The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

—Good night, good night . . . and I’ll pay you back . . .

  The wind from behind stood Otto’s hair on end, and blew along before him an empty tin can, throwing it bounding over spots of snow, jingling it over bare stretches of pavement, to hurl it lost among the mutilated shadows as he turned the corner into her street and saw that he was not alone. He cried out loudly though the other figure was close upon him: they both halted before the encounter, but Otto came on instantly. —Thank God you’re here, after all the . . . all that’s happened, and now . . . Yes everything will be all right now. I’ve been looking for you, I’ve been looking everywhere, I just went over to Horatio Street looking for you but there was nothing there, the whole place is burned down, and I should have come here, I should have come here first anyhow shouldn’t I, because you knew her, and she . . . you . . .

  —Where is she?

  —Where is she? why, she . . . she . . . why? Look, why are you looking at me that way? And what’s happened to you? your face, what is it? is it blood on your face?

  —Where is she?

  —You’re just looking for her? It’s . . . her you came for, then? His arms were moving in the dark as though he could scarcely keep himself upright in the thick gloom which seemed to have risen about them. —But I’ve been looking for you! he burst out. And then he did go off balance on the ice, taking a step back from the eyes which had penetrated him and emptied his face. —And she . . . he got out, recovering his balance with another step back, —I don’t know. I don’t know where she is, he said, and repeated it slowly, but as clear, —I don’t know where she is . . . hesitated, and stood still. And when he raised his eyes, looking east toward the hospital, he was alone in the street. The wind had gone down, and the still cold was unbearable. He stood numb, surrounded by ice, among the frozen giants of buildings, as though to dare a step would send him head over heels in a night with neither hope of morning to come nor heaven’s betrayal of its triumphal presence, in the stars.

  IX

  Vicisti, Galilæe.

  —Julian, dying words

  The sun rose at seven, and its light caught the weathercock atop the church steeple, epiphanized it there above the town like a cock of fire risen from its own ashes. In the false dawn, the sun had prepared the sky for its appearance: but even now the horned moon hung unsuspecting at the earth’s rim, before the blaze which rose behind it to extinguish the cold quiet of its reign.

  In the daylight’s embrace, objects reared to assert their separate identities, as the rising sun rescued villagers from the throbbing harmony of night, and laid the world out where they could get their hands on it to assail it once more on reasonable terms. Shapes recovered proper distance from one another, becoming distinct in color and extension, withdrawn and self-sufficient, each an entity because it was not, and with daylight could not be confused with, or be a part of, anything else. Eyes were opened, things looked at, and, in short, propriety was restored.

  Nonetheless, for here and there one drawing breath, with a conscious taste now letting it run to every sensible part, even as the daylight reinvested the furniture of out-of-doors with meaning, the rankling assurance, that is, that if it did not belong to one’s self it did at least belong to someone else, here and there breath stopped abruptly as the ear took up the hour, attention pinioned upon sounds, and left so, more distraught at each repetition as the church bell rang in sevenths, an unresolved tone which set the listening nerves alert, a-jangle, a lamed tone leaving lips open at ahh-, repeating ahh-, confirming desperately irresolute ahh- seven times and forsaken there, incomplete at the last, still waiting hymnal resolution in ahh-men.

  At that, several townsfolk summoned to mind their sexton, considered what he might know about bells in general, and how contrive toward setting this particular one to rights again; then, on second consideration, that he’d likely had something ingenious to do with its getting into this state in the first place, they pursed their lips and tried, with admirable Puritan fortitude, to put him out of mind until that time when he should be delivered from the extravagant snarl of his mortal coils, reckoning it, in all logic, a time not too far off, hoping it, in all charity, a race which he should win (for arrival at that glorious goal before him meant interment at his hands), and even now, in all good faith, quite unaware that that rescue had already been accomplished with all the intrepid serenity implicit in the Rescuer’s reputation for order, quietly and in darkness: never in fact suspecting such a thing, what with the industrious hammering and clatter from inside the church since dawn of the day before, as they stood now, listening, drawn-lipped at the windows, and here and there leveled their eyes upon the still unilluminated bulk of Mount Lamentation, and the still-to-be-fulfilled landscape of Christmas.

  Here and there they turned, to quietly ascertain that celebrated rubric on the calendar.

  It is true, when that red-letter day was done, and its wealth of bits and pieces pruned and grafted, embellished, and laid gilded and gelded to rest in those private rotting-rooms called memories where, after rearranging things and tidying up a bit, the townsfolk sat down again among the corpses of the past, inhaling, and waiting; true that, when peace was restored that evening, and no more opportunities likely for the vigorous intervention of what was, with consentaneous relief, referred to as the hand of God; true, that is, that by about eight that evening, when even the hand of God inclined to decorous retirement, a number of the more exotic accounts of the day’s main event, harried reports on the various epiphenomena, and exhibitions from among the souvenirs of the more dilapidated rotting-rooms, had shed their sources, and in currency gained credence.

