The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  Everyone silenced for a moment at a scream of brakes outside, anticipating the satisfaction of a resounding crash. They were disappointed. Instead, as their conglomerate conversation rose again, Ed Feasley rode in upon its swell. Behind him a blonde adjusting a garter followed with choppy steps like a dory pulled in the wake of a yawl on a rough sea. —Get a drink, was all Ed Feasley could say, as he sat down at Otto’s table.

  Mr. Feddle was there. He stood with difficulty, his hand on the hip of a tall light-haired girl, her delicately modeled face and New England accent manifest of good breeding. —His mother is the sweetest little Boston woman, she said, —awfully interested in dogs, awfully anti-vivisection. They were looking at Anselm, who looked about to drop to his knees. Behind her, Don Bildow said, —He is an excellent poet, when he tries. He’s been taking care of my daughter when we’re out, my wife and I. I haven’t looked at another woman since we were married. Then with his hand on the man’s-shirted shoulder of the light-haired girl, —Do you find me attractive?

  The beard at Otto’s table said, —Is that Hemingway? Ed Feasley looked over at the Big Unshaven Man, who had just said, —No queer in history ever produced great art. Feasley looked vague, but said, —There’s something familiar about him.

  —That’s the damnedest thing I ever heard, Otto said, looking at Max, partially recovered. He motioned for another drink. When he had finished it he said, —I’ve got to make a phone call. I may have to go to Peru and northern Bolivia.

  —Tonight? said Feasley. —You going to fly down? I’d like to go with you, but . . . say, if you can wait until tomorrow afternoon

  . . . I’ve got to go to a wedding tomorrow, but . . .

  —No, I mean I’ve just got to call my father now, Otto said casually as though he had known that man all his life.

  —Say hello to the old bastard for me, Ed Feasley called after him.

  Otto called, made a rendezvous for a week later with the anxious voice at the other end of the line. They would meet in the lobby of a midtown hotel, at eight (—If you’ll wear that green scarf I sent you for Christmas two years ago, Otto, I have one just like it. We’ll know each other that way. And I wear glasses . . . said the voice, murmuring, after the telephone at the other end of the line was hung up, —Should I have said rimless glasses?). Otto had agreed quickly, he didn’t know where his green muffler was but to push the thing further would have been too much, bad enough to need recourse to such a device to know your own father.

  There were seven people at the table when he returned to it. The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds. —Yeh, I’m doing a psychoanalysis of it, said one of them, tapping Mother Goose on the table.

  —I tell you, there’s a queer conspiracy to dominate everything. Just look around, the boy with the red hunting cap said. —Queers dominate writing, they dominate the theater, they dominate art. Just try to find a gallery where you can show your pictures if you’re not a queer, he added, raising a cigarette between paint-encrusted fingers. —What do you think women look so damned foolish for today? It’s because queers design their clothes, queers dictate women’s fashions, queers do their hair, queers do all the photography in the fashion magazines. They’re purposely making women look more and more idiotic until nobody will want to go to bed with one. It’s a conspiracy.

  Near their table, the tall dark girl who had been talking with Anselm said to someone she knew, —Do you know that girl? I want to meet her.

  With his hand on Esme’s shoulder, Otto leaned down to say, —Let’s get out of here. Ed Feasley looked up to say, —You want to go to a party? A big ball a bunch of queers are giving up in Harlem.

  —Drag? someone asked.

  —What’s drag?

  —Where they all dress like women.

  —This ball is drag, someone else said. —High drag.

  There was a loud yelp. Anselm, on all fours, had met the dachshund, and had one of its ears in his mouth. The tall dark girl looked up at the doorway to see a timid Italian boy with no chin start to enter, and get pushed aside. —God, she said, —there’s my stupid cousin. I’m going next door. —I’ve got a doctor for her, a young man was saying. —He’ll do it for two hundred and fifty, but I can’t get hold of her. Every time I call all I get on the phone is Rose, her crazy sister Rose.

  Otto and Ed Feasley, with Esme between them, moved toward the door. The Big Unshaven Man turned away when Feasley passed. —Of course I know him. A damn fine painter, Mr. Memling, he was saying, as he took a quart flask out of his pocket. —Would you mind filling this up with martinis? Yes, what you read about me is true, I like to have some with me. Sure, I’ll look at your novel any time, he finished, as the boy handed a ten-dollar bill across the bar.

