The Recognitions

  The Town Carpenter stood on his platform, with a slightly vacant but still expectant expression on his face. Much, perhaps, like good King Wenceslaus of Bohemia looking out on his still capital, prostrated before him by papal interdict, the Town Carpenter looked upon the town laid out here under the still cold, provoked by its sedulous silence; and here, as there, to the approach of the pale thin man in mean attire.

  But however the shade of John Huss may have leaped here from beyond Lamentation to find itself animate, teeth a-clatter, shoulders hunched forward, and even the hands thrust down seeking warmth in empty pockets colder against hard shivering limbs of the moving frame within the cloth: too hard, perhaps, and worse, too familiar, a prospect too mean for even that most mettlesome martyr, on such a cold day, ahead one expression effaced another (the Town Carpenter leaned back to spit off the platform), and Wenceslaus IV, “the vacillating,” abdicated and was gone, and the shade of the martyr gone with him.

  —Here, don’t bark at him, by God don’t you bark at him! the Town Carpenter shouted, as the dog leaped forward over a heap of bull dung, barking. —Don’t pick her up, he went on, coming down from the platform. —She’ll pee all over you. There now, he finished, and standing over his visitor he looked at him with frank and eager curiosity. —There now, he repeated, —that you look tired, it’s not surprising to me. Here from Ethiopia and the three Indies.

  —Ethiopia! Good God yes, I feel like I’d come that far.

  The Town Carpenter’s eyes glistened, as he listened and pretended to hear. —Sooner or later, of course, I knew you’d arrive, he said. —And are you alone? He bent close, intent for the nod he received. —I knew you would be, of course, he went on at that. —To voyage today with ten thousand knights, and one hundred thousand footmen, it might clutter things up.

  Nevertheless, the Town Carpenter looked slightly disappointed.

  —Being back, I . . . well, thank God I’m back.

  The Town Carpenter watched him draw a hand across his chin, and smile. —Back, the Town Carpenter repeated, standing off to look above them at the sky, —when we get back, of course, we can take up such proper customs again. But here . . . he swept a hand out before him, —here, of course, they’ve no idea of a hero. I live surrounded by people who’ve no idea what a hero is. And do you know why? Why, because they’ve no idea of what they’re doing themselves. None! Not an idea in this world or the next of what they’re doing on God’s green earth. Oh, it’s a strange land you’ve come visiting to see me here. With no idea of a hero, you see, but they need them so badly that they make up special games, hitting a ball with a stick and all kinds of nonsense, and the men who win the games are their heroes. And then, he went on, warming to what was apparently a severe preoccupation of his, —when that gets stale, they arrange whole wars which have no more reason for existing than the people who fight in them, and a boy may become a hero fighting for a life that’s worth something for the first time, threatened with loss of it, that or dying to save the lives of people who’ve no idea what to do with them. Fortunately, he went on, and inclined his head nearer, —there’s a way out for most of them. They make money, the Town Carpenter whispered hoarsely. —And a good thing such a recourse lies open, it gives them something to do, keeps them out of our way. He straightened up, looking at his balloon ascension stand, his arms still folded, and dingy underwear elbows protruding from his sleeves. He drew his lips tight together over the gums, and nodded. —Fortunately men like you and myself appear every century or so, to keep the way open. But, he called as he walked to the corner of the barn and stood there undoing the front of his clothes, —we must watch out for them, you know, trying to intrude. Here, he said, waving his free hand at the balloon stand, —they try to intrude. Traveling in their trains and their airplanes they try to intrude on the greatest career of the hero. Why, travel’s become the great occupation of people with nothing to do, you find second-hand kings and all sorts of useless people at it. There now, it’s always the heroic places you find them intruding, trying to have a share in the work of great men, looking at fine paintings and talking as though they knew more of the thing than the man who painted it, and the same thing listening to fine music, because they suspect the truth but they won’t pay the price, they all suspect that a man needs something to do, he finished, standing over the light cloud of steam he left rising from the gray boards of the barn.

