The Recognitions (52 page)

While Otto looked dartingly for Max, Esme entered with flowing ease, and pleasure lighting her thin face as she smiled to one person after another with gracious familiarity. —There he is, Otto said, as they sat down. The juke-box was playing Return to Sorrento. Otto adjusted his sling, and smoothed his mustache. Esme sat, looking out over this spectral tide with the serenity of a woman in a painting; and often enough, like gallery-goers, the faces turned to look at her stared with vacuity until, unrecognized, self-consciousness returned, and they looked away, one to say, —I know
her
, but God knows who
he
is; another to say, —She was locked up for months, a couple of years ago; and another to listen to the joke about Car-ruthers and his horse. 

At Max's table, among his and six other elbows, a number of wet beer glasses, a book titled
Twit Twit Twit
and a copy of Mother Goose, lay
The Vanity of Time
. Max rose, and came over with it. 

—What did you think of it? Otto asked, pleasantly, not getting up. He rescued the pages, and wiped off a couple of spots which were still wet. 

—Well Otto, it's good, Max said doubtfully. 

—But what? What did you think? 

—Well, I'll tell you the truth. It was funny sometimes, reading it. Like I'd read it before. There were lines in it ... 

—You mean
you
think it's plagiarized? Otto named the word. 

—Well, Max said, laughing like a friend. 

—Look, you had it out, I mean, at the table. Did they ... I mean, did all those other people see it? 

—They were looking at it. I didn't think you'd mind, and you see, I did want to ask them what they thought, about . . . recognizing it. 

—Well? Otto opened his dispatch case, turning it away from view so that it was not apparent that the play went in to join its duplicates. 

—What did they think? Pretty much the same thing, I think, Max admitted. —George said he felt like he could almost go right on with one of the . . . one of the lines. And Agnes . . . 

—Agnes Deigh? You mean you talked to her about it? 

—Well, it came up in conversation. I was up at her office this morning, talking with her about my novel. It's coming out in the spring. She's trying to arrange the French rights now. 

—But what did you think it was plagiarized from, if you're all so sure I stole it. 

—Nobody said you'd stolen it, Otto. It was just that some of the lines were a little . . . familiar. 

—Yes but from
what?
 

—That's the funny thing, nobody could figure it out, one of us would be just about to say, and then we couldn't put our finger on it. But don't worry about it, Otto. It's a good play. Then he straightened up, taking his hands from the table where he'd rested them, and said, —I'm showing some pictures this week, can you come to the opening? 

—Yes, but ... 

—Thanks for letting me read it, Otto ... 

—There was one line I borrowed, I mean I put it in just to try it out . . . Otto called after him, but Max was gone to his table, where he talked to the people seated with him. They looked up at Otto. 

Esme ate quietly, across from Otto's silent fury, weighted now to sullenness with four glasses of whisky, before his veal and peppers had appeared. 

—Hello Charles, Esme said looking up, kindly. —You look very well tonight. Charles smiled wanly. Silver glittered in his hair. His wrists were bandaged, his glass empty. —Do you want my glass of beer, Charles? Because I can't drink it. She handed it to him, and murmuring something, without a look at Otto, he left. 

—Really, Esme. 

—What is it, Otto? she said brightly. 

—Well I mean, I can't buy beer for everybody in the place. She smiled to him. —That's because you don't want to, she said. 

—You're damned right I don't, he said, looking round, and back at his plate. 

—Of course I know it's near Christmas, said someone behind him. —For Christ's sake, what do you want me to do about it, light up? 

There was a yelp from the end of the bar; and a few, who suspected it of being inhuman, turned to see a dachshund on a tight leash recover its hind end from a cuspidor. The Big Unshaven Man stepped aside. —I'm God-damned sorry, he said. —Oh, said the boy on the other end of the leash, —Mister Hemingway, could I buy you a drink? You are Ernest Hemingway aren't you? 

—My friends call me Ernie, said the Big Unshaven Man, and turning to the bar, —a double martini, boy. 

Though the place appeared crowded beyond capacity, more entered from the street outside, crying greetings, trampling, excusing themselves with grunts, struggling toward the bar. 

—Elixir of terpin hydrate with codein in a little grapefruit juice, it tastes just like orange Curacao. What do you think I was a pharmacist's mate for. 

—When I was in the Navy we drank Aqua Velva, that shaving stuff. You could buy all you wanted on shipboard. —Yeah? Well did you ever drink panther piss? the liquid fuel out of torpedoes? 