  —I sure as Chrahst know him from somewhere, Feasley said.

  —That’s because he’s Ernest Hemingway, said a voice nearby.

  —Paris? said the light-haired girl. —I wouldn’t reach up my ahss for the whole city.

  Mr. Feddle was being pushed out the door ahead of them. There they met Hannah. —Is Stanley in there? she asked. —Haven’t seen him. —He had to go to the hospital to see his mother, said Hannah. —She just won’t die. Then Hannah melted into the stew, where the juke-box was playing Return to Sorrento.

  —Where’s Adeline? Otto asked.

  —I don’t know. The hell with her, Feasley said.

  They found Adeline asleep in the car. Fortunately it was a new model, with a low chassis and a low center of gravity, which saved it from overturning at the corners. They had some difficulty getting in to the party, when Ed Feasley offered to fight anyone who kept them out. They were saved when a crapulous Cleopatra appeared, waving a rubber asp at Esme and Adeline, thought it knew them, squealing in rapturous welcome that their costumes were divine.

  It was quite a party. There must have been four hundred.

  They arrived as a beautiful thing in a strapless white evening gown finished a song called I’m a Little Piece of Leather, followed on the stage by a strip-tease in two parts. The first performer was all too obviously a woman, gone to fat. This tumbled about in the spotlights, wallowed a great unmuscled expanse of rump and bounced a mammoth front at the audience, jeering with laughter, railed off the stage in grisly flounces of flesh. Then towering loveliness appeared, bowed to thunderous applause, and moving with perfect timing slipped off one after another garment to reveal exquisite limbs (hairless but a trifle muscular) with long gathering motions of blond hair to the waist, serpentine caresses rising over the spangled brassière. Ed Feasley, who had muttered with virile disgust at the first, watched this exhibition with wondering pleasure, until, in finale, the brassiere was waved aloft leaving a chest uninhabited, leaving Feasley sitting forward in astonished indignation, leaving the stage through a curtain of wild applause.

  —Are you really a girl? a young Bronzino in velvet asked Esme, punching in disbelief at her small bosom. She laughed, and Otto turned to brandish his sling; like Infessura, perhaps, writing of the papal court of Sixtus IV, “puerorum amator et sodomita fuit,” he ordered a drink.

  There was, in fact, a religious aura about this festival, religious that is in the sense of devotion, adoration, celebration of deity, before religion became confused with systems of ethics and morality, to become a sore affliction upon the very things it had once exalted. Quite as festive, these halls, as the Dionysian processions in which Greek boys dressed as women carried the ithyphalli through the streets, amid sounds of rejoicing from all sexes present, and all were; glorious age of the shrine of Hercules at Coos, where the priests dressed in feminine attire; the shrine of Venus at Cyprus, where men in women’s clothes could spot women immediately, for they wore men’s clothes: golden day of the bride deflowered by the lingam, straddling the statue of Priapus to offer her virginity to that god who, like all gods, even to the Christian deity who exercised it with Mary in
the form of the Holy Ghost, had jus primae noctis, and no subterfuge permitted. So enough of these young brides had backed up upon the Priapean image and left their flowers there. So a voice said now, —Then let’s go to Vienna, they’ve announced that you can wear drag in the streets if you don’t offend public morals! Isn’t that sweet? To which a dark-haired person in an evening gown of green watered silk said, —More than once I’ve dressed as a priest, just so no one would be troublesome about my wearing skirts. Sometimes I just can’t breathe in trousers.

  So priests down through the ages, skirted in respectful imitation of androgynous deities who reigned before Baal was worshiped as a pillar, before Osiris sported erection, before men knew of their part in generation, and regarded skirted women as autofructiferous. When they made this discovery, the sun replaced the moon as all-powerful, and Lupercalia came to Rome, naked women whipped through the streets around the Palatine hill, and the cross became such a glorious symbol of the male triad that many a religion embraced it, so notorious that when the new religion which extolled the impotent man and the barren woman triumphed over a stupefied empire, the early skirted fathers of the Church forbade its use.

