The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (130 page)

—What do you want to get mixed up in that for? It’s the same goddam handkerchief and the same goddam cannonball in the same goddam vacuum.

—Travel, Ellery muttered. —See why the other half lives.

Six months:
Elmira
was one postmark, and her lips formed the words silently. The marking on the other letter was indecipherable, though the stamps were Spanish, and she held it up to the light, lips tightening as nothing interrupted the translucency but the jumble of a florid hand. There was no return on it. She put it aside, and took the first letter with her on her trip across the room, there to press it up under her armpit as she adjusted the radio with one hand, and tuned in her new hearing aid with the other. Then she sat down, resting her head back, lips twitching again on “six months,” the letter gripped still unopened in her hand as the radio warmed up to
Sweet Betsy from Pike
sung in Yiddish, and she stared at a crack in the ceiling.

By daylight, the crack appeared to have just lengthened another whole inch or even more, and Stanley almost bounded out of bed for his string measure. Then he sank back under the blanket (his sheet was packed), closed his jaws tight on the throbbing tooth to hold off the image it conjured as well as the pain, and then lay waiting, as though for instructions from above on something near at hand which he could not quite grasp, and with little time remaining him to do so. His forehead creased with the effort of trying to think clearly what it might be, and as the effort rose to that part of his face his jaws relaxed and immediately the pain in the tooth penetrated him sharply, and the image, close upon it, intruded.

Within the half hour, he was wandering among hospital corridors.

—But baby, taking
that
one to
Is
chia would be like taking an ow-wel to A-thens, he heard, approaching her door, and he stopped. —And don’t permit me to leave without the key to my
box
, all those brrrr-beautiful things, I just couldn’t show up over there na-ked.

He heard someone say, —Agnes, I’m glad you’re all right . . . and then,

—Baby do you call that all rwight? all strung up like an exhibibition in a shop window! Cru-wel boy!

Stanley stood there, after a glimpse at the group round her bed, pressing the deep pain in his jaw, listening.

—Arny baby you must try to stand up, or they’ll put you in a little box here and you’ll never never never see the normal outside world again. Arny-marney-tiddley-parney, what
have
you got in your pocket?

Then he heard her voice, giving someone an address, her mother’s address, on the Via Flaminia in Rome.

—Rubbing alcohol! You should be spanked!

Stanley turned away with sudden resolution: he had heard of there being a chapel in Bellevue, and set off to look for it, rescued from the prospect of actually seeing her, by the more abiding, and surely more prudent reflection, that he might burn a candle for her recovery. And he was well on the way to doing so, moving through the corridors with apprehension, as though afraid of being hustled into a ward, or a straitjacket, himself. But as he came down that hall, where the three western faiths have their depots, he was stopped dead by an apparition in a red and white candy-stripe bathrobe emerging from the synagogue, her face so abruptly familiar, delicately intimate in the sharp-boned hollow-eyed virginity of unnatural shadows, like those priestesses of Delphos in subterranean silence transfixing what might have been fear on a face in the light
but there paralyzed in prophecy (until one of them was raped: then they were replaced by women over fifty). —Hello, Stan-ley, she greeted him as she had always, as a stranger whom she knew.

—But . . . I didn’t know you were . . . Jewish? he said, and looked even more surprised, having meant to say, —I didn’t know you were here . . .

—It is so beautiful in there, she said, and smiled, as one foretelling death by falling pillars, death at sea.

Zealous, importunate, he pressed her. —But here? he recovered.

—She has always been just here, but just here, Stan-ley, she said to him; and then lowered her eyes and turned her face away. —But now they are going to send her away.

—When? he asked quickly.

—Yesterday, or today, so soon. She looked at him, in an instant looked about to cry.

—Where? Stanley asked her; but she looked at him. —Wait, he said, and started to speak rapidly. —You, you see you can come with me, yes, can’t you, you can come with me. He took her wrist, and she looked at him. —You see because . . . yes and then everything, then you’ll be save . . . safe I mean, you’ll be safe . . . Now . . . wait, first . . . He pressed the pain in his jaw, as though to communicate its urgency. —This, I have to take care of this first, I have to go to a dentist but then I’ll come back and we, and you’ll be . . . all right. You see I . . . we’re going away . . . The question lay only in his eyes, searching the large still pupils of hers.

