The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (39 page)

—Just write it down here, the man said. Otto wrote.

—When I saw you first, or rather when I heard you talk. Another beer?

—Let me get it, Otto said, reaching in for his wallet. The man paid from his change on the bar.

—What were you doing down there? In South America?

—Writing. But those revolutions . . .

—You were covering a revolution?

Otto thrust his sling forward. —Things got pretty hot down there, he said.

—Is that where . . . something happened to your arm?

—Yes, I . . .

—I didn’t want to ask you. You know, I thought it might hurt your feelings, I mean some people are sensitive about things like that.

—Oh, I don’t mind talking about it. As a matter of fact, I . . .

—What time is it? said the man looking at his wrist watch. —Is that clock right? I’ve got to get going. He pulled his hat down in front.

—Haven’t you got time for another beer? It’s my turn . . .

—I’ve got to get to the office. Will you call me there?

—Yes, certainly, I’ll be delighted . . .

—Don’t forget, now. We may be able to work something out.

They shook hands. The man went out. Otto nodded to the bartender. —Could you give me a whisky and soda? he said, and opened his large manila envelope, to study a few pages of his play with minute appreciation. The bartender put a whisky sour down before him. —But I . . .

—Sixty cents, the bartender said. Otto paid.

The trip to MacDougal Street involved two crowded buses and a seething subway. Otto, in good spirits, planned to spend some time with Max, discussing the finer points of his play. Max was not at home. Otto tried to wedge the manuscript into the mailbox, but it was getting badly bent. Then the thought of it getting lost, or stolen (and produced with great acclaim under someone else’s name) drove him to summon the janitor. After establishing the thing’s value in that dull head he gave it over for delivery, slightly weakened at its loss.

Walking west, he stopped in an Italian grocery to buy cigarettes, was disregarded, tapped his foot loudly, and then pocketed a package from the counter and left.

Hannah passed without a word. She was talking with a tall Negro. Otto looked the other way.

Esme was alone. She had just stopped Chaby in her doorway, telling him it was cold, that he must wear a coat, warming his neck with her arms for a moment and then tying round it a green scarf she found on the floor behind the chair. He was gone when Otto appeared.

Otto and Esme sat quietly for a few minutes, for Esme a content quiet demanding nothing, for him a perilous one, the minutes building up upon themselves like a precarious house of cards waiting to be shattered. She walked about the room singing a frail song, whose words found nothing to bind them together but the free sale of her voice, separated, and were lost. She smiled at him, but shy, when she looked up and saw him watching her. Picking up papers, or hanging a skirt, or simply following the fragments of her song about the room, Esme seemed to show how easy it was being happily alive, to be beautiful, not to question.

Otto sat impatient. Finally he said, —I may have to go to South America.

—Really Otto? she said, charmed.

—Bolivia and northern Peru.

—That would be very nice, she said. —What a silly place to go, Otto.

—I don’t see anything so silly about it.

—You must do what
you
want to do.

—It’s not as silly as staying in New York. Spending time with people like Chaby. And half-wits like Anselm. And Stanley.

—They are very beautiful people, Esme said.

—Chaby? Beautiful?

—Yes, Otto, she said gently.

—He’s a kind of a . . . there’s something really low, really disgusting . . .

—He’s very unhappy.

—That’s his own damned business.

—Please don’t swear at me, Otto.

—I wasn’t swearing at you, Esme. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .

—He was hurt in the war, and that’s where he got the bad habit.

—What bad habit?

—Of taking drugs, she said, sober and simple, staring at the floor where the rug ended.

—He’s a drug addict? I might have known it.

—It wasn’t his fault. They gave him morphine in the war when he was hurt, and that’s the way he learned about it.

—Well, enough people came out of the war without being dope fiends.

—Chaby didn’t, she said. She looked up, to watch Otto find an ant on the back of his hand, and crush it and roll it into a bit of lifeless dirt with his thumb. Then he said, —Is this one of your poems?

—Yes, she answered, seeing he had picked it up from the bookcase.

—Do you publish them?

—Sometimes. If I like.

He read it.

