The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  Stanley bolted the door, and turned his back against it. The cross he held was whole, but the figure mounted there was broken across the knees, and the chin was gone. He laid it face down on the bureau and turned with a hand in his pocket, where he felt the tooth and the two pills stuck to its wrapping.

  Then he was grappling with her again. At one point they were thrown a hand or two apart, and Stanley looked up to the mirror in the cabinet door for reassurance, but he saw only himself. The ship heeled over, the door swung gently to, and the mirror embraced them both again but he did not see, for at the moment he was forced to renew the struggle, with the single mirror image before his eyes.

  Her strength gave out suddenly; and he finally managed to get her to take the two sleeping pills, thinking, as the second one disappeared, that he might have kept it for himself. Then he started to pick up the filigree silver beads. He found the Portiuncula card torn in half, and paused, piecing it together, but his shaking hands could not make the edges meet. He gave that up and laid it with the crucifix, stared for a full minute at the bed, and the silent figure he saw there, then looked wildly about as though indeed himself seeking a briar patch. He shuddered as though with cold, and went back to hunting the beads.

  Each time he reached for one it rolled away from his hand, as he concluded a Gloria Patri on the last. Mumbling Aves in between, each time he caught one he renewed the devotion with a Paternoster, recovering, after sixteen centuries, the pebbles which the hermit Paul threw away to keep count of his daily three hundred prayers.

  The stem broke a path in the water as the ship ground its way into the night, and the sea washed well below the nineteenth-century monogram on the side, a more intricate device than the cross painted at the load line on those Pilgrim Galleys carrying devotees on their quest for relics, to Jerusalem for stones from Saint Anne’s church, for pregnant women, reeds for women in labor from Saint Catherine’s fountain at Sinai, and for barren women, roses from Jericho.

  Asleep in the chair, Stanley had a bad dream, the worse for its dreadful familiarity, though, waking in the dark, he could not remember what it was. But at hand he heard twisting, turning, moaning —Yes, if there is time yes, oh yes . . . Oh yes . . .

  Stanley found himself perspiring freely. His clothes were damp and his drawers almost wet, still he did not dare turn on the light, fearing its confirmation of everything he imagined the darkness to hold in abeyance as he pulled a coat round him and shivered, listening, to her sounds, and the pounding of his own heart driving them forward toward Gibraltar and the inland sea, as hearts have driven them down through centuries, from the ones peering into the cave at Bethlehem where the bodies of the Holy Innocents were hurled (and more than willing, upon turning round, to pay a hundred ducats for the knife-slashed body of a still-born Saracen child), to their descendents gathered at the burning of a celebrated poisoner of Paris, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, her gifts thus solemnized at the stake, and her ashes sought as preservative against witchcraft.

  Dawn broke, in the full glory of the dawn at sea. Some white birds had appeared. They hung behind the aftermast, breaking now and then to come down to the water for a look at anything thrown over the side. The rising sun found Stanley running damp and disheveled down a starboard deck. He paused at a ladder, hung on its wet railing to get breath, and then buttoned himself up in a number of places. He looked slightly surprised at the sun, as though it were an intruder, and might be a helpful one; but soon gave that up and carried on. His mustache looked like something he had fallen into, and his hair stood out in a heavy tangle behind. A waiter from the Tourist Class dining room stood to the rail out of his way, apparently taking for granted that Stanley was being pursued. But Stanley slid straight up to him, making a grab for him with one hand, waving the other,

  —Have you seen her? Have you seen her?

  —Ma signorino, che . . .

  But Stanley was off again; and the waiter stood there at the rail for a good half-minute looking in the direction Stanley had come from, with the unhealthy expectancy of someone who has seen a number of American moving pictures.

  Stanley covered a good part of the ship. At one point he almost made the chart room. At another he skidded into a tall white-haired man in a blanket robe and straw slippers, with the same question.

  —Heving a bit of a run, eh? Good thing, better for you then all the ductors . . . good heavens. Ghood heavens! . . .