  —Something to do? Most of the trouble in the world is made by people finding something to do.

  —There now, the Town Carpenter said, buttoning himself up as he straightened round, and nodding as though he had heard. —Of course they misuse things, every fine thing we have and make and discover, and the finest things get the most abuse. The generals and the missionaries and . . . but we cannot waste time on them, he said raising his eyes from the balloon stand to the sky, —there’s but one thing you can do with a balloon.

  —Going up? There’s only one thing to do when you get up there.

  —Danger? They don’t know the meaning of it, sitting up there in their airplanes, and surprised when they drop out of the sky. Why, they haven’t time to be frightened, they’re so surprised, brought up so carefully, insured against accident. Why, their heads are smashed like melons before they know what’s happened to them, sitting up there in their business suits at sixty miles an hour wondering if their fountain pens will leak, and then there they are spread all over twenty acres of somebody else’s land. No, not the danger. The loneliness. It’s the loneliness, the price they won’t pay. The Town Carpenter remained abstracted for a minute or so; and the wind which had just come up sounded around the corner of the barn. He gazed up at the sun, which had become involved with a cloud much the shape of a camel, an odd-legged one to be sure, but as the Town Carpenter was quick to point out, —Bactrian. They watched it. The sun entered almost between the two humps and then, from the speed of things up there, looked to be attempting an escape, its body visible along the fleeting edge, as though every instant it would break away. —See him go, see him go, the Town Carpenter said, standing there lopsided. Then he turned and said in a tone of confidence, and commiseration, —The great misfortune of the sun, it has no history. That’s why it never gets lonely up there.

  Then with a surprising agility he had gone round behind the balloon stand, and from there he called, —This? did you see it? I keep it inconspicuous, they’re all very interested in it, the American Legion . . . He swung about a length of two-inch pipe mounted on a swivel. —I’ve seen them sneaking around to look through it, but when they find no lenses in it, they think I’ve dismantled it. Of course there’s no lenses in it in the first place, they’d only confuse things.

  —Then, what is it?

  —Yes, since they don’t know what they’re looking for, of course they don’t see anything, wandering around in the daylight. There’s so much daylight you can’t see anything up there, unless you cut a path through it. Why, in good weather, one afternoon I saw Aldebaran, the red Eye of the Bull, keeping watch on the Pleiades, you know. That means it’s a very old star, being red like that. Yes, the red Eye of Taurus, he muttered coming back, —keeping a watch on them. They bear some watching, the Pleiades . . . Do you know? One night I was assailed in the darkness. A man struck me, square across the eyes, and do you know, from that blow? the force of it brought light to my eyes? and I identified him afterward, I saw him plain as could be. His American Legion cap showed as plain as could be. Then he looked round evasively. —Tell me, he said, close by again, —did you bring your great Mirror?

  —Mirror . . . ?

  —There now, it’s not easy to transport, I imagine. The great mirror in which you can see all that goes on in your kingdoms. But . . . we need it here, he said bending closer, and with another quick look round, —the American Legion. They watch me all the time, you know. Very interested, very interested in this of course. He included the balloon stand in a gesture. —Though it’s no secret. Why, more than one night they’ve co
me and picketed the house here. With your great mirror, we could keep an eye on them, the Town Carpenter finished, and watched intently the pockets searched before him until the gold cigarette case was brought out, empty. —For the messages! he exclaimed, taking it. —And with the secret inscription. There now, later you will explain it to me, he said, running his thumb over the words; then in a sudden feat of conjuring the gold case was gone inside the frontal folds of his clothing, and he stood with a large watch snapped open in his hand. —Of course I’d have known you anywhere, he said raising his brilliant eyes from the watch face. —There now, eleven-thirty. Later on we shall simplify things. Why, all the others are drowning in details. That’s what happens to them, you know. That’s where we’ll outwit them. We must simplify . . .

