The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

  —Damn it . . .

  —Now be nice . . . the Swede whispered through his tears.

  —For Christ sake Anselm . . .

  —Go home and fornicate, came from the floor. —Only know that God for His own glory permits devils to work against His will. For His own glory . . .

  And then a crash.

  They looked to see Hannah getting up from the floor, and Max went to help her. Herschel stumbled and fell against a chair, where his whole body shook, heaving from its shallow depths. —I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it any more. She asked me who I was, and I told her and she said How do you know who that is, is it anybody at all and . . . Oh God, Christ, I hate hitting somebody I don’t like.

  On the floor before the fireplace lay the funeral spray, lifted gaily from the door of a bereaved Italian family downstairs, trampled so that its wires stood out naked. Time had been there. The garden which one had thought could not grow, had risen in rank luxuriance, like the plants on that plantation abandoned. For even bananas must be cut and hung to mature properly; left on the stalk, they swell and burst open, attract insects, develop an unpleasant taste, beyond the bounds of cultivation, beyond the plantation, in the jungle, where in the art of evil their near relatives, the orchids, blossom, not questioning the distant Greeks on how they got their name, deriving innocently from the devil’s residence in man: that part which the ange’s cut from the monk Helias. Otto led Esme forth, and at the stairs she drew him down.

  VI

  “Father,” he asked, “are the rich people stronger than anyone else on earth?” “Yes, Ilusha,” I said. “There are no people on earth stronger than the rich.” “Father,” he said, “I will get rich, I will become an officer and conquer everybody. The Tsar will reward me, I will come back here and then no one will dare . . .” Then he was silent and his lips still kept trembling. “Father,” he said, “what a horrid town this is.”

  —Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov

  “Why has not man a microscopic eye?” writes Alexander Pope; “For this plain reason: man is not a fly.” What of Argus, equipped with one hundred eyes to watch over the king’s daughter turned into a heifer by a jealous goddess; how many images of the heifer did he see? how many leaves to the bracken where she browsed? And after the death of Argus (his eyes transplanted to the peacock’s tail), this wretched heifer, the metamorphosis of Io, was visited by a gadfly sent by the jealous goddess, and driven frenzied across frontiers until she reached the Nile. What did the gadfly see? And Argus, suffering the distraction of one hundred eyes: did he sit steady? or move distracted from distraction by distraction, like the housefly now dashing and retreating in frenzy against the windowpane, drawn to a new destination the instant it halted, from the shade-pull to the floor, from there to the lampshade, back to the baffling window glass. No Argus, this miserable Diptera, despite its marvelous eyes guardian of nothing; for where was the heifer? Below, perhaps. From the high ceiling the housefly careened to the molding across the room, thence to the lampshade, to a green muffler, a pair of socks on the floor, and so to the sleeping face which it attended with custodial devotion, until the blinking unmicroscopic eyes came open, and Otto lay awake.

  —O God, what have I done? came borne on a girl’s voice, sustained by a muted Rhadames singing before his judges from the lungs of a radio. Otto closed his eyes, not yet ready to return to this life. The fly rummaged about his cheek, remarking there the pitted damages of adolescence, an uneven surface affording foothold for claws laden with typhoid bacilli. Still, for a moment, the fly studied the caves of the nostrils leading into the crooked tanned peak of the nose. Otto threw his arm across his face. The fly rose, swirled, returned to walk across the cleft of the chin, and from that eminence sighted the convoluted marvel protruding across the way, and leaped silently to the ear.

  —O God, what have I done? This was followed by a tearing sob.

  Otto’s hand moved quickly, to the ear; but by the time it reached there, the fly was trampling his eyebrow, its purpose of devilish torment unchanged since Io reached the Nile, where Egyptian mothers still hesitate to disturb flies settled on a sleeping child, awed by the fly god, Baal-zebub, evil and insect-breeding power of Baal, the sun himself, lover and quickener of nature.

  —O God, what have I done . . . oouuuh . . . while in Egyptian background Rhadames was sealed up in the tomb, alive, where he finds Aïda waiting, sunless, and out in the sunshine metamorphosed by a pun Baal-zebub becomes Beelzeboul, the dung god, Prince of Devils.

