The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —Yes, but I . . . it isn’t that simple, you know. I mean, the thing itself, van der Goes, he repeated, his hand covering the sky behind the Cross, —this is . . . mine.

  —Yours? Basil Valentine said, smiling, and watching him as he sat down. —You work at night, then, do you?

  —Yes, I usually do now.

  —This element of secrecy, it becomes rather pervasive, does it?

  —No. No, don’t start that. That’s what they used to say, so don’t say that. It isn’t so simple. He drank off some of the brandy. —It’s the same sense . . . yes, this sense of a blue day in summer, do you understand? It’s too much, such a day, it’s too fully illuminated. It’s defeating that way, it doesn’t allow you to project this illumination yourself, this . . . selective illumination that’s necessary to paint . . . like this, he added, indicating the picture.

  —Seeing you now, you know, it’s answered one of the questions I’ve had on my mind for some time. The first thing I saw, it was a small Dierick Bouts, I wondered then if you used a model when you worked.

  —Well I . . .

  —But now, it’s quite obvious isn’t it, Valentine went on, nodding at the picture between them. —Mirrors?

  —Yes, yes of course, mirrors. He laughed, a constricted sound, and lit a cigarette.

  —You have one, you know, Basil Valentine said, watching him levelly as he started, looked at the cigarette in his hand, and crushed it out for the one he had just accepted. —You’re very tired, aren’t you.

  —Yes. Yes, I am, I . . . I’ve been tired for a long time.

  —Don’t you sleep?

  —I do, sometimes. During the day sometimes.

  —Well, my dear fellow, Valentine said, sitting up straight and smiling, —I don’t either. I think Brown here is probably the only one of us who does enjoy the sleep of the just.

  —Do you dream? he asked abruptly.

  —Dream? Good heavens no, not in years. And you?

  —I? Why no. No, no. No, I haven’t had a dream in . . . some time.

  —You haven’t explained all this to me yet, you know, Basil Valentine said, raising his eyes from the picture, which he pushed forward with his right hand, and a glitter of gold at his cuff. —The Virgin.

  —The Virgin? he repeated, staring across the table.

  —Yes, here for instance. She really dominates this whole composition.

  —Yes, she does. She does.

  Valentine waited, watching him. —Exquisite repose in her face, he murmured, finally. —Do you find that with mirrors too?

  —I . . . she . . . he stammered, picking up his glass.

  Recktall Brown stood up, with great alacrity considering his stature and the heavy immobile presence he had presented, deep in the armchair, an instant before. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but his eyes swimming behind the glasses seemed to jell, and his voice rose sternly when he spoke. He had, all this time, been looking from one to the other of the two men before him, gauging their effect upon one another. —I’ll answer that, and then we’ll get down to business, he said. —This model he uses is a kid I got for him, she came up trying to sell us a book of crazy poems once. This repose she gets, she just isn’t all there. He raised a naked hand. —Sit down, my boy, and be quiet. We’ve wasted half the God damn afternoon as it is, waiting for you. He turned to Basil Valentine, raising the left hand, with the diamonds, and the cigar which dropped its ash on Gula, gluttony, before him. —Valentine here has an idea for the next thing you’re going to do, but first I want to know when you’re going to finish the one you’re fooling around with down there now.

  —Fooling around? Fooling around?

  —All right, my boy, God damn it, working on. Look, I’ve bought a farm up in Vermont. The family that built the place came over from England in the seventeenth century, they had plenty of money, they made bricks. They brought over everything they owned. There were about a dozen lousy paintings there when I bought the place, none of them worth more than twenty bucks, Valentine says, and some frames I want you to look at, little oak ones with red and green velvet in them around the inside, maybe you can squeeze something in. I’m going to stock this place and sell it at auction in two weeks, and this last thing of yours can be discovered there if you finish it in time. He paused. —What do you say?

