The Recognitions (136 page)

Fell opened a tremendous cabinet. All the shelves were filled with bottles. —It's also good for fenestration procedures, labyrinthitis, and vestibular dysfunction associated with antibiotic therapy. I read up on it today. It's even good for pregnancy. Do you ever feel like jumping out of windows, Gordon? Tsk tsk . . . you can here, of course, but it wouldn't be any fun. It wouldn't be any more fun than falling out of bed. Do you still fall out of bed? —I ... —Here we are, Gordon. Ahmm, tsk tsk, this is the last of the Dramamine. How do you want it administered, orally or rectally? —I ... —But don't worry, Gordon, we have lots of things here, said Doctor Fell, rummaging among the bottles for the jug of saline solution. —Tomorrow we'll start on Roniacol, and when we run out of that there's Lesofac, Gustamate, Diasal, Amchlor . . . Oh they've sent us everything. The Nicotinic acid was the best, wasn't it, in spite of its evanescent reactions, the tingling, itching, burning of the skin, dizziness, faintness, sensations of warmth . . . bend over now, Gordon . . . gastric distress, cutaneous flushing, the increased gastro-intestinal motility ... ah ... mmmp, there we are, Gordon. You'll feel better in no time. It's due to a vasodilating action. —Do you think there will be a scar . . . ? —What do you suppose vasodilating means? ... a what? a scar? where? —When you take these bandages off my arm? —Oh certainly, certainly Gordon. —But . . . like this one on my face? —Oh, bigger. That one you could cover with a mustache. You'd be cute in a mustache, Gordon. Wait, don't go yet. Doctor Fell had fitted an ophthalmoscope to his head, and swung the mirror down over his eye. —Have a look at the bloody labyrinth, he went on talking as he worked. —Oh, I'm not being profane now you understand, tsk tsk, I'm referring to the hemorrhaging in the labyrinth of the ear, your ear of course . . . Can you hear me? can you hear me in this ear? Yes, you're getting better, I think it's all over now. Why, I'll lose you before too long, won't I ... with all that money you can be off, you can fly to the moon if you want to, can't you. I've worried about you, you know, you seemed like a very sensitive young man, and I've wondered how this sickness had done this to you, just left you with your eyes glazed and no interest in anything but your work. Tsk tsk, maybe something better will come along? You can't really enjoy going out with the vitamin samples in the morning and bringing in the . . . the specimens in the evening. But that's what life is, isn't it, yes, tsk tsk . . . Ooop ... be careful, Gordon, watch where you're going. Keep your eyes open. Do you want me to walk back with you? No? All right, just be careful, keep your eyes open. Yes . . . and now where do you suppose that tattooed idiot is? He's useless, worthless, all he does is drink and talk about shark fishing and trim his little mustache, I don't trust him at all. I'd think he'd followed us here, but I can't imagine why anyone would follow anyone here. —No . . . N O. Tresp . . . Oh Chrahst give it to me, I'll do it, I mean Chrahst I'll do it, I have to do everything here myself anyway sooner or later, and it's too late to put it up anyway. But I mean Chrahst give me the paint, will you just let go of it, Otto? I mean just let go of the handle. Now give me the brush, I mean Chrahst just hand it to me, don't throw it on the floor. I mean look at Hannah over there, the way she's working waxing it, you know? I mean Chrahst, she's going to go through to the cellar in a minute. Now go away, will you? I mean after a day like this I want to relax a minute, you know? I mean Chrahst, before I fix supper for all of you. Up in the ballroom, you know? The green room with the three chandeliers, go up there and wait for your supper while I bring the rest of them in. And look, I mean when you pass give Hannah a shove with your foot, will you? She's going to wax my old man right into the floor, and . . . Oh Chrahst, I have to do everything myself. I mean look at him sitting there staring at the clock with the sun on his face, like he was going somewhere, and Chrahst I mean the best he can do is pick up the telephone and dial and by the time I get there he's just sitting holding the telephone and he wonders who's calling him. Chrahst. I mean he'll never hang his hat on that buffalo horn in the Harvard Club again, and sit down and eat an omelette with a spoon. Now Chrahst, where are they all. Max is still mowing the lawn, even if there isn't any grass there yet, when the grass comes up I'll have to keep moving him along or he'll mow the same strip until he gets right down to rock. And Chrahst look at Stanley painting that pillar on the porte-cochere, I mean he must have about fifty coats on one side of it by now. And where the hell is Anselm, or did I leave him washing the clothes. He's scrubbed holes in everything