The Recognitions

by William Gaddis

  —Well, you see . . . the distinguished novelist commenced; but he was unequal to it. He tried to arrange his debilitated features into a smile, and turned to the tall woman with a weak inclination which he meant as a bow.

  —We’re going to see a tomb, she said, —the tomb of . . . somebody or other, have you seen it?

  —Yes, he answered instantly, and stared at her so oddly that she turned to her husband and said,

  —We can’t just leave poor Huki-lau out there all alone, even if she is wearing that . . . protection, you never know.

  Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, moved busily enough among them to give everyone the feeling that they were in a crowded room, and as though for reassurance that this was not the case, the tall woman’s husband turned his blank gaze up to the shreds of gray cloud which fled over the Moorish cloister. The distinguished novelist excused himself: he had a little work to do before lunch, and he got away.

  —It was him, that stuck his head in the church and asked me what I was doing there, the woman with the ring announced. —You wouldn’t think he’d act that way here in a place like this.

  —Maybe he’s just playing a game, the tall woman said vaguely, preoccupied with a high heel caught between the teeth of a broken mosaic. —My God . . .

  —It’s hardly worth all this walking around everywheres, the woman with the ring said, —We haven’t got any color fillum in the camera at all, they don’t have it here.

  Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, explained that the distinguished novelist had recently suffered the death of someone very close to him, a sobering conclusion which he had drawn from the customary manifest of the black necktie.

  Thus they were all slightly put off when the distinguished guest appeared in a calming Glen Urquhart plaid suit, and the necktie of the Honourable Artillery Company, though none of them knew its signification any better than he (for he’d just picked it out one day, passing Gieves’s window in Old Bond Street, in London where he’d gone for first-hand experience of quite a different nature). It was a bracing pattern of jagged dark red strokes on a blue ground, and he looked quite restored.

  It is true, he was happier taking lunch in the chill room at that small table near the windows, knee to knee with a calm lay brother appointed to the task, the heavy red cloth drawn over their laps and warm to the waist from the brazier underneath, with a cage over its coals to protect toes protruding from sandals, an arrangement rather like a communal Persian bed he had seen somewhere (not Persia).

  —We’ve had plenty of experiences to write home about already, said the woman with the ring at the long table where lunch had just commenced, presided over by a placid Franciscan who spoke no English. The tall woman closed her pill box with a snap, as her husband poured his second glass of wine, and the woman with the ring crossed herself and got her napkin in place in one utilitarian gesture.

  —We even got held up by a highwayman, her husband confirmed.

  —It was on a train.

  —You still call it a highwayman anyway, her husband said patiently, smiling his cheery smile. —And he even talked English.

  —It was broken English. And what do you think he told us? That we’re just as much to blame, because we’re there, that the victim abets the violence just by being there, he said, and he even made a quotation to prove it.

  —From Dante he told us. He took all our money, at gun-point.

  —Every peseeta we had on us.

  —But he didn’t take the cameras, the fat man said, —I guess he didn’t know how much they were worth.

  —He said he ought to do us a favor and throw them out the window, can you imagine? My . . . don’t they keep it cold here, she shivered.

  Her husband got out his billfold and found a scrap of paper. —Here’s a souvenir of it. He made me write this down so I’d remember to get this book and read it. Transcendent Speculations on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual, that’s a mouthful isn’t it. I wrote this down at gun-point.

  —Can you imagine? she demanded of the distinguished novelist, and he shook his head as though indeed he could not. Then he turned to the soup which the old woman put before him, and commenced to eat with a look on his face as though, perhaps, he could.

  —Well you can’t complain, said the fat man good-naturedly, —when you set out on an adventure trip in a country like this, like Mamie and me here with nothing but the clothes on our back. Right, Mamie? Then he lowered his attention, to wipe a spot from his yellow tie on the edge of the tablecloth.

