—Pay me? I suppose. The money piles up there.
—Why?
—The money? It . . . binds the contract. It’s the only thing he understands.
The clear eyes of drained blue no longer darted with assumed pleasure but glittered steadily, like water frozen so quickly. Valentine clutched Tertullian in his narrow lap. —You don’t dislike him, do you.
—No.
—No. In fact you rather like him. And this contract?
—Contract? Yes, a debt . . . a debt which the person to whom you owe it refuses to acknowledge, is impossible to bear.
—And the money? . . . Valentine was studying every line in the face beside him, details suddenly broken with a constricted sound like laughter,
—The money? you . . . can’t spend love.
The cab had stopped at a light and people were passing around it: the voice of a girl penetrated in clear Boston accents,—Somerset Maugham? Haha, hahahahaha, Somerset Maugham my ahss . . .
—Money buys privacy, my dear fellow, said Basil Valentine, leaning across his lap to roll up the window. —It frees one from the turmoil of those circumstances which the vulgar confuse with necessity. And necessity after all . . . what are you laughing at?
—Something earlier, something I thought of earlier but I didn’t laugh then, when I thought of, when you were talking about, a novel? Writing a novel, We don’t know what you’re thinking, you said. I thought of Momus and Vulcan, I thought of my wife then. You remember the homunculus that Vulcan made? and Momus said, You should have put a little window in him, so we could see his innermost thoughts. And I remembered . . . listen,
—You’re married?
—What happens? In this novel?
—What happens? Basil Valentine turned his full face.
—To me. The cab jolted to a start.
—Why, to you? Good heavens, I haven’t the faintest notion. Valentine laughed shortly, looking ahead again. —I was about to say earlier, of necessity . . . but tell me, when you were a child . . .
—Necessity, yes. Yes, a hero? John Huss . . .
—Huss? Hardly, today, eh? John Huss? Someone’s said, you know, anyone who accepts a martyr’s part today is a coward. And you? what happens to you? he went on hurriedly. —I suppose you . . . well, let’s say you eat your father, canonize your mother, and . . . what happens to people in novels? I don’t read them. You drown, I suppose.
—That’s too romantic.
—Novels are romantic.
—As though, death could end it?
—Have it your way, there is a step after death then. Valentine sat back and clasped his knee with folded hands. —After all, my dear fellow, you are an artist, and nothing can happen to you. An artist does not exist, except as a vehicle for his work. If you live simply in a world of shapes and smells? You’re bound to become just that. Why your life, the way you live . . .
—Yes, I don’t live, I’m . . . I am lived, he whispered.
Valentine turned to see him gripping his face in the breadth of a hand, whose finger-ends had gone white at the temple. —But, do you know how I feel sometimes? The hand dropped to clutch Valentine’s arm, and Valentine looked up into the feverish eyes. —Like . . . as though I were reading a novel, yes. And then, reading it, but the hero fails to appear, fails to be working out some plan of comedy or, disaster? All the materials are there, yes. The sounds, the images, telephones and telephone numbers? The ships and subways, the . . . the . . .
—The half-known people, Valentine interrupted easily, —who miss the subways and lose each other’s telephone numbers? Cavorting about dressed in the absurd costumes of the author’s chaotic imagination, talking about each other . . .
—Yes, while I wait. I wait. Where is he? Listen, he’s there all the time. None of them moves, but it reflects him, none of them . . . reacts, but to react with him, none of them hates but to hate with him, to hate him, and loving . . . none of them loves, but, loving . . .
—Loving?
The cab swerved suddenly. Basil Valentine was thrown against the window beside him, where he caught himself on his elbow. The man they had almost hit had seemed to hang in the air before them, the empty face a terrible exposure of nakedness.
—Idiot!
Basil Valentine’s face in profile showed the vein standing out beneath the hat-brim, a face strong, unsympathetic, bearing all of the force which sympathy lacks, in lineaments (shaded now under the black brim of this Homburg) which belied childhood and youth.