we've got by now, he can go through a shirt in half an hour if you don't take it away from him and put something else in his hands. But Chrahst I mean how many clothes can you wash at once in a couple of lousy cut-glass punch bowls. And Chrahst I might as well have another drink and another cigar, because that's all there is in the house, and they can't expect me to eat the kibbled dog food I feed them when I know the state inspector isn't coining around, I mean Chrahst lie can't expect rne to feed them anything else and pay the taxes too, at forty dollars a month a feeb. And I have to tie up another package for my mother to open before dinner, she's been waiting for it all day again. And what a letter to get, Dear Classmate, We realize this letter, our second appeal to you this year, comes at a time when you have recently been solicited for reunion funds, I mean Chrahst. Many classmates have wondered how much money has been raised toward the 1975 goal of $100,000. Chrahst, listen to that record, you can hardly hear the tune any more it's so scratched, I mean it's just as good as having an automatic record-player to have a feeb sitting there starting it over again every time it ends. The Sunny Side of the Street. But Chrahst. I mean, 1975. I mean, Chrahst. Dear Mr. Pivner . . . Eddie 7efnic wrote. Gee you would really be interested in the work we are doing here now, and I guess I won't ever really be able to thank you for all you have done giving me a start, and treating me practically like a son and all, I mean by helping me go on with my education 10 where it really comes to grips with humanity and learning all about things in science like in the work we are doing here. I'm sure glad you had your operation, and believe me I sure did everything I could so you would, even after I talked to you and I guess finally convinced you that it was a good idea, because now modern science knows what these things are and how to fix them, not like the Dark Ages. So maybe by convincing you to go ahead with it and have the operation, and while all along I'm working here right in the forefront of all that kind of things, maybe in that way I'm repaying you. Let me tell you about the work we are doing here now, first we are study-ing anxiety neurosises by giving some animals a nervous breakdown. Like we have a whole bunch of kids (ha ha I mean little goats) which' are hooked up so that when the light dims it gets a shock, so after a while then the minute the light dims the kid backs into the corner and gets tense so after a while of that he gets anxiety neurosis, because at first he's only tense but then when we change the signals around on him then he gets the real anxiety neurosis. Then you do that about a thousand times on him, you should see them kicking out their both hind legs so they won't get the shock except waiting for it when they don't know it's going to happen at what moment then they get the anxiety neurosis which is a breakdown, while all the while we measure everything so that we know. So after about a thousand times then we try to get them out of it, and everything is recorded real close by the lab and then we go over all that and try to get them out of it, you can see it's real interesting and how much good it will do. You must have a real nice nurse up there, to write me your letter like she did and all. I have been in the laboratory here where they took a sheep's brain apart so I could see what it must be like having those nerve tissues between the frontal lobes of the brain severed off of the mid-brain which is where you have the emotions, so I can see where the prison psychiatric doctor said how it might be a good thing because things like counterfeiting and forging arent crimes of violence but more something emotional maybe that gets mixed up so if you sever it off then it can't get mixed up any more and you don't want to do things like forging and counterfeiting any more. Which even though they aren't crimes of violence they sort of mean something's wrong somewhere. Like I already wrote to you the last time mostly what I do here still is things like cleaning the pens of these kids and feed them if their being fed if we're not testing something on them or something, and all things like that, which keeps me pretty busy because the rest of the time mostly I spend reading these books so I even haven't been to church for a while now, and even the radio I don't turn on listening just to music but only the news broadcasts, because there is all this I want to learn and the scientists here are real nice about if you want to ask them questions how they'll explain everything to you, so I keep studying so I can too some day, I mean explain everything. That's too bad about like you're having this child to play with and like being trained all over again about things like going to the bathroom but gee we took care of the main thing didn't we, and gee if I have repaid