The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  Basil Valentine turned a light on, and herded the figure before him like a shadow. —Put your feet up and relax, if you like. But I want to talk to you seriously.

  —Seriously? Then talk to Richelieu. I’ve only been ordained a matter of months. Or years, is it? I can’t distinguish now, I’ve come so far, tempted by the daughters of Mara disguised as beautiful women. That was before Buddhism was corrupted by idolatry. Where is that good cigar you gave me?

  —Take one of these and sit down, Valentine said, holding out the gold case.

  —Varé tava soskei . . . soskei . . . I can’t sit down with one of these things. I’d float away. Here, what’s this thing over here, this gold bull busting an egg.

  Basil Valentine breathed more easily as the figure before him seemed to weary and wither a little. —An altar figure, my dear fellow.

  —Well that’s apparent, that’s apparent.

  —A small copy of one that stood in the Miaco pagoda, in Japan, Valentine went on, watching the hand stroking the gold of the bull’s back. —The time of Chaos, you know, before creation, and the world concealed in an egg floating on the waters. And the bull here, the symbol of creative force, breaking the egg to give birth to the earth.

  —Is that what the Jesuits are teaching now? Good God! How far back do you go, anyhow? Before death came into the world? Before the time of Night and Chaos? Before good and evil, before magic, before religion. There, religion is the despair of magic . . . no, that’s not you Jesuits, is it. Religion is the mother of sin. I like that. That’s Lucretius. You do keep occupied, don’t you. Books, papers, a griffin’s egg? You can’t manage without one of those. All the churches had griffin’s eggs hanging around. Hung them on the lamp ropes so the rats couldn’t get down and eat the oil. Exterior brown and hairy, white inside and the yolk a clear liquid. Tell them about the egg that Leda laid, and make them laugh.

  —My dear fellow, Basil Valentine said, approaching, with his arms extended (triceps, biceps, semi-lunar fascia all conscious). —this is enough, you know. You must . . .

  —Let me loose. Just give me a good book to read, and I’ll improve my mind while you’re out preaching. Here we are, Die Geschichte der fränkischen Könige Childerich und Clodovech. Christmas day, the year four hundred ninety-six, and Clovis is baptized in Rheims. A white dove flew down from heaven with a vial of holy oil for that express purpose. Did you know that? His wife converted him. Clotilda. That’s exactly what she did. She brought him round, in the middle of a battle. He gave up the sun for that. Mithra, the sun god, and Clovis threw him over. Why, even the Stoics believed the sun was animated and intelligent, and Clovis throws him over eight hundred years later, just like that. Why I remember, a child in church (the voice went on, as Basil Valentine gently guided the shoulders before him back toward the couch)—sitting reading the Pilgrim Hymnal. “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation,” my father reads out. “For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it,” we all shout back at him. “For Thou delightest not in burnt offering,” he goes on, “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise,” we agree.

  As the weight, at which Valentine was surprised, lowered to the couch, he noticed that the eyes before him were closed. —But what I remember is the countryside then, the brilliance of outdoors and outwindows, and the sunlight streaming through the lozenge shapes of glass, and we were locked away from it, locked inside to worship. And there was the sun out there for everyone else to see. Good God, tell me that Clovis wasn’t lonely at dawn. Tell me he wasn’t sick at the sunset.

  —But what is it? What is it? For heaven’s sake tell me, Valentine said, and his own shoulders quivered too, —instead of this . . . babbling, what is it? What is the matter?

  —Thank God you love people. Thank God you love people. Thank God you love people.

  —I?

  —But the night you caused that cab crash . . . why didn’t you go down and look. I’ve wondered. I’ve wondered.

  —Caused? I caused it?

  —As sure as Mother Shipton. Good God, are prophets guiltless?

  Basil Valentine sat back with his cigarette. He spoke with some strain, as though to convince and repress some part of himself. —If one pauses to enjoy vulgar satisfactions, you know, one loses sight of one’s objectives.

  The eyes were raised to him. —I know why you don’t like them. They have too many hands, is that why? For each heart there are ten thousand hands, is that it?

  —Precisely, Valentine said, and crushed out his cigarette, and stood. He walked toward the windows again, each step more composed, and each word, as he spoke, more calm. —Hands, hands, hands, he said. —Dirty hands picking things up, and dropping them, beautiful things, defiling them. Hands pushing, hands grabbing, hands outstretched, hands knotted up in violence, hands dangling in helplessness, hands . . . on you. He stood at the window, looking out on the city. —Hands . . . he repeated.

