The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

—In his sermon speaking on the Druids. That is why the Druids made the oak tree the king of trees, because it was so often struck by lightning, and that was a sign of divine favor.

  —And when was the Pope of Rome struck by lightning?

  —The divine right of kings, have you never heard tell of that? You may ask the sexton.

  The Town Carpenter, who had been silent for some minutes, snared the word kings from somewhere, and lowered his eyes from the buck to find other, less dusty, glances directed toward him. —Kings, he responded, —second-hand kings and all sorts of useless people you find at it today. There now, just look at the way people travel today, they’ve no sense of voyages at all. I set off on a voyage myself a while ago, a voyage of discovery, you might say. The train was going a good sixty miles an hour and I got to my feet and pulled the emergency cord. You could see nothing at that speed. And do you know, they put me in prison? Yes they did, without a word of apology. It was in prison I lost these, he went on, motioning to his empty mouth. —I went to sleep, and the man in the prison with me, a dangerous man you could see in his eyes, he stole my teeth while I slept. Let him choke on them!

  —Do you know how he holds his temporal power, the Pope of Rome? the strangler demanded, having choked the blue lady dry while the Town Carpenter spoke, taking advantage, now, of the gap while the Town Carpenter drank. —Money from right here in America, money from right here in the United States is what keeps him in power.

  —Donations . . .

  —Donations! Do you think he heats his fine Vatican palace, all the eleven hundred rooms of it, with donations? For one thing, he’s sponsored by an American bread company, I know for a fact.

  —Go to a train station yourself, the Town Carpenter continued, pushing forward his empty glass, —or a bus station. Go to an airport and look at them, the miserable lot of them with their empty eyes and their empty faces, and no idea what they’re doing but getting out of one pot into another, weary and worried only for the comforts of the body, frightened only that they may discover something between now and the minute they get where they think they are going. There now, I’ve been to the airport myself, where the airplanes leave for Cairo and Damascus, and would you believe it to look at the people who go to Cairo and Damascus, the washedout faces, and you see them come in from Cairo and Damascus and do they look any different? They might have been around to the corner grocer and no more, from the look of them. What they can tell of Cairo and Damascus is no more than I can tell of my train trip, sixty miles an hour and no toilet in sight, that is what they know of Cairo and Damascus. He recovered his glass, full, and raised it.

  —Have you ever had trench mouth? asked the small man with beer. —At first I thought it was only a sore throat . . .

  —He signed a contract for fifty thousand dollars a year, I know for a fact. When he gives the Lord’s Prayer, now, every time he comes to the part about “give us this day our daily bread” he says, “Give us this day our daily slo-baked enriched oven-crust thinsliced . . .”

  —Ah, that’s a joke, an old joke, said the man farthest from the storm.

  —A joke! A joke, is it!

  —Trench mouth can be fatal, they say, if it gets into your throat and the glands you have in there . . .

  —I’ll tell you the truth now, the Town Carpenter went on, his voice resonant with this confidence, —they’ve never been to Cairo and Damascus. With all their tickets and their passports, and their fine luggage all stuck up with advertising, they’ve never been out of their own bathrooms. It’s so easy to go anywhere today, he said, and paused to look round, to see if any lips other than his own were moving, —that a fool can go anywhere, and it’s the fools who do. There are men who have been around the world a dozen times, and they’ve never discovered anything but one inconvenience and one belly upset after another. Voyages have lost their meaning, it’s so easy today, he finished, looking out over the top of the head of the small man with beer, whose eyes were on a level with the top button of his underwear, who said, —I should be in bed like the doctor told me, and no alcohol.

  Beyond the glass three figures, who had crossed the street to avoid the Depot Tavern, passed in the storm. —The Ladies, someone said.

  The Town Carpenter saw them too. —There they go, he said. —I offered to sing at their Christmas supper tonight at the church, a nice temperance song. The Toast. Do you know that one?

  —By the woes of the drunkard’s mother,

  By his children who beg for bread . . .

  he began in a low voice.

  —I wouldn’t dare go home now, said the small man with beer, gazing through the glass. —I’d catch my death.