you by convincing you to have that operation when we talked in the prison, gee you know how much I appreciate how much I owe you and all, and I guess you sure must know I didn't ever think anything bad about you when that happened, I mean that you were a criminal or like that, but just something was wrong somewhere which wasn't your fault but a good scientific explanation for it, so Jf I have repaid you that way and by studying hard like I am and all, then I guess that's the best I can do to show you how much I appreciate all you've done for me and all, and I sure study every minute, like last night this friend came by he had tickets for some concert when I was studying and he tried to keep asking me to go and I said no. Yours very truly, EDDIE P S I'm enclosing something I saw in the newspaper about this man who was a counterfeiter which they were trying to catch for a long time, I guess he was pretty good at it too which just goes to show you there was something wrong somewhere, like they found him in this hotel sort of in Spain it looked like he took his own life there, so I guess we took care of the main thing didn't we, I mean if a counterfeiter has to take his own life like that, and thats one thing, I mean restoring life after death that science hasn't figured out yet, but we're working on it. Dear Friend . . . Mrs. Sinisterra read on a postcard, We have not yet heard from you regarding the plastic newspaper clipping which we sent you recently. If you would like to keep this "permanized" clipping just send one dollar in the self-addressed stamped envelope which was enclosed for your convenience, or mail your payment with this card enclosed for proper identification and credit. We can obtain additional copies of this item or items from other news-934

papers and permanize them in plastic at $1.00 each. If you can furnish the clippings, the charge is only 75¢ each. Thank you for your courtesy and patronage. MEMENTO ASSOCIATES She tore the card in half and went up the stairs alone. When she got inside, she clung to the edge of the slopped sink for a minute, her body hunched as though in pain and her head up, listening; she turned the plastic knob on the box pinned to the collapsed folds of her bosom, her head still up, as though listening. Then she went to a medicine cabinet at the end of the sink, opened it, and took the same attitude. —You! . . . she called out. There was a disagreeable sound of response from somewhere. —You took my . . . Then she stopped, and held her forehead in a hand. "Deft, moving, genuine, at once tough and compassionate . . . one does not often get from autobiography so satisfying an experience." "Told with sensitivity which is fresh, combined with masterful insights, moving at a swift yet leisurely pace . . ." "A tingling narrative style, which touches deeply in its moments of swiftly known pathos, and breathes into memories of worldly experience insights into great truths almost worthy of the author of the Confessions ...." —You're trying to tell me these are reviews of your book? —Yes, yes, said Mr. Feddle eagerly, snatching the ribbons of paper back, and returning them to the book under his arm. He'd met the hunched critic in the green wool shirt plodding up Sixth Avenue as though in deep snow, a heavy book under his own arm, about to enter a tailor shop to have two buttons sewn on the front of his pants. —How come I haven't seen it then? —It's out. It's out, it just came out, said Mr. Feddle retreating. —I thought it was poetry, how come these say . . . —Poetical autobiography, Mr. Feddle said quickly. —How come all these reviews have the name of it torn off the top? —Oh, oh that's my . . . being modest ... —You being modest? Don't try to give me ... is that it? Under your arm there, is that it? Lemme see it. —Yes, but ... an advance copy, Mr. Feddle said retiring further out of reach, moving the book under his arm only enough to show his name on the jacket. —Here, lemme see it, you ... all right, you stupid old bastard, don't, I don't want to see it. —But you . . . aren't you even going to buy me a glass of beer? —Go on, you crazy old bastard. Do you think I don't know what those reviews are? You think I don't know the book those reviews are written about? —Oh did you . . . read it? Mr. Feddle asked helplessly. —No, but I knew the son of a bitch who wrote it, said the critic, turning away, into the tailor shop where he found his friend the stubby poet sitting debagged in a waist-high booth. —What are you doing here? —Having the zipper on my fly fixed. The critic undid his waist and sat down in the next booth. —That crazy old bastard out there, showing me reviews of Anselm's book he's trying to say are his. Anselm . . . —Anselm, the Church really had him. I laugh every time I think of him, retiring from the world and they make him publicity agent for a monastery. And the importance he tries to give himself by talking