  —Yetzer hara, the evil heart, were Adam and Eve in love? What I mean is, do we only know things in terms of other things? Well then, I’ll die like Socrates, there’s dignity.

  —Will you now? Valentine turned his back to the window, though he remained there, and almost smiled. —A condemned felon. Do you think they’ll let you? He turned to the window again. —Hands dropping pennies at the newsstand, in exchange for a picture of a man strapped in the electric chair, the faces gaping over the papers in the subway until every car looks like a traveling asylum. Thick heads bent over the radio, waiting for the news that the switch has been pulled in the death-house.

  It was silent; and remained so some minutes. Basil Valentine stood looking out the window, as it was his habit when alone.

  —Tell me, have you ever fallen in love with someone already engaged away, and then won the beloved away from your rival? And then as time goes on, you begin to suspect that you look like him? Him whom you hated and found ugly.

  —No, my dear fellow, I can’t say I have, Valentine said, sauntering back to the couch.

  —Well, let me tell you what happened to me. When still a boy I read Novalis, and there was great appeal, you know. But after a few more years of study I understood the mistake I’d made, the romantic mistake I’d almost made, I saw eventually how Novalis had appealed to all the most dangerous parts of me, all the romantic and dangerous parts, so I settled down to extinguish them. After two or three years I emerged triumphant, to tell the truth quite pleased with myself, to be rid of all those romantic threats which would have killed me if they had taken me unawares. Thus cleansed, I went on in the rational spirit, easily spotted romantic snares and stepped aside. One day I picked up the work of a man named Friedrich von Hardenberg, and my rational mind became quite inflamed, with the logical answers to just the things I’d been questioning . . . since I’d turned my back on Novalis, and all he stood for.

  Valentine sat down. He tapped a cigarette, commenced to smile, and look up, and say, —My dear fellow . . . when the figure before him leaped from the couch.

  —Damn it! Damn it! Good God, can’t you see what I mean? When you see yourself . . . when you see yourself . . . The hands before him quivered in the air, the fingertips almost touching. Then one hand seized the other. —And you know you’ll do it again . . . and again.

  Before Basil Valentine could stand, he found himself alone. He held the unlit cigarette, tapping it with his index finger, and heard a crash in his kitchen, and footsteps, and the bathroom door. He paused only to light the cigarette, and then quickly picked up the loose newspaper-wrapped package, and his dispatch case as he passed the desk on the way to his bedroom. He’d got them both in the safe, and was back, standing before the windows, before he heard another sound.

  —They tell me there’s no scene in all Greek literature should make us more ashamed of our Christian culture, came in a calm voice behind him.

  —And they are right, Valentine said, turning, to see him sitting nonsens
ically on the empty marble top of the coffee table. —Now, my dear fellow, let’s be sensible, Valentine said, approaching. —You look better, a good deal better than when you arrived. Now sit down and tell me just what you propose to do with yourself.

  —Play The Stars and Stripes Forever and I’ll march up and down the room. Play the Thunder and Lightning Polka. I’ll dance.

  —What did you say to Brown?

  —I asked him, What’s laughter.

  —And I suppose he told you it distinguishes us from beasts.

  —He said, It makes the present. He said, it must be shared, and being so, makes the present. Laughter.

  —I imagine, Valentine muttered. —But . . . what did you and he . . .

  —We laughed. Brown and me, and that damned, congenitally damned . . . He sat muttering to himself, then he looked around slowly, and had begun to subside when something caught his eye. —What’s that? He half rose, pointing to a painting on a corner wall.

  —That? Valentine repeated, and smiled. —Valdés. Juan de Valdés Leal. You know him?

  —Where’d you get it?

  —It was among the worthless pictures that Brown got in that country house. I asked it of him, because we are such . . . friends.

  —And he gave it to you?

  —Of course. Since Brown was assured it was worth no more than twenty dollars, he gave it to me for fifty . . . Watching the eyes staring fixed on the Valdés painting, as though it recalled something, Valentine pursued calmly, —And now, getting back to work are you? Have you thought any more about that favor I asked of you? The Patinir?

  —It’s all over, he shuddered. —I swear, by all that’s ugly it’s done. But you . . . He’d suddenly begun pinching up rolls of flesh on the back of one hand. —Why are you doing this to me? he demanded without looking up. —When you know it doesn’t exist? to ask me to copy it? Like he . . . restoring an empty canvas, yes. He scratched me a bit, I’ll tell you. Until today, God! that damned table. God’s watching? Invidia, I was brought up eating my meals off envy, until today. And it was false all the time! He spoke with more effort than he had yet made to control his voice. —Copying a copy? is that where I started? All my life I’ve sworn it was real, year after year, that damned table top floating in the bottom of the tank, I’ve sworn it was real, and today? A child could tell it’s a copy, he broke off, wrenching at the folds of flesh and veins on his hand, and he dared look up.