  —A joke? said the man farthest from the storm, studying the blue woman upside down. —Do you know the one about the little nigger boy meets the Catholic priest on the street and he says, Hello Father. So the priest says, Did you call me Father? The little nigger boy says Yes Father and the priest says, Are you a Catholic? So the boy says, I’m a nigger, ain’t that bad enough?

  Everyone laughed but the Town Carpenter. He’d gone to the men’s room.

  —You’re carrying a dead body, the strangler retaliated, —and you ask him how much you owe him, and he says nothing. Is he dead?

  —I’m the kind of a man that likes to be a poodle, said the small man with beer, watching the Town Carpenter return with the dog which had followed him in there, and waited.

  —A poodle?

  —If I’m going to be a dog I want to be something I like. He took a temperate sip of his small beer, and turned to the plate glass. The wind had gone down, and the snow continued to fall. —Do you think the sun will ever shine again? he asked no one.

  The wind had gone down; and without its driving force the snow came on in residual particles, remnants of violence left moving loosely in the air, with no apparent direction. It had not settled heavily round the parsonage, because of the slight and exposed elevation, but every crevice and corner was packed as though the wind had come from every quarter in its brief paranoid career. The snow was packed round the dining-room window where, well inside, Reverend Gwyon’s face reflected the slight clearing of the sky with raised eyebrows. The dining table, where he sat resting both hands before him, was an oval to which leaves might be added to accommodate a dozen people, though no such need had risen in years. Just the reverse, in fact, might better have served the interests of economy implicit everywhere, not a penurious economy but “sensible,” sensible that is to waste, superfluity, extravagance, which might here have dictated that the table contract its surface even further, to the strict necessity of one man’s setting: and for another man than this, it might well have done so (considering the withering glances of most of Gwyon’s forebears, many of whom ate in the kitchen when alone, one of whom, long before the coming of the incandescent lamp, took his meals to a small upstairs closet, as its floor still showed, or the dour John H. (whose picture was nowhere to be seen) who, after he had reached his majority, was never known to eat indoors again). Not that Gwyon ever sat down to a groaning board, or ate with smörgasbord perambulation: there was seldom more than one monochrome dish at a time before him. But so much did his presence require this large open surface before him, that when he was joined at a meal he glanced up incessantly as though aware that the table was crowded, and, when his guest sat on his right hand, each time Gwyon turned his attention in that direction he would grip the edge of the table in the other, supporting the balance which this alien presence threatened, or sit staring straight ahead, steadying the thing with both hands planted flat upon it. So he sat now, muttering a steadying, —Hmmm, every few moments, and raising his glance like an eccentric weight, unsure where it would drop.

  The expletive outburst which had issued in a tone of alternate expectation of the right thing, whatever it was, and surprise, when it did not come forth, had stopped as suddenly as it began. Now only breaks and brief beginnings came from one part of the room and then another, from the corner where all Go
od works were conceived, to the low table under the window. —Superbia . . . Ira . . . Invidia . . . Avaritia, yes, there . . . “I would desire that this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I might lock you up in my good chest: O my sweet gold!” . . . do you remember that? I . . . well never mind, no matter. Covetousness, no matter . . . And the voice trailed off again.

  Reverend Gwyon exhaled, sniffed caraway.

  —Now, the priesthood . . . the ministry, I mean . . . yes, I heard about you, some time ago, John . . . John . . . what was it? He’d seen you, stopped in to see you, I mean hear you and then see you. A priest. John . . .

  Their eyes met across the room for an instant. —Yes, yes, Gwyon said dropping his eyes quickly, speaking in a tone of dismissal. —No weight to him at all. Claimed to be a priest. No weight to him at all. He paused, holding the table down. —No mystery at all, he added in a mutter. But movement brought his eyes up again, he watched the hands embrace one another, break, reach out, a small pitcher picked up, juggled between them and almost lost, put down with one hand as the other caught up a streamer of newspaper, with —What’s this?