about what a sinner he was, he has to bring in every saint from Saint Augustine to Saint . . . some other saint to back him up, for Christ sake, publicity agent for a spiritual powerhouse. How'd you come out in court today? —That snotty kid swore he'd never met me, so how could he have used me in his novel. But we're proving he took incidents right out of my own life . . . —So what good are they to you . . . ? The tailor came out with a pair of pants over his arm. The poet put on his pants and the critic took off his pants. —Tell him to hurry up, we have to get uptown to meet this guy who's going to put up money for a new magazine. —I can't go without my pants, for Christ sake. Give him a couple of minutes to sew the buttons on. And then they silenced, each bending forth, closer and closer, to fix the book the other was carrying with a look of myopic recognition. —You reading that? both asked at once, withdrawing in surprise. —No. I'm just reviewing it, said the taller one, hunching back in his green wool shirt. —A lousy twenty-five bucks. It'll take me the whole evening tonight. You didn't buy it, did you? Christ, at that price? Who the hell do they think's going to pay that much just for a novel. Christ, I could have given it to you, all I need is the jacket blurb to write the review. It was in fact quite a thick book. A pattern of bold elegance, the lettering on the dust wrapper stood forth in stark configurations of red and black to intimate the origin of design. (For some crotchety reason there was no picture of the author looking pensive sucking a pipe, sans gene with a cigarette, sang-froid with no necktie, plastered across the back.) —Reading it? Christ no, what do you think I am? I just been having trouble sleeping, so my analyst told me to get a book and count the letters, so I just went in and asked them for the thickest book in the place and they sold me this damned thing, he muttered looking at the book with intimate dislike. —I'm up to a hundred and thirty-six thousand three hundred and something and I haven't even made fifty pages yet. Where's your pants? —Wait a second, he'll be right out with them. I got a card from Max. —Did he hear about Charles Dickens yet? —I wrote a note to him about it on a review of his book I sent him. —Your review? He'll thank you for that. —They cut it on me, for Christ sake, you know that. The hell with them, anyway, they're all of them fucked and far from home, sitting over there right now pretending they're in New York pretending they're in Paris . . . hey wait, wait . . . —I can't, I can't miss this guy, I'll see you later, the Viareggio. —That place, for Christ sake, it's taken over by fairies. Wait . . . Out on the sidewalk, Mr. Feddle hurried up fluttering the ribbons of newspaper. —Beat it, screw, go on you crazy old bastard, I heard all about your book ... —You did? you did? You've heard about it already? Yes, a beer? a beer to celebrate . . . ? And in his enthusiasm Mr. Feddle came too close. The book was snatched from under his arm and he fluttered here helplessly, listening to the laughter, and an instant's more hope that it might not be opened, that the dust wrapper he had made so carefully, lettering his name with such meticulous clarity on the front, pasting a picture of himself taken forty years before on the back, might yet sustain it. Then pages flashed, the laughter broke. —The Idiot? That's the title of your book? The Idiot . . . the laughter came on, —by Feodor Feddle . . . ? " 'Did you imagine that I did not foresee all this hatred!' Ippolit whispered again . . ." Mr. Feddle wiped his eye, sitting at an empty cafeteria table a few minutes later, over a tomato cocktail he had made with catsup and water, trying to hold together the torn dust wrapper so that his picture and his name might be seen whole by anyone coming near, the book balanced upright as pages slipped under his thumb, and a smile as of satisfaction fixed to his lips, weary satisfaction for a work completed, as the last page turned and the last paragraph swam before his eyes. "They can't make decent bread anywhere; in winter they are frozen like mice in a cellar . . ." He touched at his watering eye with the crook of a finger. " 'We've had enough of following our whims; it's time to be reasonable. And all this, all this life abroad, and this Europe of yours is all a fantasy, and all of us abroad are only a fantasy . . . remember my words, you'll see it for yourself!' she concluded almost wrathfully . . ." Someone approached his table. He swallowed hard, preparing to speak. It was a Puerto Rican busboy, with a hairline mustache. Pages retreated under his thumb. " 'Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness, said Myshkin in a low voice. " 'Ha, ha, ha! Just as I thought! I knew it was sure to be something like that! Though you are . . . you are . . . Well, well! You are eloquent people! Goodbye! Goodbye!' " On the terrace