The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —But, was that all?

  —But listen, What was terrible was that I know every step in that house, I know how many steps it takes to come down the stairs or to cross the living room, I can’t tell you the number but I know, but these steps I heard in the darkness, they were regular and even, not in a hurry but what was terrible, they kept reaching places too soon. I know the sound, I know how the sounds change when you step from the front hall into the living room, or passing the dining room or off the last stair and . . . but these steps kept arriving too soon, not hesitating anywhere and not in a hurry, but if you take regular even steps, and there weren’t enough of them.

  —It is strange. And your voice, you sound like a child.

  —It doesn’t sound terrible does it, now.

  —We’ll talk about it in the morning, she whispered, and her hand moved down his body to find him and gently raise him into life. —There must be a reason . . .

  —Reason! but, good God, haven’t we had enough . . . reason.

  Her hand twisted and her fingers, closed together, moved only enough to make themselves felt, to make their motion not an act but a sense, to arouse not simply the blood which rushed to meet them but, in a touch, something beyond it. —Why do you fight it all so hard, Wyatt?

  —Women, he commenced, and then, —men rising to isolated challenges, he spends his life preparing to meet one, one single challenge, when he triumphs it’s, they call it heroic, but you, I know how hard you try for me, women just go on, they just go on, and I . . .

  —They have to, Esther said beside him, as he came over half upon her in the darkness. —If we could get away from here, you’ve been everywhere, you’ve studied in Germany and in Paris and I . . . Wyatt, if we could travel . . . She felt his leg relax on hers. —And you don’t want to, you don’t want to travel.

  —To voyage . . .

  —With me?

  —Charles Fort says maybe we’re fished for, by supercelestial beings . . .

  —Yes, without me. Alone.

  —My grandfather, he fell down a well once, did I tell you? He talks of voyages, he’s oriented by the stars. Orientation sidérale, the man who experimented with ants in the desert in Morocco . . . Then he seemed to tighten and hold her off suddenly, and she asked:

  —What is it?

  —In that dream, I just remembered my . . . my hair was on fire.

  She felt him run his hand over his hair, and down his rough cheek in the darkness. —We’ll talk about it in the morning, she said, —not now.

  —Not flames, he said holding her again.

  —You, you’d go to Morocco . . .

  —But just burning, he whispered, almost wondrously, as she rose to engage the incredulous tension of his right hand, still murmuring:

  —And be more . . . Moroccan . . . than the Moors.

  Next morning Esther woke alone, to realize that she had been alone most of the night. She swallowed, and found her cold better. She smelled coffee and went to the kitchen, where half a pot of it was boiling furiously on the stove. She started to call out, felt a wave of nausea, and sat down and decided to eat something. She got out bread and butter and looked for an egg, but could not find one. Then she poured some of the boiling coffee into a cold cup, and the cup cracked; nonetheless she poured until it was full and took it into the living room.

  Light showed from the studio, and she heard sounds behind the half-closed door. Then:

  —Damn you, damn you . . . damn you!

  —What? she brought out, at the door. —What a smell.

  —Nothing. He stood facing her under the bare brilliance of the bulb, as though stricken, in the midst of some criminal commission, as lightning freezes motion.

  —What is it?

  —Nothing, I’m . . . talking to myself.

  —Are you working? still working?

  —Yes, yes, working, he answered. His empty hands opened and closed at his sides, as though seeking something to occupy them. Then he caught up a knife in one, and with the other pointed to the straight easel, —On that.

  —That? She looked at the familiar thing on the easel. It was a late eighteenth-century American painting in need of a good deal of work, the portrait of a woman with large bones in her face but an unprominent nose, a picture which looked very much like Esther. She found it so, at any rate; and even when he’d said, —As a painting, it isn’t very good as a painting, is it? . . . she standing behind him could see no further than the portrait, held by the likeness as happened so often but seldom so clearly, finding resemblances to herself everywhere as though she set out from the start seeking identity with misfortune, recognition in disaster.

