The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (159 page)

—What did you mean by that? Going back, why not. What did you mean?

The shoulderstraps on the trenchcoat shrugged slightly. —Nothing. Of course, rumors?

—Yes, yes, yes, the other whispered with sharp impatience behind his hands. —And after your reports, eh? Watching over me . . . yes, little things like, the moment I show some dismay over our paintings being dumped for dollars, did you tell them that too?

—Please, of course . . .

—Yes, which proved conclusively that I must be working for the restoration of the crown . . . aphhh . . . this kind of logic . . . Certainly I’m going back, why not? where . . . what else? he whispered staring straight ahead. Then he lowered his eyes slowly, and sat studying the cheese on the plate at his elbow.

—Of course, I meant to say, I understand you . . .

—Of course, you explained that once. No . . .

—I meant only to say, things there are not going well, nothing is going well there. Everything there, the corruption has spread . . . His voice tailed off, he sat silent with his small glittering eyes, startled when the cheese was suddenly pushed toward him with an elbow.

—There, try some of that, taste it, corruption put to good use . . .

And they were silent again, the man in the trenchcoat did not touch the Gorgonzola, finally he said, —Tomorrow? There is one more? they told me, a priest?

—Dressed like one.

—And you, you will indicate him to me, you will not mistake him?

—Yes I, I’ll point him out to you. I won’t mistake him, his companion
muttered behind his hands, drew them aside and appeared to spit something from the end of his tongue. —If you think you can take care of it then, on the street, in daylight?

—Of course . . . the man in the trenchcoat murmured, then, —
A Véres költö
 . . . you remember that . . . ?

—You? The clasped hands fell away for a moment, with a sparkle of gold, and the scar on the lip drew it into what appeared to be a sneer. —The poet stained with blood! . . . He drew his hands up again.

—Or . . . you?

—Enough . . .

—You will be on the train tomorrow night?

—Yes.

—I should like a last good dinner, before we go back. Eh? The Piccolo Budapest? Eh?

—Yes. Early. About seven.

—You are . . . going back, then? the man in the trenchcoat said, and studied the profile beside him.

—Yes, yes, and now good night. Good night.

—The personal affairs no longer take precedence, eh? Good night. Until tomorrow? Under Saint Peter’s Umbrella . . . eh?

Stanley looked down at his book quickly.

—And have you ever seen anything so frankly hideous as this, the tall woman’s voice took up. —A piece of dirt enshrined forever in clear lifetime plastic. My God! . . . with a certificate of Miraculous Origin and the Seal of the Church. A piece of dirt from the church of Cana in Galilee, where they turned wine into water, my God. My husband’s picking up all sorts of things, you can see the state he must be in after what happened to Huki-lau . . .

A distant voice said, —I don’t care if Joan of Arc was a witch, that hasn’t a thing to do with it . . .

And another, —Of course everyone knows that the Franciscans were canonized for the very things the Waldensians were burned alive for . . .

And then Stanley looked up as though he had been struck. A waiter stood before him, and he whispered, —Café, hoarsely, trying to look round the dirty apron to where the voice had come from he had so certainly heard. When he saw her, she was already seated, and although so close, in the chair which the man in the trench-coat had left, she had not seen him, and she did not look round, but down at her hands on the table. At that instant Stanley might have leaped up, or cried out, or simply spoken beginning with some overladen conjunction, as though to continue a conversation of minutes or hours before: and it was not her company that stopped
him but the absolute, absolved quiet on her face, in spite of the small sore which disparaged the delicate line of her lip.

—Something bit her, perhaps, she said at that moment, answering a question from the man half turned from Stanley, and a reproachful smile touched her face, still looking down. Then they were both silent. He only appeared to have glanced at her, and he went on, staring straight ahead.

—Of course Huki-lau isn’t dead, she’s . . . The tall woman whispered something. —Which is just as bad.
I
don’t see how it happened, she’s had her belt on every minute she’s been over here. There was a goat, in Spain, though, with designs on her. You could see in his eyes.

