The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —That’s t.b., they got a lot of t.b. here. The kids especially. Now listen, when we get into the station . . . Look out! Look what you’re doing! . . . Mr. Yák bent down so fast he almost fell. —You throw your cigarette on her feet like that, she’s liable to go up in a cloud of smoke. See? When he straightened up from blowing the ashes away, he went on, —Now from now on, we’ve got a lot of work to do, see? And you got to settle down now and be more . . . more serious, see? All this drinking, and these girls, you want to forget all that, you’re not a bum. All that kind of thing, he continued, with no response, —it’s a waste, it’s sinful, living like that.

  —Yes, I know. I know . . .

  —What? See what I mean? It’s sinful.

  —I know.

  —See? And if you go on like that . . .

  —But . . .

  —What? . . . See? What fun is it.

  —But . . . it’s not the sin itself that’s what is . . . Good God . . . the voice went on dully, and distant, —staggering into one after another . . . and then . . . and lying in the dark knotted up in wet sheets, and . . .

  —See? What good is it? Mr. Yák demanded, leaning across and resting an elbow on the brittle lap between them for the moment before he realized it, then he drew up, —it’s always the same, isn’t it, so why do you want to do it again.

  —Yes, but . . . it’s not the thing itself, it’s not sin itself. It’s never the thing itself, it’s always the possibility that . . . It’s always the prospect of sin that draws . . . draws us on.

  Mr. Yák straightened up from his strained position, peering round the back of the head as he’d been doing, trying to reach the face if only in its reflection against the black surface of the night. —See? he confirmed. —After awhile you get tired of it, after awhile you get to the place where it doesn’t satisfy anything inside you like. You get to the place, he went on, staring at the shivering floor, —where no matter how much you’ve got mixed up with all kinds of the wrong things, that they don’t gratify you any more to do them, see? So then you have to kind of look up, and look for something bigger. See? See what I mean? He looked anxiously up at the window.

  —Yes but . . . if you’ve done things . . . if you’ve done things to people, and they . . . and you can’t atone to them for . . . for what you’ve done . . .

  —No, you can’t! You can’t! . . . not to them, but you . . . if you’ve like sinned against one person then you make it up to another, that’s all you can do, you never know when you . . . until the time comes when you can make it up to another. Like I once . . . this woman, I . . .

  They paused, rocking together all staring in different vacant directions of the past.

  —What?

  —Nothing.

  —What woman?

  —You . . . Mr. Yák jerked his head up, to see only Mr. Yák’s face on the glass. —I’m going out to the gents’ a minute . . . He faltered a pause in the door to the corridor. —If anybody comes in to sit down, you want to kind of talk to her, see? . . . Then the door slid closed, and he left them together, steadying himself down the corridor like an old man.

  Almost immediately, lights appeared in the darkness outside, moving past the windows slowly, lights so dim that they seemed to do no more than illuminate themselves. The train stopped.

  —Well I would have thought the name of the town was Urinarios, a tall woman said getting on, —it’s the only word you can see on the station out there. She stopped while her husband opened the door of a compartment, and they went in. They sat down side by side, and she stared at the couple sitting side by side across from them. —So much smoke, she whispered to her husband. He offered her a cigarette. The train started. —And if we ever go all the way to a town like that again, if you could call it a town, just to see a church or whatever it was . . . I don’t see how you ate a bite of that lunch. You’ll regret it too, she added, trying to arrange her feet round the wrapped legs stretched before her. The spike of her heel caught the edge of the shawl, and she gasped. At that, the man across from her appeared to recover some long-lost consciousness, and he did so with a wild light in his eyes, darting down as though he were going to grab the tall woman’s feet and pull her off her cushion. But he very busily brought the ends of the shawl back where they’d been wrapped, and then, lighting a ferocious-looking yellow cigarette, started chattering to the hooded figure beside him. —Díme lo, he said, —aunque no es . . . díme que tu me quieres, aunque no es . . . The tall woman cleared her throat, drew her feet together carefully, managed a prim smile across the way, and gripped her husband’s arm. —Let’s get out of here, she whispered, —this . . . She stood, straining her smile, sustaining it until her husband was up, fomenting it with embarrassment of being polite, whispering, as the door slid open, —And my God! . . . did you see her face? —Syphilis, her husband said, —they’ve got a lot of syphilis here, even in the children, it’s inherited . . . as he closed the door, and Mr. Yák, coming down the corridor behind him, opened it and entered.