  Valentine was watching him closely, the watery blue of his own eyes hardened, the narrowed lids sharpening interest into scrutiny: he saw what appeared as a weak attempt at a smile, but no more, a quirk on that face and it was gone while the voice picked up again, —Now, if there was no gold? . . . continuing an effort to assemble a pattern from breakage where the features had failed. —And if what I’ve been forging, does not exist? And if I . . . if I, I . . .

  —Perhaps if you could listen to me for a minute . . .

  —Listen! He was bolt upright, broken through by a shudder and left rigid there, as lightning freezes motion. —Do you hear? he whispered. Nothing moved. Valentine stared, until he saw the lips commence to tremble in sharp tugs, —two, three-four-five, sixseven . . . hear? you, you’re wearing the watch? hear it? racing with the clock, hear them racing? tick, tick-tick-tick, tick tick . . . there! the watch is ahead. Is it? listen!

  —Now really, if you can’t . . .

  —Listen! I say . . . And then he sank back slowly. —No, it’s over. You ruined it, interrupting. But didn’t you hear them? racing? Tick. Tick-tick. Zeno wouldn’t have, Zeno . . . what I mean is add one, subtract anything or add anything to infinity and it doesn’t make any difference. Did you hear? how they were chopping time up into fragments with their race to get through it? Otherwise it wouldn’t matter. But Christ! racing, the question really is homo- or homoi-, who’s who, what I mean is, who wins? Christ or the tortoise? If God’s watching, . . . Christ! listen, O my sweet gold! why were we born so beautiful? That’s why we’re here, an alchemist and a priest, without blemishes, you and I. It’s true? You’ve never seen a cross-eyed priest? an ordained amputee? No, never! By all that’s ugly, it’s done! He sat, pinching up folds on the back of his hand. —Now, remember? Who was it, “gettato a mare,” remember? an anchor tied to his neck? and thrown, caught by kelpies and martyred, remember? in the celestial sea. Here, maybe we’re fished for.

  Valentine muttered, —What are you trying to . . .

  —Making a mummy, but, what I mean is which came out first? the heart or the brain. Why, the brain with the optic lobes, pulled out through the nose by the nates . . . But the heart, didn’t come out till very late. He sat quivering, lips still moving over that last, —Very late. He paused; and then his lips scarcely appeared to move when he took up, —By the damned, I mean the excluded and . . . keeping the path to hell clean, to fool good people. Fished for? why, fished for . . . Have you read Averroes? What I mean is, do we believe in order to understand? Or understand in order to be . . . be fished for.

  Basil Valentine stood over him a moment longer, then shrugged, turned away, and spoke both humoring and impatient, —If you remember Saint Anselm, Credo ut intelligam . . .

  —Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s it! Flesh, remember? flesh, how thou art fishified. He’d jumped to his feet. —Listen, do you understand? We’re fished for! On this rock, remember? and I shall make thee a fisher of men?

  —Where are you going?

  —Philippi. Yes, the first . . . with Paul, to Philippi.

  —You’re not going anywhere. Sit down and tell me what you propose to do. If it’s a rest you need, there’s money.

  —Ish Kerioth bought a cemetery with his . . . thirty pieces, do? do? he went on loudly. —While there’s still time, we . . . follow our training, there’s no way out. I’ll go to North Africa, and tempt Arab children to believe in the white Christ by giving them candy. That’s accepted procedure. They’re prejudiced. They accept Him as a prophet of their own Prophet. That’s worse to fight than if they never heard of him at all. Charity’s the challenge.

  —If it’s simply some childish obsession with the priesthood . . . ?

  —And you? for you the priesthood is just, spreading damnation?

  —Nothing can be given, which cannot also be withheld.

  —By all that’s ugly . . . yes, if they had but one neck? Do you remember the seventeenth-century messiah Shabbetai Zebi, but . . . he faltered, backing to a doorway, —What’s that to do with . . . Dominus ac Redemptor.

  —What’s that? Valentine asked quickly, surprised, but he sat down.

  —Yes, Clement the fourteenth, his brief suppressing the order? Remember? I know . . . the Church must punish, to prove it has the power to punish? But you . . . you . . . ?