The juke-box was playing
Return to Sorrento
. A boy with a sharp black beard sat down beside Esme. —Have you got any tea? he asked her. She shook her head, and looked up at Otto, who had not heard, had not in fact even noticed the person sitting half behind him. —Sometimes I really hate Max, he said, then noticed the beard. —I mean, I mistrust him. There were no introductions. —That poor bastard, said the beard. —He's really had it, man. So has she. 

—Who? Otto asked incuriously. 

—His girl, she's getting a real screwing. She wanted to marry him last year but she wanted him to be analyzed first. Max didn't have any money so she paid for it. Now his analyst says he's in love with her for all the neurotic reasons in the book. It don't jive, man. He's through with her but he can't leave her because he can't stop his analysis. 

—Does she know it? 

—Who, Edna? She ... 

—Edna who? 

—Edna Mims, she's a blonde from uptown. He used to bring her down here to shock her, and then take her home and ball her . . . 

—
Edna?
said Otto, unable to swallow. —With
him?
 

Everyone silenced for a moment at a scream of brakes outside, anticipating the satisfaction of a resounding crash. They were dis-appointed. Instead, as their conglomerate conversation rose again, Ed Feasley rode in upon its swell. Behind him a blonde adjusting a garter followed with choppy steps like a dory pulled in the wake of a yawl on a rough sea. —Get a drink, was all Ed Feasley could say, as he sat down at Otto's table. 

Mr. Feddle was there. He stood with difficulty, his hand on the hip of a tall light-haired girl, her delicately modeled face and New England accent manifest of good breeding. —His mother is the sweetest little Boston woman, she said, —
aw
fully interested in dogs,
aw
fully anti-vivisection. They were looking at Anselm, who looked about to drop to his knees. Behind her, Don Bildow said, —He is an excellent poet, when he tries. He's been taking care of my daughter when we're out, my wife and I. I haven't looked at another woman since we were married. Then with his hand on the man's-shirted shoulder of the light-haired girl, —Do you find me attractive? 

The beard at Otto's table said, —Is that Hemingway? Ed Feasley looked over at the Big Unshaven Man, who had just said, —No queer in history ever produced great art. Feasley looked vague, but said, —There's something familiar about him. 

—That's the damnedest thing I ever heard, Otto said, looking at Max, partially recovered. He motioned for another drink. When he had finished it he said, —I've got to make a phone call. I may have to go to Peru and northern Bolivia. 

—Tonight? said Feasley. —You going to fly down? I'd like to go with you, but . . . say, if you can wait until tomorrow afternoon . . I've got to go to a wedding tomorrow, but ... 

—No, I mean I've just got to call my father now, Otto said casually as though he had known that man all his life. 

—Say hello to the old bastard for me, Ed Feasley called after him. 

Otto called, made a rendezvous for a week later with the anxious voice at the other end of the line. They would meet in the lobby of a midtown hotel, at eight (—If you'll wear that green scarf I sent you for Christmas two years ago, Otto, I have one just like it. We'll know each other that way. And I wear glasses . . . said the voice, murmuring, after the telephone at the other end of the line was hung up, —Should I have said rimless glasses?). Otto had agreed quickly, he didn't know where his green muffler was but to push the thing further would have been too much, bad enough to need recourse to such a device to know your own father. 

There were seven people at the table when he returned to it. The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds. —Yeh, I'm doing a psychoanalysis of it, said one of them, tapping Mother Goose on the table. 

—I tell you, there's a queer conspiracy to dominate everything. Just look around, the boy with the red hunting cap said. —Queers dominate writing, they dominate the theater, they dominate art. Just try to find a gallery where you can show your pictures if you're not a queer, he added, raising a cigarette between paint-encrusted fingers. —What do you think women look so damned foolish for

today? It's because queers design their clothes, queers dictate women's fashions, queers do their hair, queers do all the photography in the fashion magazines. They're purposely making women look more and more idiotic until nobody will want to go to bed with one. It's a conspiracy. 

Near their table, the tall dark girl who had been talking with Anselm said to someone she knew, —Do you know that girl? I want to meet her. 

With his hand on Esme's shoulder, Otto leaned down to say, —Let's get out of here. Ed Feaslëy looked up to say, —You want to go to a party? A big ball a bunch of queers are giving up in Harlem. 

—Drag? someone asked. 