  —Who was that? he asked, seating himself, squaring his hair as he did so.

  —I told you, people . . . people will disdain no ruses, no ruse at all to prove their own existence.

  —Listen, you . . . But Mr. Yák found that he was again speaking to the back of a pair of shoulders, and he wilted back.

  —Good God, the desolation of that place, that station we just stopped at. The window again held off the black surface of the night.

  —I feel like we been riding on this thing all my life.

  —Yes, yes that’s it, that’s it, you know? It’s like . . . like being at sea. Somebody’s said that going to sea is the best substitute for suicide. Why, in this country . . . in this country . . .

  —Suicide? . . .

  —Look, what if we’re caught?

  —With this? Mr. Yák shrugged. He had recovered his composure.

  —No, I mean . . . whatever you . . . whatever we’re . . . wanted for.

  Mr. Yák looked up quickly, to see him turning back to the window. —What’s the matter, you scared now? he said, and then repeated, —Wanted for?

  —Yes, I . . . I am. I am scared.

  —Sometimes I think I ought to have gone to Brazil. But that’s the thing, a place like that, Brazil, everything’s too new, what you want to do, you always want to go to the mother country of the place you maybe should have gone to . . . His voice tailed off. He had recovered his composure, but he looked weary, and older, jouncing back against the seat cushion, his hair slightly crooked on his brow, staring vaguely straight ahead, and the shaking of the train kept him nodding thoughtfully. —But now you go one place, and then you go somewheres else . . . His own tone was vague now, as he turned his attention to the reflection in the glass.

  —Sail on, sail on, like the Flying Dutchman. Why good God, in this country . . .

  —Who?

  —It was Herr von Falkenberg, sailing without a steersman around the North Sea condemned to never make port, while he and the Devil played dice for his soul.

  Suddenly they were face to face, and Mr. Yák found the hand mounting the two diamonds clutching his wrist. The eyes he stared into were burning green, the face even more knotted than that first day he had seen its confusion in the cemetery, and the voice more strained with desperation. —Why, in this country you could . . . just sail on like that, without ever leaving its boundaries, it’s not a land you travel in, it’s a land you flee across, from one place to another, from one port to another, like a sailor’s life where one destination becomes the same as another, and every voyage the same as the one before it, because every destination is only another place to start from. In this country, without ever leaving Spain, a whole Odyssey within its boundaries, a whole Odyssey without Ulysses. Listen . . .

  —You . . . anyways, Mr. Yák interrupted, trying to break away from the eyes fixed on him and even to withdraw from the hold of the hand he had sought so many times, —anyways you couldn’t drownd on the land.
/>   —You couldn’t! Well it’s . . . it’s like that. It’s like drowning, this despair, this . . . being engulfed in emptiness.

  The grip on Mr. Yák’s wrist quivered with intensity, as did the eyes and the whole face as though waiting for some answer from him. Mr. Yák broke the hold of the eyes, lowering his own to the hand there, and the diamonds glittering over the flat lap which separated them. —What you’d want to do maybe, he commenced, —you might like go to a monastery awhile, you don’t have to turn into a monk, you’re like a guest there, you . . . he filtered, staring at the hand, and the two diamonds, —you . . .

  —Do you want it?

  —What?

  —This ring, this diamond ring? It’s yours. It’s yours now, if you want it.

  Mr. Yák snatched his arm away and almost lost his balance. He looked helpless for a moment, and then managed to say, —No, no I . . . I didn’t ever want it off you . . . He looked away from the hand there, to several places before his eye stopped at the extended feet between them, where the shawl had come off again, and there he bent down to pull it together. —We can get down to work now, he said from the shaking floor, —and then, when you have your work everything is . . . He was trying to knot the ends of the shawl, but it kept coming undone. He heard his own voice speaking with the tone of another, —And then all the love you’ve hoarded all your life, for your work . . . listen . . . His hands were shaking, and he could not make the ends meet to knot. —Have you got a knife, so I could cut this thing and tie it? Still he did not look up, aware that the figure was standing over him steadily on the shifting floor, and the square hand held a penknife before him. He reached up for it, raising his eyes at the same time. —Listen, he said, —listen, did you . . . really kill? . . . did you really kill somebody?