—How tired you look, like he looked sometimes, like an old man, with nothing left before you to regret. And are you old? or are the scars still unhealed down your front. Raise your left hand . . . you can’t, it sits there relishing another scar. She laughed, a sharp sound, and left it between them, looking at her own hands on the table. She was wearing a simple dark gray suit, with a long unbroken skirt and a short cape. She had nothing on her hair.

He muttered something.

—What? You’re joking. And she laughed again. His right hand had come down on the table, and she took it in hers, and laid her left hand over both. Still, he appeared to bite the gold seal ring on the other, staring ahead.

—Still . . .

—Today? In Assisi, she went through and through and through the gate. No one appeared in person, granting indulgences. No one, in a “heavenly brightness shining,” no one, do you remember? When no one was at the door? Now granting indulgences, O friars minors, is he in Purgatory if he drowned? Down, on a rope, did he tell you that story? Drowned, in the celestial sea come down the rope to undo the anchor caught there on a stone with no one’s name on, and a date, inclined against the bottom by the darkness, and so no wonder that the anchor caught, and he came down the rope. If there were time . . .

—Listen. Just tell me . . .

—More you know? His blood on the leaves, I saw it. But no thorns? that’s someone else then, for I saw him delivered, down. Yes, streaked with no one’s oil and delivered, down, that damned black androgyne who held him back and lost him, down . . .

—I may not see you again.

She did not raise her eyes.

Stanley swallowed with self-conscious effort and pretended, to himself, to find his place in the book before him. At another table, a group had settled to worry the most recent dogma, that of the
Assumption. One of them said, —There’s a perfectly good scientific explanation . . .

—And then when we drove back, a monk drove with us. She had her belt on then, but I didn’t
watch
 . . .

—She would have died of asphyxia at fifty thousand feet.

—You hear things, about life in monasteries.

—Or if she’d gone fast, burned up like a meteor.

—Will you marry her?

Stanley looked up at that, eyes wide but the lids drawn upon them in disbelief, as though trying to hide what he heard from himself; and hide what he saw, for her eyes were wide, and no lids discernible.

—Marry you! the man said, and he withdrew his right hand from under hers.

—All right, Mary was a Jew, wasn’t she? A Jewish woman, if she went bodily to heaven, how does she eat?

—This little piece of dirt, enclosed in lifetime plastic forever. Does a plastic lifetime last forever?

—Is there a kosher kitchen in heaven?

—You see, he put it there, and he did not take it away. Stanley stared at her. His own expression, and even the movement of his hands, commenced to follow hers, then those of the man when he answered, then his face hers and his hands those of the man, except intricate muscles tried round the edges and round the eyes, and the corners of his mouth, to rescue his own face from that unguarded openness, and his hands quivered.

—Marry you! Me!

—For he put it there, and did not take it away as he promised, as he always had done before, as he promised.

—Me!

—Take the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. You try to preserve Mary from the taint of Original Sin, then what about Elizabeth? You can go all the way back.

—Of course we met the people who make these things. Religious novelties, and mostly plastic. And she even admitted openly she was a convert. But my husband can tell a Jew a mile away.

—So Mary Herself told Saint Anthony of Padua her body remains incorruptible in Heaven.

—Saint John of the Cross said . . .

—Listen! Listen . . .

—Where there is no love . . .

—This is the last time I will see you.

—But why do you do the things you do? Why do you live the life you live?

Stanley watched his shoulders hunch forward, watched one hand
grip the other, and though he could not see the watery blue eyes, his own by now lay open with the same implications of desire as those wide dark eyes he sought.

—Because . . . do you understand? the Cold Man said, speaking with quiet clarity for the first time, —because any sanctuary of power . . . protects beautiful things. To keep people . . . to control people, to give them something . . . anything cheap that will satisfy them at the moment, to keep them away from beautiful things, to keep them where their hands can’t touch beautiful things, their hands that . . . touch and defile and . . . and break beautiful things, hands that hate beautiful things, and fear beautiful things, and touch and defile and fear and break beautiful things . . .

—Oh no, she said to him.

—Because there are so few . . . there is so little beauty, there are so few beautiful things, that to preserve them, to keep them . . .