  So Otto, forced awake by three millenniums, a goddess, a princess, and a devil, swung once more at the housefly and sat up on the edge of his bed, his face anxiously distorted, listening. He waited.

  —O God! What have I done! sounded through the thin wall.

  He got up and lit an American cigarette.

  December’s thin sunlight came in at the window, hopefully revisiting this city despaired of the night before. In thousands of rooms, as many men intently removed minuscule stubble from pallid chins, with as much care for office appearance as though each worked under Saint Wulstan, whose holiness was so offended by beards that he carried a knife, and when a man so adorned knelt for his blessing the good Bishop of Wulster cut out a handful of it, threw it in the poor fellow’s face, and told him to cut the rest off or go, quite literally, to Hell. Now they buttoned buttons for the thousandth time without question, absorbed in pragmatic interior monologues which anticipated the successes of the day to come fostered by the failures of the day before.

  The city throbbed in gray effulgence, radiating motion, while silent pigeons swept the lower air, or walked grunting on the sills and cornices of the buildings, and on the sidewalks of open places. In Union Square, one of them attacked a bird of rare beauty, tropically plumed, which looked lost and unused to spreading its wings beyond the breadth of a cage.

  Otto stumped about the small room, picking up his cigarette whenever it had rested for long enough to burn a brown scar on the woodwork, to liven its coal and find a fresh place to leave it. He was dressed in shorts. The linen suit was rumpled, and the morning light showed it less becomingly so than he had believed the night before. He examined a smudge on the elbow (where it had been dropped on Esme’s floor), started to brush it out, and then did not. It remained, witness to what, try as he would, he could not clearly remember. Two suits and a jacket hung beside the linen, only the gray flannel carefully unpressed.

  —O God! What have I du-un . . . huuuuh . . . came through the wall. —Haha. Haha. That’s the way to do it . . . He sank back in the chair, still staring at the wall; but only the radio voice reached him: —Ladies, if you are troubled by excess hair, write for a free brochure of our method, guaranteed to remove fifteen hundred hairs in a single hour . . .

  Then he got up and dressed slowly. Buttoning his shirt, he looked vacantly at a book and some papers on the table, which had come under the attention of the fly. He took a towel from the bed and snapped it at the fly. The fly moved to the ceiling, and several of the papers to the floor. Picking up the local Spanish newspaper (which he carried in public and appeared to read), he muttered something; then, pulling on his trousers, he looked as absently at a scrap of notepaper on which was written, Gd crs as mch fr mmnt as fr hr—wht mean? The expression on his face started to change as he read that over, scratching his head as he filled in the vowels. But whatever that expression would have been, it failed: he stood looking at his fingernails, turned in upon the palm. Then barely glancing, crumpled the notepaper as he picked it up and threw it in the basket, to turn away buttoning his trousers, and sit down to count his money.

  —And now friends, you’ve probably been hearing so much about this wonderful new protein diet . . . He looked up, having reached one hundred thirty. The dial in the next room was being turned.

  —To take the odor out of perspiration. Fifty-two per cent more effective . . .

&nb
sp; He gave up counting the money, thumbing over the rest before he put it away, and went to the mirror with a necktie. There he studied his eyes anxiously for a moment, then noticed that his skin appeared pale beneath the surface of color, and the mustache hairs were brought into separate and ragged prominence.

  —And so friends, to get your free . . . Christ sent me not to baptize but to . . . That wonderful he-man aroma that girls really go for . . .

  Then a pneumatic pavement-breaker started in the street below, some ten yards from where it had been torn up, and repaired, the week before. He considered leaving the sling where it was, empty, on the table, for it was proving more of an impediment than he had anticipated. But fearful of meeting someone who had seen him in it, he hung it round his neck, and went back to the mirror to arrange it.

  The pavement-breaker below stopped just long enough for him to hear through the wall,

  —You have just heard the oria from Gluck’s Orfeoadoiradeechay . . . and he stood in his open door looking at the closed door just to his right. He raised a hand to knock; but glancing back as his own door came closed saw the large manila envelope on the table, returned to pick it up, and took the smaller less familiar one with it.