  Basil Valentine had started to rise, but let himself down in the chair again without making a sound, his lips open to show his teeth drawn tight together, and turned his eyes down to see the man across from him lower his eyes and seem to wilt, silent, and appearing not to breathe. Valentine waited, and then said gently, —The one you’re working on now, another van der Goes?

  —Yes, yes it is. He looked up, and drew a deep breath.

  —What is it, the subject?

  —I . . . I . . . it was going to be an Annunciation, that, because they’re . . . well have you ever seen a bad one? I mean by any painter? He held his hands in the air before him, the fingertips almost touching. —It’s almost as though . . . just the idea of the Annunciation, a painter can’t . . . no painter could do it badly.

  —The Annunciation? Valentine looked troubled.

  —No, I . . . it isn’t. I was going to, I wanted to, but then I got started on this other . . . this other idea took form and . . .

  —What is it, then?

  —It’s a . . . the death of the Virgin.

  —But there is one, you know, a splendid one of van der Goes, it’s in Brussels I think, isn’t it?

  —Yes, yes, I know it, I know that one. It is splendid, that one. But this one, this one I’ve done is later, painted later in his life, when the shapes . . .

  —Is it nearly done? Brown demanded, standing over them.

  —Yes, it is. It’s more than finished, really, he said looking up at Brown.

  —More than finished?

  —Yes, I . . . you know, it’s finished, it has to be . . . damaged now.

  —That must be difficult, Basil Valentine said.

  —It is, it’s the most difficult part. Not the actual damaging it, but damaging it without trying to preserve the parts that cost such . . . well, you know that’s where they fail, a good many . . . painters who do this kind of work, they can’t resist saving those parts, and anyone can tell, anyone can tell.

  —You call me as soon as it’s done then, do you hear me? Brown said, sitting down. He finished his drink quickly. —And we’ll get started on the next one now. Valentine’s here to . . .

  —I . . . damn it, you can’t just . . . He looked up at Basil Valentine. —He talks to me as though it was like making patent medicine. He . . .

  —All right my boy, I . . .

  —He heard a Fra Angelico had sold somewhere for a high price once, and he thought I should do a Fra Angelico, toss off a Fra Angelico . . .

  —All right now . . .

  —Like making patent medicine. He turned to Brown. —Do you know why I could never paint one, paint a Fra Angelico? Do you know why? Do you know how he painted? Fra Angelico painted down on his knees, he was on his knees and his eyes full of tears when he painted Christ on the Cross. And do you think I . . . do you think I . . .

  —Control yourself now, for Christ sake. We have work to do.

  —Work? Work? Do you think I . . . as though I spend my time down there flying balloons . . .

  —“That vice may merit, ’tis the price of toil,” Basil Valentine said, stretching his arms and smiling as he looked at both of them.

  —All right, Valentine, what is it now? What is this thing of yours?

  —Not mine, my dear Brown. Pope. Alexander Pope. “ ‘But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed,’ What then? Is . . .”

  —Not that, God damn it. This idea . . .

  The telephone rang. There was an extension in the hallway, as well as the one near the bar, and Recktall Brown went to the hallway extension.

  —He would absolutely have to have Alexander Pope in a box, to enjoy him. He is beyond anything I’ve ever com
e upon. Honestly, I never in my life could have imagined that business could live so powerfully independent of every other faculty of the human intelligence. Basil Valentine rested his head back, blowing smoke toward the ceiling, and watching it rise there. —Earlier, you know, he mentioned to me the idea of a novel factory, a sort of assembly line of writers, each one with his own especial little job. Mass production, he said, and tailored to the public taste. But not so absurd, Basil Valentine said sitting forward suddenly.

  —Yes, I . . . I know. I know.

  —When I laughed . . . but it’s not so funny in his hands, you know. Just recently he started this business of submitting novels to a public opinion board, a cross-section of readers who give their opinions, and the author makes changes accordingly. Best sellers, of course.

  —Yes, good God, imagine if . . . submitting paintings to them, to a cross section? You’d better take out . . . This color . . . These lines, and . . . He drew his hand down over his face, —You can change a line without even touching it. No, he went on after a pause, and Valentine watched him closely, —nothing is funny in his hands. Everything becomes very . . . real.

