The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —I heard you . . . Mr. Yák said next day. —I heard you in there last night. And now look at you, look at your eyes, you’re getting this French influenza like everybody’s getting, that ought to put you in bed a while and take care of yourself, see? Because in a day or two we’re going to bring it in, for the mummy, see?

  If she heard the heart pounding in the dark, or felt it shaking the whole frame she embraced, every beat splitting the head she held between her hands, the jaw rigid then shivering on gasps for breath, while every beat of the heart surged the flow more weakly and ebbed to withhold the life she drew forth, she gave no sign of knowing in the dark, the first time, the second, the third and her knee raised to manage gently insistent manipulation with her toes, to continue the rehearsal and then in a rush repeat the performance, no more sign than the animal trainer putting the sick dog through its paces.

  Two days later, when Marga had left for the country (a family wedding), Mr. Yák had his arrangements almost made. The párroco in San Zwingli was properly awed, the sacristán thoroughly intimidated, and Señor Hermoso Hermoso, convinced with such happy importance that he knew what was going on, had given up trying to find out. He had even at one point, and quite unwittingly, put Mr. Yák onto something most pertinent to the project, in a casual café conversation which turned to a local method for aging fine lace, a process Mr. Yák now considered employing to add some dozens of centuries to the linen bandaging, before it was finally baked on.

  —So what we want to do, we want to bury it somewhere, in the ground, see? Listen . . . are you listening, Stephan? How do you feel, you feel better? Listen, then what you want to do, you go there where it’s buried, and wet it down, see? You know what I mean, wet it down? I mean, like . . . like you stand over it and wet it down, see? You do that a lot of times, then you dig it up and hang it in the sun, and it’s got that nice yellow aged color that makes it look real old, see? You listening? Come on, get your head out of under the covers. You got to come out with me and buy this linen bandaging so we get the right kind. See? Come on. You feel better. You’re all well now. Come on, get your head out of under the cover.

  The mound on the bed shifted, but remained silent, and Mr. Yák leaned forward to put a kindly hand on what he believed to be a shoulder. There was a growl from inside.

  —Come on, you want to come out in the fresh air will do you more good than this here . . . Mr. Yák shook the mound, and the growl grew louder. Finally a cautious aperture appeared, with an eye behind it, and a clear voice said, —Go away.

  —Good. You’re not in a delirium any more anyway, Mr. Yák said, letting go the shoulder, and he sat down beside the bed, relieved. For these past two evenings, Mr. Yák had returned wearied enough with the work of the day, to the even more taxing demands of this friendship he had formed from the depths of what he could by now believe to have been the kindness of his heart. And just as there could be no doubt, after touching his forehead, but that Stephan had been ill, there was even less doubt of his delirium after listening to his conversation: Salamanders and Sylphs, and Mermaids, a regular Carnival, but wait, not carne vale . . . Ave carne! . . . Salve! . . . macte virtute esto! —Did you want me to end like Descartes, then? Larvatus prodeo, retiring to prove his own existence, and he kept a Salamander. She came to visit him like mine did then. But now . . . Copulo, ergo sum. Eh? Carne, O te felicem!

  And Mr. Yák had shaken his head, and muttered something about “that flashy piece of goods down the hall,” at which he was instantly threatened with blindness as happened to Stesichorus, —for slandering Helen.

  —What an affliction, Mr. Yák muttered, but to himself, and thinking of himself, not Stesichorus.

  —Why, proving one’s own existence, you’d be surprised what a man will do to prove his own existence? . . . pursued Mr. Yák out the night before, crossing himself. —Why, there’s no ruse at all that people will disdain, to prove their own existences . . .

  —Get some sleep, Stephan.

  —No ruse at all . . .

  Now, Mr. Yák gave up once more, with a glance up at the Andalusian love scene on Stephan’s wall, and returned to his own room where now hung the picture he had traded for it, Jesús del Gran Poder, which he had found leaning face-to against Stephan’s wall. He stood looking absently at the dark bowed head of Christ under the weight of the Cross, and, after a full minute, cocked his head at a sound in the hall. A moment later he found Stephan trying to slip out of the pension. He let him escape, followed, and then caught him up in the street below as though by accident. There they exchanged their usual contentious greetings, and Mr. Yák took him off to buy forty meters of linen bandage, on the promise that they go to a bar immediately after.