  —We didn’t even bring a car over this time, said the woman with the ring. —We’re going right down to the Holy Week in Seville as soon as we leave here. I wanted to see the big fair they have in Valencia too but I don’t know how long we’re over here for, it’s not till later. They call it the Fallas, it’s all fireworks. Then she turned to the tranquil figure at the table head, and addressed him in what she believed was his language, for she, with some of the girls back home, had taken a course, preparing for exactly such opportune exigencies as this. —Cuando tiene las Fallas en Valencia? she asked, and repeated, —las Fallas? . . . but since she pronounced it phallus, the good Franciscan answered with a gelid smile and offered her the bread.

  The tall woman cleared her throat, passed the wine decanter in answer to no one’s request as far up the table as she could reach, and said that somewhere she had read that in this very monastery a monk had been put under a pot for refusing to go out and beg, and that he was still there. Had anyone seen it? —The pot, I mean.

  No, but when the woman with the ring and her husband were in Granada, a guide took them on a tour through the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, and they had had to look at the crippled and deformed orphans, —which wasn’t really the kind of thing we came all the way over here to see, we didn’t know where he was taking us.

  —That cathedral they have there, it’s the biggest one I ever saw.

  —And the sound when that gypsy boy’s head hit the pavement . . .

  The distinguished novelist remained bent over his plate; and whether or not he appeared as contemplative as he believed, he did at least thus thwart any attempts to draw him into conversation, until, that is, someone asked him directly if he liked the art here . . .

  —Ahm . . .

  —Like that big El Greco, the picture of the . . .

  —What? Is it safe? Is it still . . . he broke out, looking up abruptly.

  —What?

  —No . . . nothing, I . . . I was thinking of something else. The . . . ahm, yes it’s a . . . an excellent picture, the ahm plasticity of the modeling, the transition of ahm the heavy oils laid on transparent ones, a great clarity of ahm religious purpose without getting lost in a maze of details, of ahm . . . for fear that there may be no . . . Ahm . . .

  —I’ve seen another picture of his, they make me nervous, everybody seems to wiggle too much in them.

  —We saw a big Pietà in Granada, I like him better. Aren’t you chilly?

  The distinguished novelist attacked the fish on the plate before him. It stared up with one round insolent eye, and he severed the head at one blow. The world of art settled, that of religion reared intrepidly.

  —That was probably the village idiot.

  —But won’t they let him in church? the tall woman demanded. —In our church at home, of course I haven’t been in it recently but we used to have one, an idiot I mean. Every small town had one, just like they had a town drunk and a Jew, but of course we didn’t have any of these little boys in red sleeves to get him out the door. And that boy swinging that brass thing on the end of the chain made me frightfully nervous. It looked like it was going to blow up any minute.

  The fat man looked self-conscious, and stopped to rub another spot from his necktie.

  —And were you in the sacristy when they were getting that old priest ready to send on? I don’t know, all that lace, and the way those little boys flit about . . . She saw the distinguished novelist looking at her uneasily, and went on hurriedly, �
�I don’t mean to say they’re that way or anything but . . . one hears things, she murmured, looking down at her plate. —Tell me, she whispered to the woman next to her, —what are these perfectly weird little things we’re supposed to be eating.

  —Lentils. Haven’t you ever eaten them?

  —I’ve read about them, the tall woman said and put down her fork.

  —To tell the honest truth I don’t really see how they eat like this all the time. I’ve had the johnny-trots ever since we got here. From all the oil. Do you have . . .

  —I take reducing pills. You swallow one before a meal and it blows up like a balloon in your stomach. You lose your appetite. Not that one wouldn’t here anyhow. Have you looked at the bread? I don’t mean tasted it, but just look at it. It’s practically turning red.

  —My husband would know what it is, said the woman with the ring, examining a piece of the bread. She broke it, and the fine gray texture crumbled. —My husband’s in food chemistry. He studied toxicology at Yale. Her husband took the bread from her and examined it with a pocket magnifying glass. —He’s with the Necrostyle people, she said, —you must know their products? Then she nudged her husband, and whispered that maybe he was being impolite, —because they’re very sensitive, these people. Even if they’re monks.