  The morning was exceptionally fine, the streets still comparatively unlittered by those tons of ingeniously made, colorfully printed, scientifically designed wrappings of things themselves expendable which the natives drop behind them wherever they go, wary as those canny spirits down under cluttering the path to paradise.

  As he walked toward the bus stop, he noticed that his watch was fourteen minutes slow. Turning the corner, he started to run; and the bus which had been waiting roared away as he arrived, bearing faces which looked with benign satisfaction on him catching breath in the exhaust fumes. He waited. A cab stopped right before him; and the next bus, unable to approach the curb, roared past. The taxi driver had looked at him questioningly, now disdainfully, and drove after the bus. The downtown bus he boarded a quarter-hour later was driven by a mustached man in a leather jacket, whose swashbuckling motions recalled the devil-may-care bomber pilots of the motion-picture screen. His cap, its wire frame removed, clung rakishly to the back of his oily head, as he guided his huge machine down the runway for another takeoff. Otto rocked back and forth, holding a strap, attempting to appear as vacant as the faces before him while he stared straight forward at

  Take someone to church with you

  next Sunday

  You’ll both be richer for it

  The phantasies of the passengers were suspended, as they tore through clouds, shuddered at air-pockets, dove low over landmarks. Otto had finally turned round, and was staring at

  1,500,000

  Americans have

  SYPHILIS or GONORRHEA

  and don’t know it

  From their empty faces, none of the passengers resented the driver’s incursion into their own phantastical domains: watching his weaving back, they appeared to respect his right to perform in allegory, to redeem, as best his numb imagination would permit him, the absurdity of reality.

  Anselm said nothing; but smiled without recognition as they passed in Washington Square. Otto caught his breath and lowered his eyes quickly from the thin newly shaven face to the crimson-covered book under Anselm’s arm, and went on to the doorway he had left only hours before. The stairs had the familiarity of a staircase descended in a dream. He had seen them last unlit, with other eyes than these of morning: now they interested him, for he could see himself climbing them, often and regularly, up and down. The door he approached was blank, anonymous. He knocked sharply: still it stood, no hint of what was resident behind it.

  Knock knock knock. And more silence than before.

  —Esme? he called.

  —Who is it?

  —Otto.

  —Who?

  —Otto.

  —Oh. But it’s so early.

  The instant her voice stopped the door, flat, blank, regained its anonymity, and she was gone, nowhere.

  —Otto?

  —Hello?

  —Will you come back in an hour?

  —An hour?

  —I have to take a bath.

  —All right, he called at that resolute door, and went down the stairs.

  A small hairy face turned to him from the lap of the blonde whom he sat beside at the drugstore counter. He ordered coffee, and started to tamper with the green ribbon on the dog’s crown. The blonde straightened herself, looking the other way, the lhasa turned to stare at the Coca-Cola machine, and she bent forward to blow softly in its hair. On his left, the hairy-armed counterman rested his hands on the counter. —Yeh, I could write a book, he said to the girl sitting there —I bet it’d be banned in Boston, she said. She laughed. —Not oney in Boston, he said. They laughed. The blonde with the dog coughed, and moved down a seat. Otto blew more cigarette smoke straight before him, and put the packet of Emus on the counter.

  Over his third cup of coffee, staring at the two manila envelopes, he suddenly remembered the smaller one which contained a short story written by a navy veteran, handed him at the party the night before after he said he had a friend with a magazine. That friend was the girl who had caused him untold misery three years before, by not marrying him. Having got all of the poetically incumbent recriminations out of his system, Otto remembered her now with condescending fondness. He wrote on a slip of paper, “My dear Edna: I enclose a copy of a story written by a friend of mine, because having read it over I thought it might go well in your magazine. If you can’t use it, will you please return it to me, since he has no permanent address . . . ,” which note he signed and clipped to the papers in the envelope without even having to bother to take them out.

  Stanley said nothing; but hung his head without recognition as they passed in Washington Square. When Otto returned to Esme’s door, he was uncertain whether to kiss her uproariously, formally, or not at all. The restraint of not-at-all would be best rewarded, eventually, for then she would believe that she wanted him to kiss her, and arrange an unequivocal opportunity. He adjusted his sling.