  His words were caught on the wind. The dog followed him. Before he was out of sight, there was the sound of thunder, rolling like a body to rest in the south. The Town Carpenter shook his fist at it, but did not diminish his step.

  The wind had come up quite sudden. It commenced to blow with that terrible quality peculiar to the winter wind, pointless, and the more bitter. March winds make a boisterous kind of sense, blowing seeds and seed-pods, blowing off the white pustular symptoms of winter, awakening, preparing for growth; and a vengeful sense in the fall, so long as a leaf remains where it grew, but the winter wind blows nothing, and blows that nowhere, blows with destructive violence where there is nothing left to destroy, vindictive and viciously fingered to leave no crevice untouched. Looking up, even the balloon stand is testament to something, erect with the stupid patience of objects so violated, testimony found futile as the wind itself in the envy as quickly rejected as it is longed after. The clouds conspired over Mount Lamentation had lost their distinct edges, and mounted in a dark mass as though what lay beyond there were already suffering what the wind, if simply to justify itself, threatened to bring closer. It blew round the corners of the carriage barn, over the snow clotted against the mound of what had been the kitchen midden for as long as he could remember, over the snow crusted on the ground behind the barn, showing its surface here and there as though that ground had never been disturbed, as though the surface were all of it that existed.

  He drew his shoulders closer together still, and almost lost his balance as he turned away from this desolation where something moved with the sudden effortless ease of an apparition, unconcerned with inertia, unrestricted by the ingenious arrangement of muscle and tendon, weight and intention whose failure to coincide threatened to upset him now. He made the gesture he might have made if he had had a stick in his hand, and expected it to support him; and then twisted like a man menaced on one hand by the very thing he has turned to escape on the other. Whether the empty carriage barn had put forth the shade of Heracles, caroling a missionary jaunt beyond the mountains, or John Huss had approached from that distant direction to urge those already baptized against false miracles, ecclesiastical greed, and seeking tangible evidence of Christ’s presence instead of in His enduring word; and whether the two met on the horizon to merge, to vie, or simply compare wares, there was no time to consider, for he looked up to see the bull, its great head thrown up against the wind and the storm it threatened, the great rounds of the eyes wide open, fixed on webs of red veins. Where it had come from, or to what purpose, its casual properties and the questions which might have been asked on a day in June, none of that was provoked by the bull’s appearance. Its back end wheeled as it came to the fence and stopped there, in a halt of defiance which challenged the wind and left it to be consumed in its own violence.

  —That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness . . . Janet read, alone in her room, the prophet Zephaniah, as any passing her closed door might have heard. None did. —And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung . . . The paranoid wind shivered the pane at her back. —Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired . . . The unwavering quality of her voice sustained the relish of the prophet whose benisons she followed here, near breathless with being a step ahead of him, far and away from the New Testament wail down these same halls which had catechized and left her to work out her own excursions among the alarms of the Old. —The Lord will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen.

  Zephaniah gets his business done quickly. Three chapters suffice; and he makes way for Haggai, whose nose is just as out of joint. In spite of her absorption, Janet read with the assurance of the Old Testament reader who knows that the New will follow, is, in fact, in hand with its more temperate prospects; just as she could read the New Testament without trepidation, knowing that any insinuations of wavering charity on the part of its engineers were bolstered by a Figure Who brooked no nonsense, lurking, “ravin in tooth and claw,” at the ready, among the unalterable jots and tittles of His seventy-two-letter masquerade in the Old. Haggai anticipates Him shaking the earth, the heavens, the sea, the dry land, the nations, phenomenal antics still dignified as acts of God set forth with such strenuous diligence that the tenth minor prophet is drained in two chapters; but Janet had for the moment enough of a good thing with —when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord. Her blue lips finished, they repeated while she stood and gazed through that glass, a window tucked high on the house looking down to the carriage barn.

