The Recognitions

  —But dear man . . . came from across the room, the woman with the orchid upside-down.

  —And it would be finished by now, because the Church . . .

  —But my dear Mister . . . Pott is it? her voice came on as she stood spilling part of her drink on his shoe and burning Don Bildow’s sleeve with her cigarette, —I am a birthright Friend.

  As Anselm approached behind him, Stanley heard the vague harsh whistle, half turned, and then talked more rapidly and more directly to Agnes Deigh, who listened with strained attention. Anselm walked with slow careless indifference, bumping people as though they were pieces of overstuffed furniture. —Come on baby, one more glass of nice gin and we’ll find you the cutest doctor, why you look good enough to eat! . . . oww . . . Anselm bumped, bumped the girl with the bandaged wrists who went on, —We’ve been thinking of getting a two-toed sloth instead, they just hang on the shower-curtain rod all day and you don’t have to do a thing.

  —Hey Stanley, where’s your instrument? Anselm asked coming up behind him. He’d taken out a dirty pocket comb with some teeth missing. —Here, middle C is missing, but if you can find some toilet paper I’ll accompany you in “We hasten with feeble but diligent footsteps” . . . didn’t you bring your instrument?

  —And I don’t read Voltaire of course, Stanley continued, his voice quavering as he forced it, —but somewhere I came across some words of his, “If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.” That may sound irreverent, but . . .

  —It sounds downright God damned heretical, Anselm said behind him.

  —But . . . even Voltaire could see that some transcendent judgment is necessary, because nothing is self-sufficient, even art, and when art isn’t an expression of something higher, when it isn’t invested you might even say, it breaks up into fragments that don’t have any meaning and don’t have any . . .

  —You sound like Simon Magus, invested, for Christ sake, Anselm said, putting a dirty hand on Stanley’s shoulder. —Why don’t you go see his heart, they’ve got it in the Bibliothèque Nationale. You might understand him. By osmosis.

  —Simon Magus? Stanley said, turning, confused.

  —Voltaire, for Christ sake. He patted Stanley on the shoulder. —How’s your crack, Stanley? he asked him. Two people turned, raising eyebrows in shocked interest. Agnes Deigh pretended to be looking for something in her large pocketbook.

  —Why, what . . .

  —The crack in your ceiling, what do you think I mean.

  —Oh, I didn’t know you . . . it’s a little longer, three-eighths of an inch longer, I . . .

  —What the hell have you got in your pocket? Anselm said, nodding at Stanley’s side jacket pocket, which bulged, and weighed the jacket down on that side. —I’ll be God damned, Anselm said, reaching into the pocket before Stanley could step away, —a cold chisel. I heard this but I wouldn’t believe it.

  —Well, I came up on the subway, and . . .

  —Bathysiderodromophobia! What did I tell you! said an onlooker. Anselm looked up, his eyes narrowed. —And what’s that in your pocket?

  —A stethoscope, Anselm said, —what does it look like.

  —Anselm! What are you doing here? They looked up to see Don Bildow. —Where is . . . you’re supposed to be taking care of . . .

  —I took her to a movie, and left her there until I come back.

  —To a movie! But . . . what movie, where, where is she, how could you . . .

  —All right, I’ll tell you the truth . . . well, don’t worry about her. It’s a good show, it will do her good.

  —But you can’t . . . couldn’t do a thing like that . . .

  —Don, an excited young man interrupted, grasping his arm, and nodding at someone across the room, who stood looking at a copy of the small stiff-covered magazine. —That poem, that poem by Max, he says it isn’t by Max at all, he says . . . well come over, quick.

  Anselm said, —What poem? and followed them across the room, rolling his magazine now with the cover outside (Pin-Up Cuties) with one hand, picking up a drink with the other, and already showing the yellowed edges of teeth in a grin.

  Stanley looked after them bewildered; then he saw Esther, whom he did not know, approaching Otto, and attempted an irresolute signal, saying —There’s Otto, I still have the twenty dollars he lent me, I haven’t needed it . . . His signal went unseen; he listened at a strain of music, and returned to Agnes Deigh, whose eyes were closed. —And do you know what Handel had inscribed inside the cover of his harpsichord? Musica Donum Dei . . . they still have it, he finished in desolate consolation, looking up, embarrassed at the prospect before him, the flesh abandoned by the lights of the discriminating will.