  She opened the door and smiled at him, as she probably smiled at the janitor when he appeared there. Otto said good morning, and came in. He took off his green muffler and tossed it to a chair, where it fell on the floor behind. —How do you feel this morning? he asked her.

  —Like I feel in the morning, Esme answered, smiling, unhesitating as a good child.

  —I mean after last night.

  —Morning is always after last night.

  —No, I mean the party, and . . .

  —Oh. I was . . . what did you call it? Plas-tered?

  —You were pretty far gone. Otto stared at her face: how she must have scrubbed it, making its hollows more cleanly cut, and then applied the dark lines of the eyebrows and no other make-up. He reached for her waist. She moved away.

  —Did you bring me home? she asked.

  —Did I bring you home? Esme . . . He stared at her eyes, wide in innocent curiosity.

  —Is something the matter? she asked.

  —Don’t you remember?

  —What?

  —Don’t you remember anything?

  —The party? she asked, happily. —It was a lovely party. And then poor Anselm was walking around like a dog and saying funny things, and then that poor young man hit that girl . . . She stopped.

  —Herschel hit Hannah. And then?

  —Yes, she said, —Herschel hit Hannah. She stopped.

  —But Hannah, I mean Esme, is that all you remember?

  —Yes, it was a lovely party, and you were standing there pretending to read that old book . . . She was reeking of honesty.

  —Esme . . .

  —And you kept fooling with that funny thing you wear around your neck . . .

  —Esme.

  —What, Ot-to?

  —Don’t you remember coming back here with me?

  —Then you did bring me home. Why didn’t you tell me, instead of teasing me
like that?

  Otto’s forehead drew together; the sling quivered. What is a conquest which goes unacknowledged by the conquered? Here was where he had dropped his coat, there the ashtray he had overturned. —Esme . . .

  knock knock knock

  —But Esme . . .

  —What is it? she said, on her way to the door, smiling.

  — . . . ?!

  —Chaby! Esme said, as though delighted with what came in at that door. —This, she said to Otto, —is Chaby Sin-is-ter-ra, as though she were making up the words syllable by syllable.

  —How do you do, said Otto, not wishing to be told. Nor was he.

  Chaby was small, sharply boned. His chin was small and sharp, so were his eyes, and his teeth: everything about him, in fact, but his hair, a shiny black pompadour which he wore like a hat and continually adjusted with an unclean pocket comb missing a tooth, which left a ridge on the otherwise smooth metaled surface. His mustache was a thin line of black hairs drawn from his nostrils along his upper lip. Otto ran a fingertip along the straggling fullness of his own, and sat down. —What a friggin night I had, said Chaby. And his fingernails were black.

  Otto lit an Emu and sat apparently absorbed with it, indicating that its complete enjoyment required all of his attention. He blew a ring of smoke one way, another another way, and another to the floor, where it sank and settled upon the carpet. The carpet ended halfway across the room in an indecision of color and design, its surface the flat and slightly ribbed lay of Aubusson because of the uneven texture of the floor. Its intricate design, beginning under the daybed where Otto sat, gave way to abstraction, threatening even worse where it came suddenly to an end, a sense of delirium in the hand of the painter who had painted it there, cross-stroking the warp and the weft with a two-inch brush. Chaby tapped a shiny foot, accompanying an evil rhythm which played endlessly within. Esme sat down on the arm of his chair. He got up and went to the radio, which he turned on with the casual thoughtlessness of long habit. The room was filled with the throbbing hesitations of a tango. In silent disdain, so watered down that it approached charity, Otto contrasted his own attire to the padded, pleated affair swaying across from him, until he realized that Chaby had taken off his coat and drawn Esme’s waist closely and somewhat below his own. They were dancing. Otto followed the first intimacies of that tango with painful intentness. He adjusted his sling, as though to indicate that but for this injustice he might dance or do battle. Then he yawned; but the yawn did not succeed, simply left him sitting with his mouth open. With his unharnessed hand he reached for a book.