—Qué dijo de playa? asked one, drawn on by the mystery of a man looking for a beach. None tried to answer her. They tramped up the dirt in silence. Inside his room Otto turned on the woman who had admitted to cleaning it. —El está para la máquina, he said pointing to the typewriter. —Esta mañana.
—Perdido, said one woman, satisfied that something was lost.
—Sí, perdido, said another equally agreeable. She started to look under the mattress.
—Qué cosa? asked the accused bravely.
—Papel, said the master. —Papel que yo escribo mi playa al máquina, finishing in triumphal confusion. —Mi playa, he repeated, menacing.
—Es muy misterioso, said one of the women.
—Sí.
—Muy misterioso, repeated the third, while the fourth let go the mattress (it was where she would have hidden anything) and stood silently marveling at this man who had lost a beach right here in the room.
—Titulito The Vanity of Time, Otto recommenced.
—No entiendo, the eldest came back at him, helplessly defiant.
—The Vanity of Time, he said more loudly. —La Vanidad del Tiemplo, God damn it, he almost shouted. Illiterate, illiterate old fools. He looked around for a pencil, found none, returned. —Tiene una . . . una . . . He made scribbling motions in the air. —Por escribo.
One held a pencil out to him. —Un lápiz, señor? she asked. Lápiz, of course; though anyone looking at it could see that it was a pencil. He took it from her and wrote, THE VANITY OF TIME, in large letters. —Mucho papel, he said.
—Aïe . . . said the old one, dawning. —Pero sí, sí señor, with happy relief. She was uncomfortably familiar with this pile of paper. It had once been pointed out to her as mucho importante, and she had daily dusted the title page with care: the words were as unforgettably meaningless to her as the Latin legend circumscribing the largest local Virgin. —Aquí está, she said reaching to the top of a pile of linen on a shelf. —Lo pusé aquí cuando empacaba, todo estaba tan revuelto que tuve miedo de que se perdiera, o se ensuciara . . . she got out, in what sounded like one wildly relieved word.
Otto, breathing heavily, took it from her muttering, —Gracias, gracias, señoritas, without raising his eyes from the precious bundle. The four smiled, murmured —Nada, de nada, señor, and trundled out the door clustering about the acquitted for an explanation.
He carried the sheaf of clean papers over to a chair. The words were beautiful. The letters themselves were beautiful. His handwriting, in careful notes along occasional margins to give the thing a casual look, was beautiful. He read at familiar random, smiling to himself. Every page, beautiful, except one which would have to be retyped, he had killed a cockroach on it. Or perhaps, perhaps it had style in itself, that dark smudge. There were (though he had never seen one) tarantulas in Central America. Or was it black widows? And would a black widow make a brown smudge?
Then he raised his face to the empty door. The obsequious smile was gone. Left eyebrow up, lips moistened, slightly parted and curled, he waited while a producer approached, welcoming hand extended. Otto eyed the vision, nodded casually, reached for a cigarette. There were none in the linen suit. He was interrupted while he went to the dirty striped shirt for the necessary property; and returned to the chair the long way round the room, pausing (at the mirror) to light the cigarette. Putting the papers on the publisher’s desk he fumbled a little, able to use but one hand. —Here, let me help you, the publisher said. —Nothing serious, I trust? —Nothing, nothing at all, Otto answered, elbowing the sling back under his jacket. —A scratch. Central America, you know.
He read a few lines in the second act and blew a perfect smoke ring on the quiet air. There was Esther. Where would he meet her? At the apartment? But he did not want to see her husband again. The thought of that man barely ten years his senior made him curl inside, the man who had seemed at first almost a father, then a fool, finally near maniac. It would be better to call Esther for a drink. Or for luncheon. Better still to meet her casually, by carefully prearranged accident.
—How wonderful you look, Otto.
—A little color . . . How have you been?
—Oh the same old things, you know, but without you it’s been so dull and so lonely. But you, what about you? And what’s happened to your hand?