After that he moved with compulsive certainty. And only on going through the pales outside, pressing his jaw but carrying his head up, and passing the delegation which had forestalled his intended visit, he remembered that he had not asked for his glasses and then, that he had not lit a candle.

—Arny-parney-tiddly-marney, he passed quickly, —stand up! What ever made you try and telephone your
wife
, even if the line
was
busy?

The telephone was still ringing when Maude got in. She’d heard it from the hall, and almost broke her key trying to fit it in upside-down.

—Yes, what? she said breathlessly into it, —I? Me? . . . As she spoke her eyes rose slowly to meet those of the figure gently swinging in the bedroom door. —But you . . . why did you choose me? she brought out finally. —But no, no . . . no, she cried, and even with the last word the telephone was back silent where she’d got it, and she stood with her weight on it staring and still, as though supported by those eyes which held her across the room. It was only
in wilting, as the energy which the telephone, so long silent, had flooded her with, ebbed away, and she came to rest in her spinal support with a twinge, that the bond of their eyes broke, and she ducked round the suspended figure, into the bedroom to take off her coat. And the baby hung there, sitting silent in a sort of breeches buoy which she had made from a pair of Arny’s shorts and some cord, a breeches buoy pulling neither to ship nor shore, moving gently, never more than enough to intensify the repose of its occupant whose only activity was to fix Maude and hold her with clear blue eyes.

In the bedroom she stood looking vacantly at the thing curled on the dresser top: only that morning, trying to find her bank in the telephone directory, she had come helplessly upon the
Guarantee Truss Company
, thrown the book down, and never called to find what remained of her tiny bank balance. And here the thing lay, a circle of swathed steel tapered, to broaden an end in a cushion which rose just enough from the top of the chest to liken it to an open hood, and the whole tensely coiled length a cobra in devious wait: and she hurried past it jabbing a hand to the light switch.

The kitchen sink was stacked with dishes. On her way in there with the baby, she tripped over a pair of Arny’s shoes which she kept out, empty, in the middle of the floor.

—The most popular hostess of the week . . . ! she said in a faint tone as she washed, first a dish, then a tiny foot, then a cup. —They telephoned me to ask me if I would like to g-give a luncheon for my . . . and they would bring everything and do all the work and afterward s-serve . . . s-sell their lunchware to my . . . my . . . And I asked them how they picked me and she said we blindfolded a girl, and found your name in a telephone book, it’s a great . . . a great honor to be . . . to be chosen the most . . .

The eyes did not move from her. The baby’s head was not conical nor, looking at it, did one have that impression; but immediately upon looking away such an image formed in the mind, and no amount of looking back, of studying it from strategic angles, served to temper the placid image which remained. When most of the dishes were done she had reached the neck, and suddenly she applied both thumbs at the base of the baby’s head. —It should go in more
here
, she whispered, then applied the heel of a hand there, and finally stepped back and turned away from the fixed gaze as though breaking fetters. She left the baby there in the sink with what dishes remained and went into the living room, where she turned the radio on, tripped again over the empty shoes, and stood thoughtfully for a moment before she picked up the telephone and
dialed, reading the number of the druggist written on a bottle in her hand.

—Friends, the time to sell your diamonds is now . . .

—Hello? Could I buy some morphine from you? What? No, I mean just some plain morphine . . . ?