  —Oh, he’s given you some of his lectures too? “Business is cooperation with reality,” that one? The one on cleaning fluid, a chemical you can buy for three cents a gallon, which he sold at a quarter a six-ounce bottle? His chalk toothpaste? The breakfast cereal he made that gave people spasms of the colon? Has he told you about the old woman who got spastic colitis from taking a laxative he made, a by-product of heaven knows what. They threw her case out of court. A riotous tale, he entertains with it when he’s been drinking. He still makes a pretty penny from some simple chemical that women use for their menstrual periods, such a delicate necessity that the shame and secrecy involved make it possible to sell it at some absurd price . . .

  —Yes, the secrecy.

  —What?

  —These paintings, selling these paintings, the secrecy of it.

  Valentine chuckled. —Of course, he couldn’t do any of it alone. Other people do his work for him, get his ideas for him. Who do you think launched this picture here in this country? He motioned to the open reproduction. —Did you read about it?

  —Where?

  —In the papers. No, you probably never see the newspaper, at that. He didn’t tell you, then? He wouldn’t, of course. It might interfere.

  —Interfere? with what?

  —With your work, of course, he’s quite frantic about protecting you. I’ve gathered you’re quite as dedicated as those medieval forgers of classical antiquities. Valentine was speaking rapidly and with asperity. —True to your art, so to say?

  —True to . . . yes, that’s like saying a man’s true to his cancer.

  —Don’t be upset, don’t concern yourself with him, with his explanations of reality.

  —But that’s what’s so strange, it makes so much sense at first, and then if you listen, you . . . Yes, he understands reality.

  —He does not understand reality. Basil Valentine stood up, still, grasping his lapels, and looked down to the lowered face across the table. —Recktall Brown is reality, he said, and after a pause where neither of them moved, turned on a toe and idled out into the room. —A very different thing, he added over his shoulder, and stopped to light a cigarette.

  Recktall Brown’s voice reached them in the separate phrases of telephone conversation, —Not a dollar more, God damn it . . . , at one point, at another, —God damn it, not a dollar less.

  —But let me tell you about discovering this van der Goes. It might amuse you. It was taken to London, secretly of course, and modified with tempera before it was brought back to America, a crude job of overpainting on a glue finish, which would wash right off. It was such an obvious bad job that even customs discovered it. As much as it pained them, poor fellows, since they collect ten per cent on anything they can prove is a copy or an imitation. But there was the genuine, duty-free, original work of art underneath. As a matter of fact, I was called in to help verify it. You see how much we trust your work. And of course everyone respected the owner’s “business secret” about where he’d got it. After that incident people were predisposed to accept it.

  —But . . . why? There’s no law, is there, against . . .

  —Not a question of law, my dear fellow, Valentine said returning to the table. —Publicity. Publicity.

  —But, a thing like this, a . . . painting like this . . .

  —A painting like this or a tube of toothpaste or a laxative which induces spastic colitis. You can’t sell any of them without publicity. The people! Valentine turned away again, and commenced to walk up and down. He was talking more rapidly, in precisions of irritation as though he did not dare stop, for fear of an argument being rejected before he reached its point, or hesitate, and waste a precious instant before Brown’s return. Even the Latin came with native sharpness from his tongue when he said, —You recall the maxim, Vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur? Yes, if they want to be deceived, let them be deceived. Have you looked at his hands? he demanded, stopping abruptly at the edge of the table. —At Brown’s hands, when he sits with them folded in his lap? And those diamonds? Like a great soft toad, “. . . ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head”?

  —But, all this . . .