of the Flore sat a person who resembled the aging George Washington without his wig (at about the time he said farewell to his troops). She was drinking a bilious cloudy liquid and read, with silent moving lips,from a small stiff-covered magazine. Anyone could have seen it was Partisan Review she was reading, if anyone had looked. Paris lay by, accomplished. Other cities might cloy the appetites they fed, but this serpent of old Seine, pinched gray and wrinkled deep in time, continued to make hungry where she most satisfied, even to that hill where by night, round corners, she fed on most delicious poison, where, with, —Hey Joe, you see ciné cochon? deu^ femmes fooky-fooky? the vilest things became her still; where by day picturesque painters infested picturesque alleys painting the same picturesque painting painted so many times before: the spectral bulbiferous pyramids crowning the ascent where the first bishop of the city had approached carrying his head under his arm in a two-league march which centuries later would provoke a comment worthy any thinker before him, in a woman's pen whose shrewd instant would, ever after him, define and redeem the people whose patron saint he became. Now, her whole mien no more changed after another great war than those of her daughters parading the Grands Boulevards, quickly restored with cosmetics after their own brief battles, murmuring, like them, —Vous m'emmenez? . . . Paris prepared to celebrate an anniversary. It was her two thousandth anniversary, and that not one of birth, but of the first time, under another name, when she was raped: a morsel for a monarch, Lutetia succumbed after a struggle, and later on, like her daughters parading now between the Madeleine and the Café de la Paix, took a more gaudy name for her professional purposes, shrining the innocence of the maiden name in history. Thus brilliant in flowered robes, like those Greek law decreed for courtesans, Paris soon gained the ascendancy, soon stood out like those prostitutes of Rome who, it was said, "could be distinguished from virtuous matrons only by the superior elegance of their dress and the swarm of admirers who surrounded them." As fashions have originated with courtesans throughout the ages, she soon became their arbiter. And since she was, like the better class of whores in ancient Greece, a trained entertainer, no more opprobrium attached to distinguished men visiting her than fell to Socrates visiting Aspasia: statesmen and generals came too, as Pericles came to Aspasia, and even after she had ruined him, and found herself accused of impiety, the great man appeared at her trial as her advocate, only to find his eloquence to fail him in court: "he could only clasp Aspasia to his breast and weep." Other lands were not slow to credit her reputation as the author of all civilized innovations in the western world, and as much as five centuries ago the English, Italians, and even Turks, readily acknowledged that civilization had been enhanced with syphilis by the French. Paris exiled her overcivilized members across the river to Saint Germain des Prés, which had now once more become a haven for those crippled by novel and contagious disease. They behaved in this sanctuary very much as they had then, prohibited, as they were in the fifteenth century, "under pain of death, from conversing with the rest of the world." On the terrace of the Flore, a passably dressed man who had compounded a new philosophy sat surrounded by some of the unshaven, unshorn, unwashed youth who espoused it. Four ruthlessly well-organized Hollanders, in the picturesque dress of their native land, sang Red River Valley from the sidewalk, and passed a cute wooden shoe among the captive audience. Someone whispered, —I'm actually going to join the church, the Roman Catholic. Someone else warned that the Pope and the whole works was going to Brazil. Someone else said that the Polar Icecap was growing, and would soon tip the earth over. Across the street on the terrace of the Brasserie Lipp, two pin-headed young men in gray flannel compared shiny green passports, thumbing forty-one blank pages. They were with two square-shouldered girls, whose small breasts were attached quite low to accommodate the fashion which the dresses imposed. One of the girls said, —I think my conçerage is returning all my mail marked ankonoo because I only gave her a thousand francs poorbwar. Behind them, another young man in gray flannels said he had known one of the girls, she was on the Daisy Chain at Vassar. On the terrace of the Reine Blanche next door, a golden-haired boy said, —I just want to say that being in Paris is a big fat wonderful thing . . . and beside him a youth whose plume of hair stood uncombed with painstaking care laid a hand on his and said, —Be-t tout no ônelé etheur boïze frem dthe younaïtedd stétce in Paris is laïke kemming tout a bagnkouètt and bring yoûrze one lennch. On