The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (23 page)

—He
ain’t
yer husband?

—Look at him, Esther said raising her eyes. —Can’t you see? Look at his eyes, can’t you see he’s a priest?

—Esther . . .

Suddenly the night around them disappeared in a blaze of red and white lights and the harmonic explosion of the sirens and bells, as a hose truck, an emergency vehicle, and a hook and ladder arrived, it seemed at the same instant. The policeman turned his back on them in the doorway. —It’s just somebody’s friggin Christmas tree, he called out.

—Are them the ones that lit it? came a voice from behind a red beam.

—You better get home to bed, Jack, the policeman said, turning to Wyatt.

—There aren’t any cabs . . .

—Come on. I’ll give you a lift, Father.

They drove uptown, in silence except for the constant static voice on the radio at their knees repeating its esoterics, —signal thirty, signal thirty . . . car number one three seven, signal thirty . . .

Wyatt handed the policeman a five-dollar bill when they got out, and the policeman said, —Happy New Year, Father.

As he fitted the key in the door, Esther murmured, —I feel so old. He let her in, to the darkness and the scent of lavender. She sat down and said, —Leave the light off, as he crossed to the bright shaft of light that came from the drying lamp set up before the portrait in the studio.

—Wyatt, she said, —can’t you say something to me . . . ? Even if you don’t believe it?

He did not appear to have heard, standing over the portrait. He turned off the hot lamp, lifted a small ultra-violet hand lamp
and stood tapping his foot, waiting for it to warm up. There were sounds of Esther standing in the dark room, and her footsteps. The violet light gradually rose to its lurid fullness, and showed his drawn face and level unblinking eyes turned upon the portrait. The smooth surface was gone under the violet light: in the woman’s face, the portions he had restored shone dead black, a face touched with the irregular chiaroscuric hand of lues and the plague, tissues ulcerated under the surface which reappeared, in complaisant continence the instant he turned the violet light from it, and upon the form of Esther who had come, looking over his shoulder, and fallen stricken there on the floor without a word.

Wyatt picked her up, and carried her across the dark room to the bedroom. —Don’t try to carry me, she whispered, as he got her there and laid her down on the bed, losing his balance and coming down almost on top of her, where she suddenly held him. Then Esther reached out with one hand and turned on the soft bed lamp. He held her face between his hands, his thumbs meeting above her eyes, and drew his thumbs along her brows. Her eyes opened, bloodshot and the whites almost possessed by the flesh round them: his eyes above were still and hard, looking down unblinking. She reached up to catch his right hand and stop it, so that only his left thumb moved along her brow. —You look like a criminal, she said gently. His smile seemed to draw her lips together, her upper lip caught under her lower. —Why? she whispered. —Why do you fight it all so hard?

—There’s still . . . so much more to do, he answered, as his smile left his face.

—So much what? If . . . you can’t share your work with me . . . but does that mean you can’t share anything? She moved under him, and put one hand up to his rough cheek. He did not answer. —You looked like a little boy, with the flames all over your face, she whispered.

—It was terrible, he commenced, —and that woman . . . !

—A lonely little boy, getting upset over silly people.

—But Esther . . . when I realized how much you’ve talked to them, told them about me, about my father and . . . my mother, and guilt complexes and that dream I have that comes back, and saying that I needed analysis badly, and all sorts of . . . He paused. She was not crying.

—I had to talk to someone, she said. She scratched the palm of his right hand with her fingernails. —I wish . . . she said, moving under him. His right hand closed on her fingers, and they stopped.

He stroked her hair.

Then she moved so quickly, raising herself on her elbows, that
her dress tore. —Do you think it can go on like
this?
she said loudly. His tight black jacket, unpadded and unpressed, bound his arms, but he did not stop to take it off; and then her eyes closed, his thumbs on the lids, and they shared the only intimacy they knew.

—What do you think about? she asked him, as they undressed.

—Think about? he repeated, looking up confused.

—Just . . . now, she said.

—Not thought. I don’t
think
of anything, but . . . He drew on his cigarette, which was half smoked away. —It was strange. There were sapphires. I could see sapphires spread out, different sizes and different brilliances, and in different settings. Though some of them weren’t set at all. And then I thought, yes I did think, I thought, if only I can keep thinking of these sapphires, and not lose them, not lose one of them, everything will be all right.

