The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (89 page)

Her voice came in gusts, bringing them closer. —I don’t think you really ought to read a play, it spoils it when you see it . . . But somehow when I own a book, it’s almost like I’d read it . . . In the Modern Museum of Art, it was supposed to be a painting of a woman and he told me it was very valuable, but even my knees are better than hers were . . . The music had not stopped; had, in fact, been pounding its way into
Aïda
all this time, and by now reached “The dance of the little Moorish slaves.” —Isn’t just the word poem beautiful . . . ?

Staring into the loose top of her dress, he stroked his mustache with a fingertip, and sat closer, to hear, —I couldn’t live without Christmas . . . as her knee came against his and lay there in warm confidence, like the plain gold cross whose stem sprang from between her breasts. —Yes, I turned into a Catholic when I got married . . . Shoulders drawn back, the cross climbed from between the cumulous embankments. —But then I got a divorce and I don’t know if I’m still one or not. He gave me this . . . The cigarette case was snapped open and closed in metallic rumination. —It’s all he ever gave me, it’s supposed to be gold but I have to go and have it redipped every two or three months, I keep it because it’s a kind of a sacred memory, that being the only time I was married and all.

—I know what you mean. He squeezed her knee in gentle affirmation. His eyes settled on the bill, and seeking something more pleasant rose to the tinted mirror which showed his hair mussed, the green muffler askew: but neither hand dared leave its duty, to the casualty, and the casual prey. —Back to Central America, he heard his voice echo, minutes later, —South America, really. Boru and northern Polivia . . . And he sat staring into the mirror at the person who had made this statement. He waited; as one may in polite conversation, for it to be corrected. But the figure he saw
there in the glass made no such effort, simply sat, as though facing destiny on equal terms at last.

—Yes, my name’s Jean, she repeated. —And you?

—My name? he said. —My name? His tongue clung to the roof of his dry mouth. He opened his lips and ran the end of his tongue over them. He started to raise his left arm to look at his watch, and the hampering sling surprised him as though he’d wakened bound. He did not look at his watch then, but thought he could hear it tick. He heard the sounds of his mouth recovering fluidity, heard his name but could not repeat it now, no more than the king who abdicates repeats the name he took when he assumed the crown. —Look . . . he murmured. She had a room in the hotel. The one next to it was empty. The bill for their drinks had mounted quite high: if he took the empty room he could sign for it. He looked down the bar quickly, to where the man in light gray flannel sat thoughtfully picking his nose with his thumb. —What time is it?

She leaned forward. —Your watch says twenty minutes of eight.

—Well then it’s stopped, it must have stopped . . . He drew off the green muffler, and commenced to stuff one end in his pocket. —I’ll see about the room. But he sat still for a moment longer, watching the man in light gray flannel, to see if he had been noticed during all this time. The man had no green muffler; and as Otto drew off his own, a contract of necessity disappeared: the Damastean robber took his bed and was gone, slain by Theseus, that hero who identified himself to his father with the sword his father had left behind, Aegeus, King of Athens.

Here the man in the light gray flannel suit signaled the bartender. The seal ring flashed, connoting monarchy; and turning away, the prince, to some extent, relaxed, as the Protean image of his father, after two decades of transforming itself, settled again prepared to change as soon as grasped, just as Proteus, rising from the sea at midday to sleep in the rock shade, assumed every possible shape and form to escape prophesying, when the curious caught him.

Otto let himself down from the bar stool slowly, intent intending dignity, posturing peril; and then he hung there, staring, as the revolving door swung into the lobby. Santa Claus entered, propelled with a whack from behind, and stood unsteadily for a moment. Then he saw what he was looking for, and started for the bar just as the tall bellboy caught him and inserted him again into one of the revolving compartments, pushing him back in as he came round again, and finally getting in with him to help him out the other side, and send the red-clad saint to other hearths. The dining room swayed gracelessly, and as Otto’s feet rested upon the floor it seemed
to shudder, like the deck of a ship as the hull lowers upon a ragged sea. He steadied himself for a moment; and then with his whole hand he felt for his inside breast pocket, as though the wallet must have been there all the time, its absence illusory, caused by witchcraft; and he glanced quickly at the blonde, as those medieval inquisitors, fingering the pages of the
Malleus Maleficarum
may have glanced at the witches who seemed to deprive men of their virile members, when they found that “such members are never actually taken away from the body, but are only hidden by a glamour from the senses of sight and touch.”