—Idiot, he repeated, sitting back, unaware of the feverish stare fixed upon him.
Then the driver burst out over his shoulder, —You just try drivin a cab, Mac, if you think it’s such a fuckin easy job.
Basil Valentine leaned forward. He was livid; but his voice was controlled. —I have no faint intention of wasting an instant considering such an absurd pastime. Now turn around and keep your obscenities to yourself, before you do run down someone as stupid as yourself.
—Listen Mac, don’t give me any of that, who the hell are you, this is a fuckin free country . . .
—Pull up over here, driver.
The cab came to a precipitous stop. Basil Valentine looked at the vase, the eggs, the books, and chose the books to be seen with, carrying in the street. He read the meter as they got out, and was reaching deep into his change pocket when the cab roared away.
—But you . . . you really hate people, don’t you, came the voice beside him.
—You see? Valentine said, not listening. He took out his cigarette case. —When I exclaimed, “idiot,” of course I meant the . . . idiot whom we almost ran down. You see? They’re the same, the ones who construct their own disasters so skillfully, in accord with the deepest parts of their ignorant nature, and then call it accident. He stood looking after the cab, a light poised before his cigarette.
—But . . . you really hate other people.
—My dear fellow, remember Emerson’s advice, Basil Valentine said, and paused. There was a crash at the corner. From where they stood they could see that the cab had hit a bus. —We are advised to treat other people as though they were real, he said then, lighting his cigarette, —because, perhaps they are.
—I . . . I have to go.
—We’re not dining, then?
—No, I . . . I have to get to work, I . . . it’s late.
—But my dear fellow, of course I understand. And the van Eyck details, I’ll drop them off at your place some time, shall I?
—Oh no, no don’t, don’t come down there, don’t bother, I . . . goodbye, goodbye . . .
—Not goodbye, Basil Valentine said, extending his hand. —People don’t say goodbye any more. You look up and they’re gone, missing. You hear of them, in a country with exotic postage stamps, or dead at sea. I’ll see you very soon. He smiled, and held the hand in his as though it were a creature he would suffocate.
In another cab a minute later, Basil Valentine found two books in his lap instead of one. He picked up the copy of Thoreau, and looked out of the rear window; but there, almost a block behind, people merged from all directions, and all that he could see at the point where they had separated were the tops of some lilies on a flower cart, stopped in the neon glow of a bar.
He faced forward again, thumbing the pages of the book, gold glittering at his cuff as he paused to glance at occasional sentences. The cab had turned east. As it stopped at a corner, the smile of a great and private pleasure drew out his lips, and he looked out the closed window. People who passed, passed quickly and silently, leaving behind a figure barely taller than the barrel organ mounted on a stick, whose handle he turned, his only motion, the hand, clockwise, barely more enduring than the sounds he released on the night air, sounds without the vanity of music, sounds unattached, squeaks and drawn wheezes, pathos in the minor key and then the shrill of loneliness related to nothing but itself, like the wind round the fireplace left standing after the house burned to the ground.
When the cab started again,
he returned his eyes to the words underlined on the page before him: What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey. And he was still looking at this line, and he was still smiling, when the cab stopped before his door.
—Seven lilies?
Seven celestial fabrics, seven spheres, the colors of the seven planetary bodies: all these revolved above the flower cart. But above seventh heaven, we are told, there are seven seas of light, and then the veils, separating the Substances seven of each kind, and then, Paradise: seven stages, one above the other, canopied by the Throne of the Compassionate, discreetly remote from the tumult going on here in the middle distance. The lights changed, traffic moved, and waves of figures crested with faces dumbly unbroken, or spotted with the foam of confusion, or shattering their surfaces with speech, ebbed and flowed on a sea of noise, disdaining the music of the spheres.