  The comradeship between these two men by now had something inevitable about it. They were in ways mutually dependent, and at constant cross purposes. The older man seemed interested in what the younger did only in order to disapprove of it; and the younger man’s total lack of interest in the elder’s activity only spurred that one on to redouble it. They seldom entered a bar together, but that Mr. Yák ordered two coffees, and his companion stood, restraining one hand with the other, until he could get one of them on a glass of wine, or, more frequently now, coñac. What is more, there were moments when they strongly resembled one another, though that, perhaps, was only in an expression round the eyes, a tense look, glittering with impatience, a sort of alert vacancy, ready for flight.

  Their pursuits were by now so mysterious to one another that neither showed surprise at anything the other did or said, each, in fact, depending more and more heavily on the other for encouragement, an arrangement somewhat similar to that magic formula of modern marriage, whose parties are encouraged by disapprobation and disinterest respectively.

  Their present careers were reaching the first peaks at about the same time: just as Mr. Yák was ready to bring his purchase from the rural cemetery into town and commence actual work on it, his partner had passed the last lap on a Marathon of drink, and appeared to be scaling the heights beyond.

  —What’s that spilled on the lapels of your coat like that? Mr. Yák demanded, catching up with him at one point.

  —I’m learning to drink from a bottle with a spout, you don’t touch it to your lips. Getting it up there’s easy enough, it’s when you try to stop that it gets on you like this.

  —What’s that, those marks on your shoulders?

  —That’s from sliding down between the casks.

  —You don’t want to spend money like this.

  —You told me it’s so dirty it’s unhealthy to carry around.

  —Why weren’t you in at supper tonight?

  —Not after that gray artichoke. And that woman at our table, I can’t tell whether she’s crossing herself or fixing her napkin, it goes on all the way through the meal. And that woman at the next table, suckling the baby.

  —What’s the matter with that?

  —Nothing the matter with it, it just takes my mind off the bread soup.

  —You’re not mixed up with some woman now, are you?

  —What’s the matter with women?

  —I got nothing against them, it’s just that no one of them can last a man his whole life.

  —Good God! What, do you think I suggested that?

  —No, but they will. I never knew a woman yet that the minute she came into the room I wasn’t waiting for her to leave it. Try getting married some time. I even had a wife once myself.

  —What did you do with her?

  —I tied the can to her. What do you think I did. Listen, tell me something . . .

  —The joke about the five Jones brothers? Have you heard that? Los cinco-jones? . . .

  —We got work to do, why do you get drunk like this?

  —Well I’ll tell you, I have five monkeys in my stomach and four chairs in my head, do you know that one? The first coñac and one monkey goes up and sits down. Second glass, another one goes up and sits down, the third . . .

  —Li
sten . . .

  —The fourth . . .

  —Listen . . .

  —And when the fifth monkey gets up there, there’s no place for him to sit down, so . . .

  —You’re picking up the language? Where.

  —Marga taught me all I know. That’s love. Or say, I’m encoñado.

  —What’s that encoñado?

  —That’s a local invocation to call men into bed.

  —Where do you think you’re going now?

  —I’ll go to sleep if I can. If I can’t I’ll go down and dance with the gypsies.

  —You keep away from them down there. Tomorrow . . .

  —Good night.

  —Tomorrow . . .

  But Mr. Yák was restless. It was barely eleven at night, and a good deal of noise came to him from Alphonso del Gato below. He went out alone for coffee.

  The streets were thronged with people very different from those of early morning, the girls and old women in black, the line before the charcoal seller’s. But the cries were the same, —Cien iguales me quedan! . . . Cien iguales para hoy! . . . The sound of English in the street was startling, a blond boy on the arm of a man, —But I’m not even sure where Spain is . . . A tall woman passed, speaking to her husband, —I’ve gotten used to poverty by now. —You mean other people’s? —Yes, it doesn’t bother me at all like it did, remember when we got here yesterday and I was giving money out everywhere? . . .

  Mr. Yák found he had walked in a large circle, and returned to the Villa Rosa. He entered its Moorish interior, ordered coffee, looked sharply away from two girls, and was raising his cup when he heard something familiar from a room down the back hall. It was La Tani.