She turned out the light. —That must mean something. Like your dream. Your dream isn’t hard to understand. Certainly not . . . after tonight.

—There’s always the sense, he went on, —the sense of recalling something, of almost reaching it, and holding it . . . She leaned over to him, her hand caught his wrist and the coal of tobacco glowed, burning his fingers. In the darkness she did not notice. —And then it’s . . . escaped again. It’s escaped again, and there’s only a sense of disappointment, of something irretrievably lost.

He raised his head.

—A cigarette, she said. —Why do you always leave me so quickly afterward? Why do you always want a cigarette right afterward?

—Reality, he answered.

—Reality? Otto repeated. —Well I always think of it as meaning the things you can’t do anything about. This was an argument which many women might have welcomed; and, from the way he raised one eyebrow, it might appear that many had. Nevertheless, Esther continued to stare into the cup before her. —I mean . . . Otto commenced.

—I think he thinks of it as . . .

—Yes? he asked, after pausing politely.

—As nothing, she said. —As a great, empty nothing.

Before Otto could look (or try not to look) as uncomfortable as this made him, he was startled by her looking him square in the face across the table, to ask, —Do you like him?

—Why, yes, he answered, looking down, in a tone which she might have taken for insincerity, had she not been able to see his embarrassment. —I mean, I don’t really know him, he went on as
she looked back into her empty coffee cup, —but I . . . he is sort of hard to get to know, isn’t he.

Esther nodded. —Yes, she said, and looked up for what he would say next.

—I mean, I can’t imagine that anybody really knows him really well. Except you of course, he added hastily, offering her a cigarette.

—I’d better not take time, she said.

—And I mean, Otto said, lighting a cigarette, —I think you can learn so much from him. I mean I think I can. I mean little things that you don’t learn at Harvard. Like the way he was talking about the Saint Jerome in El Greco’s painting being the real Saint Jerome, the neck and chest all sort of drained of decay, and the sort of lonely singleness of purpose of insanity. That kind of thing. And he doesn’t talk down to me, he just sort of . . . talks, like . . . well we were talking about German philosophy, and he was talking about Vainiger, and something about how we have to live in the dark and only assume postulates true which if they were true would justify . . .

—Romantic, German . . . Esther murmured.

—Yes but, and then Fichte saying that we have to act because that’s the only way we can know we’re real, and that it has to be moral action because that’s the only way we can know other people are. Real I mean. But look, there’s something, I mean do you think he minds me . . . taking you to lunch like this? Esther looked up and smiled across the table for the first time in some minutes. —Because you know, I wouldn’t want . . .

—I think he’ll be grateful, she said.

Otto turned for the waiter, whom he’d been having trouble reaching since they sat down. He’d brought her to a small restaurant which, with excess of garlic in everything but dessert and coffee (though it lingered even there), and very dry martini cocktails served by disdainfully subservient waiters one and all in need of a shave, sustained a Continental fabric that would have collapsed entirely without the expense accounts of the publishing world. —His mother breathed for him before I married him, said the woman at the next table, who was seated nearer to Otto than Esther was. —His job is to scrub the kitchen and the bathroom . . .

Otto studied the bill.

—And thank you for the book, Esther said as she did her lips. —It was kind of you to bring it, just because you heard me mention it the other evening. Did you like it?

—As a matter of fact, he said, unable to interrupt himself so that he paid the thirty-cent overcharge without question, —I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

—Well then you take it back. She pushed it toward him.

—No, no, I brought it to you. But maybe, I might come up and borrow it when you’re done? I mean, if neither of you mind?

—I hope you will come up, she said. —He would too. I know he would, because he . . . because you can talk to him. And you must, she said taking Otto’s hand in hers as they reached the sidewalk outside. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking from one of his to the other. —And you . . . mustn’t be put off by the way he seems to withdraw. He does like you. And I’m glad you like him. I’m glad you told me you did just now, because I told him you did last night.

—What did he say? Otto asked anxiously.

Esther smiled. —It was funny, she said. —He said it made it like there were three of us in the room where there should only have been two. He said I shouldn’t’ try to make explicit things that should be implicit. She was looking beyond him as she said this, into the crowd of people passing on Fifth Avenue, looking searchingly. Then she looked quickly back at his face. —But you understand, don’t you?