To
A
C
HILD, BEHELD IN SUMMER RAIMENT

Little girl, one lesser garment

Will suffice to clothe your crotch
,

Hide that undiscovered cavern

Where old Time will wind his watch
.

—Where did you get a word like crotch? Otto asked, his voice mocking, shocked (for he was shocked, and this dissembling the only way he knew to evade it).

—I got it.

—But don’t you think it’s sort of . . . vulgar? I mean, why crotch?

—It rhymes with watch, Esme explained. —It’s a poem. Then, in the tone of a child conspiring, she said, —I wrote a poem for Recktall Brown. It’s about him and me. Would you like to read it?

Otto, ready to sulk again, took it from her. —What does
Effluvium
mean?

—That’s the title.

—Yes, I see. But what does it mean?

—Why should it mean anything? It’s the title.

He read it through, stared at it, and finally managed to say, —I didn’t know you knew words like perspicacious.

—It’s just a word, Esme said.

—It’s a very nice poem.

—It isn’t nice at all.

—I’m afraid I don’t understand it.

—Why should you understand it?

—But what does it mean?

—What does it
mean
. It just
is
.

One moment he thought she was laughing at him for finding no meaning; the next, that she took him a fool for looking for one. —It sounds hermaphroditic, he said, defensively.

—Her-maph-ro-dit-ic? What is that?

—Someone with the equipment of both sexes.

—Like a succubus?

—Queer. Queerer.

—Queerer than
queer?

Even now, it was almost dark; and the daybed where he sat stood mounted on the surface of the painted rug, and she outside it, looking on as one looks at an odalisque. Alone in the chair she thought of this, and started to shiver. —What’s the matter? he said, and started to get up.

—Don’t, don’t, she said quickly as though frightened. —Stay there, please. Please.

—But what’s the matter?

—I just get cold sometimes, all of a sudden my feet get very cold.

—Esme, about last night . . .

—What did you want to see me about, alone? she asked, seemed to mock him.

—Well, about last night, I wanted to clear up . . .

She sat still, far out of his reach, one leg folded under her. She had lit a cigarette, and its smoke rose between them. He had no wish to clear up the events of the night before: only to repeat it, in the pall of half-light, but while there was still light, light, so he could see. He got up and came to her chair.

—Please sit down, please, where you were, she said, hiding her face. —If we’re going to talk I have to be able to see you. The cigarette burned, a protective brand between them. He turned, silent, and looked around, on the chest, on the table. There he picked up
a paper, covered with writing in her large open hand. He read, “Baby and I / Were baked in a pie / The gravy was wonderful hot. / We had nothing to pay / To the baker that day / And so we crept out of the pot.” —Is this more of your poetry?

—Oh no, Otto. That’s a nursery rhyme I used to know.

—What did you write it here for?

—Sometimes I just write things I know, things I remember, because I like to write lovely things.

—I don’t see what’s so lovely about being baked in a pie.

—Please sit down, she said. But when she put her cigarette out, he crushed his own quickly and reached her before she had time to do more than throw her elbow up before her eyes. He took her shoulders and turned them back until her face fell open to him. Her eyes were larger than he thought they could be, her lips quivering with fear, he kissed her crushing her down with his whole weight. Then like the pickpocket who calls attention to one’s arm by bump ing it, while his hand slips in to the billfold, Otto distracted the dress covering her breasts with one hand, while his other sought delicately, lower, until it came to uneasy rest in warmth and darkness.

—But your arm? she whispered.

—What arm? She pointed to that sling, come undone. —It’s all right, he said, flushing. —It’s all right. Esme’s thin face had the look of a small terrified animal never assailed, never before held and forced, and now caught in a snare; but a face that asked no pity, no stopping now, only assault, until every terror was consummated. Then she hid her face. —Otto, that thing scratches.

—What thing?

—This, she said, pointing at his mustache, exposing herself, and they went down in the chair again. Something snapped. Esme reached to her shoulder, embarrassed at this interruption of reality. Then, blithe as a little girl who has a secret game, or hiding place, which she shows to only one (or as candidly, one at a time) she led him back to the daybed.