—A revolution. Just one of those things, a regular occupational hazard down there. Possibly you saw something of it in the papers?
—Oh I never read them, you know that, not any more. But they tell me you’ve written a wonderful play.
And then as he took off his shirt and his trousers, —And you’re so brown, all of you, and all in white . . .
Outside the sun poured its heat over the endless green of the fan-leaved banana trees. As Otto struggled down the porch carrying two suitcases and his typewriter, a voice came from an open door, —Hey come here, I want to show you some pictures.
—I’ve got to get the train for the port, he called to the man with the kewpie doll tattooed on his forearm. —It leaves in twenty minutes.
—Come here. I want to show you some pictures.
Otto had, on occasion, pictured fine man-to-man farewells, close handclasps, and a few words of curt but constant friendship. He put his bags down in the door and entered. Snapshots of all sizes and degrees of fading surrounded the man sitting on the rumpled bedcover. —I’m putting them in an album, he said. He could hardly sit up. —See this one? This here is me with my first car, in Pennsylvania. He put glue all over the back of it, and then took an envelope of those black art corners used to mount snapshots in albums, and stuck them on the corners. As he licked them they came off in his mouth, and the glue on his chin, colored with dry chili. —See this one here? he went on, blowing the art corners out of his mouth and getting fresh ones. —This is me with my old man. That’s my first car behind us. That was 1931, see that? A new car. Even then I wasn’t doin so bad. On the pages he had completed, snapshots were firmly stuck with artistic disregard for angles, size, and number of art corners. All were consistent in one thing, however: —This is me. This is me in a bar in Brooklyn with some Greek sailors, one of them had a camera, I was workin in the Navy Yard. This is me in Panama, I worked in the Canal Zone before I came up here. This is me in Darien on a hunting trip with some Indians. Here, this is me with some Sand Blast Indians . . .
—I have to go, I have to get that train. It leaves in about ten minutes.
—Here, look at this one. . . By now he had got glue over most of his chin, and art corners stuck to his wrists and arms, framing the kewpie doll. —This is me . . . he started as Otto went toward the door. —Look can you hand me that bottle on the table before you go, I don’t want to get up and make a mess of all this. My grandchildren . . .
As Otto started down the porch, there was the rending sound of breaking wind from the room behind him, and the voice, —There’s a goodbye kiss for you, kid.
The fine particles of ash in the air settled on his white linen as he hurried.
The small town of the port might have had but one place in this world of time, and that to make itself presentable for Otto’s departure, after which it could settle down to a long and uninterrupted decline. He walked in and out of its streets, looking about casually, pausing only when he saw his sudden reflection in a shop window. Stopping at the shops he appeared to be looking at the goods spread before him, while his stare got no farther than the image in the glass. Then he crossed to the shaded side of the street. On a veranda as he passed three black men were playing cards. When they saw him they pointed up, over their heads, smiling, nodding. On the open porch above a girl stood, as black and smiling as those below. She was wrapped only in a white towel, held together with one hand. He did not turn. —You want chikichig? one of the men asked. —Boy change you luck, called another after him where he walked on. —Pretty boy get all what he want . . .
The whiteness of the Company boat was a glitter in the strong sun. Few passengers were in sigh
t, but the pier was crowded with people selling and begging and looking for a penny’s worth of work. Their colors rose from a soft tan to hearty black. They were dressed in clothes which they had never seen new, and each carried something worthless, a basket of dolls made of straw, bundles of papers, inedible confections.
—La limpia, a child cried at Otto, pointing to his shoes, and then lost interest. Those shoes were perfect. The white linen suit had got becomingly crumpled on the trip down, and in this blazing light the gray tinge from the ashes did not show, clearly the definition of cultivated diffidence. He had a French book, labeled Adolphe, in a side pocket which he carried when he traveled and appeared to read in public places. As he started toward the dock with a boy who came barely to his waist carrying his bags, the sun cast his shadow striding with vain certainty before him.