  —You remind me of a boy I was in school with, Valentine said quietly. —You and Martin. The ones who wake up late. You suddenly realize what is happening around you, the desperate attempts on all sides to reconcile the ideal with reality, you call it corruption and think it new. Some of us have always known it, the others never know. You and Martin are the ones who cause the trouble, waking suddenly, to be surprised. Stupidity is never surprised, neither is intelligence. They are complementary, and the whole conduct of human affairs depends on their co-operation. But the Martins appear, and cause mistrust . . .

  —There’s Lent! Martin’s? Martins? you killed him with much cherishing?

  —I was a syndicus then. Martin was below me. In such a school the first thing one learns is obedience. Not encouraged to think for one’s self, because one is not yet ready to do so. And you understand, one is encouraged to report the . . . breaches committed by others.

  —A spy system! ac redemptor, I know. And you! he cried out from the doorway where he stood. —For you, if you hate their hands, and you hate their faces, and you hate their suffering . . . and you a priest! You . . . you . . . yes, a pope . . . a pope’s . . .

  The telephone rang behind him.

  —Ici Castel Gandolfo .
. . A Mister Inononu calling the SS Basil Valentine . . . hurry . . . the forty days is almost done . . .

  Basil Valentine wrested the telephone from him, and he went through the doorway taking the lamp to the floor with him. The phone was dead in Valentine’s hand, but he stood holding it, staring in the dark.

  —The Triumphal Car of Antimony. Now I remember your name, Basil Valentine, the alchemist who watched pigs grow fat on food containing stibium, wasn’t it . . . you tried it on some fasting emaciated monks and they all died . . .

  Valentine dropped the telephone into its cradle, and the figure retreated before him, its back to the window.

  —And so they named it antimony, anathema to monks . . .

  Basil Valentine stood still in the near darkness, feeling every physical detail of his body, every one but his eyes; for the figure against the window was indistinct, its shape and size ambiguous, but for the eyes. —Preach to them, then, my yetzer hara, speak to them, then, my evil heart. While I fly like a piece of cloth on the wind, or the color itself, the street is filling with people like buttons in Galilee. Speak to the Am-ha-aretz, preach to them, pray. Tell them, as the composer predicted, there’s nothing left but knowledge and evidence, and art’s become a sort of tailbone surviving in us from that good prehensile tail we held on with then. Tell them that Peter died an old man, and right side up. Tell them that Mary broke her vows to go off with a soldier named Panthera, and wandered away to give birth to his son. Tell them, the ones who are conscious of what happens to themselves only in terms of what has happened to themselves, who recognize only things they have seen with their eyes, tell them the whole thing hangs on a resurrection that only one lunatic saw, one and then twelve and then five hundred, for visions are contagious, and resurrections were a stock in trade, and the streets were full of messiahs spreading discontent, that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist would both be arrested on the street today, and jailed, and for the same reason. Tell them the truth, then, that Christ was thrown into a pit for common malefactors, tell them the truth, then, not that power corrupts men, but men corrupt power. My yetzer hara, speak to them, preach to them, my evil heart, to the ones who look out the window and are not surprised to see the sun, burning itself out, ninety-three million miles away, the ones who dream of the dead and expect themselves to be dreamt of, the Am-ha-aretz, filling the streets and seeking authority and no further, write with a brass pencil on a clean tin plate, I A O, I A E, corruption is no more than knowledge that comes too soon, tell them of Atholl’s coronation with a red-hot iron crown, and of how the Egyptians burned red-haired men and scattered their ashes with winnowing fans, tell them of Justinian’s pavement made like an ocean and destroyed when the roof of Saint Sophia fell in, and of the son of the ruler of Cairo, Ibn Tulun, sleeping on an inflated feather-bed on a lake of quicksilver, tell them of Antiope and the goat, of Pasiphaë and the bull, and the egg that Leda laid to make them laugh if they’ll listen. The Am-ha-aretz, whose memories include nothing but their own failures, tell them their suffering belittles them, tell them that, my yetzer hara, tell the ones who trade only in false coin where they can buy clothes to wear when they are alone. That is all, and Gresham’s law, and Gresham’s law, and Gresham’s law for love or money. Go out among them and tell them that their nostalgia for places they have never been is sex, the sweating Am-ha-aretz, and when they hear music, tell them it is their mother, tell Nicodemus, tell him there is no other way to be born again, and again and again and again of a thousand other mothers of others-to-be, tell him, my yetzer hara, tell them, tell them my evil heart, that they are hopeless, tell them what damnation is, and that they are damned, that what they have been forging all this time never existed.