrictions in the peat bog, the specimens themselves in motion: —I feel like we’ve been here for simply ages, said the tall woman. —I feel like 1 was born here, murmured Maude. But neither plaint nor query sounded in their voices, and neither made a move to go. Those who had disappeared were gone silently, leaving only faint traces or none on their minute contributions to the origin of species: the others remained with the tenacity of creatures bound to work out natural laws of survival, thus prove the superiority of their various equipment in adapting to conditions which no memory was long enough to find anything but nature.

The dark poet reared his head with reptilian vigilance, looking from the dead orchid to Herschel, who had just come from the bathroom and posed, flourishing, in the door, an unfamiliar bloom sprung from the jungle floor, watched by these resentful close-focused eyes, turned away, at that moment, to a sound and flutter across the room, where the Duchess of Ohio soared on an outburst of tittering. The critic approached, moving with the steps of one in a familiar medium, disdaining claims of time past and future, both contained in this limicolous present.

—They’re moving Father’s grave . . . Mr. Crotcher sang, sunk in the armchair, indifferent as the oyster which, despite the evolutionary excursions going on above, has found no reason to change in two hundred million years. While all around, less abiding varieties kept in motion, as though this might in itself be proof against
time. Arny Munk’s head lolled in several directions, its sensory equipment unnecessary for he was being led by Sonny Byron whose tender voice belied the firm grip of his hand. —Come along, baby, be sweet, just for a minute, she’ll never miss you . . . And they passed under the eyes of the Paleozoic poet, glittering open from features whose prehistoric simplicity was faintly shadowed with apprehension at the sight of the opportune mutations going on around him, denying, by their very existence, the finality of his old-world wisdom, and suggesting, as they took to the air manipulating the baubles so helplessly evolved with a pretense of having designed them themselves, that perhaps, for all his belligerent cooperation with environment, that environment itself was changing, and not only he, but the entire species upon which he depended while living, and rescue from anonymity, perpetuation afterward, was to become part of the sodden floor, and the mat, and finally only traces on the crust itself.