The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (40 page)

He pulled at the roll of paper on the wall, to wipe away a smudge on his cheek, and that paper rolled out to him with a great creaking, and one small brave passenger, a cockroach, riding like Palinurus piloting the ship of Aeneas, where he went to sleep at the helm and fell overboard, to be murdered by natives ashore.

And as Jesus Christ, of the house of David, took upon himself human nature in order to free and to redeem mankind who were in the bonds of sin because of Adam’s disobedience, so also, in our art, the thing that is unjustly defiled by the one will be absolved, cleansed and delivered from that foulness by another that is contrary to it.

—Raymond Lully,
Codicillus

That afternoon, Fuller sat on a bench, his back turned to Central Park in December. Women scuttled past him the bulks of furs, bearing gold and precious ornaments which he watched without envy. He’d only to smile, to yawn, or frankly raise his upper lip and he could show more gold than any of them could wear, even in their most offensive aspirations to taste: jewels by the pound-weight, rings so heavy that they looked like weapons. The cold wind made continuous suggestion to his hat, a narrow-brimmed, imperially high-crowned straw, to join the fuzzy commotion that passed. The hat would have none of it. It was as firm on his head as his right hand on the umbrella, or his left hand holding the leash on the black poodle.

His face remained peacefully arranged until that leash tightened, and then the lines in Fuller’s forehead and around his mouth tightened too. When they walked, the leash was taut like a bar holding them apart, instead of a binding tie. The black faces viewed one another with mistrust, but a weary mistrust which had by now settled down to resigned loathing. Though now as Fuller looked down at the dog, there was an element of glee in his expression of disgust. It was cold; and though Fuller was cold, the dog was shivering. Fuller too was inclined to shiver, but refused to give the dog that satisfaction. He sat quite tense, restraining himself, but staring directly at the dog, who could not stop shivering. But the disgust in Fuller’s face was evident. He wanted to visit a dear friend, whose office was a bare six blocks off, and sat now considering whether he
could get there and back to Mr. Brown’s before the cocktail hour. Mr. Brown had gone to the doctor. Sometimes he was late, returning from the doctor. Fuller knew that
he
would be punished if
he
were late. On the other hand, he knew that Mr. Brown would hear about the visit, late or not. That was why Fuller looked at the poodle with troubled eyes now, for he was certain that this poodle and their master communicated, that if he went to see his friend, the poodle would tell on him.

Then he smiled. Today must be different, and he tried to evade the habit of fear. He had his ticket, and tomorrow he would be gone. Mr. Brown would shout for him, the poodle would bark, but he would be far away. This ticket which he carried deeply hidden was the most expensive he had ever got. Its destination must be much nearer home than any of the others.

He looked down to see that the poodle was watching him with that look which seemed to enter his mind and rummage in his memory. Was it learning about the ticket? Fuller stood, pulling the poodle to its feet roughly as it lunged toward a bird alighted near. He set off defiantly toward First Avenue, the witness a taut four feet away.

We would believe that Fuller had had a childhood only in helpless empiricism, because we all have. But it was as unreal to him by now as to anyone looking at his face, where time had long since stopped experimenting. That childhood was like a book read, misplaced, forgotten, to be recalled when one sees another copy, the cheap edition in a railway station newsstand, which is bought, thumbed through, and like as not left on the train when the station is called. The slow train of Fuller’s life had made one express dash, when Recktall Brown had found him while on a Caribbean cruise, bought him from himself with something he had prized above life, not having it, this set of gold teeth, and a promise of magic unfulfilled: he was delivered at what seemed to be the last stop, Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown’s dog, and Mr. Brown’s apartment. That promise of magic, which had appealed so to youth, never materialized, though Fuller did not doubt but what Mr. Brown could make his skin white if he wanted to, a possibility which, grown older, he regarded now more as threat than redemption, and did not speak of it.

The dog hated his singing. Today, in easily understood levity (the ticket), he sang:

—Littel girl, please leave my bachelor room.

Littel girl, littel girl please leave my bachelor room,

You are so brazen, you are so free,

You must proteck your mo-ral-i-ty:

Littel girl, please leave my bachelor room,

as they walked toward Third Avenue, and the elevated train which the dog hated too. Fuller knew this, and always waited at the corner until a train was in sight, pretending to the dog that he was looking into a cigar-store window there.

—Hello mahn, how you goin? Fuller greeted his friend after the pleasant walk (there had been two trains, from opposite directions, passing above them in a roar).