  He found Stephan presiding at a juerga. There were bottles of wine on the table, three people were eating, a man was tuning a guitar, and the girl on Stephan’s knee smiled uncertainly at Mr. Yák. Now, if Marga had put him off, Pastora stopped him dead. Her coarse black hair stood out round her dark face. And her large and dark eyes were gravely excited. They shone with a strained surprise, reflected in the face so close there, and she turned them up with something fierce and proud in them. Her teeth were large, her nose slightly flattened, and her shaded upper lip was curled in what, on another face, might have been a pout, but here lay tinged with ferocity, suggesting the savage gifts her voice assured, and her quick simple movements confirmed. Her faded cerise blouse had pulled out of the skirt whose zipper was apparently broken, as was one of the straps on her high-heeled sandal, and she could not have been more than nineteen. From the hostility of the smile with which she greeted Mr. Yák’s intrusion, her acquaintance with the man whose neck she got an arm round now was apparently not too recent.

  —How long have you had this one? Mr. Yák demanded, sitting down. She watched him mistrustfully, understanding nothing but the tone in his voice, and sulked miserably when she was put down. —I see you still got your diamond ring, anyway, Mr. Yák said.

  —Es un amigo tuyo? Pastora brought out, her voice harsh, uncertain.

  —Tell her, she wants to know if I’m a friend of yours, Mr. Yák challenged. —Come on, what are you grinning about, you that drunk already?

  —Krishna seduced sixteen thousand maidens.

  —Listen, tomorrow . . .

  —You’ll believe me if I tell you . . . Krishna was the sun, and they . . . they were dewdrops.

  —Tomorrow we’ve got work, do you hear me? You don’t want to do this, you don’t want to let yourself go to hell like this, do you hear me?

  —No, he whispered, leaning abruptly over before Mr. Yák’s face, —It’s just the other way, he whispered, looking up craftily at Mr. Yák’s eyes. —Have you ever heard of the . . . I am . . . encoñado, and she . . . she’s acara . . . acarajotada, un . . . understand? Known in vulgar English as . . . as being in love, understand?

  —I’m not going to stand by and see a tramp like this . . .

  —They let the path stay dirty, you . . . you see? To fool people, to fool reasonable people, like you. But I . . . I . . . His head swayed, and he blinked his eyes in Mr. Yák’s face. —See? he managed to add. Pastora got up suddenly, and stood beside him. The guitar broke a chord at the other end of the table. Someone there commenced to clap. Pastora put a hand on his opposite shoulder, nearest Mr. Yák, all the time watching Mr. Yák with animal alertness, even as he stood and reached to dislodge her hand and help his friend away.

  —Déjame! she snarled across the sunken shoulders, and then in her hoarse whisper, —Déjale! . . . sounding that j with the guttural intensity of the Arabs’ .

  —Hoy los nobios se van a casar . . . someone at the end of the table began singing. Mr. Yák withdrew his hand slowly, and lowered his eyes to the figure slumped at the head of the table, where he stared for a moment while Pastora watched him and did not move. Then he looked sharply up at her. —Ten cuidado, he said, warning her, and before she could answer he turned away and was gone, past the diners, the guitar, the bottles, the heels, the singer’s —No sale la cuenta porque falta un churumbel.

  Pastora, at every instant with him as near to joy as to woe, waiting to be told, for joy to burst over her at the slightest assurance, despair at the first slight, tears of helpless anger at indifference, recovering in surly contempt, but still waiting to be told, —Me quieres? She with nothing of her own, not even her words but in question, until forced to cry out at last, —Yo te quiero y tu no me quieres.

  They kept on there until the wine was gone. Then she lit one of the harsh yellow cigarettes and put it to his lips. —Vámonos . . . Esteban! Vámonos? . . .

  At night, —Vida! . . . Cielo! . . . no termina . . . mi vida! And still in the dark, and in fun so she means it to sound, —Vamos hacer un niño! . . . gone unanswered, Pastora listening in the dark, no answer but the sound of the bed and she goes limp through her thin body under the steady silent weight, or a hand at the brown nipple of her small breast, and flings up her arms to pull the weight closer, her head back, sobbing, sobs shaking her occupied body and that part so full, still unfulfilled, forgotten for this anguish, her face wet, turned away from the silent lips she has drawn down to her, waiting, to cry out at last, —Me quieres? . . . Díme lo, aunque no es verdad! . . .