Beside the boat, he took the change from his pocket to count. There were a few coins of the republic which he was leaving, mixed in with E Pluribus Unum dimes and quarters, odd-looking shiny coins (he had made certain to put aside new ones) which he would drop on New York bars, by mistake. He felt a hand touch his arm, and turned to see a black face of sudden age which held no beauty for him.
—Una limosnita, por el amor de Dios . . . The face had tufts of hair at chin and lips, so separately white that they looked to have been stuck there a moment before. Otto looked at his coins. The shiny two-and-one-half-cent piece looked like a dime. He felt that the beggar would make the same mistake, or think that he had made it unwittingly. He gave the lesser coin into the old hand and turned away. —Dios se lo pague, said the voice, in beneficent threat.
The luggage and its carrier disposed of, Otto walked through the town, into the wide open plaza of cement benches and palm trees. In the center was a dry fountain, and children who would seem to have nothing to laugh at laughed at nothing. They quieted for a moment when the priest passed. He was a long black-skirted affair with magenta buttons from throat to feet, five magenta buttons on each cuff. Around the largest part of him came a wide sash of glorious purple. His round black hat carried a purple corded band. He made no sign, marching toward the cathedral.
The broken face of that old building was covered with the sun. It was difficult to believe that it had ever been new, actually been built stone by stone under the surface of the plaster. The saints, some armless and headless, waited in still niches smoothed and quietened by the rain. The towers hung heavy with silent bells. But in places the plaster had come away, showing the walis built brick by brick, separated by lines of mortar laid by men’s hands. Just inside the door waited a Virgin; the priest went in not glancing at her, passed her with proprietary certainty. When he was gone the children forgot him and remembered themselves. The birds, forgetting nothing and remembering nothing, dashed the benches with spots of white.
Otto walked more rapidly, for fear of one of them catching his linen, and was suddenly brought up face to face with a girl beside the waterless fountain. The darkness which she wore about her gave her an air of richness, her skin a color never burned by one sun; and in an evanescent instant he loved her. Recovering, he was as suddenly embarrassed, and got round her through the plaza.
Around the weight of the cathedral, the town looked transitory, brightly colored and haphazard, as though without that weight it might disintegrate, to wander off and be lost in the green hills.
The white boat slipped away from the pier, away from the black and brown and tan upturned faces, the hands extended for a last tossed coin and those few raised in farewell. The water was shallow and clear green. Slowly the heat of land fell away, and two people stood, a distance apart, at the boat-deck rail, watching the buildings lose their form and become smears of color, the palms lose their majesty and fade into the heavy green of the countryside. The harbor was still, nothing could be seen to move, and its sounds and cries were lost: there was only the throbbing of the boat, moving with certainty out upon water which became deeper and deeper blue. Otto, walking up to the bow, was taking the sun of this lost country with him.
He took a case out of his pocket, opened it, and caught his quivering lower lip with his teeth as a jarring of the boat hit his hand against the rail and sent the gold-rimmed dark glasses down into the white water. He stood clutching the emptied case tightly, looking over the bow to where it tore that water open, as though there must be some way of recovery.
—Too bad, said a cheerful voice beside him, a fiercely sun-pinkened American. —Looked like a nice pair of glasses. Otto closed the case and put it into his pocket. —Why don’t you throw the case in too? asked his witness.
—I can use it for something, Otto said, surly, defensive.
—Carry pills in? said the traveler, and laughed again. —Hot as hell, isn’t it. It’ll cool down when we get out a ways.
—Possibly, said Otto, and walked aft.