  Very near him, the tall woman had just caught her husband in time to prevent him from confessing (to some “total stranger” as she would tell him next morning) that he had two psychoanalysts, neither known to the other, whom he played off against each other and managed to keep ahead of them both himself. —Our bene . . . one of our dear friends, she interrupted, as Stanley attended with fugitive interest, —has the most exquisite Queen Anne sofa which he’s hinted he might be willing to sell, for a price of course. Of course there’s nothing we need less than a Queen Anne sofa, she went on pleasantly, including the total stranger and, with an icily cordial smile, Stanley’s gape, and then she turned a rueful look on her husband, —but it might rather help things along, to buy something tonight from your employer . . . ?

  The total stranger mumbled something about a Cadillac that smelled like a phobia inside; and Stanley, again abashed by the cordial dismissal in the tall woman’s smile, and the weary bravery in the superciliary shadow of her look, sought refuge in more immediate terrain, anticipating it as unlit as he’d left it, and so doubly startled at being so sharply fixed in the illumination of both eyes upon him.

  Beyond, someone was engaged in writing a criticism of a work which contained forty-nine one-syllable words to seven of two syllables; thirty-one words of Anglo-Saxon origin to five of Latin and one-eighteenth of Greek. It was honest, this person said.

  And beyond, Otto fled himself from one of Esther’s eyes to the other, and found himself in both. —You don’t look well, she said to him. —Come, where we can talk . . . leading him across the room toward the door of the bedroom. —It’s as though I knew you were coming . . . The bedroom door was locked. She turned to the other door, still holding his arm. —Oh Herschel, I’m sorry . . . She closed the bathroom door and they turned back. —What did you say?

  —Like a jungle, Otto repeated, looking into the room beyond her. —A jungle where you’ve lived in the dry season, and you come back in a wet season . . . His voice tailed off and he stood there trying to assume no expression at all as her eyes searched his face, to find no betrayal but a quirked eyebrow which started to rise, and did not.

  —What’s happened to you? she asked him.

  —Nothing, I . . . I’m tired.

  —Nothing! She caught breath. —You’re different. You’ve changed.

  —I guess I’m just tired, he repeated.

  —Do you want to stay here tonight?

  —Here? he said, looking at her as though not understanding.

  —Here. With me.

  —But Esther, I . . . I don’t think it would be . . .

  —All right.

  —I mean I just think it might . . .

  —All right, I said.

  —But . . .

  —Please. If you don’t want to then don’t talk about it.

  —Oh damn it Esther, I didn’t come here to argue with you, he said in a hoarse whisper. —Why are you looking at me like that?

  —Where have you been all this time? She asked him that gently, as though prompting him to the question he should have asked about himself, of her: for she had the answer ready enough, as he may have known, looking down at his own thumbnails instead of into her eyes where he might have read it.

  —Just . . . around, he mumbled.

  ?
??But what have you been doing to yourself? she came on, forced to recover the moment.

  —Nothing really, not much of anything, I . . . He looked up at her with an attempted smile. —Looking around, there just hasn’t seemed to be much worth doing.

  —Is it worth going on like this, alone? just to find out what’s not worth doing? she demanded with an involuntary abruptness, and as he looked down again, —Even your smile isn’t alive . . . and she stopped, lowering her own eyes as though someone else had spoken. Then she looked up quickly, as though to ascertain him there, before she went on, —And you, I suppose you have something . . . crucial, something crucial you have to do before you can . . . But Esther stopped speaking again, for in his face, she saw that he had not.

  The place did present aspects of foliage, shifting and dank, the florist’s window flooded perhaps, its tenants afloat in slithering similitude; or the jungle: for at that instant the room was pierced by a raptorial cry like that of the bird descending.

  —That? that’s Max’s poem? Anselm laughed, crying out, —“Wer, wenn ich schriee . . .” that?