  The train jolted, and he lost his balance on the floor. —Look out! Look out for her!

  They were in Madrid.

  In the railway station, what they wanted to do, according to Mr. Yák, who was moving and muttering like an old man talking to himself, they didn’t want to be in any big hurry, and they didn’t need to act suspicious pretending they were having an easy time with their charge, —because if people think you’re having any trouble then they don’t bother you, they try to look the other way. Except here, he added, annoyed, looking round the station. —They’re better in New York that way, here somebody’s just liable to try to help you out, that’s because they’re used to old people here, in New York they pretend they don’t know there’s such a thing . . . and he went on muttering, in time with his shuffling steps, when his words were no longer distinguishable.

  Near the luggage check-room, they paused and Mr. Yák said, —Wait here, I’ll get a cab. We can’t carry this all over town like this. His eyes darted about as he spoke, and then he muttered, —All these cops, these Guardia Civil . . . and he hurried away.

  He was in more of a hurry, his eyes still jumping from one black patent-leather tricorn to another as he avoided the Guardia Civil, when he returned. He was in such a hurry, in fact, that he went right past the woebegone couple standing against the wall near the luggage room. A moment later he returned, looking more harassed, glanced up, away, and stopped dead. He turned his head slowly, to see the patient shawl-wrapped figure standing right where he had left her, but now she was waited upon, at a respectful distance, by a creature not much taller, apparently not much younger, and despite his activity, in an inferior state of repair. The numbered metal tag on his dirty cap shone like a diadem in the battered crown of this martyr to unkemptness, and identified him as one of that villainous horde who, for a nominal fee, will spare no effort in making the first moments of the traveler’s arrival in these capitals a faithful foretaste of the worst possibilities for helplessness, confusion, misery, anger, blasphemy, and acute hatred, that may lie ahead. A single tooth appeared and fled from sight in the midst of the dirty field of stubble on his chin, pursuing words which leaped out the more exhilarated by Mr. Yák’s incredulous approach. He had a strap for binding the handles of bags together, and this he waved in the air, spurred on, and still held to his proper distance, by the stiff reserve of the figure he was regaling.

  Braving the threat of the flail, Mr. Yák stepped between them, put a dutifully protecting, and steadying, arm round the shawled shoulders, and with something near his last bit of energy turned to face his opponent who, far from being daunted, was carried to new heights of clamor by this doubling of his audience, and did not stop until he gasped for breath. It turned out that the Señorito who had stationed him here had, upon leaving, instructed him to talk to her, —la vieja . . . and he indicated the silent shawled figure with his strap, should anyone approach. And the Señorito had gone? —Sí Señor. Where had he gone? —Yo no se, Señor, yo, mira Usted . . . That riot of gestures proclaiming a triumphantly total lack of responsibility for the vagaries of others commenced again; and it was some time, and with some effort, that Mr. Yák learned the police were on the lookout for someone, —Un extranjero, entiende, un norteamericano, sabe Usted . . . —Per ché? —Claro, mira Usted, un norteamericano . . . —Por qué? Mr. Yák demanded, gripping the shoulder he supported, mumbling, —Why? . . . what . . . ? . . . for murder? —Claro que sí, Señor, un falsificador, m’entiende? Un norteamericano, sabe Usted, un falsificador . . .

  —Falsi-ficador . . . Mr. Yák mumbled, repeating it, —but . . .

  —Sí Señor, mira Usted . . .

  It turned out that the Señorito had asked the same question, and fled directly he got this same answer, leaving this mozo behind, to chat with her, —con la vieja . . . all of which the mozo had accepted, apparently, without it ever occurring to him to wonder about the Señorito, and his sudden flight, any more than it might occur to him to question the Señor whom he was serving at this moment, so used was he to the transient rewards of blind loyalty, and a life sustained by a blind faith in the innate depravity of human nature. And now he stood, wadding the first five-peseta note he had seen for some time into the depths of the only whole part of his pants, while he held out his other hand for another, leering at Mr. Yák from a face which only the heritage of centuries of ignorance could redeem, for there was enough guile in it to rule an empire.