—Esther . . . Otto whispered, and buried himself more deeply on her, forced his head down over her shoulder, pressing the lips that lied into her neck. —
Esme
 . . .

As in Chinese fencing, whose contractual positions eliminate the fetters of time, time passed.

—It’s a song from
Tosca
, she said, waking in the dark.

—What is?

—The song you wanted to know the name of.

—Song? Then you were dreaming.

—Then I was, she said. —Was it a dream? He felt her feet, very
cold, against him. And he held her close to him, smiling. —I dreamt . . . he said, —Now don’t you smell it?

—What?

—Lavender. Don’t you smell the lavender? A moment of silence, and she said, —What did you dream?

—I dreamt . . . I had a terrible dream. I was at a film with a woman I knew very well, and I was pretending to be blind, with my eyeballs looking way up under the lids. Then I really was blind, and I was walking with a stick with a retracting point. There was cloth over my eyeballs that scratched and hurt, but I didn’t seem to be upset. And the woman with me threatened me if I tried to escape her. Then another woman came along, she was very full-breasted, in a tight sort of bodice. We went to the park, and there was someone else there. Who was it? I can’t think who it was. But the woman with me led me down a long street, and we came to a movie palace. Then I realized I’d made myself blind. And then the stick split down the middle, and I was there alone. The woman had left me alone. It was terrible.

—I dreamt about someone.

—Who?

—Someone you don’t know, she said. Then she said to herself, —He was in a mirror, caught there.

—Now I remember who it was I saw in the park, Otto said.

—Who?

—Someone I used to know, someone you don’t know, he said, and saw that pale thin man standing in the park vividly silent, watching him without recognition as he approached, blind, with the stick and its retracting point. —A friend, I used to . . . it’s funny, that I miss him.

—But why aren’t you missing me! she cried out in a suffocated voice. —I’m here . . . In the dark he felt her shudder, and traced her brow with his finger.

Esme put her head under his chin. He held her, smiling. And in the darkness, he suddenly realized that she could not see his smile, and he relaxed his face, feeling what a. strain the smile had been.

She straightened her clothes, getting up, and turned on a light. —Stop
looking
at me, she said.

—You have a lovely body, he said.

—That isn’t true.

—It is, it’s so slim, almost like a boy’s body. Do you ever model?

—Sometimes I do, Esme admitted.

—For fashion magazines? She hesitated, and turned away, looking for a belt. —Yes, that’s it, she said, and Otto pursued her no further, busy as he was tying up his bandage which had come loose,
exposing a healthy, though pallid, length of forearm. —I like my body because it’s just easy to wash, Esme said, and went out, to the communal bathroom.

His hair was rumpled; looking for a mirror, all he found was a medicine chest, the mirror’s place filled by a painting of dark abstraction.

—Do you like the painting? she said, coming in behind him.

—Don’t you have a mirror?

—Don’t you see? There aren’t any, she said.

—But why not?

—Mirrors dominate the people. They tell your face how to grow.

—Now Esme, really. Mirrors are made to look in.

—Made to look in? she said. —They are evil, she said, thinking of her own dream now. —To be trapped in one, and they are evil. If you knew what they know. There are evil mirrors where he works, and they work with him, because they are mirrors with terrible memories, and they know, they
know
, and they tell him these terrible things and then they trap him . . . She was speaking with hysteric speed.

—Esme, he said, holding her. —Now relax Esme, and she reached her arms around him, pulling him down to her as though never to let go.

—Is there a mirror in the bathroom? he asked as he let her go.

—Yes, she whispered.

He tried to take her round the waist again, but she twisted away. —Let me go. I have to hurry, she said.

—Why?

—I have to meet somebody.

—Who?

—Somebody you don’t know, she said, suddenly recovered, and as though playing his game with him like a child.

In the communal bathroom, he felt for his wallet in his pocket, then caught his face’s image in the mirror: crooked, out of proportion, it looked a stranger to him, because her face in this hour past, searching in it so deeply that his own face was forgotten, all faces other than hers forgotten, her face had become the very image, the definition of a face.