  He had backed away from her, holding the knife, as though he were guarding something, or hiding it, and when she looked behind him on the wall she saw the black lines on the cracked soiled surface of the unfinished portrait. —That, she said, —that’s what you were working on?

  —That. He made a stab pointing behind her with the knife, and she moved to sink wearily against the door frame.

  —A way to start the day, she said, looking at him. —I wish you’d stop waving that knife. Start the day? I feel like you’ve been in here all night, like you’re always in here, and whoever it is that sleeps with me and talks to me in the dark is somebody else.

  —I woke up, he said putting the knife down, —I wanted to work.

  —But this . . . if you wanted to work on that, you can tell me, you don’t have to pretend, . . . this secrecy . . .

  —Aunt May, when she made things, even her baking, she kept the blinds closed in the butler’s pantry when she frosted a cake, nobody ever saw anything of hers until it was done.

  —Aunt May! I don’t care about Aunt May, but you . . . I wish you would finish that thing, she went on, looking at the lines over his shoulder, —and get rid of her.

  —Rid of her? he repeated. From somewhere he’d picked up an egg.

  —Finish it. Then there might be room for me.

  —You? to paint you?

  —Yes, if you . . .

  —But you’re here, he brought out, cracking the egg over a cup, and he caught the yolk in his palm. —You’re so much here. Esther . . . I’m sorry, he said with a step toward her, the egg yolk rolling from one palm to the other, threatening to escape. —I’m sorry, he said seeing the expression he’d brought to her face. —I’m tired.

  —Even this, she said lowering her eyes, and bringing them round to the damaged likeness on the easel, —if you’d finish this.

  —There’s no hurry, he said quickly, —they’ve gone abroad, the people who own it, they may not be back for some time.

  —If they were gone ten years you’d take ten years. You could do work like this in half the time you take, a tenth of the time, even if you won’t paint yourself you could settle down to restoring work and make something of it. It’s no wonder you don’t sleep, that you’re nervous and have bad dreams when you’re not doing what you want to do.

  He stood bent over a cup, where he held the egg yolk suspended between the squared fingertips of one hand, and a pin in the other, about to puncture it, and he looked up at her. —But I am, Esther.

  —If you could finish something original, she said. —You look like an old man. Why are you laughing?

  —Just then, he said straightening up, and the egg yolk still hanging from his fingers, —I felt like him, just for that instant as though I were old Herr Koppel, I’ve told you, the man I studied with in Munich. As though this were that studio he had over the slaughterhouse, where we worked, he’d stand with an egg yolk like this and talk, “That romantic disease, originality, all around we see originality of incompetent idiots, they could draw nothing, paint nothing, just so the mess they make is original . . . Even two hundred years ago who wanted to be original, to be original was to admit that you could not do a thing the right way, so you could only do it your own way. When you paint you do not try to be original, only you think about your work, how to make it better, so y
ou copy masters, only masters, for with each copy of a copy the form degenerates . . . you do not invent shapes, you know them, auswendig wissen Sie, by heart . . .” The egg yolk fell, most of it went into the cup. —Damn it, he said, looking at it, —but it doesn’t matter, these stale eggs . . . “Country eggs you must have, with stale city eggs you cannot make good tempera . . .”

  —I might have had it for breakfast.

  —But, was it the last one? I didn’t . . . I’m sorry, Esther, I . . . here . . . He poured the white from one stained cup into what yolk there was in the other. —Here, it just isn’t . . . it’s clean, there just isn’t as much yolk . . .

  —Aren’t you going to your office? You’d better shave if you are, she said and left him offering the cup in the direction of the damaged likeness on the easel.

  Her coffee was cold. She poured it into the sink, and went down to get the mail. She read one letter on the stairs, and called out before she’d closed the door behind her, —Wyatt, something awful’s happened. Where are you? Then she almost screamed, seeing him standing in the door of the studio with blood all over one side of his face and his neck. —What happened?