  Pastora woke alone in the damp bed, the sheets twisted, to call, —Esteban? . . . and hear nothing but her own breath in the dark. She got up naked and opened the inside shutters, and daylight separated the louvers of the outside. A blanket and her skirt lay on the dirty worn tiles of the ground floor. She put on her slip, her skirt, her shoes, shook the pitcher, found it empty, called loudly for water, and when it was brought she poured some in the basin, rinsed her face, wet her hair, and combed its coarse strands down with a comb from her purse. On the table by the bed, as she put on her blouse, she found an empty Ideal packet, and another one-hundred peseta note.

  Mr. Yák was out of bed and dressed before his morning coffee was brought. He did not wait for it in fact, but locked his room, tapped at the door down the hall, opened it and found the room empty, and interrupted a girl on a trip with two chamber pots down the chill front passage. She opened the front door for him, smiling, —Vaya Usted con Diós . . . and he went out, down the stairs and into the street, his hair square on his head and his mustache set stiff with purpose.

  He passed the blind boy with the lottery tickets pinned to his coat, the line of women in black, before the charcoal-seller’s, children carried by bundled like Eskimos, men in bedroom slippers, cloth hemp-soled shoes, berets, mufflers drawn over the chin, capes out of Goya across half the face. The sound of English in the streets was startling: the same tall woman passed, pointing to a tattered old man before her, —Now there, I want some sandals like those, see them? —Those aren’t sandals, mumbled her husband beside her, —those are his feet.

  Mr. Yák made a circle, looking in at every bar and café, from the Puerta del Sol back down the Calle de Atocha. It grew later, and his expression of impatience became more stern, entering the Plaza Tirso de
Molina, watching, listening for La Tani, he stopped in at Chispero’s for coffee, still searching every face for the one he sought, searching faces as though the great city were a perpetual masquerade, where every face, like his own, hid another, so that at last it was not that specific square face knotted about the eyes in mild surprise that he sought, but familiarity to emerge from this world of shapes and smells, the amber color of Genesis coñac, the green of the bottles, the fixed stare of the silver fish on the bar, the smell of oil, dark squares of fried blood on a plate, shreds of liver, the seat of the emotions roasted, cut up, served beside the tall stemmed glass, waiting, watching for familiarity to emerge from this world of shapes and smells, clad against the cold reality of the outside in the yielding armor of drunkenness. An elderly man stood against the wall opposite, drinking coffee beneath a picture of Adelita Beltrán who would appear later on the stage inside, to dance, pounding her heels, brandishing her skirt to La Sebastiana, to sing La Zarza Mora, and Mr. Yák looked away from the old man quickly, aware that the resemblance he had sought and found in that face was his own. The coffee in his glass floated yellow globes of oil at the rim, and he drank it down and went out, pressing at his mustache with two fingertips.

  It was not in a bar that he finally did find Stephan, but standing unsteadily outside one, a place called La Flor de mi Viña, where a car had just run over his foot, slowly, nudging him insistently from behind like a clumsy animal sidling up, leaving him with that expression of mild surprise confirmed in his face. And the only reason a policeman appeared was that one happened to be passing, and a handful of unoccupied people had set up a clamor. It happened so slowly. That gentle nudging might have been one of the burros that stand harnessed to trash carts in the streets of the city. The policeman was very polite, as Mr. Yák appeared, rescued his friend and set off with him in the direction of the Estación del Norte, walking briskly not speaking after his first reproof, —What did you want to tell the cop you’re a . . . what did you tell him? A Pelagian? . . . he just wanted to know what kind of a nationality you are, can’t you just say swisso? What if he asks for your Pelagian passport? Have you got your passport on you? What if I didn’t come along just then? The day was heavily overcast, and they walked on without looking up at the even unchanging gray of the sky. —How long you expect to keep this up, anyway? Mr. Yák muttered, expecting no answer, and he got none. They’d walked some distance before he commented, —This place is getting on both of our nerves.