The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (118 page)

The squat procession passed by, the third-in-line murmuring with the subdued reverence of a tourist speaking of something quite other than the hideous sarcophagus which he pretends to his guide he’s come three thousand miles to see, —Tchikovsky you can almost take straight, but what can you do with Bach? . . . the second-in-line considering lighting, camera-angles, and the over-all general effect of the heavy figure in perfect grace despite its distension hurled down among roses, serving not contradiction but complement for the lighter one mounting over it, grown out of it and rising continuously in the tension of growth . . . distinct close-up possibilities there, the thin empty hand in a shape of its own ascending in wild emergency and the eyes the same . . . while their leader himself confirmed, —We oughda get ouda here . . . bad publicidy . . . And they advanced, suddenly remarkable for the fact that they all appeared a good half-head shorter than everyone else, except for the last of them, who, with a forehead, might have stood a half-head taller. They found the cloakroom and, considering their numbers, came out rather badly.

The R.A., who had resolutely sought the exit down near the Christmas tree for reasons buried near three-quarters of a century
in his, or Sir Walter Scott’s past (he had trouble distinguishing them), came forth over the empty field.

—Here now, don’t you know!

—No listen, listen . . . you’ve got to listen to me, you’ve got to . . . to . . . wait . . . wait . . .

—Ghood heavens, my dear boy, I don’t hev to wait for ennathing . . . here here now, turn loose, eh? You can’t mphhht don’t you know, eh? What the devil do you think I am, a mphhht . . . ?

—No wait, if you’ll listen, if you’ll . . . listen to me.

—Here now, there’s a good fellow, turn loose, eh? And mphht stop waving thet dirty hendful of mphhht whatever-it-is in my face, don’t you know . . .

—Listen . . . Wait . . .

—Here now, my dear boy . . . The R.A. turned himself loose, but stood there a moment longer, —Nice hot bath, eh? Nice hot bath and a good night’s sleep, eh? Thet’ll straighten you up, eh? Ghood heavens yes, don’t you know . . . And he got off quite nimbly, and spent hardly a moment in the cloakroom, for his threadbare tweed coat was one of the few garments left, and he would never have considered making off with the trenchcoat which hung beside it. So he was quite quickly out on the street, in a swank neighborhood, he noticed, for there was nothing in the refuse bins but empty bottles, and the elegantly long white boxes of florists.

The last stare Basil Valentine had matched, as he stepped back, one step, and another, startled him only because he had for so long been staring down the room at its counterpart the yellowed mimosa, and here his arm was taken in a tight hold, and —Come away, this is not a good place to stay now.

Valentine pulled away. —You . . . go on, eh? Go on. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.

—But you . . . are too nervous now, you are not well, this is not a good time to leave you . . . alone?

—Alone? Go on. You go on, will you? . . . After a pause, in which Basil Valentine’s face rehearsed every muscle the other restrained, he said, —What do you know about this? What do you know about . . . me? . . .

—Perhaps as much as you know about me. Yes. And the gun, now. You have no reason for it?

—Yes, I . . . leave it with me, I . . . I’ll be in touch with you in the morning. Basil Valentine turned away, into the dark hall, and into the bathroom, where he locked the door.

He stood still on the tile floor, and he heard Fuller on the kitchen stairs. Then he went to the mirror, and stared at what he saw
there. The swollen lip twitched, and he drew it into a smile. Then he raised a finger and pressed it, and looked into the eyes for as long as he could, and then to the soft shine of the gold signet ring. The weight at his waist was heavy as he thought what it was, and took the gun out and laid it on a hamper. Then he took off his jacket, and with a good deal of unfastening of buttons and buckles, and stretching of elastic, undid himself, and sat to a weak hypospadial stream. He stood, and saw bubbles on the surface he’d discolored, bubbles drawing into the features of a face. He flushed it, and swung on the mirror again, doing himself up (and that was the detail, the totally irrelevant detail, the floating face, which he remembered long afterward).

From the closed kitchen came the whine of the dog as Valentine emerged; and from the great living room, broken strains of music, as he approached, and stopped in shadow, watching, and licking his lip, and, as the voice came, listening.