  They looked toward the door, saw only the paunchy guest of the evening moving toward it, in an unsteady rasorial attitude as though following a trail of crumbs to the great world outside. Mr. Feddle approached, looking rather reckless, gripping The Vertebrate Eye and its Adaptive Radiation.

  Otto’s hand jerked, and then moved furtively to his inside breast pocket as half a step back he looked frankly down Esther’s figure. Her eyes drew him up quickly. —I just thought . . . remembered, you? are you all right? I mean, I heard . . .

  —What?

  —I don’t know. Nothing. You hear things.

  —What are you talking about?

  —Well you, that you needed a doctor?

  —A doctor came this afternoon, and . . . I saw him.

  —But, and then, you’re all right?

  —I’d rather not talk about it.

  —But all right, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .

  He had started to move away from her but Esther was speaking to him, her voice going on as though she had not stopped, —Because you’ve done the same thing, you’ve spent all your time too, you’ve put all your energy up against things that weren’t there, but you put them there yourself just to have something to fight . . .

  —Esther . . .

  —So you wouldn’t have to fight the real things. She spoke with great rapidity at him. —And now you say you’re tired? At your age, because you’ve been trying to make negative things do the work of positive ones . . .

  —I wish I was an old man! he burst out at her, and then lowered his eyes again, his pale hand inside his coat holding the thick packet there. —Because . . . damn it, this being young, it’s like he said it was, it’s like a tomb, this youth, youth, this thing in America, this accent on youth, on everything belongs to the young, and we, look at us, in this tomb, like he told me it could be, like he said it was . . . And Otto raised his eyes to see nothing moving in her face.

  —Yes, you came here for him, didn’t you, she said quietly. —You only wanted to see him, didn’t you. And you came here hoping to find him? Well he isn’t here. He was here. But he isn’t here now.

  —Where, he was? here?

  —I said he was, but he isn’t here now, she answered steadily, watching Otto look everywhere round the room, waiting calmly until he brought his bloodshot eyes back to her, to say, —He’s gone.

  —Where, do you know where?

  —No, she answered and paused, looking at him for seconds, before she said, —Yes I knew, you’d come for him, because, from the first it was like that, and you took me to get closer to him, to take what you thought was the dearest thing he had, and you . . . trusted him, didn’t you . . .

  —Do you think it’s you I mistrust? he said suddenly looking up to her face; but then he looked away slowly, as from the light of a candle after knowing the light of a self-consuming indestructible sun, carefully as though in fear of extinguishing that candle, though it flare up in determined self-immolation, demanding to be saved from itself. —If I did then, he went on trying to speak clearly, —if I didn’t trust you then, I mean mistrust you, then, I wouldn’t have learned to mistrust myself and everything else now. And this, this mess, ransacking this mess looking for your own feelings and trying to rescue them but it’s too late, you can’t even recognize them when they come to the surface because they’ve been spent everywhere and, vulgarized and exploited and wasted and spent wherever we could, they keep demanding and you keep paying and you can’t . . . and then all of a sudden somebody asks you to pay in gold and you can’t. Yes, you can’t, you haven’t got it, and you can’t.

  —Where have you been asked to pay in gold? she asked quietly, when he finished the outburst which left him breathless staring down, as if uncertain if he knew what he’d said, and sought to recover it at their feet. —Otto? He looked up and stared at her. —Tell me, who’s done this to you?

  —I . . . he mumbled, looking away again, —I guess I’ve done it myself, he answered in a whisper, as Mr. Feddle bumped him, passing in the other direction, empty-handed.

  And though aware of someone at her side demanding her attention, she waited, looking at him, waiting for his eyes to return to her.

  —Esther, have you got a copy of the Diuno Elegies? Rilkey’s Diuno . . . ?

  —“Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” Anselm repeated, in a rapture of delight, —“und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz . . .”

  —Shut up, Anselm.

  —It can’t be, Don Bildow repeated, staring at the open page of the small stiff-covered magazine in his hand, as the words of the first line under Max’s name formed on his lips, “Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic . . .” —He wouldn’t have dared.