  —Micrococcus prodigiosus, he pronounced, snapping the glass closed and looking up with his cheery smile. —It forms sometimes on stale food kept in a dry place. Looks like blood, doesn’t it.

  —He’s giving you a funny look, the woman with the ring said to her husband. And when at a sign from the figure at the head of the table, the bread was taken unobtrusively away, she whispered, —Oh dear, I wonder if we hurt his feelings . . . And she’d just started to speak to the tall woman, in a very low tone of frank confidence, —They’re pretty behind the times over here, when we landed the customs almost arrested me, they thought my Tampax was incendiary bombs . . . Then she realized that the figure at the head of the table was addressing her, in slow careful syllables.

  —He’s explaining about the bread, she whispered aside, listening, —why it’s funny. Concentrating, her lips moved as though to wrest the words from his, syllable by syllable while he spoke, and turning to explain when he paused, —because it’s real hard to get flour over here, especially if you’re poor like monks, they have to get it off the black market. That isn’t exactly the way he put it, she amended when his silence unleashed her full confusion. —He says they even get food packages from America, like there was this Protestant minister who came here on a visit about thirty years ago and he always sends them these packages of food, they just got one lately. Then this is where I got sort of mixed up, she confessed, while the figure at the head of the table watched her querulously. —I think it’s something he wants me to explain to him, because in this last food package they just got there was some kind of powdery stuff in a tin box they mixed with the flour when they made this bread, and it came out funny. Maybe it was cereal, except I’m not sure what’s the Spanish word for cereal. Maybe it was wheat germ, my husband could probably explain it to him, like enriched bread like we have home, except I don’t know what’s the Spanish for wheat germ. She sighed, looking almost wistfully at the scrap of bread by her husband’s hand on the table, a hard crust, the crumbled fine gray texture flecked with spots “like blood.” —Home, she repeated —Now, with it’s almost Easter . . . She sighed again, and smiled pensively, looking far away and rubbing the slight hair shade on her upper lip. —Isn’t it nice we’re all merkins.

  At the head of the table, the figure nodded to her his thanks for her explanation to the other exotic guests and she, seeking to please him still further, was fishing for something in her bosom. The ring got caught, and finally she extracted it along with a string of beads which proved to be a rosary. —And see this here? she said to the others. —This little heart-shaped thing in the middle is full of Lourdes holy water, see it’s stamped right on there, certified. She passed it up the table. The Franciscan looked at it with the polite interest he might have shown for a Zuñi prayer stick, and returned it as she went on, —My family’s in religious novelties. Mostly plastic ones. Last year we got out a plastic shofar, for Yom Kippur. It was filled with candy. It went real well. Show them your key chain, she said to her husband, digging him with an elbow. —See? she said, showing it. There were a good many keys, but she got the plastic-enclosed picture free. —See? you just move it a little and his eyes open and close, see his lips move just like in prayer? And the hand he’s got up in a benediction even wiggles a little, see? See the halo move when you tip it? . . . These go real well. It’s a whole series of art-foto key chains. She started to pass this devotional object up the table, but the good Franciscan appeared to be absorbed studying his thumbnails.

  —Of course, not being Catholic ourselves, the tall woman said to her, —my husband and I don’t always appreciate these things, you know. I’m sure he thought he was going to get a free drink in church.

  —Well we’re converts ourselves. You catch onto things after awhile. She lowered her voice and looked vacantly past the ceramics on the wall. —The spiritual meaning of the Mass, the elevation of the Host, and the when they break the bread . . .

  —Well of course in our church we had the Lord’s Supper . . .

  —And everybody got a drink, the tall woman’s husband came in. He’d recovered the decanter. —This morning the old man in the middle up there got three drinks, he mumbled, —and nobody else . . . could you understand him?