—What's drag? 

—Where they all dress like women. 

—This ball is drag, someone else said. —High drag. 

There was a loud yelp. Anselm, on all fours, had met the dachshund, and had one of its ears in his mouth. The tall dark girl looked up at the doorway to see a timid Italian boy with no chin start to enter, and get pushed aside. —God, she said, —there's my stupid cousin. I'm going next door. —I've got a doctor for her, a young man was saying. —He'll do it for two hundred and fifty, but I can't get hold of her. Every time I call all I get on the phone is Rose, her crazy sister Rose. 

Otto and Ed Feaslëy, with Esme between them, moved toward the door. The Big Unshaven Man turned away when Feaslëy passed. —Of course I know him. A damn fine painter, Mr. Memling, he was saying, as he took a quart flask out of his pocket. —Would you mind filling this up with martinis? Yes, what you read about me is true, I like to have some with me. Sure, I'll look at your novel any time, he finished, as the boy handed a ten-dollar bill across the bar. 

—I sure as Chrahst know him from somewhere, Feasley said. 

—That's because he's Ernest Hemingway, said a voice nearby. 

—Paris? said the light-haired girl. —I wouldn't reach up my ahss for the whole city. 

Mr. Feddle was being pushed out the door ahead of them. There they met Hannah. —Is Stanley in there? she asked. —Haven't seen him. —He had to go to the hospital to see his mother, said Hannah. —She just won't die. Then Hannah melted into the stew, where the juke-box was playing
Return to Sorrento
. 

—Where's Adeline? Otto asked. 

—I don't know. The hell with her, Feaslëy said. They found Adeline asleep in the car. Fortunately it was a new model, with a low chassis and a low center of gravity, which saved it from overturning at the corners. They had some difficulty getting in to the party, when Ed Feasley offered to fight anyone who kept them out. They were saved when a crapulous Cleopatra appeared, waving a rubber asp at Esme and Adeline, thought it knew them, squealing in rapturous welcome that their costumes were divine. 

It was quite a party. There must have been four hundred. 

They arrived as a beautiful thing in a strapless white evening gown finished a song called
I'm a Little Piece of Leather
, followed on the stage by a strip-tease in two parts. The first performer was all too obviously a woman, gone to fat. This tumbled about in the spotlights, wallowed a great unmuscled expanse of rump and bounced a mammoth front at the audience, jeering with laughter, railed off the stage in grisly flounces of flesh. Then towering loveliness appeared, bowed to thunderous applause, and moving with perfect timing slipped off one after another garment to reveal exquisite limbs (hairless but a trifle muscular) with long gathering motions of blond hair to the waist, serpentine caresses rising over the spangled brassiere. Ed Feasley, who had muttered with virile disgust at the first, watched this exhibition with wondering pleasure, until, in finale, the brassiere was waved aloft leaving a chest uninhabited, leaving Feasley sitting forward in astonished indignation, leaving, the stage through a curtain of wild applause. 

—Are you
really
a girl? a young Bronzino in velvet asked Esme, punching in disbelief at her small bosom. She laughed, and Otto turned to brandish his sling; like Infessura, perhaps, writing of the papal court of Sixtus IV, "puerorum amator et sodomita fuit," he ordered a drink. 

There was, in fact, a religious aura about this festival, religious that is in the sense of devotion, adoration, celebration of deity, before religion became confused with systems of ethics and morality, to become a sore affliction upon the very things it had once exalted. Quite as festive, these halls, as the Díonysian processions in which Greek boys dressed as women carried the ithyphalli through the streets, amid sounds of rejoicing from all sexes present, and all were; glorious age of the shrine of Hercules at Coos, where the priests dressed in feminine attire; the shrine of Venus at Cyprus, where men in women's clothes could spot women immediately, for they wore men's clothes: golden day of the bride deflowered by the lingam, straddling the statue of Priapus to offer her virginity to that god who, like all gods, even to the Christian deity who exercised it with Mary in the form of the Holy Ghost, had jus primae noctis, and no subterfuge permitted. So enough of these young brides had backed up upon the Priapean image and left their flowers there. So a voice said now, —Then let's go to Vienna, they've announced that you can wear drag in the streets if you don't offend public morals! Isn't that sweet? To which a dark-haired person in an evening gown of green watered silk said, — More than once I've dressed as a priest, just so no one would be troublesome about my wearing skirts. Sometimes I just can't
breathe
in trousers.