The mirror in his cabin was smaller than he would have liked, framed in wood covered with thick green paint. He looked at his luggage. It was all there, with Wan ted-on-Voyage tags tied to the handles. Then he thought to look at his fingernails. Not as a man does, the fingers turned in upon the palms, but like a lady, at the back of the extended hand so that she may admire the slim beauty of her fingers. Otto admired the taut dark figure of his hand, forgot to look at the nails and had to look back again (fingers turned in upon the palm). He was immediately troubled about covering that fine hand with a bandage. Still, injury might have been to the wrist: in which case the white gauze would go splendidly across the base of his hand, set off the dark length of the fingers like a lady’s evening glove. He made certain that he had two extra packages of Emu which he would offer (preferably to ladies), casually indifferent to their choking fumes. He considered unpacking, but there was no hurry. The sling he had fashioned was in the top of the small suitcase. There would be time that evening to try it again, to decide where the bandage would go, where the wound was.
The sun moved down toward the sea, its redness heightened in hurry to be gone, moving as though pursued. The land was far behind, a soft haze behind the slowly curving wake of the boat, a white wake already floating with garbage where white birds dove and lifted themselves away. Otto saw none of this. He had started to post the Italian print on his wall (Lady of the Junipers), thought of Jesse’s words, shrank, put it out of mind. He thought of his wallet, and pressed the bulge under his coat with his wrist. His hair, like his nails, was grown just the right length. The mustache, sparse and golden, the same. He tightened the knot in his tie and pulled down the skirt of his jacket. With the smoke from a fresh cigarette he blew a perfect circle against the hard surface of the mirror, where it clung growing larger and thinner around this image of his importunate face.
Up the coast of the New World the ship bearing ten million bananas ground out its course, every minute the waste heaving brokenly around it more brilliant as the moon rose off the starboard bow and moved into the sky with effortless guile, unashamed of the stigmata blemishing the face she showed from the frozen fogs of the Grand Banks to the jungles of Brazil, where along the Rio Branco they knew her for a girl who loved her brother the sun; and the sun, suspicious, trapped her in her evil passion by drawing a blackened hand across her face, leaving the marks which betrayed her, and betray her still.
V
America is the country of young men.
—Emerson
—Nothing, said Maude Munk.
—Nothing? Amy Munk repeated.
—Nothing, she confirmed, dropping ice cubes into a glass. —The same things. They ask the same questions they’ve been asking for three years. Was I conscious after the accident, and if I wasn’t how could I have reported it all to the police, and did I have pains in my back then, and if I did why don’t the hospital records show it. Then my doctor and their doctor argue, and my lawyer and their lawyer argue, and the cab driver who was driving the cab I was in lives in Detroit now. I wish you’d put your shoes away somewhere when you take them off.
—Well I cou
ld tell them your personality’s changed. And you never used to drink before that accident. It used to upset you because I drank.
—It still does, Arny. Terribly. And you don’t have pains, like I do. Today I even asked the judge, Would you have two operations and wear a spinal brace if you were malingering?
—Maude look, you’re spilling your drink, he said, righting the glass which tipped toward him in her forgotten hand. The radio offered cocktail music, When Buddha Smiles.
—What is it? Are you tired? Arny? . . . Oh, I just wish you got tired doing something you liked.
—You don’t make a living doing things you like.
—But selling . . . and year after year . . . and . . . things like last week.
—Maude.
—Does your father know about that? Or does he just pretend he doesn’t know, and he’s glad you’ve sold another order, playing cards in a hotel room where they send naked women in for your out-of-town buyers. And all the time your father’s such a fine dignified old man. Why if my Daddy ever . . .
—Maude.
—Anyhow, my Daddy was a man.
—What do you mean by that? Just because I have a rupture . . .
—I don’t mean your old rupture. It’s just that . . . She looked at him a moment longer, got up and freshened her drink, and turned the dial on the radio. Finally she asked, —What are you reading? Arny? You’re not even reading, are you.
—Maude.
—As though you were all alone. Sometimes I come into the room and you’re sitting here with a book open, but you’re not reading. You’re just sitting looking at the page, but you’re not reading? Are you lonely?
—that looks better, smells better, tastes better, and is better, said a young man’s voice on the radio.
—But how can you be lonely? I’m here.
—the next number on our program, the Academic Festival Overture, by Tschaikovsky.
—Arny, have you filled out the papers?
The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) Page 24