  —“Ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein . . .” Hahaha, that’s Max’s poem? Die erste . . . haha, hahahahahaha, from the Duineser Elegien von Max Rilke, hahahaha

  —Esther, have you got a copy of Rilke? these . . . elegies?

  —I have, she faltered (for it was not true), —but I’ve lent it.

  —But not Rilke, he wouldn’t have dared, Don Bildow repeated, as though it might be a matter of opinion, or a rumor which, traced down, might yet be retracted.

  —Ask him to show you his Sonette an Orpheus, you’d love it.

  —Shut up, Anselm, said the stubby poet darkly, motioning to the man in the green wool shirt.

  —You should have known, Bildow cried out at him as he slogged toward them.

  —Whut?

  —This, this . . . poem, this thing of Max’s, you wrote that essay on Rilke last spring, you . . .

  —Rilke, but that was on Rilke, Rilke the man, an essay on Rilke the man . . .

  —Max Rilke. “Weisst du’s noch nicht?” . . . Anselm howled, waving his magazine in the air, wrapping something around his neck. —Christ, don’t you know Max by now? Like that shirt he cut up and framed, he called it a painting, “The Workman’s Soul”?

  —Shut up . . . was repeated, but Don Bildow was staring at Anselm dumbly. Then, —Shirt? he whispered.

  —And these pictures he’s showing now, the abstract paintings he’s selling now, don’t you know where he got them? Max Rilke Constable, Anselm went on, laughing. —Didn’t you know where he got them? that they’re all fragments lifted right out of Constable canvases?

  —My God, my dear, excuse me, said the tall woman, —but that creature has my furpiece . . . She set off toward Anselm, sundering numerous conversations as she crossed that room.

  —D’you know what happened when Caruso died? Science cut open his throat to see what made him sing. D’you know what that means?

  —Do we know even half of what’s happening to us?

  —And do you know why the French are so honest? because there are so few words in their language they’re forced to be.

  Otto had moved slowly across the room, v
aguely, sideways, steps backwards, picking up a glass half full, getting nearer the door of the studio, as though in that darkness might be the figure hidden there working, still there and silent from two years before.

  —Hello, Rose said looking up to him with a smile.

  —Oh! he startled, to see her there sitting on the floor. —And . . . you?

  —Yes.

  —And you, then you’re Esther’s sister?

  —Rose. And she continued to smile while he looked at her almost wincing as though seeking something there in her face. Then, —You look like the doctor, she said. —Except the doctor was not so old.

  —The doctor? You mean the doctor who came to . . . to see Esther?

  —Yes, Rose said, and turned her face away suddenly. —To kill her beautiful baby.

  —But the . . . I mean, they told you about it? Esther, about . . . a baby?

  Rose looked up at him. She was smiling again; but it was a different sort of smile. —Not a real baby, she said, in a low tone of confidence. —For Esther made it up, she only made it up.

  —Made it up? But I mean, is that what he said? the doctor? that it was a . . . I mean, what do they call them, a hysterical pregnancy? Is that what he called it?

  —Yes, Rose confirmed after a thoughtful moment, moving her lips as though fitting the words to them in recall. —So he said, when he killed it, for so he killed it. Those are the best babies, she said, as Otto looked away from her and stared out into the room. —Are they not? the best babies, for they do never grow up, she went on, —and when they die they go where nothing happens, and there they remain in suspense forever . . .

  Her sigh lingered as he stared out into the room, listening to the tall woman, watching her attentively as though every word and movement of hers were extremely important, though he did not hear a thing she was saying, —Aren’t they charming? Baby’s breath . . . taking a jeweled spray from her purse and fixing it to an earlobe. —My husband gave them to me, he says a woman can lie so much more convincingly when she wears jew-els, she went on, affixing the other. —I just gave him some money and told him to go out and buy himself something and promise not to look at it, she finished, snapping her purse. —We have to go on to another God-awful party later. She cleared her throat, looking round, and took up again, —Did you meet that very . . . healthy-looking Boy Scout master? Except for his nose, possibly. I overheard him say that the Boy Scouts had hit him with a sidewalk.