the terrace of the Royale Saint Germain, Hannah was to!d that a friend of hers was coining up from Italy, Don . . . what-was-it? And she responded, —Hey diddle diddle It bends in the middle, can you buy me a beer? —I heard they hung one of Max's pictures upside down at his show, —So what, Hannah said and she sounded morose. —Nobody noticed it until today, it's a real compliment to the coherence of the design. She was sitting at a table with an Australian sculptor who made leather sandals, a colored girl in the Stuart tartan, and a professional Mexican, who looked blank. Hannah was staring at a ribbon of newspaper, with a note scribbled in the margin. —Who was that guy Charles that Max was talking about? He said he finally made it? under a subway? that he held up the IRT for twenty-five minutes . . . —Will you shut up about it? Hannah responded, to amend her tone with, —and buy me a beer? The Australian sculptor who made leather sandals said that Beethoven's duet for viola and cello sounded to him like two bulky women rummaging under a bed. Behind him a girl said, —Of course I like music, but not just to listen to. —And you know how he paints them? He climbs up a ladder with a piece of string soaked in ink, and he drops it from the ceiling onto a canvas on the floor. —We've just bought a lovely big Pissarro . . . —My uncle had one, it was so big he couldn't park it anywhere, —Max got good write-ups on his show. The critic in La Macule said . . . —Why shouldn't he? Hannah interrupted. —They came around asking for a ten per cent cut on anything he sold if they gave him good reviews, sure he said yes, any good publicity agent charges ten per cent. —Look, is it true what I heard about Max? that his mistress is the wife of ... (and here the name of a well-known painter was whispered in Hannah's ear)
— ... who slips him her husband's unfinished canvases that he's discarded and forgotten about, and Max touches them up and sells them as originals? —My uncle finally smashed it up one night, somebody on a motorcycle thought he was two motorcycles and tried to go between them. —And then he told me he spent two days in bed with this real high-class whore he picked up in the Café de la Paix, after he told her he couldn't pay in francs, all he had was dollars, and he flashes this roll of tens and twenties and fifties, so she paid all the bills at the George Sank and gave him a terrific time for a couple of days and then rolled him, he said he'd like to see her trying to change Confederate States money in the Banque de France. What's this, a review of his book? Hannah pushed the ribbon of paper forth saying, —The poor bastard who wrote it sends it over to him. Read it, you can see he misses the whole idea. Somebody in the Trib compared it to Nightwood. —Here he comes now, isn't it? Hannah looked up, to see Max approach, smiling; to ask, —Hey, can you buy me a beer? At the next table a girl said, —Plagiary? What's that. Handel did it. They all did it. Even Mozart did it, he even plagiarized from himself, just look at the wind instruments in the dinner scene with Leporello. Someone said he'd been knocked down by a priest riding a bicycle with a red plush seat in the Rue Zheetliquer; someone said she had been knocked down by a nun on a bicycle in Rue Dauphine street: someone with a beard said he had never seen either a nun or a priest on the left bank, and added, —I just got a new holy man myself. —A what? —You know, an analyst. Have you been up to the exhibition of paintings by nuts up in the Saint Anne hospital? We got a nice section, the ones by American nuts. Some of them are dirty as hell. And someone said, —Nothing queer about Carruthers ... to conclude, once for all, the story of that subaltern and his mare. —Marecones, muttered the man in the sharkskin suit. —Wie Eulen nach Athen bringen . . . —Marecones y nada mas. There, on the terrace of the Reine Blanche Rudy and Frank held hands under the table, and talked about the wedding banquet: Caviar Volga, consomme Grands Viveurs, paillettes, homard au whisky, cœur de Charollais Edouard VII, perdreau rôti sur canape . . . champagnes, Mumm 1928, Chateau Issan 1925 . . . —And in the ceremony we just told him to leave out that vulgar part about the bodies of man and woman clinging to each other. They said afterwards that I was quite dewy-eyed. —Sonny's terribwy upset, so jealous] He trwied to do away with himself, did he tell you? —How? —By hitting himself savagewy in the temple with a fountain pen. But where was Big Anna? Is that one jealous too? —No baby, Big Anna telephoned from some absurd place in Italy. They were going to drive up in some nameless person's new Renault, and they were somewhere in the Fremola valley when it didn't go right, so they opened the hood to look at the engine, and there was nothing in there but an old tire, they must just have dropped the engine right out. So they just left it there, it was the