It was a long struggle, as though the image itself were holding him back in the chair while the dentist worked. And there was time for the agony of remorse, since Stanley had simply got off the cross-town bus and gone to the first dentist whose sign he saw, up a flight, someone he had never heard of and who had, surely, never heard of him. They strained and tugged at one another, Stanley at the chair, Doctor Weisgall at Stanley, and the longer it went on the more alarmed Stanley became, for the dentist seemed in an unsettled state himself. He had heavy arms, was in need of a shave, and perspired freely in his white coat. And then, while Stanley still lay back, gripping the arms of the chair in a rigidity of concentrated terror, he heard a voice and opened his eyes to see the thing held before him in a pair of heavy pincers. —Is it out? he tried to say, —Is that it? But he could not control that side of his mouth. Nonetheless he asked for it when he left, to take with him wrapped in gauze and a piece of newspaper. Out on the street, the dead side of his tongue nudged the numb hollow on his jaw, and he stopped to spit blood in the gutter. Passers-by glanced at him with distaste, the contempt bred of Fourteenth Street’s familiarity with such exhibitions, for he made a bad job of it, a stream blown against his chin, hung dripping from the uncontrollable side of his mouth, for he had no handkerchief.

In the window above, Doctor Weisgall watched him stagger, collide with a trashbin, a child, another staggering figure who tried to embrace him as a companion in arms, and finally disappear from sight. Then he took off his white coat and stood there rubbing his chin for a minute. Then as though he had put off for long enough some alien, fortuitous, but no less constraining duty, he picked up the letter he had received that morning, opened it, and stared at its pages as he called the police to report this anonymous persecution:

Dear Doctor Weisgall.

The I, what does it stand for? your first name, what is it? The book I am going to write will be called Flowers of Friendship, because do you remember Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded, well that is what my book will be about.

We are the great refusal, doctor.

Why do they love us and trust us for all the wrong reasons, reasons often we know nothing about and then they are disappointed. They are always disappointed. Sometimes I want to just stop, just stop everything and thank everyone. What they do, they free us when they betray us. Is that too easy, doctor? Is it because we can share a part of Ourself with each one we know, the part he demands for the rest we do not offer because he would not recognize the rest and more important even would not believe it is us, so we think better perhaps to simply put it away and do not bother him with it. Then see him, with all his might and main and all of his necessity he builds a whole Us out of his fragment, an Us we may have trouble to recognize too but respond kindly to it but better fearsomely, better beware and afraid for one day he will face us with it and then who can say, This is not us at all, why he has depended upon that Us he made with such loving care did he not? Oh surprised he is and disappointed! How we failed how we failed! He is angry and deeply hurt, betrayed! Betrayed! Do not trust Us, flowers of friendship. All the while we search beyond him for what he thinks he has offered so honest, so honest is he, so honest. Finding in him and everywhere some where where we may share a part but no more, is there anyone you can share nothing with? Is there then who you can share everything with? No no no no—but they do not understand. There were too many of them, doctor. There, there, you see? Your kindness is hypocrisy. They gave you everything, he shared everything he had with you. Did you ask him? No, he gave it so honest is he and so sincere. And some day he finds, you never did accept from inside do you understand? Only outside like a handshake you accepted. He is angry and reduced, not for you now but of you then who pretended to share, and did not share but gave, and gave in the giving only a fragment in exchange you see. How little of us ever meets how little of another. As one day he recalls his confidence to you as weakness, and to cast it out he will cast you away because you did accept it from him, so you served him well, and he is older now, and better unfriendship and weakness so cauterized than friendship which remembers.

Why after this long time have you not answered me? What do you demand?

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way? But we do, everyone treats anyone that way, saying I have had these defeats and disappointments, but you whom I encounter you know what you will say, moving, in accord with your nature which is here in bloom, but I do not yet understand, I, for myself, do not yet understand. Since my problems are not yours therefore you must have none, but live alone inside yourself, therefore here are my problems and we shall share them. So honest are they, picking the flowers with such ease and such concern.

If you have walked out in a summer night, you will understand this, walked out with your face bared to the darkness and then, a spider’s web hung heavy with moisture between magnolia and the yew claps its sodden delicacy over your face, then you will know what I mean. Here, he makes friendship in spite of things, worming confidences as they say,
he does lose no opportunity to find your frailties, where you fail and how weak, nor lose opportunity to make you know he knows these, at last to lose no opportunity to assure you of his friendship in spite of them, and always in spite of them and so how fortunate you are to have him a friend! feebly saying nice things about you behind your back.