  The wind had reached a height of delusion. Now, right before her eyes, it was given something to do: particles of snow appeared, conjured by the wind’s own madness. Janet drew closer to the window. Standing with both palms flattened against the glass, her upper lip rose slowly as she stared below, to see the figure between the carriage barn and the bull’s enclosure reel as though attacked on both sides, gain his balance and pause, steadying himself, and set out with what at first appeared extreme difficulty walking, until he broke into a run, up toward the house and out of her sight. —He is come, her blue lips made out; but the upper one was drawn down to the line of her bite, giving her a slightly perplexed look, as she turned to emerge, leaving two irregular near-translucent blots on the glass behind her.

  Down on the porch, Reverend Gwyon stood staring at the sky, reflecting in his attitude and expression the bull’s disdain for what was going on up there. In Gwyon’s case, however, the simple grandeur of the bull’s impersonal contempt for the storm was impaired by lines of fierce indignation, as though to indicate that this celestial turmoil had been got up as a personal affront to him, or one for whose honor he was jealous. Gwyon did not lower his eyes to the figure approaching up the lawn until the porch steps clattered immediately beneath him; at that, he broke off his engagement, muttering, and turned hastily to open the front door.

  —There! . . . I mean, here! sounded behind him, teeth a-clatter.

  —Whoo . . . what is it? Gwyon got out, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder, with the door open.

  —Terror coming both ways . . . like being a child again. Yes, there, get the door closed . . .

  Reverend Gwyon got the front door closed with a bang, rattling the bell in it. Then he started to turn down the hall, but his way was blocked. Though neither of them moved, a regular creaking had been set up in the hallway and sounded all around them.

  —Why, it’s . . . this whole house is saturated with priesthood, with . . .

  —Priesthood? Gwyon repeated, looking for an opening.

  —Ministry, the ministry then, eh? Yes, here we are, no exception, except I’m late. Late coming. Here, every creak, do you hear them? Every creak one of doubt, generations of it, so I’m no exception, except I’m late. But I . . . that’s what I was trained for, after all, isn’t it. Here, it’s so familiar, all so familiar here . . .

  Reverend Gwyo
n found an opening and got through it. Immediately he started to talk, striding down the hall. —Familiar, yes, he commenced, gauging his words to the distance ahead of him. —Science, science has a fool theory about recognition. Half the forepart of the brain receives an impression, they say, an instant before the other half. When it reaches the second half the brain recognizes it! A lot of bosh, of course, he paused a step to confide, —but it gives these fool scientists something to do, keeps them from meddling in important matters that don’t concern them.

  Reverend Gwyon had timed this observation perfectly; for as he reached the last phrases he had turned the corner to his study. The still surfaces of the mirrors in the cruz-con-espejos were alerted by his passage, but too late to hinder it, for with the last word he was inside, leaving them empty but vigilant now. Alone among books and papers in precarious piles, Reverend Gwyon sat down. There were books open and closed, some with twenty bits of paper between their pages; passages underlined, written in, crossed out. There were periodicals, and ribbons of newspaper littered everywhere. Near one knee a headline said, Science Shows There’s a God, Pope Declares. Gwyon rested an elbow on Osservatore Romano. (“Who is capable of fixing his eyes on the shining sun?” It was that issue in which Cardinal Tedeschini testified to the Papal vision: “But he was able to do so, and during those days could witness the life of the sun under the hand of Mary.”) Gwyon reached Saint John of the Cross down from a shelf. (“The agitated sun was convulsed and transformed in a picture of life, in a spectacle of heavenly movements, and it transmitted silent but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ.”) This caught the corner of Gwyon’s eye, which narrowed, and he grunted impatiently and covered it with another paper, the Scientific American for 11 April 1891. There, for a moment, he stared at a picture of Doctor Variot and a colleague consulting beside a baby skewered on an electrode in an electro-metallurgic bath. “. . . Rather than to rescue our cadavers from the worms of the grave,” he read half aloud, with idle satisfaction, and sat back, staring at the door.