But his hand pressed against bone. With that, he retired from the image of himself which had stepped down from the mirror above the bar, to dwell apart and watch it move across the room toward the lobby, prepared to applaud this vacant being if things should go well, to abandon it tinted and penniless if things should conspire against it. Even absolute, he mistrusted glamours; even so, he did not notice the green muffler trailing from his pocket as he walked across the floor.

—A single room for tonight?

—We have just one, sir. With bath. Nine-fifty.

—Fine. Fine.

—And your luggage, sir?

—Coming along behind me, you know. From the dock, following me.

—I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to pay in advance. A formality . . .

—I say, my travelers’ checks are all in my small suitcase, you know, following me along here from the dock. Just recently arrived, I mean back in this country . . .

—I’m afraid we won’t be able to . . .

—I haven’t much time to . . .

—We might be able to hold a room for you until ten, unless someone else . . .

—Yes, well, that will do then. It will have to do, you know. Thank you, Otto finished, turning from the desk, the particles of his expression uncomposed, as though at the theater and temporarily confused by the course of the play; but as the theater-goer has redemption written on his ticket stub, and a sterile fragment of faith tells him that salvation is just around the corner as he takes his seat for the last act, so an anticipatory calm pervaded the materials of Otto’s face.

Nevertheless the machinery of faith inclines to creak when the multitude boards; and the more the formidable tyranny of their privilege exerts itself, and love of spectacle demands effects, the more brazenly the machine is bared. Among Rome’s earlier and
more cheerfully dealt contributions to the decline of civilization was the gallant assistance she gave to the decadence of the Greek theater, where Roman eyes blinked in startled satisfaction as the god descended in a machine to dispense salvation on the stage, which faith, in the audience, had anticipated (while Democritus, succumbing in a measure to popular prejudice, granted to the upper air inhabitants “of the same form as men, but grander, composed of very subtle atoms, less liable to dissolution . . .”).

As Jean was saying to Anatole in the bar, even then, —I just always kind of
expect
something nice to happen. And then it does.

The slung arm rose taut from the sling; the free one dropped its work of jamming the green muffler into a pocket, and collapsed as Otto stood, swaying gently as though suspended, like Absalom perhaps, hanging by his chin in the terebinth tree as the darts of Joab found his heart, and so smitten he came down to earth: the revolving door turned, and from it issued an apparition on a fragmentary blast too weak to do more than flutter the end of the green muffler.

It was too late to go out another door. The man had seen him. Otto finished jamming his own muffler down into his pocket, in mechanical denial of what was happening, and came forward with his hand extended.

—Hullo, he said, a sound which took all of his energy, left him unable to add the word, —
Father
.

—Uh huh, said the other, looking round him quickly through the thick glasses, pulling the cane up under his arm, hardly pausing to shake hands. —Everything all right? he murmured, going on in toward the bar.

—Why yes, I . . .

—You better take my arm. It looks better.

—Why yes. I’m sorry. Of course. Otto guided him in; and they paused. —Do you want to have a drink first? I mean, a drink at the bar? Otto managed to ask, staring over a sagging shoulder at the sagging charm of Jean at the bar.

—I don’t drink. Too many people at the bar anyhow. We’ll get a table.

Otto followed, looking back over his own sagging shoulder at the bar. —It isn’t really crowded, he said.

His companion turned, and for the first time fixed him with sharp pupils which seemed to penetrate him. —You’re not drunk, are you?

—Drunk? I? Why no, no I . . .

—That would be a nice stew.