  —What is it? he asked. —What awful thing . . .

  —What’s happened to you? she cried running up to him.

  —What? He stood there with a straight razor opened in his hand.

  —What are you doing?

  —Shaving . . .

  —Did you do that . . . shaving? What are you doing in there, shaving.

  —Oh, he said running his fingertips over his chin, and looking at the blood on them. —It’s a mess, I’m sorry, Esther. The mirror, I was using this mirror in here, you have the one in the bathroom covered . . .

  —Covered! she burst out impatiently, twisting the letter in her hand.

  —It has a cloth over it, I thought for some reason you might . . .

  —It’s a handkerchief drying, why didn’t you just pull it off. And that, she went on, getting breath, —that terrible thing, it’s dangerous to shave with, look at it, just because your father . . . You’re like a child about it, this image of his . . .

  —What was the letter?

  —The letter? This? Yes, that warehouse, the place in New Jersey where you had your things, it burned. And here, they send you a check for a hundred and thirty dollars.

  —Really? That’s fine.

  —Fine? Aren’t you upset? Things like those paintings, they can’t be replaced.

  —No, they can’t, he said quickly, a hand to his chin where the blood had already begun to dry.

  —Where are you going?

  —To wash. I have to hurry, I . . . I have some plans to take in.

  She caught him again at the front door, where he paused with a roll of papers under his arm. —No coffee? Nothing?

  —I had some earlier. He pulled at the knob, but she had a hand on his arm.

  —I wish you could rest, she said, and when he turned, looking at her as though he had suddenly been stopped in a crowded street: —Are you all right?

  —I? Why yes, yes I’m all right, Esther, I . . . you mustn’t . . . Goodbye, he broke and hurried toward the stairs.

  A few minutes later, when she was standing pouring coffee into the cracked cup, the doorbell rang. It was a delivery boy with a dozen eggs. She put them on the kitchen table, and then took out a handkerchief and stood, steadying herself with a hand on the table, staring at the coffee, whose surface was broken with the regular beats of her heart.

  It was dark afternoon when Esther came in, bearing in the forefront of her mind fragments of a conversation she had left a little earlier (on Rilke, not Rilke’s poetry but Rilke the man, who refused to be psychoanalyzed for fear of purging his genius); but over this, and through the rest of her mind, skated an image far more familiar, plunging and surfacing, escaping under the applied hand of her memory, reappearing when she turned elsewhere, echoing, among faces and lanterns and the prows of boats, —Maybe we’re fished for . . . , an image whose apparition she waited even now. Though it was dark in the studio, she opened the door and looked in there. Then she took off her coat, turned the radio on, and sat down, oblivious to the soprano singing nel massimo dolore, —Sempre con fè sincera la mia preghiera . . .

  The door rattled, with muttering beyond it. She sat still. Finally he entered, in a state of some excitement. —I had trouble with the key, he said, and gave her a broken self-conscious laugh. She wanted time to study him before she spoke, but could not let him escape to the studio before she asked:

  —Was it you I saw this afternoon? a little while ago?

  —Me? Why? Where?

  —Were you there, where they’re showing Picasso’s new . . .

  —Night Fishing in Antibes, yes, yes . . .

  —Why didn’t you speak to us?

  —Speak to who? You? Were you there?

  —I was there, with a friend. You could have spoken to us, Wyatt, you didn’t have to pretend that . . . I was out with someone who . . .

  —Who? I didn’t see them, I didn’t see you, I mean.

  —You looked right at us. I’d already said, There’s my husband, we were near the door and you were bobbing . . .

  —Listen . . .

  —You went right past us going out.

  —Look, I didn’t see you. Listen, that painting, I was looking at the painting. Do you see what this was like, Esther? seeing it?

  —I saw it.