  —Well, they do it in Latin, the woman with the ring said soberly.

  —It sounded to me like he was singing, I can play dominos better than you can . . .

  The tall woman rescued the decanter and started to pass it back up the table, but put it down because it was empty. —To tell the truth, she said to the woman with the ring, —my father was born one, but of course he never told anybody at home that, you have to be so careful in a small town. He had an awful time, he even had extreme unction.

  —When he died?

  —Oh God no, he’s still alive. That was before my brother was born.

  —But once you have extreme unction administered to you, then if you recover you have to eat fish and . . . renounce matrimonial relations.

  —Then it must have been something else he had.

  —I can play dominos better than you oo cannn . . . came in a cooing chant beside her.

  —Frankly, she said in a low tone to the woman with the ring, —I don’t want to see him getting mixed up with any of this. He’s already got two analysts waiting for him when he gets home.

  —better than you oo cann . . .

  —You can see what I mean.

  The figure at the head of the table rose, and the woman with the ring, brandishing it like a weapon as she undid her napkin and crossed herself, turned to him and said with oppressive clarity, —La comedia está muy bien. And the Franciscan, who had not been to the theater since he took orders, inclined his head to acknowledge her kind manner, though she could not see if he wore his kind smile because he held a napkin over his mouth with one hand, picking his teeth behind it with the other.

  When they got outside, Fr. Eulalio, who had been confined somewhere in the depths of the great fortress this past hour or two for reasons best known to his superior, joined them again, and hoped they could find room to take him to Madrid. It was something urgent. If he went now, he believed he could get a ride back somehow that night, or early next morning (he was going to see about flour on the black market). The distinguished novelist excused himself, looking haggard and unsteady despite the bracing stripes of the H.A.C. He tripped on the stairs.

  —My, he is odd, isn’t he. One almost wonders . . . The tall woman’s voice tailed off, as she looked abstractedly up at the walls, and murmured, —My God, you’d think they were expecting the Russians. Then she recovered, adjusting her hair with her scarlet nails. —You know frankly, I haven’t seen a soul around here who looked frightfully h
oly. They all look quite easy-going.

  —They’ve got the life of Reilly, her husband said, licking his lips.

  —Here, we ought to leave them something, an alms or whatever you call it, to pay for the lunch. Have you got some of those big brown bills? And there’s the old porter out on the front porch, should we give him something? They always show up like this at the last minute . . .

  She came back looking quite confused. —He wouldn’t take a penny!

  —They’re very proud, said the woman with the ring, —even the poor ones.

  —Well he has so few teeth he certainly can’t eat much, but I thought he might buy himself a drink, he probably drinks, and from those marks on his face you can see he probably has something . . . she went on, closing her pocketbook, turning toward the soiled limousine where Fr. Eulalio was already climbing in. —And that one asked me what Huki-lau’s belt was, my God! What could I tell him? Nevertheless, she added as she watched the brown robe disappear inside the car, —I am glad she’s wearing it.

  —Goodbye . . .

  —We may get down to Holy Week in Seville ourselves, it sounds a riot.

  —Or if you’re still here, or maybe next year, Valencia . . .

  —Next year we are going to Hawaii for the Narcissus Festival.

  —For the Fallas.

  —Goodbye . . . Isn’t it a God-awful day . . . The soiled limousine rolled, choked on the hill, barely missed a mule approaching the fountain with solitary dignity, and a child squatted in the gutter, and turned from sight.

  —Look! Bernie, look! said the woman with the ring, waving it toward the porch on the gothic façade, —that man, that funny man talking to the janitor, don’t you see him? Haven’t we seen him before? on the train? at gun-point on the train! Wasn’t it? Look, or . . . wasn’t it?

  Her husband was turned in that direction, but he was busy. The yellow necktie, which appeared to have pictures of brown sailboats on it, kept blowing in his face, and he was trying to adjust a light meter to the bleak even color of the day.