The moment of evening loss is suggested in restricted portions of the sky which only suggest infinity, and that such an intimacy is possible when something rises from inside, to be skewered on the peaks or continue to rise untrammeled: a desperate moment for those with nowhere to go, the ones who lose their balance when they look up, passing on all sides here, invited nowhere, enjoying neither drink nor those they drank with but suddenly desolated, glancing up, stepping down from the curb alone, to seek anywhere (having forgot to make a date for “cocktails,” asylum of glass, brittle words, olives from across the sea, and chromium) a place to escape this transition from day to night: a grotesque time of loneliness, for what has been sought is almost visible, and requires, perhaps, no more than a priest to bring it forth. Restricted above the seven lilies, the sky lay in just such a portion as the Etruscan priest might have traced with his wand when, building the temple, he outlined on the sky the foundation at his feet, delivering the residence of deity to earth.
Seven days, seven seals, seven bullocks in burnt offering; seven times Jacob bowed before Esau; seven stars the angels of the seven churches, seven lamps which are the seven spirits, seven stars in his right hand; seven years in Eden; and seven times seven years to the jubilee trumpet; seven years of plenty, seven years of famine; so Nebuchadnezzar heated the furnace seven times more than it was wont to be heated, to purge the three who refused to bow down before the golden image sixty forearms (counting to the end of the middle finger) high, and six wide; and when they came through unscathed and unscorched, the king exclaimed, —Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and quite sensibly joined them in their fearful subscription to a Hostility Who could afford no other gods before Him, and would seem to have triumphed in this fracas which took place not too far distant from India, where things remained quiet enough that many heard a serene voice saying, Even those who worship other gods worship me although they know it not.
—A priest?
—You remember me.
—Look out, chum. Look out of the way, said the flower-cart man.
—Don’t you remember me?
—Here wait, I . . . could you sell me these lilies?
—Hurry up then, there’s a cop coming. I’ll leave you have all seven for a dollar, said the flower-cart man.
—Your face, yes, your face, but . . .
—Come on, chum. Talk to your friend here or give me a buck. There’s a cop coming, the flower-cart man interrupted.
—I knew your face, but the round collar . . .
—And I knew you half a block away. But up close you don’t look like yourself at all. It must be two years . . . ?
—Two years?
—Since I saw you, that night, New Year’s Eve, with your wife in the street. John picked up his suitcase again. It was a large, and apparently heavy Gladstone bag, which he’d put down to shake hands, stood with his palm open, extended, and withdrawn it when the confusion his gesture had caused threatened upset among the driving currents of people, the threat of smashed eggs, fallen lilies, and a broken vase, which he stood over now protecting with his large black-coated frame, ballasted by the heavy bag. —But I have to make a train, he said. He took half a step back. Then his face streamed crimson: for a full second his large features were at once exposed stilled by surprise and swimming in the harsh brilliance of the three neon letters above. He recovered his half-step, dropped the bag with another step forward and brought up a supporting arm. —What’s the matter? Are you all right? His eyes fell under the shadow of the soft black hat-brim, and were gone as the lower part of his face, the moving lips, shone livid under the letters BAR blazing green. —Are you all right?
—Yes, good night. Good night.
—But I can’t just leave you . . .
—Your train, your train.
—But what is it? You’re shaking. John’s features showed no shape now, his whole face shaded under the soft black hat-brim as his shoulders and both extended arms were caught again in the blazing letters, and an empty hand, then two, as the laden figure turned from his support. —But here . . .
—Good night. Your train. And you can’t come in here. It’s a bar.
—Bar? Certainly I can, I’ll help you. John caught up his bag with one hand, and caught an elbow with the other. A lily dropped.
—Wait!
—What?
—The lily?
—I’ll get it. Now, here . . . be careful of the door.
In the dim-lit end of the bar, shadows were contorted in the effervescent illumination of the juke-box; which also played Let’s Do It. John cleared his throat and spoke in an attempted convivial tone, —What are you doing with lilies and, eggs is it?
—Yes, a little brandy.