—Yes, your daughters all were fair, and . . . your daughters all were fair, but the youngest . . . here, I didn’t know you had a radio here? music here?

Basil Valentine first looked to the foot of the stairs, there saw nothing but the still caparisoned bulk. Then he saw the figure at the far wall, as still as everything else in the room, and his back turned on it, tuning the radio, stopping methodically along the stream that poured from it, bursts of brackish laughter, shreds of music, the human voice in aggressive counterfeit, lowered in counsel, raised in song, sincere in extolling absurdities, absurd parading devotion up and down the scale: a vapid tenor, widely known and loved, wound
Silent Night
round his throat, and strangled on it, into the brackish laughter again, and then from the north Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis
emerged, commenced to fill the place, and was gone into jazz,
When the Saints Go Marching In
. He left it at that, turned his back on it and walked vaguely across the room, empty-handed now. —You and I . . . he said approaching the foot of the stairs, —You and I . . . you were so damned familiar . . .

There, he went down on one knee, and tried to open the visor again but gave that up after a moment, and raised his hand to look at the blood he’d got on it. Then he looked back at the figure before him, and said quietly, breathing sharp in what sounded like a laugh, —Il sangue? ti soffoca il sangue? O yes, ecco un artista . . . Good God . . . Then he looked the figure up and down, and went off balance toward the feet, where he seized the exposed ankle and worked his fingers there seeking a pulse. —Yes, there’s where they nailed the wren, there’s where they nailed up . . . He pulled himself back to his knees again, staring suddenly feverishly at the chin
and throat, his weight resting in a hand on the breastplate, where he turned his eyes and pushed it with the heel of his hand and all the weight he could give it. It sank a little, and came up again, and he rested there until his eyes caught the penknife on the rug across, and he reached over to pick that up and open it as he stood. —Yes . . . what chance had you, when hierophants conspired? . . . Then he walked away. —Good God, he said, wandering off toward the pulpit bar opening and closing the penknife blade in his hands, and the music continued, —I willingly fastened a tail to my back, and drank what you gave me, but damn it, there . . . He stopped and poured brandy into a glass, and with it turned and looked around the room. Then he put the glass down again without raising it to his mouth and took three steps, gone for a minute beyond the pulpit bar and out of sight for Basil Valentine who stood where he had stopped, tingling the tip of his tongue on the broken tooth and aware of a warm dampness filling the crotch of his trousers. A full minute of this, and Valentine prepared to step out, but put a foot back instead of forward as the figure emerged again, tucking something in an inside pocket, and, it sounded like whistling a broken delayed alto to the music, which he broke off with, —Oh yes, “I’ll scratch you a bit till you see awry . . . But all that you see will seem fine and brave . . .”

Then he came rushing across the carpet toward the thing on the floor there crying, —Get up! Get up! When he reached it he stood over it, the penknife closed and gone inside one hand with the other closed round it, quivering, like his voice now, —Good God, you’ve . . . left me in mid-air, it’s as though the . . . bottom has dropped out of time itself. Then he went to his knees and tore frantically at the visor trying to raise it. Finally he stopped, looking exhausted, staring down, and his hand still on the projecting chin. —What now? . . . good God, what now? You and I . . . you and I, you . . . were so damned familiar. He stared a moment longer, and then as he whispered —What a luxury you were! . . . and flung his face down bringing both hands in round the headpiece, Basil Valentine stepped forth and reached him very quickly. He lay there shaking.

—Here now . . . you know, Valentine said standing over him, surprised at the tremor in his own voice, and even more at the calm expression of the face raised to him. So they were silent, until Basil Valentine shifted half a step back and said, —You might . . . go in and wash, you know. You got . . . blood all over one side of your face just then . . . you know. At that Valentine stopped, unable to keep the tip of his tongue from the broken tooth, and more aware than he was of this face before him of the face he had left in the
mirror minutes before as that image’s smile returned, and he felt it distorting the lips in betrayal of the emotion he did not feel, as he summoned his voice and said, —My dear fellow . . . you’re weeping, aren’t you.

Still nothing moved.

—Come along now, my dear fellow, straighten up. It’s a shock, but . . .