  Concerning the Reverend himself, for instance, by noon it was rumored that he had once traveled in Italy, and by one accepted that he had stopped in Rome; by two, rumored that he had in Spain entered a Carthusian monastery as a novice, and by three confirmed; by four, that he had once dressed himself in rags, rented three pitiful children, and attended in a state of mendicant collapse before the steps of the Ritz hotel in Madrid; by five, that he had stood the entire town of Málaga to drinks, conducted the male population on an experimental hike out on the sea toward Africa, seeking One who should manage it dry-shod; by six, that he had indeed married himself to a hoary crone with bangles in her ears, proclaimed himself heir to the throne of Abd-er-Rahman, and led an insurrection of the Moors on Córdoba; by seven, a score of people were to be found who had seen him on the roof of the church mid-morning of the day before; and by eight, even the tale told by an unpalatable fellow (whose general attitude toward life was sketched in a tattoo on his right forearm, and who had never been seen at any community-supported center but the police station, much less the church), a tale in which that very morning the Reverend had been seen abroad without a stitch on, albeit within the confines of his own lawns and pasture, a tale which might have ended that night under the twelve-point antlers of the buck in the Depot Tavern but for the main event of the day, or, again, if the buck had survived, or, indeed, even the Depot Tavern been left standing, by eight even this tale had made its way into a number of respectable parlors, a rococo affair, adorned, by this time, with elements which many now suspected might be the truth.

  This fellow said that he was returning home (and a few suspected it right here at the outset, since he was known from the police blotter to reside at “no fixed address”) from work, as he referred to the nightly periods he spent in the abandoned bridge works sleeping off drink, when, as he did every morning, he passed the parsonage, where he had become used to the reassuring spectacle of the Reverend greeting the dawn from the front porch, with increasing vehemence, it seemed, as recent dawns coincided with the end of the working day. This morning, however, and in spite of the fine sunrise, the Reverend was not to be seen at his station. The night watchman went on to relate how, glancing back over his shoulder as he descended the hill, he discerned what appeared to be an impressively large and white figure in the branches of a tree, down near the barn, the carriage barn a
t the foot of the back lawn. He paused, understandably, to await the next development, as the figure in the tree appeared to be doing also; and within a minute’s time, the black bull appeared in the field below. The bull was readily enough identified; but it was here that the fellow’s story assumed such proportions that credulity was strained, even among those enough offended by subsequent events, or injured in the trial of strength which ensued before the morning was out, to cherish every word, for he detailed a chase, and a capture, of such heroic dimensions, that only a few here and there, whom the pagan curiosity of youth had led into traffic with myths, could summon images to approximate his description, and none could match it. For once caught round the neck, at which point the captor’s feet did, he admitted, leave the ground, he said that the bull was downed; and the more the time of the day passed, and the more he was given to drink, the more vociferously this fellow swore that he had seen the bull carried shoulder-high, and then dragged, by its hind legs, out of his sight, up the lawn toward the parsonage.

  With contumely masked as charity on the one hand, and charity proffered as indifference by the other, the church-going and the Depot Tavern’s public suffered one another at a distance, mutually exclusive, not, until that day, to say aloof (for by noon a few had crossed the line in both directions). And so, though a few gathered before the church that morning wore expressions of anxiety, on edge because of the bell which had been ringing the hour in irresolute sevenths since dawn, and even now called them to worship in the same breathless fashion, none was prepared for anything out of what, in extraordinary times, is called the ordinary. Of all the knot of soberly dressed children and somberly dressed adults, with here and there in the bright sunshine a voice like a tinkling cymbal, and another sounding brass, none even noticed from outside that the lozenge-shaped panes were boarded up from within; and none was prepared, upon entering, for the appearance of the interior of the church, though within a few minutes it was difficult to tell who was going in and who was coming out as they blocked the doorway describing the darkened place, the arrangement of the benches (for it proved later that a number of the pews had been hewn down to these modest proportions), the altar brought closer down with a gold bull figure mounted just out of a shaft of sunlight which struck from above. Still outside, a pale woman who never used scent, and so was highly responsive to such things, believed she smelled incense. And someone even noted the disappearance of the bronze tablet put up in loving memory of John H. —(an item never recovered, and, as far as that goes, never replaced).

  —Natalis Invicti Solis . . .

  A burly man (he proved later, in daylight, to be commander of the local American Legion post) had climbed up and commenced to tear a board from a window, but he lost balance at the sound of this stern and still gentle voice.

  —The birth of the Unconquered Sun . . . We are gathered here in the world cave before him born of the Rock, the one Rock hewn without human hands, in the sight of the shepherds who witnessed his birth, whose name signifies friend, and mediator, who comes with rest from sin, and hope beyond the grave . . . and offers the revival of the Sun in promise and pledge of his own . . .

  A number of people were trying to get out, and others to get in; but, whatever the rearrangement of the obscure interior, it became increasingly evident that at best it would accommodate only fifty or sixty, and even that number only if they were familiar with the three-sided disposal of the benches.

  —Transitus dei . . . the bull lies slain . . . and from the dying bull issues the seed of the world . . .

  Possibly the familiar authority of the voice held them silent at first, standing in contorted positions and here and there sinking down on the benches.