  —Yes but, when I saw it, it was one of those moments of reality, of near-recognition of reality. I’d been . . . I’ve been worn out in this piece of work, and when I finished it I was. free, free all of a sudden out in the world. In the street everything was unfamiliar, everything and everyone I saw was unreal, I felt like I was going to lose my balance out there, this feeling was getting all knotted up inside me and I went in there just to stop for a minute. And then I saw this thing. When I saw it all of a sudden everything was freed, into one recognition, really freed into reality that we never see, you never see it. You don’t see it in paintings because most of the time you can’t see beyond a painting. Most paintings, the instant you see them they become familiar, and then it’s too late. Listen, do you see what I mean?

  —As Don said about Picasso . . . she commenced.

  —That’s why people can’t keep looking at Picasso and expect to get anything out of his paintings, and people, no wonder so many people laugh at him. You can’t see them any time, just any time, because you can’t see freely very often, hardly ever, maybe seven times in a life.

  —I wish, she said, —I wish . . .

  How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible: to come up one day saying, —You see? I was right all the time. Or, —Then I was wrong, all the time. The radio is still busy with Puccini, Tosca all the way through: from the jumble at the end of the second act, Wyatt rescues her words, repeats them, —Questo è il bacio di Tosca! That’s reality, then. Tosca’s kiss, reality?

  —I wish . . . she repeats (preferring Don Giovanni).

  —Maybe seven times in a life.

  Magic number! but she sits looking at him, waiting in the space populated by memory. One night when she was doing her nails, he came in. —Wyatt, you’ve never had a manicure? Never? Let me give you a manicure . . . But he said something in a tone apologetic, alarmed, and took his hands away one clutched in the other.

  —But it can’t really be that simple . . . (a discussion: did the coming of the printing press corrupt? putting a price on authorship, originality). —Look at it this way, look at it as liberation, the first time in history that a writer was independent of patrons, the first time he could put a price on his work, make it a thing of material value, a vested interest in himself for the first time in history . . .

  —And painters, and artists? Lithography, and color reproductions . . .

  —Yes, I don’t know, if one corrupts the artist and the other corrupts . . . that damned Mona Lisa, no one sees it, you can’t s
ee it with a thousand off-center reproductions between you and it.

  —But how . . .

  —I don’t know, I’ve tried to understand it myself. Spinoza . . .

  Mozart? The air is full of him, you’ve only got to have a radio receiving set to formulize the silence, give it shape and put it in motion: Sleigh Ride hurtles from the grid and strikes her. She suffers the impact without surprise. —I know you’ve never said you didn’t want children, but whenever I’ve mentioned it you just look . . . you just get a look on your face. He puts his hand there, his right hand to his forehead and draws it down with feverish application, as though in this to pull away the features so long forming, revaluing for this moment; but above his hand, his face comes back into shape, the forehead quickly rises and recovers its lines, then the brows, and the eyes vividly devious permit nothing to enter. —I wish we were in the dark, you can talk to me in the dark, in the light you tell me things like . . . Zero doesn’t exist.

  —But you asked me . . .

  —Or bad money drives out good.

  Esther watched him now, standing in the middle of the room, drawing his hand down over his face as though, again, to wipe out some past, how long ago, or how recent, or all of it? She did not know, but sought one area among the German festivals, Handel at Breslau, Shakespeare at Stuttgart, Beethoven at Bonn, all in May; Egmont at Altenburg, Der Fliegende Holländer at Nürnberg in June; Die Ägyptische Helena at München . . .

  —Munich, she said, —when you were in Munich?

  —What?

  —You’ve never told me much about it.

  —About Munich?

  —And that boy you knew there that you spent so much time with.

  —Han? I didn’t spend a lot of time with him.

  —You worked together, and drank together and traveled together.

  —Traveled?

  —That night you spent together at Interlaken, from what you’ve told me of that . . .

  —We were there for almost a week, waiting for a look at the Jungfrau, it was hidden every day, I told you about that. And the day I left for Paris, early in the morning standing on the railway platform I looked up, and there it was as though it had come from nowhere, and at that instant the train came in right between us, good God I remember that well, that morning.