—Yes, I . . .

—You . . . it’s as though you bring him to life.

Otto turned to watch her leave him. Then, a hand moving in his pocket, he counted his money by memory. Then he looked at his watch. Then he took a slip of paper from his pocket.

—Chr-ah-st. Otto. I mean what are you doing standing in the middle of the street writing a note?

—Oh Ed, I . . . it’s just something I thought of for this play I’m working on.

—A play? Chrahst, how unnecessary. Who’s in it? asked Ed, who, though he did not know it, was himself in the play, with the unlikely name of Max.

—Well no one yet, Otto said, returning to his pocket the slip of paper on which he had just written: Gordon says nt mke thngs explict whch shd be implict ie frndshp. —I haven’t finished it. The plot still needs a little tightening up. (By this Otto meant that a plot of some sort had yet to be supplied, to motivate the series of monologues in which Gordon, a figure who resembled Otto at his better moments, and whom Otto greatly admired, said things which Otto had overheard, or thought of too late to say.) —The whole plot is laid . . .

—Chrahst what lousy weather, I mean I’ve been everywhere and wherever you go all you find out is that it’s hot as hell in summer and cold as hell in winter. Got time for a drink?

—Why yes, yes fine, I . . .

—I mean Chrahst what else do they expect you to do? he said as they walked south.

—Are you going to the reunion?

—What reunion?

—Our class, the class reunion, it’s going to be . . .

—My Chrahst, I mean who wants to go to a thing like that? I mean Chrahst you just get drunk with the same stupid guys you were drunk with for four years, except every year they manage some goddamn way to get a little stupider and lose their hair and bring their wives instead, and why go all the way up there to get drunk? I mean Chrahst it’s as though you hadn’t grown up any.

—Say, while we’re near here I want to stop in at Brooks for a minute, Otto said. —I have to get . . .

—O Chrahst I might as well stop too. I’ve got to get some drawers. I mean, I’m going to get married next week, and I’ve got to get some drawers. We could take my car . . .

—But it’s only four blocks away.

—I know, and I lost the goddamn car anyway.

—You lost it?

—Last night, I left it somewhere. I think it was uptown, but I mean Chrahst, you can’t expect me to remember everything.

Pillaged by a cold wind about his midriff (for fashion confided that he might button only the bottom button of his jacket, hybrid heritage of the Guards, which forbade an overcoat), Otto reached their doorway. He paused there to look back up the street, and then take a slip of paper from his pocket. Gordon’s speeches were becoming more and more profound. Gordon would soon be at home only in drama; and, though his author had not considered it, possibly closet drama at that. Otto often disappeared at odd moments, as some children do given a new word, or a new idea, or a gift, and they are found standing alone in some private corner, lips moving, as they search for the place where this new thing belongs, to get it firmly in place and part of themselves before they return to adult assaults, and the incredible possibility that they may one day themselves be the hunters. Like their lips, his pencil moved, getting the thing down before it was lost, not to himself but to his play; for once written, it need be reconsidered only for sound and character, and the scene it would best fit in, while he returned to the assaults and possibilities that only the hunter knows. In the past few months, Gordon had begun to lose his debonair manner, and become more seriously inclined; he tossed off epigrams less readily, but often paused and made abrupt gestures with his hands, as though to shape his wisdom in plain view
of the large audience, halting between phrases to indicate the labor they cost him; he was liable to be silent, where he had chatted amiably; and where he had paused upstage, thoughtfully silent, he was liable not to appear at all. Grdn: We hate thngs only becse in thm we see elemnts whch we secrtly hate in rslves, Gordon’s creator wrote, at the foot of a page almost covered with notations (one of which covered half the page, and only two of which were not Gordon). He paused for a moment, tapping his lip with the pencil; then, Grdn: Orignlty not inventn bt snse of recall, recgntion, pttrns alrdy thr, q. You cannt invnt t shpe of a stone. N. Mke Grdn pntr? sclptr? By now Gordon was some three or four inches shorter than he had been, and considerably less elegant. With this note that Gordon’s profession was still open to change, Otto pushed at the outside door and found it open. He entered and climbed the stairs. He was commencing to envy Gordon.