  Stanley caromed off the rail, made another ladder, and was up it. In the ship’s hospital he found the bed which had been a center of activity the night before, empty. Though Stanley could hardly know it, waking as he had, alone and moist, to jump up and spill those silver filigree beads all over the floor again, she hadn’t got much head start on him, and perhaps as little idea, he did realize when he found her still running, of where she was going as he had.

  And —Dead! she said when he did find her, and caught her wrist to hold her back.

  Up the deck, now a covered one and near the water line, a group of silent men surrounded a long canvas sack, where Father Martin presided, a book in one hand, raising the other at the regular somnambulistic intervals of ritual.

  —Dead! . . . and that damned black andro-gyne. He did it.

  —But now you . . . now you . . . now . . .

  —You know, you saw him, too, apply the poison, and the envenomed words . . .

  —Now now now . . .

  —No! . . . don’t hold me here . . .

  —Some Spaniard’s all it is, I heard him talk. I heard the Viaticum last night and heard him talking Spanish.

  —Let me go!

  Upwind on the deck, none of them heard her cry out, none of them turned at any rate; and holding her, Stanley finally realized that she was making no effort to escape him.

  With a sign, Father Martin was still, and the other figures took up his motion, as slow and as careful, they slid the weighted canvas bundle over the side.

  With the splash, the birds came down immediately. The men and the priest had left the rail and gone forward, for the dawn was very bright on the water, and dazzled the eyes. Then she broke away from him and ran toward the rail. Stanley hesitated in surprise, and then started after her to hold her before she could jump.

  But she stopped, and stared down at the dazzling sea.

  Stanley stopped, and recollected enough to cross himself. Then he looked out, at the glare of the sea stretching everywhere the sky was not, and the notion of land as impossible to him as daylight on wakening from a nightmare, the sea the man had come out of, and gone back to. Then he recalled his dream: he had been crossing the street, carrying a tiny shawl-wrapped figure, and he met Anselm.

  —No! . . . she cried out at the rail; and Stanley shut his eyes on the dream, opened them again on the sea, which had lost the glare of sunrise. The sea, romantic in books, or dreams or conversation, symbol in poetry, the mother, last lover, and here it was, none of those things before him. Romantic? this heaving, senseless actuality? alive? evil? symbolical? shifting its surfaces in imitation of life over depths the whole fabric of darkness, of blind life and death. Boundlessly neither yes or no, good nor evil, hope nor fear, pretending to all these things in the eyes that first beheld it, but unchanged since then, still its own color, heaving with the indifferent hunger of all actuality.

  Stanley looked down, to steady himself as he took a step toward her, and the lines in the grain of the wooden rail swam over against themselves in imitation of the surface of the water, stretching like this beyond the morning mists which belied the horizon to where Africa lay, unknown to the senses, but borne in insinuations on the wind from the south. The ship heaved, shuddered, dropped its bows on the water. Down below, the white birds, finding nothing, startled by the clap of the hull, fled coming up all together, and away, like the fragments of a letter torn up and released into the wind.

  —O Christ, the plough . . .

  —O Christ the what?

  —the laughter, of holy white birds
. . .

  —What you reading? a poem? You know, you don’t look so good. The man at the rail held out his glass. —Take a swat at this? He shrugged at the look of horror with which his offer was received, but continued to stare at the figure in the deck chair, a man who, in any other circumstances, might have been described as of comfortable middle age. Engulfed in the flow of a tartan lap robe and folds of Irish thorn-proof, he stared fixedly at an open book and moved his lips with precise effort.

  The man at the rail took a bottle from his pocket to replenish his glass, and stared out over the water, through the morning mists toward the indistinct mound on the horizon. —That broken-down bump doesn’t look like a life-insurance ad from here, he muttered, spat over the side, and wiped his chin. He had appeared on all fours, though somewhat taliped because of the glass he maintained upright in one hand, growling at a dog leashed to a tall woman who passed in the opposite direction, —a Hawaiian poodle dog, he explained. —Did you see what it’s wearing? I asked her what the hell it was. A chastity belt, it’s made out of plastic. Made in England. Huki-lau will need it among those naughty Spanish doggies, she says to me. Jesus. Grrrr-rouf! he lunged after the dog. —You getting off at Gib too? The figure in the deck chair responded with a feeble sound, amended with a nod. —Me too. Some spic sued my newspaper, they pay the bastard off and then send me all the way the hell over here to see what the hell is going on. They think he’s blowing the money on a patron saint. You know, you don’t look so good. He had straightened up and leaned back against the rail, sipping. —What you got in the paper bag? To be sick in?