  The newspaper clipping slid across the table. —Yes, that’s something I’ve been looking for, Gwyon said, reaching for it. —Some . . . figuring, a calculation.

  Written in the margin, in pencil, was this:

  —Yes, there, Reverend Gwyon said, getting hold of it. He put it face down on the table, and covered it with his forearm. His lips were working. He stared straight ahead through the window at the sky.

  Janet entered, to place two dishes on the table.

  —Here, what’s this? what’s this? Gwyon demanded, looking at them.

  —This is bread; and this is fish, said Janet, and raised her eyes across the table.

  —Fish? Gwyon repeated.

  —And bread, she confirmed, standing over the meager portion as though waiting for something to happen. Her upper gum lay exposed, forgotten.

  —Bring me some eggs, Gwyon said curtly. She stood there. Reverend Gwyon brought his head up sharply. A quick baffled look at the food on the table, and the figure standing over it, and Janet was gone. A bell’s tinkle followed, from the kitchen, and Gwyon clicked his lips at this signal of delay, fixing his elbows on the table as though to steady it while the figure beside him sat down.

  —Fish! . . .

  Gwyon shipped his oars; or sat, at any rate, as though he had done so, his hands drawn up before his face. There the fingers continued in agitated movement, dissembling the single persistent element in the variety of expressions passing over his face. Each expression embraced his features familiarly: each one was familiar to his face, but seldom had they followed one upon another in such swift succession, as the rate of his commutation between one past and another, the distant past and that more recent, increased; and the shocks of the present, those intervals when he was interrupted as he might have been changing vehicles, came more frequently. A gleam, however, persisted in Gwyon’s eyes, a look of keen attention which commenced to glitter with something near cunning each time he turned it surreptitiously on his obstreperous passenger, now hunched over the plate of fish, eating ravenously.

  Janet entered, bearing a single plate in her gloved hands. She was not looking where she put it down but straight across the table. The fish was almost gone. Reverend Gwyon lowered a hand and pushed the newspaper clipping aside to make room for the plate being lowered before him, noticing the clipping as he did so, recalling, —That food package, Janet? She said nothing; and Gwyon had to look up at her face to see her faint nod. Her face looked more blue than it did usually, for Janet had gone quite pale in the past few minutes. She went out saying, —There is no egg, over her shoulder, and left Gwyon staring into a plate of white navy beans.

  The fish was gone, and the outburst commenced abruptly with, —That cross, you know, that cross, I’ve always . . . but I mean just now I didn’t . . . The hand stopped in the middle of gesturing to the hall, where the cruz-con-espejos still lay on the floor.

  Gripping the table edge with one hand, Gwyon snatched at the newspaper clipping with the other. He was too late; and could do no more than watch it picked up as though the wind had got it, and spread it out on the air between them. On one side a little girl in long white stockings stared out obliquely from an indistinct picture, on the other, the sharp eyes of a man from under the even division of a shiny widow’s peak.

  —This . . .

  —That, said Gwyon, planting a hand on the paper as it fell back to the table, —is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all. Confession of her attacker, it says here. Why, this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. And this picture? taken when he was young of course, why this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso, a very respectable man in San Zwingli. I knew him there, Reverend Gwyon went on muttering, —years after the crime. Years after. His hand held the paper down flat on the table between them. —Years after, Gwyon repeated, hiding the marginal calculations with his sleeve.

  —Yes, but she . . . she . . .

  —She? . . . Gwyon looked up anxiously when he did not go on, to see him stopped, confused and preoccupied. It was a bone, in the last mouthful of fishmeat, and Gwyon’s own face twitched, watching him remove it.

  —But now, he went on more evenly, rid of the fishbone, —now I feel recovered. A lot recovered. Yes, here I am, he said, and though their eyes had caught one another’s at a number of angles, he now looked Reverend Gwyon full in the face for the first time. —And I . . . you must wonder what I’ve been doing, all this time?

  Gwyon lowered his eyes. He started to make a steadying sound, but was interrupted as soon as his voice broke in his throat; and so he began to eat the navy beans.