  So even now, under a potted palm with silver fronds, a youth making a solemn avowal held another youth by that part where early Hebrews placed their hands when taking oaths, for it represented Jahveh.

  Ed Feasley had a hand on a smooth chocolate shoulder which rose from a lavender evening gown in organdy, standing in the less-lighted shelter of a pillar.

  There were women there. At a large table near the dance floor one sat, with broad tailored shoulders, flat grosgrain lapels, shortcut hair and heavy hands (she looked rather like George Washington without his wig, at about the time he married Martha Dandridge (Custis) for her money), recently in trouble, someone said, over kidnaping a seal for immoral purposes. She had not spoken to a man for sixteen years. Somewhere submerged in childhood lay a little girl’s name which had once been hers. Only her bankers knew it now. Friends called her Popeye. Now she was saying, to an exquisitely pomaded creature whom thousands knew as a hero of stage, screen, and radio, —I wish I were a little boy, so that I could dance with you. They were interrupted by Big Anna, in dinner clothes. —Have you seen Agnes? said the Swede. —My dear she has the key to my box, and simply everything’s locked up in it. The most delicious gown Jacques Griffes made for me especially to wear tonight, and I’ve had to come in this silly tuxedo suit, simply everyone thinks I’m a woman . . .

  The second in order of the strip-tease performers stood beside them, dressed now in silver lamé. —Rudy! the Swede said, —your dance was excruciating.

  —I feel simply ghastly, Rudy said. —I’ve been having hot flashes all evening. What divine perfume. Have you seen a book of mine?

  —It’s only My Sin, I borrowed it from Agnes. Is this your book? Rudy reached for it. —But what are you doing reading Tertullian?

  —For my work of course. I’m designing sports costumes for an order of nuns, and I’ve been told that their ears simply must be kept covered, by a very dear friend. He lent me this book, Rudy said, fondling Tertullian. —De Virginibus Velandis, on the necessity of veiling virgins. Val told me the most divinely absurd stories this afternoon. Do you know why nuns must have their ears covered? My dear, so they won’t conceive! The Virgin conceived that way, the Logos entered her ears. I have no idea what a logos is, but it doesn’t sound at all nice does it. Val quoted Vergil and all sorts of dead people. Why, they all used to believe that all sorts of animals conceived that way. They thought that mares were made pregnant by the wind. And so I have to read this to really know what on earth I’m doing, covering their ears, because evil angels are waiting to do the nastiest things to them. Can you imagine conceiving on the badminton court?

  —It sounds really celestial, said Big Anna. —But what perfume are you wearing?

  —I can’t tell you, really. A very dear friend makes it himself. Fuisse deam, that’s what he calls it. An aroma remained, you could tell a goddess had just appeared, Rudy said, waltzing toward the dance floor.

  —I’d prefer French, Big Anna muttered, looking bitterly after Rudy’s silver lamé. —Where is Agnes, he said, wringing his hands.

  Otto was trying to order another drink. He stared on the festival with glazed eyes, and had decided for safety’s sake to sit still until he could summon energy to leave. He waved with a heavy hand at a passing mulatto whose black hair stood out four inches behind his conical head in anointed streamlining, and that one was gone with his tray. Instead Cleopatra fluttered up to ask him for Maude Munk’s telephone number, —because she’s getting the most gorgeous baby by air mail from Sweden, and we want one so much . . . With the concentration of applied memory, Otto invented a telephone number. —Do you want to dance? Cleopatra asked him. Adeline returned to the table alone. —I was dancing with some guy and he suddenly let go of me and said, You are a girl, aren’t you, and left me right in the middle of the floor. See him, that big handsome boy, he looks like he went to Princeton.

  —He probably did, Otto mumbled. Then he swung around at Cleopatra. —Will you get that God-damned thing out of my sling? he said, and the queen removed the asp, alarmed. —That’s the cutest disguise you wear, said Cleopatra, and then, abruptly, and as indignant —Aren’t you queer?

  —Of course not, Otto said, indignantly unoriginal.

  —What a shame, said Cleopatra. —I must find my barge.

  Otto looked for Esme, did not see her. He looked for Feasley, did not see him. He was about to speak to Adeline when she left the table and went toward the dance floor saying, —I see a gentleman.