  —Bread.

  —Bread?

  The figure in the deck chair made an infirm gesture overhead.

  —Oh, for the birds? The newsman steadied his glass at the rail and got a handful of bread out of the bag. —You look fermiliar somehow, you know? It’s the first time I’ve seen you on deck the whole trip. The man in the deck chair made a vague gesture, down. —Oh, you been sick in your cabin? You missed all the fun then, you hear about it? the shipwreck? The man in the deck chair startled visibly. —We picked up these poor bastards in a lifeboat, one of them died yesterday and they dumped him back where they got him. An old tub called the Purdue Victory, it busted right in half. He paused to dip a bit of bread into his glass, and throw it at a seagull. —A foot of barnacles on the hull, salt water leaking in the fresh water tanks, rust flakes like your fist painted right over, they get in this storm and the rudder chain snaps, the sea swings it right around like a fighter turns a guy around in the ring when he’s groggy to finish him off. Pow! The damn thing broke in half and went down in two minutes, both ends of it. They were going to scrap it anyway after this trip, you know? But that company’s got a good lobby in Congress or it would have been scrapped ten years ago. So now with deep remorse for the guys who were drownded they collect a quarter of a million bucks insurance. Breaks your heart. He flung another whisky-soaked wad of bread heavenward, and watched his new deck companion labor a deep swallow and return to the printed page. —Whose poems? He squatted to look at the cover. —John Mansfield? You get them out of the First Class saloon? The man in the deck chair nodded. He tried a smile but it was obliterated by a grimace of swallowing.

  —Sail on! sail on and on and on, you remember that one? Columbus? Behind him lay the blue Azores, behind him lay the Gates of Hercules, you remember that poem? Speak, brave Admiral, what shall I say? Why say, sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on . . . The newsman struggled to an almost vertical position against the rail and drank off half his glass. —He knew where he was going all the time, Columbus did. Did you know that? he confided. —Sail on, sail on, he knew he wasn’t going to India. You know how he knew? Because the Portuguese already discovered America. The King of Portugal took one look at it and said to hell with it. You know who his mapmaker was? It was Columbus’s brother. All the King of Portugal wants to do is get the spics the hell out of competition in the spice trade, so his mapmaker slips Columbus these maps so he can go discover America for Ferdinando and Isabella, give them something to keep them busy and get the hell out of the spice trade. The stout mate said, lo! the very stars are gone. My men grow mutinous wan and weak . . . And all the time Columbus is keeping two sets of logs on the ship, he fakes a set to pretend they’re only half as far out as they think, while he knows they’re going to America all the time. You know what Columbus discovered in America? Syphilis. They all crossed the ocean to get laid. Now speak brave Admiral, what shall I say? . . . With a full slice of whisky-soaked bread, he lunged into —Sail on! . . . tripped over the foot rest of the deck chair, and caught a foot under the rail. The bottle flew from his pocket, slid down the scuppers and smashed. He lay for a moment staring at the glass still gripped upright in his hand. Then without changing his position he raised his chin from the deck and drank it down, struggled to his feet, and calling out, —Here, chum, to a seagull flying as though hung suspended beside the ship, threw his empty glass at it.

  The man in the deck chair opened his eyes. The hulk of Gibraltar was closer. Direct above, a white gull fixed him with a cold eye. He looked back at his book, and a few minutes passed while he looked up nervously and back at the page, until finally he got the paper bag and with an indecisive gesture attempted to toss a bit of bread up. The bird swooped.

  —What’s the matter, scared you?

  —Up there flying, they’re beautiful, but so close . . .