  —Yes, now here we are, and . . . because down there, things got confused down there, dreadfully confused. I couldn’t begin to tell you everything that happened, everything . . . I hardly know myself, except . . . I hardly believe it now, I hardly believe they actually did happen. And so I . . . well there, so I just left it all there, it was getting to be so unreal anyhow that it . . . and I . . . well here, here to go on from where reality left off, to recover myself, and . . . After all, it’s what I was trained for, and I . . . the ministry, a career with the times, in keeping with the times. He took a hand from the edge of the table to rub it over his face. —And all that . . . fabrication, there’s no reason to believe it ever existed, and she . . . that city? If I fell among thieves? Why, there are places more real, there are places in books, there are people in plays more real than . . . all that. It was turning into a . . . a regular carnival. With a quick look up from his plate, Gwyon saw him shake his head slightly, four fingers pressed to a temple, then he broke out with the same constricted laugh. —Yes, a carnival, remember? O flesh, farewell! and he jumped up so suddenly that Gwyon dropped his fork and got hold of the table with both hands, like a man grabbing for the gunwales in fear of capsizing.

  —But here, I feel like I’m being watched here. I always felt that way, but . . . secure, being watched. He paused in the corner where all Good works were conceived. —You’re watching me, aren’t you! He caught Gwyon’s glittering eye, and then turned toward the window, but did not reach it, he was stopped by the low table there and stared down at it. —It . . . you see? he said turning, and his whole face was softened in a sickly smile, —this . . . “in hell is all manner of delight” . . . he coughed, —when the Seven Sins pay a call? But no matter, his features drew tight again and he looked away. —Not now, he whispered.

  Gwyon, seated firmly, feet planted wide apart on the floor as though the hull were rolling, watched him standing there looking out through the glass. Outside the window, the snow fell in heavier smaller particles, at different angles to the earth, here in foreground from right to left, and beyond from left to right, not swirling but apparently on separate planes. There was a long pause before he spoke, more quietly, without turning from the glass, —And when the seed began to grow, ’twas lik
e a garden full of snow . . . do you remember that?

  Attentive as he was, Reverend Gwyon did not seem to be listening: all of his attention was in his eyes which, narrow and widen as they might with the expressions of his face, had not lost their gleam. Since the moment he had, as it were, almost tumbled into the tailsheets, he sat erect and more firm at the head of the table. His face, which had reflected coming forth from his own memory to the present, and then retreating to extreme confines of memory lying centuries beyond his years, now seemed to embrace them all in sudden intensity as he leaned forward.

  At that moment Janet came in with a sail of wrapping paper. —If Reverend will write their name on this, she said, reefing it, —for I cannot write foreign, and she handed over the stub of a black crayon. Subdued, with a quick look at the fishbones and not elsewhere, she took that plate in a square gloved hand and went out, leaving Gwyon staring at the wrapping paper, the concentration in his face gone as suddenly as it had come there. Then his hand came up slowly and plotted the words of address to Estremadura. His lips moved, and seemed to draw the clear even whisper across the smooth table to themselves.

  —And if beauty did provoke thieves, sooner than gold? The path I’ve come on, and you’d remember, here, how as an . . . ape to nature, I excelled. The path the foul spirits kept clean, but it’s over. By all that’s ugly, it’s done.

  Real Monasterio, Gwyon wrote, his lips moving, de Nuestra Señora de la Otra Vez, as the whisper came closer, and broke out in a voice over his head,

  —What’s this? Spain?

  —Spain? Gwyon repeated. He dropped the crayon stub, looking up, and his large hand trembled over the newspaper clipping.

  —Going to Spain?

  —It doesn’t snow there, Gwyon said lowering his eyes, until they fixed on the little girl in long white stockings. —But the cold, on the hill where . . . He shuddered. —That land! he broke out. —Damned, empty land, you’re part of it when you’re there. Part of it, that self-continent land, and when you’re out, outside, shut out, and look back on it, you look back on its emptiness from your own, look over its ragged edges to its . . . its hard face, refuses to admit you’ve ever touched it. He was staring blankly at the newspaper clipping.