  A voice said, —I’ve never seen so much bad silk on so many divine bodies. Another said, —Let’s elope. And another, —You can’t touch me, because I’m in a state of Grace. I’m going to be received tomorrow, only think! Tomorrow . . .

  —Pony boy, a voice crooned.

  —But I thought Victoria and Albert Hall were going to be here. Have you read her book? Have you seen his play? Where are they? said Big Anna, looking, as he had each minute of the evening, nearer to weeping. —Oh Herschel! Herschel! Will you stop that singing and console me?

  —What is it, baby?

  —It’s Agnes. She has my key.

  —Yes, baby, Herschel said. He was almost immobile, but still standing. —I have to get home to work, he said in a voice which was more a liquid presence and barely escaped his throat. —Work. Work. Work.

  —What work?

  —Haf to write a speech. Have you ever read The Trees of Home? It stinks, baby. It’s a best seller. I’ve been writing speeches for the author of the best seller Trees of Home, baby. Moral regeneration, insidious influences sapping our very gzzzhuu huuu I’m going down to Dutch Siam yes I am . . . he sang.

  —I haven’t seen you since the boat docked! At this, Big Anna turned around. —Victoria! Where’s Albert? I’m so glad to see you baby.

  —He’s dancing with an archbishop. But darling tell me have you seen a tall dark girl here? Her name is Seraphina di Brescia, I just hoped she might be here, I know she’s in New York. I met her at the Monocle in Paris . . .

  —No, but have you seen Agnes? Agnes Deigh?

  —You’re joking, darling. Tell me, did you ever get your little what-was-his-name over from Italy?

  —Little Giono! said the Swede, wringing his hands again. —No, and I’ve been after the immigration people, but they won’t help. Why he’ll be fifteen by the time I can get him over here, and he won’t do for a thing. I’m going to have to adopt him, it’s the only way out. But before I adopt him I have to join the Church my dear, think of it. He has to have a Catholic parent. I’m going back next week.

  —To Rome?

  —Oh yes, I can’t bear it here a moment longer.

  Otto, seeing Feasley approach, struggled to his feet. —Let’s get out of here, he said. —Where are Esme? and Adeline?

  —The hell with them. Just wait a minute. There’s a littl
e colored girl here I want to take along. See if you can find her while I go to the head. She’s in a purple dress.

  —We met in Paris, someone said, —in the Reine Blanche . . .

  —In the Carrousel . . .

  —In Copenhagen . . .

  —The Drap Dead . . .

  —The Boof on the Roof . . .

  —Seraphina? The one they call Jimmy? I know she has money, but what does she spend it all on? —Don’t be silly. She spends it on girls.

  —Yes darling, said Adeline’s dancing partner into her blond hair resting against the grosgrain lapels. —We have to follow Emerson’s advice to treat people as though they were real, because, perhaps they are . . .

  From somewhere in the middle of the floor, in a quailing voice, —Baby and I were baked in a pie, the gravy was wonderful hot . . .

  —Of course there’s time, Agnes Deigh’s voice said, —just take the key and hurry. And don’t let me forget to give you my mother’s address in Rome . . .

  —And the address of Monseigneur Fé, he has his own chapel right near the Vatican where he performs the most divine marriage ceremonies . . .

  So they danced, as though ridden with the conscience of the Tarahumara Indian, whose only sin can be not having danced enough.

  Feasley said, —Come on, let’s get out of here, not stopping as he passed the table. —Chrahst, I found her, the girl in the purple dress. Standing right beside me at the next urinal . . .

  —I hate women, a voice said. It paused. Then, —I hate men too.

  And so, as the Lord prophesied through the Greek Clement: I am come to destroy the work of the woman, that is, concupiscence, whose works are generation and death.

  It broke up and spread itself, in couples and threes and figures of stumbling loneliness, into the streets, into doorways, they all went into the dark repeating themselves and preparing to meet one another, to reassemble, rehearse their interchangeable disasters; and the place looked like a kingdom stricken by papal anathema, as when Philippe Auguste, cunning pitiless monarch of France, was excommunicated for marrying Agnes while his wife Ingeborg still lived, and in his kingdom under the interdict there was neither baptism, marriage, nor burial, and corpses rotted on the high road.