—Who are you? . . .

Basil Valentine stepped forward again, almost kicked the headpiece. —Now listen to me, he said firm for the first time, —there’s been enough of all this . . . business. He sounded impatient. —Don’t you think it’s time to . . . wash up, and get into some fresh clothes, get a fresh start? Because all this . . . all this . . . Valentine raised his foot, and jarred the headpiece with his toe, at which the other stood up quickly and turned away, leaving the penknife dropped on the carpet where he’d knelt.

—After all, now, Valentine said to his back, —there will be some changes, won’t there, without . . . now that there are just the two of us.

—I’ve got a headache, a . . . I’ve got a rotten headache. He stopped in the middle of the room, and Valentine came up on him where he stood pressing his forehead in his hands.

—I should think you might, you know. Basil Valentine put a hand gently on his shoulder, but he drew away quickly. Valentine stepped back. —And I suppose we should . . . call the police, you know, he said, licking his lip.

—They’ll probably be here any minute.

—How do you mean?

—Where do you think I’ve been all this time? Good God, what do you think kept me from getting right back here before this . . . this . . . He shook a hand out at the scene behind them. —After I’d broken your door down, and was coming out . . .

—You broke my door down?

—Where the . . . what do you think those . . . pieces of . . . dirty . . . burnt wood, that . . . what do you think that is? I knew what it was, when I got in and saw the . . . saw something smoking in your grate, I knew what it was, I knew what you’d done, damn you . . . I knew what you’d done.

—Now listen to me, what is all this? The police are in my flat?

—I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know where the police are. I know that two of them were taking me somewhere afterwards and I got away from them . . . and came here. How should I know where the police are? Why should I . . . care where the police are.

Basil Valentine had gone pale in the face; and now he touched
his lower lip, tapped it with a fingertip. Then he looked up and said calmly, —There was really no reason for you to do a thing like that, you know. I . . . I’ve been trying to get hold of you since . . . yesterday morning, when you left me in the park there so . . . precipitously.

—You have! Then who did you think it was ringing your bell an hour or two ago?

—I’ve been out . . . for some time, Basil Valentine answered. —I’ve even been down to Horatio Street, you know, looking for you.

—You have! And what did you find there?

—No one at home, my dear fellow, obviously.

—No one at home! Yes, that’s good . . . No one at home! Do you know what happened down there? Do you know what had happened when I went back down yesterday? It had burned. The whole place had burned, the whole building. It must have been that . . . I left some things burning there, in that fireplace, and there was oil and everything spilled everywhere, and something must have . . . the oil must have . . . Good God I don’t know, but it’s gone.

Basil Valentine had backed to the pulpit bar, where he leaned watching. —That painting you were working on too, eh? he said after a moment. —The last one, the one I liked as it was, eh?

—What? The face turned to him in confusion from the abstract emptiness it had fallen into, staring down at the carpet.

—That
Stabat Mater?

—What, she?

—Burned too?

—Good God! Good God! She wasn’t . . . she . . .

—Here, my dear fellow, Basil Valentine said coming at him again. —Get hold of yourself, get hold of yourself. This time he did take both shoulders in his hands, to say, —We’re both upset, there’s no sense in all this now, and it’s no time to try to talk rationally about it. If the place is burned, it’s burned, and anything in it . . .

—Oh yes, and the griffin’s egg, that was there! Oh, that griffin’s egg, damn it. That’s why I went down there, to get it so I could . . . Then he stopped and pulled from Valentine’s hands again. —This last picture, he said, —the van der Goes, where is it?

—My dear fellow . . .

—Where is it?

—Come back here . . . listen . . .

—Oh yes, it’s in his privy chamber, isn’t it. That’s where he kept things like that, isn’t it? Yes, in the genizah?

—Come here, listen . . . And at that moment Basil Valentine’s eye caught the painting behind him, just beyond the pulpit bar. —What’s this! What’s happened here?

—That . . .

—Here, stop that laughter . . . this, did you do this? Valentine stood running a finger over the hole, where the figure of the Emperor Valerian stretched on his rack had been cut neatly out.

—I? Good God no. Crémer, Monsieur Crémer, vous savez . . .