—But to make more . . . beautiful things?

As they looked at each other, Stanley looked at them both, helplessly suspended between their eyes, waiting for what each sought in the other.

—Now . . . if there were time . . . she said softly.

—And you are going into a convent, you are going into that . . . that life, he insisted suddenly, and she shrugged her shoulders, looking down once more.

—Or what other? For there she will become a bride.

—Tomorrow, yes it’s arranged, an audience, it’s the best thing, tomorrow.

—So soon!

—Tomorrow, yes. It’s all arranged.

—Tomorrow she will . . . kiss the Fisherman Ring? If there were time, to ask him questions about Purgatory.

—I had a book of his once, by mistake . . .

—To kiss Saint Peter in the Boat, tomorrow?

—Here you are! Listen, listen to this, this letter from my wife, Don Bildow burst out, dropping square in front of Stanley at the table.

—No, no, no . . .

—Listen. My daughter was all swollen up when I left, remember? And we thought it was . . . we didn’t know what it was, remember? Well do you know what it was? . . . what it is? She’s pregnant! That’s what this letter from my wife says, and she’s only six. Do you hear me? What am I going to do? What are you looking at me like that for?

Stanley was silent, he was staring at Bildow’s face, but vacantly, as though far beyond it.

—It’s the
Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli
.

—But have you read
Justine?
In that he desecrates the wafer right inside her.

—Give me that! Give me that thing! Don Bildow snatched the book from Stanley’s lap.

—My husband’s sitting up in the hotel room now, with a book by some laousy Chinaman, and a bottle of Scotch.

An Italian boy entered and joined the next table, where he offered a group of American tourists for sale.

Further on, two American senators were drinking whisky and arguing whether or not Sweden had a king.

—He says he’s practicing the gentle art of sitting and forgetting. My God, I’m tired.

Don Bildow was trying to tear the book up. First he tried to break the spine, but he could not. Then he got half the pages in one hand, but he could not tear them. Finally he held the book against him, and started to rip out about ten pages at a time. The table behind his narrow back was empty, and then Victoria and Albert Hall, and Rudy, and Sonny, and Buster, and Big Anna, the Swede, and two others descended on it, and set to discussing the problems of the train trip to Paris, if Rudy and Frank were both in states of Grace they could not share the same compartment. The pages continued to rip. A faint male voice protested, —Caprew . . . A woman’s voice said, —Kike. Don Bildow sat at the table ripping the pages out of the book, about five at a time.

From behind, when she stood still in that yellow velours gown, Mrs. Deigh rather resembled an uneven stack of sofa cushions. At the moment only Dom Sucio had this coign of vantage, and he did not stop to enjoy it, but turned and hurried down a dark hallway hastily adjusting his mantle, as she opened the door to Stanley. He paused, upon entering, to support himself on Judith’s sword-arm: Holofernes’ head swung toward him, and the whole thing almost came over.

—My dear boy be . . . be careful of our . . . Donatello, Mrs. Deigh gasped as the bronze righted itself. —It’s his . . . David, his famous David, she murmured nervously, addressing the still gently swaying head, as though apologizing to it. She continued to murmur nervously, wringing one hand in the other, as she led him into the crowded room. —We do wish you would have your hair cut. Stanley sat down on the edge of the Queen Anne chair, and she stood over him for a minute. —What is it? What is troubling you, dear boy?

—Nothing, nothing, nothing, he said quickly, and pulled his shoulder from under her hand, and the glitter of the wrist watch
at his cheek. She withdrew looking injured, and sat down almost silently in the big chair. There she commenced the familiar chucking noise.

—I . . . I’m sorry, I . . . I’m tired.

—It has been a trying day for everyone, she said, somewhat distantly, and went on looking at the ceiling. When he continued silent, hands gripped between his knees, she said in the same tone, —We had a very trying visit from some British Israelites. And poor Cardinal Spermelli, the white ants have completely destroyed his chess-playing machine. All he talks of now is going to Venice, where he can be conducted to his last resting place in the dignity of a pompa, funebre, though those little Coca-Cola motorboats . . .