  —Cultores Solis Invicti Mithrae . . . gathered here wearied of the religions of the cities, the religions spoken of in the cities and practiced nowhere, the exhausted and pale, the frighted and forgotten, come before him who rewards for acts of piety more than he does for valor, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Truth . . .

  Someone said later that the voice broke and took up with the gentle rush of smoke from a boat gone under a river bridge.

  —We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, who has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, a God invoked by his own name.

  —We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, who is truth-speaking, a chief in assemblies, with a thousand ears, well-shapen, with ten thousand eyes, high, with full knowledge, strong, sleepless, ever awake.

  —We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of all countries . . . we sacrifice unto the undying, shining, swift-horsed sun.

  —For his brightness and glory I have offered unto him a sacrifice worth being heard, unto Mithra the lord of wide pastures.

  Later someone else said that here the voice quit and rose like the smoke of a train in and out of a tunnel,

  —May he come to us for help. May he come to us for ease. May he come to us for joy. May he come to us for mercy. May he come to us for health. May he come to us for victory. May he come to us for good conscience. May he come to us for bliss. He, the awful and overpowering, worthy of sacrifice and prayer, not to be deceived anywhere in the whole of the material world, Mithra, the lord of wide pastures.

  But by now, the sound which lay among them like a sound among stones, filling the cavern behind them, commenced to return in a murmur.

  —On whichever side he has been worshiped first in the fullness of faith of a devoted heart, to that side turns Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, with the fiend-smiting wind, with the cursing thought of the wise.

  The murmur rose, with the sound of an echo from a chasm, and started to disintegrate into separate voices. Someone said, —Just get hold of him . . .

  —With a sacrifice in which thou art invoked by thine own name, with the proper words do I offer thee libations, O most beneficent Mithra. Should the evil thoughts of the earthly man be a hundred times worse, they would not rise so high as the good thoughts of the heavenly Mithra.

  —Look out, be quiet . . . come on now, Reverend . . .

  —Should the evil words of the earthly man be a hundred times worse, they would not rise so high as the good words of the heavenly Mithra.

  —That’s enough of this . . . get hold of him, shut him up . . .

  —Should the evil deeds of the earthly man be a hundred times worse, they would not rise so high as the good deeds of the heavenly Mithra.

  The shaft of sunlight struck the gold bull figure showing a hand grasping the horns, again and again, to be interrupted above by a visage which broke it and eyes blazing with the suddenness of lightning, as the voice at each flash became thunderous, and they struck at the same moment,

  —To Mithra of the wide pastures, of the thousand ears, of the myriad eyes . . .

  —Look out! Get his arms . . .

  —the Yazad of the spoken name . . .

  There was a crash, and a howl of pain.

  —be sacrifice, homage, propitiation, and praise . . .

  Someone finally managed to wrench a board from one of the windows. With the light, everyone looked in different directions. The howl of pain had come from a man now on the floor, and pinned there under the weight of the holy water stoup, drenched, having knocked it over in assailing the altar where it stood. The bell started again, and someone managed to turn off the mechanism. Someone else reached a telephone, and called a minister in a nearby town, inviting, and then entreating, him to come and restore the occasion they had gathered to observe.

  Everyone looked in different directions; and afterward, outside, none of them could say for certain how the figure exhorting them had appeared, though two starry-eyed children turned nasty with one another over it, one describing Persian dress, and a turban, the other Assyrian, with a crown, becoming so vivid, indeed, that their schoolteacher, who was quivering nearby, confirmed that they had seen such pictures in a history primer the week before, though this did not deter their zeal for a moment.

  One person said he’d be
en taken to hospital; another, back to the parsonage.

  The brisk air was turning cold; and in the shelter of a clapboard buttress, where they’d already retired from the sun before the sky itself commenced to darken overhead, this rising chill embraced a small knot of ladies, uniting them so familiarly that they might have been the immediate source of it, and their voices the shocks of its emanation.

  —At our supper last night we never suspected . . .

  —Never imagined such desecration was taking place right over our heads . . .

  —I heard hammering . . .

  —Well I heard hammering.

  —I heard it too, but I never dreamt that something like this . . .

  —Something like this! . . .

  —I’ve had the feeling something like this was going to happen for quite a time now.

  —Since the last time he went away for a rest. When we all agreed that a rest would be best.

  —Ever since May . . .

  —Since May?

  —I’ve thought . . .

  —Oh May.

  —That was his last really Christian service. May’s funeral service.

  —How we have missed her.

  —How we have needed her.

  —How he has needed her guiding hand.

  —May would be eighty-three this month.

  —Someone ought to be notified. Someone ought to come immediately. Someone ought . . .

  —The son . . .

  —The son?

  —The son has been gone for such a long time. A prodigal son.

  —But he had no brothers. Poor Camilla . . .

  —Poor Camilla never was strong. Taken and left in foreign lands.

  —He wasn’t a strong boy. When he took sick . . .

  —The Lord did spare him.

  —The Lord did spare him to do His work. To follow right in his father’s footsteps. That is, of course . . .

  —His fathers six generations back.

  —To serve right here in his own community. The people he needs, who need him now.