  It was like a night at the fall of the year, a chill borne on the air in light rain, out where the mozo installed the elderly couple in a taxicab, which looked, and set off, like something the age of all three of them and the driver together, a Renault fitted with a charcoal burner, whose few undefiled surfaces might still maintain, in strong daylight, that they had once been painted red. Heaving and shuddering, this intrepid equipage passed the wet palace gardens and the palace itself, picked up speed and careened past the Opera, toward the center of the capital, that storied arena the Puerta del Sol, once a gate of the city opened on the rising sun.

  In spite of his weariness, Mr. Yák managed to introduce his guest into the Pensión Las Cenizas unnoticed, down the dim passages and to his own room, which he locked and hurried to tap on the door down the hall, though he could see from the frosted glass panel it was dark. Past ten o’clock, he went to the dining room, dipped two spoonfuls of the garlic soup taking his usual care to avoid the sodden chunks of old bread afloat there, though he needn’t have bothered for he didn’t eat the soup, but just looked at it until it was taken away and four dead fish, gripping their tails in their burnt jaws, appeared, and he got no further than breaking one of the warped spines with his fork. The woman beside him was busy with her napkin, or crossing herself, it was difficult to tell which, and he looked away, crossing himself surreptitiously a moment later, for he’d forgot when he sat down, the first time since he could remember. And then a new guest entered, looked uncertainly about, and was seated at the empty place across the table. He was a stout man, and he filled his bowl with the garlic soup, whose thin surface reflected in orange-colored globules, and set immediately to eat. Mr. Yák looked up, to his left where a mirror on the sideboard had so often reflected the vivacious dec
orum of blond hair and the blue angora sweater that it was empty now as though it could contain no other. Then his eyes came down to the nursing mother, half his age, and he stared at her full breast. The man across the table finished his soup, sat back, and the sounds from inside him, like huffy pigeons in the open, brought Mr. Yák round, and to his feet. Without repeating his usual courtesy to the diners left behind, he hurried out, down the chill corridors, past his own door, to the dark panels beyond, and he opened that door without knocking, and reached above him until he caught the string on the light.

  It was not the bright bare bulb he was accustomed to in his own room, but dimmed with the translucent paper wrapper from a coñac bottle. Atop the armoire there was a small forest of bottles, transparently green with emptiness. Its long mirror endlessly reflected one smaller, across the room over a single-spigot washstand, where a glass stood corroded with unfinished coñac whose smell hung in the room, rose to the molding of plaster garlands round the high white ceiling. Above the silvered bed (—a regular whorehouse bed, he’d called it himself once), the Andalusian maiden coquetted over her balcony and the shoulder of him in the guitar’s embrace, hung at length across a faded vertical space where Jesús del Gran Poder had made way for her. Then noticing the cold radiator he remembered he’d meant to ask the dueño to put a brazier in here. He stepped from the carpet, a piece gray-blue and orange cut by the yard laid here on the uneven lengths of flooring, to a wicker table where a wicker chair with a red and black Indian-style cushion was drawn up, an empty coffee bowl and a stump of bread before it, and stepping, his foot rolled on something, and he stooped to pick up a .32 cartridge. It lay in the palm of his hand, the rim of the case cut in for use in an automatic pistol, and he weighed it there with a confused expression on his face, an expression which he snorted away as he pocketed the cartridge and returned to the table. A half page from a book lay beside the stump of bread, torn from Calderón’s La Vida es Sueño, and it was torn evenly along the line, “El delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido . . .” and this too he seemed to weigh in his hand, before he put it back by the stump of bread, and a crumpled one-peseta note on the wicker table, pausing, as though he heard something, that voice, and —Oh yes, was it? the greatest sin of man, being born? hehehehe . . . and then that broken laughter. —No, because there’s more to do, more work, more work if it’s true that even the gods themselves, can’t recall their gifts. Because there’s a moment, traveling. Quiere comer? they offered, shelter. Coming up to Madrid, it’s a destination, Madrid. You can tell by the name. Quiere comer? Everyone used to offer shelter to travelers, who knows it might be a god in disguise. The whole family there, eating, the whole . . . all the family . . . Quiere comer . . . ? No, no I’m smoking, there’s still so much work that’s necessary, I’m smoking, I’m alone because, not hungry, because if it’s true, then the love had to be hoarded for the work, locked up, there, there! is there a moment? traveling when, love and necessity become the same thing?