A lonely waiter appeared, to show them to a table in one corner,
felicitously almost dark. Otto walked with a slight limp, in time to the
March of the Sardar
which came from the hidden amplifiers. The cane before him kept similar time. Passing an occupied table, Otto looked with horror at the man seated there: not at the man, perhaps, but at his tie: the inquisitorial stripes still challenged him. He still felt eligible, or had until this moment. The glance of the man at the table was cursory, from Otto to the grotesque striding before him, the glance of the British resident as the two ruined nobles followed the crippled clamor of their music toward the south.

They were imprisoned, side by side, behind a table against the wall.

—You shouldn’t have jumped like that, when you met me.

—Oh, did I?

—It just don’t look good.

—I know, I . . .

—People notice things like that.

—I know. The waiter dropped menus before them and escaped. —I guess . . . well I mean we might as well start right off with dinner.

—You want to
eat?

—Well, I mean I thought we were going to . . . I guess it doesn’t really matter. It was difficult for Otto to study the figure beside him; nevertheless he tried, beyond the bushy hair and the heavy glasses. Otto wanted to see his teeth. —It’s funny, he said. —You have such black hair.

—What’s so funny about it?

—Well, I mean because mine is so light, Otto answered as the cane clattered to the floor.

—Is it on crooked? his companion asked in a low tone, raising his hand to his brow, and passing it delicately over his temple. —I been kind of rattled all evening, he said. —Since I left home.

—Why. I mean is anything wrong? at home?

—“He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.” I just done something sort of hasty, like the Bible says there. But stupidity gets me sometimes. I just blow up. He sat back, then, and appeared to relax. —That’s dangerous in any business, let alone this one.

—Yes, said Otto. —Of course. He held the large menu card up as a screen for his confusion, increased now by a scent which crept up around him, a familiar fugitive aroma which he could not identify. He was not reading the menu, but anticipating, as though reality in any desperate measure would suffice to anchor his covetousness;
and he did not dare look up the bar for Jean. Clams, gros, to start? or omelette aux truffes?

—But those things don’t hardly seem to matter tonight. I feel in a nice mood.

Coq au vin? Pigeon aux petits pois? Poularde au riz, sauce suprême?

—I always feel this way after a good job. And Christmas all over the place . . . The lonely waiter appeared, and he silenced.

Foie gras à la gelée de Porto? Poulet . . . Fonds d’artichauts . . . Salade à la grecque . . .

—Hamburger steak, sounded beside him; and the music was Mozart’s
Turkish March
. Where had he found that? Otto realized that he was looking at the wine list. As he folded the huge card back upon itself, the voice said, —Same thing for you?

—Yes, I . . .

—Two hamburger steaks, well done. And hurry it up.

Albert, King of the Belgians, careening gloriously down among the crevices of rock, gone, never to reappear and interrupt legends offered about him, to suffer translation from the fiction of selective memories to the betrayal of living reality.

Otto looked at the heavy glasses, saw dust on the surfaces of the lenses. —I noticed your eyes. Are they . . . I mean, very bad? I mean, they really look . . .

—Eserine.

—Oh. Is it contagious? I mean, is it dangerous?

—Dangerous? It’s not dangerous.

—But . . . is it painful?

—No. You can feel it, but it’s not painful.

—Oh. Otto folded his hands before him. —Is it hereditary, do you know? he asked, looking up.

—Is it what?

—I mean, how did you get it?

—I got it from a friend of mine.

—Oh, said Otto, and sat a bit further away. Then he said agreeably, —I suppose you wonder what I’ve been doing with myself.

—Keeping busy I guess, was the answer, in an uninterested tone. Otto looked down at his hands, and reconsidered. —What have you been up to lately?

—I’m working on a passport now. It’s no job for a beginner. It never was work for bums to get into. They ruin it for the real craftsman.

—Yes. I mean I guess it’s like that in everything. But passports? I mean, what are you . . .

The lonely waiter bore down, a plate in each hand. —All right, can it.

—What? I mean, I just asked about passports, what are you . . .

—It’s a very cold night out tonight, ain’t it. Their plates were put before them, and the waiter went the way he had come. —What’s the matter with you, anyway. Don’t you know there’s some things you just don’t ask about like that? This is a public place.