  —Scared you, huh? The newsman recovered the rail limping, and pulled up his trouser cuff. —It’s going up like a balloon, he said looking at his ankle. —Look at that broken-down rock, they ought to sink it. But oh no! Not the limeys. That would make too much sense. Instead they have this crazy superstition about these baboons that run all over the place there, that they’ll lose Gibraltar when there aren’t any more. So what do they do, they fly these sunset-assed baboons in from Africa when the stock gets low. They run all over the place there. How would you like to look up and see some sunset-assed baboon looking in your bedroom window? he challenged. —They don’t hurt anybody, you know. Except the Y.M.C.A. It’s yellow, the building. It makes them mad as hell. They come down and throw rocks at it. How’d you like to be a member of the Gibraltar Young Men Christians Association with a bunch of sunset-assed baboons throwing rocks at you? Favoring his swelling ankle he leaned on the rail and gazed back at the wake of the ship. —Behind him lay the Gates of Hercules. The blanched mate showed his teeth and said, brave Admiral, speak!

  The man in the deck chair mastered a liquid swallow, and heaved slightly fixing his eyes on The Everlasting Mercy, reading under his breath in precise gasps, —Chra-hist, the laughter of hu-ho-white birds flying . . .

  —A light! A light! Sail on, sail on. The son of a bitch knew where he was going all the time.

  Stanley woke to cold hands opening his pants from behind, and lay there with his eyes wide open for a moment as the fingers became more intimate.

  From somewhere, there came music. It was the tango, Jealousy.

  Then he almost leaped out of the bed. —What are you . . . who are you? he cried, turning on the woman in white. She had a generous Scandinavian face. —Now wait, now wait, now wait . . .

  —Now you lie down, she said. —You just lie down. I want to give you this suppository, sonny.

  —This what? He stared at the cone between her fingers. It was Nembutal sodium in a cocoa-butter base. Then he stared at her. She smiled, and got his shoulder in a bone-breaking grip. Then he looked round him. The place was rocking gently. —I’m in the ship hospital? he asked. Then he looked at his wrist and said, —Who stole my watch?

  —You’ll be all right, now you just roll over and let me give you this suppository . . .

  —Get me out of this bed, he burst out.

  —You have to stay in bed for a little while longer . . .

  —No but not this bed, not this bed . . . look all the other beds are empty, put me in another one, put me in that bed but not this bed . . .

>   With a pleasant smile and a turn of her wrist, she spun him round and his face went into the pillow. —But you . . . can’t you . . . wait . . .

  —Just relax the buttocks now . . . tha-at’s it . . .

  —But can’t you . . . ummp!

  —That will help you rest, sonny.

  —But I don’t want to rest. You can’t just keep me here. Where’s my watch? What day is it? And where . . . where is she?

  The woman looked concerned for the first time, and she said, —Now we mustn’t start that again, must we.

  —Start . . . what again?

  A waiter entered and started to approach with some food on a tray. Then he saw Stanley was sitting up, with eyes wide open. He put the tray down a safe distance away, and said, —Coraggio . . .

  —Now what was that? Stanley demanded as the waiter got out the door.

  —He’s the one who saved you from jumping over the side.

  Stanley lay back slowly. —The side of what? he murmured, but she did not hear him. She was busy unmaking a bed.

  Spots of sun danced brokenly off the ceiling and down one wall. Stanley’s head came back to rest against a metal bar of the bed. —But no . . . why would I . . . he commenced, raising a hand to his face. He touched his cheek, then his chin, pulled his hand away and stared at it, then began to rub his chin again. It was rough with stubble. —But how long have I . . . how long have I been here?

  —Lie back and don’t try to remember everything now, sonny boy, said the woman in white. —Lie back and get some sleep. She emptied a pillowcase briskly.

  —But I do, I remember everything. I remember everything perfectly. Everything except . . . except that, if I did that, but I . . . I wouldn’t do that. No! . . . He came up on his elbows again, —No it wasn’t me that tried it, it was her, don’t you remember? But wait, listen, first put me into another bed, I can’t stay in this bed. Any of the other beds, they’re all empty and it doesn’t matter but . . . Then he stopped. There was someone two beds away from him. A face, clean-shaven but weary looking, rested on a doubled-up hand, the elbow dug into the pillow, watching him with patient curiosity. The covers were pulled up over the head, so that only the face showed. —What do you think I am, a seagull?