The little mortician shook hands with him. —We had a big one, a . . . I mean we had a big one today, a funeral. Why I have more, there, do you see them all, all those at the end, those flowers, I have more flowers for you than you’ll be able to carry, Fuller. He motioned at the tall erectly wired bank of lilies, browning a bit at the edges. Fuller looked distressed.

—I cannot go off with them, mahn.

—But why? I mean, why not?

—It’s that Mister Brown, mahn, sayin to me Fuller don’t you bring any more of your God-damned corpse bouquets in at this house.

—But in your own room, I mean even in your own room you can’t have them?

—No mahn, and he find out some way too if I try. Like the birds, I believe he even know about the birds. Somebody inform on me, I know, he added, looking at the poodle.

—What birds?

—I tell you about that another time, when we not under surveillance. But the gloves? You reserved another selection of gloves for me?

—Yes, I mean I have eight pairs. Eight of them, I mean sixteen. Sixteen gloves, eight pall-bearers I mean. He fetched the gloves, and Fuller looked them over carefully.

—These are very choice, Fuller said holding up one pair. —Very clean and immaculate. I suppose he don’t carry the coffin, just walk alongside to be respectable.

—But doesn’t he mind the gloves? I mean Mister Brown, he doesn’t mind you wearing these gloves that were used to carry the, a . . . well I mean there’s no harm in it but some people are peculiar, I mean to serve things wearing these?

—He think I purchase them, said Fuller. —That is how I managin to finance my trip mahn. The money I save.

—Your trip?

—Yes, I fear this is sayin farewell to you. Tomorrow I will be a distance away, goin to my home.

—To the Barbados?

—I plan departin tomorrow in the morning.

—But Fuller, I mean not like the other times, I mean you’ve started out other times . . .

—I plan departin in the morning, Fuller repeated firmly, speaking to the dog. He put the gloves under his coat. —You still have your Armenium?

—Oh yes, I mean always, he’ll always be here.

—It remain a great pity his family cannot have him back, down in the Armenium where they reside, put him in the nice groung of his homeland where he belong to be.

—Seven years. He’s been there, I mean, here, seven years. He was here when I bought this store, I mean the business. I write letters to his family, but they can’t send money out of Armenia to pay the rent, I mean to pay his . . . my keeping him here like this. I’m not even sure there is such a country as Armenia any more.

—I wish some day I could aid him to return to his homeland, Fuller said, as he put out his hand. —Goodbye, he said. —I leavin you to God to watch over and proteck you. And the Armenium.

—Goodbye Fuller, come around Thursday night if you can, there’s going to be a big . . . I mean . . . The little man had looked forward to the greatest day in his career when Fuller’s master was given over to him for the last shave and costuming, and had no doubt Fuller would see that he got the commission. It had never been discussed between them. Nevertheless it was understood. Fuller had rehearsed the scene in his own impatient imagination many times. —Goodbye Fuller, he said, disappointment in his voice. —Send me a picture postcard, Fuller.

The black companions returned to hear their master’s voice echoing the words God damn it down the halls. Fuller was greeted with the phrase when they appeared in the doorway.

—God damn it, Fuller. Do you know what time it is? The poodle ran up to his side, where it stood muzzling his hand. —You’re late. Where the hell have you been? That God damn undertaker’s? Fuller looked at the poodle, who was betraying him even as he stood there.

—I stop to say somebody hello, sar, he admitted.

—Bring in the glasses, Fuller. Then go to bed.

—But Mister Brown I don’t mean to . . .

—Bring in the glasses, Fuller.

A few minutes later, Fuller entered, bearing the tray in white-gloved hands, with three glasses, two clean linen towels, and a bucket of ice. He put them on the bar across the room, behind
Recktall Brown and Basil Valentine who were sitting before the fireplace. He stood fussing at the bar. Then Recktall Brown realized that he was still in the room, waiting like a hopeful shadow to be assigned some attachment in the light.

—Before you go to bed you’d better give me that ticket, Fuller.

—Ticket, Mister Brown?

—Give me that ticket you bought for Utica New York.

—Ticket please . . . Mister Brown?

—God damn it Fuller, give me that ticket you bought this morning for Utica.

—But Mister Brown I don’t mean to . . . Fuller was shaking.

—Fuller!

Fuller reached down into an inside pocket, and drew the ticket out slowly, handed it over. —Now go to bed. And no lights. Remember, no lights.

Fuller looked, at him and then at the poodle, and turned to trudge up the stairs.

—Crazy old nigger’s scared of the dark, Recktall Brown said. —He says he’s “visited by the most terrible creatures in the whole of history,” he laughed, tearing up the ticket to Utica. He threw the bits into the fireplace. —He thinks anywhere must be on the way to Barbados.