  —Yes, think of the tradition you have behind you, Valentine went on, turning his back. —Lucius Mummius, and that famous story in which he charges the men carrying his plunder from Corinth back to Rome, that any of the art treasures lost or broken would have to be replaced at the expense of the man responsible. No more idea of art than the people who surround us today, not a particle of appreciation, but they brought it back to Rome by the ton. Private collecting started, a thing the Greeks never dreamt of. It started in Rome, and forgery with it. The same poseurs, the same idiots who would buy a vase if they had to pay enough for it, the same people who come to Brown, in gray waistcoats, perhaps, instead of togas, the same people in Rome, the same people, the same hands . . .

  —But you, then you, if you feel this way . . .

  —Because the people, the people, they’re bringing us to the point Rome reached when a court could award a painting to the man who owned the board, not the artist who had painted on it. Valentine stood with his knees against the edge of the low table. —Yes, when the Roman Republic collapsed, art collecting collapsed, art forging disappeared. And then what. Instead of art they had religion, and all the talent went into holy relics. Half the people collected them, the other half manufactured them. A forest of relics of the True Cross? Miraculous multiplication. Then the Renaissance, and they dropped the knucklebones of the saints and came back to art. His eyes, which were hard and blue now, settled on the radiant figure in the center of the table of the Seven Deadly Sins. —Intricate, cunning forgeries like this, he added, sweeping a hand with a glitter of gold over the whole table as he turned his back. —The people! he said, watching Recktall Brown approach. —Of course I loathe him.

  —But it’s not. This table, it’s not a forgery.

  —What’s the matter? Brown demanded, coming up to them.

  —This Bosch, it’s not a forgery.

  —Who the hell said it was? Look, Valentine . . .

  —Listen . . .

  —Have you got him all upset like this?

  —Listen, this Bosch painting, it’s not a forgery.

  Basil Valentine sank back in his chair and clasped a knee between his hands. —It’s not? he said quietly, with the beginning of a smile on his lips, and shrugged. —Not even a copy?

  —You’re God damn right it’s not.

  —It’s not. It can’t be.

  —Why not? Valentine asked them. His eyes had recovered their light watery blue, agreeable indifference. —The story I heard, you know, he went on after a pause, —was that the original came from the di Brescia collection, one of the finest in Europe, most of them Flemish primitives in fact. The old man, the Conte di Brescia, found himself running out of m
oney. He loved the pictures, and none of his family would have dared suggest he sell a single one, even if they’d known the state of their finances. Of course they were simply waiting for him to die so they could sell them all. Meanwhile they went right on living in the manner which centuries of wealth had taught them, watched the pictures go out to be cleaned and come back, none the wiser. When the old grandee died, they fell over themselves to sell the pictures, and found that every one of them was a copy. They hadn’t been sent out to be cleaned, the old man had sent them out to be copied and sold, and the copies were brought back.

  —That’s right, sold, Brown said, —they sold the originals you just said, and I got this one. I got it ten or fifteen years ago.

  —Where?

  —Where? Never mind. Right here in America. I picked it up for just about nothing.

  —The collection of copies was dispersed too, you know, Valentine said. —Soon after the scandal, in the late ’twenties. And this . . .

  —But wait, listen . . .

  —Don’t get yourself upset, my boy, Brown said letting himself down in his chair; and Valentine looked across the table with the faint smile still on his lips.

  —Listen, this is the original, it is.

  —Don’t get yourself so excited, God damn it my boy . . .

  —How are you so certain? Valentine asked calmly.

  —Because, listen. What happened was, I heard, I heard this somewhere, abroad, yes somewhere abroad I heard that what happened was, a boy, a boy whose father owned the original, he’d bought it himself, he bought it from the Conte di . . . Brescia, and the boy . . . the boy copied it and stole the original and left his copy in its place, and sold the original, he sold it in secret for . . . for just about nothing.

  —How very interesting, Basil Valentine said quietly. The smile was gone from his lips, and he watched the quivering figure across the table from him without moving, without expression on his face.

  —All right, that’s enough of that. Didn’t the two of you get started on this new thing he’s going to work on while I wasn’t here?

  —Of course, Valentine said, his tone returned to its agreeable level, with an ingratiating edge to it as he turned to Brown and went on, —We decided to write a novel about you, since you don’t exist.