—Overwork? Here. Do you feel better? Take a lesson from the lilies. John smiled, and extended a hand. —They toil not . . . The wrist on the bar was jerked away from him. —Are you all right? he asked again, seeking for some sign in the profile of the face turned from him, and he found none, and faced forward himself. There his eyes rose to the mirror behind the bar, where a fevered stare pinioned them for an instant.
—Did either of you guys . . . excuse me, father, did either of you gentlemen put in a call to Miami? the bartender intruded between them and the mirror. John shook his head; and when the bulk of the bartender moved on, he saw the reflection of his own face overcome with youth in such proximity to one who looked twice his age. —When I mentioned to your father . . . he commenced.
—My father!
—Yes. I mentioned I’d seen you, I didn’t say . . .
—You saw my father?
—Why yes, traveling. On church business, I happened to stop in your town, and saw him.
—What did he say?
—What did he say? Why . . . John repeated. —He didn’t say . . . we talked church business, that’s about all. He smiled again, but drew back.
—But my father?
—Church business, John faltered, and cleared his throat again. —You see, I do a good deal of traveling, among out-of-the-way parishes where enrollment has fallen down, it’s part of the revival in religious . . . interest going on all over the country, a lot of it is inter-denominational . . .
—But my father? What did he say?
—Well to tell you the truth, John commenced, and looked down again, catching a cuff against his coat to draw it back and look at his wrist watch, —to tell the truth . . . he’s quite old, isn’t he. And he wasn’t . . . very co-operative. The pressing necessities of the times . . .
—But what did he say?
Looking up, John’s face startled more at finding itself uncomposed in the glass. —It was strange, he said, and paused at the apparently unfamiliar resonance in his own voice, going on, —I got there on Sunday, Sunday morning. I thought, Why not go in and hear his sermon? That’s always a good way to get a picture of the problems a congregation . . . a minister may be up against, but . . . It was strange. When I went into church, there was almost the feeling the sunlight had stoppe
d. He’s a big man, but it was his voice. He towered over the pulpit, he was holding onto it with both hands when I came in, and afterward I looked around at the faces . . . the sermon, his sermon was on some primitive Australian religion, but you see, to tell the truth . . .
—What?
John looked up. The lilies on the bar were browning at the edges. He shifted his eyes only far enough to reach the image beside his own in the mirror, but found only a stare of feverish continence which was lost below the mirror’s edge. —I remember every word of that Australian . . . legend, the parallel he was drawing with . . . Christianity, I can’t get it out of my mind. John had clutched the edge of the bar, lowering his voice and slowing his words, —Boyma big man; very budgery man. Him sit on big glass stone. Him son Grogoragally can see everything and go everywhere. See budgery man, like him; see bad man, plenty too much devil devil. Likes budgery man; no likes bad man: he growl too much. Budgery man die, Grogoragally tell Boyma; Boyma say, “Take him Ballima way, plenty budgery place.” Bad man die; Boyma say, “Take him Oorooma way, plenty too hot, him growl there.” Grogoragally plenty strong, him not so strong as Boyma . . .
Several people in the bar were looking in their direction. One detached himself and set out toward them, slowly, with the care of a navigator. Before him, his hands composed a shivering binnacle for what served, on this voyage, as a compass, a glass of whisky, perilously plumb between the gimbals of his fingers.
—It was strange, it was as though he could lead every good Protestant there . . . Oorooma way, if he wanted to. And then, when I walked home with him he would hardly talk about it, he would hardly talk about any of the things that a . . . man with the pressing responsibilities . . .
—Say, gentlemen, said a voice behind them. —I enjoyed your sermon. It was the figure from down the bar, a dilapidated bark indeed, heaving in toward shore now and seeking anchorage.
—But . . . me? He didn’t ask about me?
—Well, to tell the truth I . . . scarcely mentioned . . . I said I’d seen you, and he asked in an absent way . . . it’s an absent way he seems to have about everything, everything except when I saw him in the church. When I was talking to him, I’d turn to see he’d stopped, standing staring straight up at the sun . . .
The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) Page 37