—Your occult powers are rather impressive.

—Occult? Recktall Brown grunted the word, and paused his cigar in the air between them abruptly so that its ash fell to the Aubusson carpet like a gray bird-dropping. He looked through his thick lenses and through the smoke: there were moments when Basil Valentine looked sixteen, days when he looked sixty. In profile, his face was strong and flexible; but, when he turned full face as he did now, the narrowness of his chin seemed to sap the face of that strength so impressive an instant before. Temples faintly graying, distinguished enough to be artificial (though the time was gone when anyone might have said premature, and gone the time when it was necessary to dye them so, instead now to tint them with black occasionally), he looked like an old person who looks very young, hair-ends slightly too long, he wore a perfectly fitted gray pinstripe suit, soft powder-blue Oxford-cloth shirt, and a slender black tie whose pattern, woven in the silk, was barely discernible. He raised a gold cigarette case in long fingers. Gold glittered at his cuff.

—How did you know, that he had a ticket for Utica?

—This morning he asks me very carefully, Mr. Brown, do they use United States of America money in a place called Utica? Recktall Brown laughed, and Basil Valentine smiled, took a cigarette
from the case, and laid the case on the low table before him. There was a long inscription, worn nearly smooth, on the surface of the gold, and he ran a fingertip over it before leaving the case on the glass-covered painting, on the slender column separating the tableaux
Avaritia
and
Invidia
. He raised his eyes slightly when he lit his cigarette, to the table’s center, and blew a stream of smoke toward the underclothed Figure there with its maimed hand upraised. —You keep it too warm in here, he said finally.

—I like it this way.

—Not for you, not for you. I wasn’t thinking of you. The paintings, the furniture. This steam heat will warp everything you have.

—Not before I sell them. And what the hell? Whoever buys them puts them up in steam-heated places. Recktall Brown ground an Aubusson rose under heel, turning to cross the room toward the bar. It was a small hexagonal pulpit, furnished with bottles. The carved oak leaves, and the well-pinioned figure of Christ on its face (which gave him occasion to remark, —He was innocent, and they nailed him) were stained with tricklings of gin. —Gin?

—I’d prefer whisky. Basil Valentine did not look up from the magazine he’d drawn toward him and opened again on the table. He studied the reproduction on the two-page spread of the centerfold, and his lips moved. Then he pushed the open
Collectors Quarterly
away and stood abruptly, to demand: —Is he always this late? accepting the glass from the heavy hand mounting the two diamonds.

—Nervous? Brown laughed, a sound which stopped in his throat, and sank back in a chair. —With somebody like him you can’t expect . . .

—You’ve been quite successful in your efforts to keep me from meeting him, Basil Valentine interrupted. —One might think . . .

—Just watch your step with him, Recktall Brown muttered from the chair he filled, and Valentine, muttering something himself, turned his back and flung his cigarette into the fireplace, and stood looking at the carved letters beneath the mantel.

The chimney piece was a massive Elizabethan affair, ponderous like the rest of the furniture, the chairs standing out from the carpeting which stretched from wall to wall, and the two refectory tables, giving the place the look of an exclusive gentlemen’s club; but only at first glance: for Recktall Brown, owner and host, was implicit everywhere. More than one guest had been provoked to make obvious remarks on the generic likeness between the head of the wart hog, mounted high on one wall, and the portrait of the host hung across the room. And even though he had been rallied often enough over that portrait (when he had been drinking),
Recktall Brown would not remove it. Instead he could pause and look at it with fond veneration. They looked, too, over his shoulder, but none could find the youth he reverenced there. Instead they saw an unformed likeness of the face turned from them, ears protruding but erect, only the hands too similar. There were other paintings, especially the Patinir on the other side of the doorway, in whose neighborhood this portrait would at best have been an intrusive presence; but there was something in the thing itself which made it absurd, though it took a moment to realize what had happened. It had been painted from a photograph (the sitter too busy to sit more than that instant of the camera’s eye) in which his hands, found in the foreground by the undiscriminating lens, were marvelously enlarged. The portrait painter, directed to copy that photograph faithfully and neither talented, nor paid enough, to do otherwise, had with attentive care copied the hands as they were in the picture. And pausing, passing it hundreds of times in the years since, often catching up one hand in the other before him, his hands came to resemble these in the portrait, filling out large and heavy, so apparently flaccid that they had been referred to once, and repeated by other voices in other rooms, as prehensile udders. And the diamond ring? It appeared; though none but himself knew that its double gleam had been added long after the paint of the portrait was dry.