The Recognitions (55 page)

His work, always unfinished, was like the commission from a prince in the Middle Ages, the prince who ordered his tomb, and then busied the artist continually with a succession of fireplaces and doorways, the litter of this life, while the tomb remained unfinished. Nor for Stanley, was this massive piece of music which he worked at when he could, building the tomb he knew it to be, as every piece of created work is the tomb of its creator: thus he could not leave it finished haphazard as he saw work left on all sides of him. It must be finished to a thorough perfection, as much as he humbly could perceive that, every note and every bar, every transition and move-ment in the pattern over and against itself and within itself proof against time: the movement in the Divine Comedy; the pattern in a Requiem Mass; prepared against time as old masters prepared their canvases and their pigments, so that when they were called to appear the work would still hold the perfection they had embraced there. Not what was going on around him now, a canvas ready when it had been stretched and slavered with white lead, or not prepared at all, words put on paper, flickering images on celluloid, with no thought but of the words and the image and the daub to follow. (Stanley's work was done on scrap paper which he ruled himself and on envelope backs, old letters, or old scores which he had erased. He was saving a pile of new paper for the final composition.) 

As dawn neared outside he was still fully awake, lying under the crack in the ceiling, under the yellowed ivory (thirteenth century) crucifix over the bed. He heard the truck collecting rubbish at the far end of his block. Christmas so near, again? Suddenly he looked at the watch strapped to his wrist, a rage of figures battling through his mind. He saw Anselm, and shuddered; Esme, and moaned: what unholy thing was that? what knowledge of evil did they share? for so they did, antipodal, but embracing in his mind, images profaning his love in their coupling. He stretched his arms above his head. Did one wear a watch in the tomb? A long walk, he decided; and then he would go to Mass. Why had Agnes Deigh refused to go to Mass with him, one day when they had met; it was just time, and near enough. —I've got to have drinks with someone, business is business darling, he could hear her voice again. Then her profane images shouldered his missionary intentions aside, and the more he thought of her. 

He had turned his face to the window just above him, where uncertain light entered to show things as they had been left in each other's shadows the night before, shadowless now, older, wearing out separately and all together. This window he had to keep open in summer, so that passers-by could look in, upsetting to him, as though the friction of their glances might wear things down further; the window open in summer so that things might be thrown in, as some children one day, playing, had thrown something a dog had done on the sidewalk in behind the radiator. 

There was a slight tapping on the door, as though someone were knocking who did not want to be answered to, knocking to find no one instead of someone there. Stanley sat up on the edge of his low couch, the door handle turned a slow quarter-circle, and back. 

—Who is it? he cried out. —Who is it out there? 

—Stanley? A girl's voice: it was Hannah, he let her in. —It's so cold, she said, —I'm sorry, but can I sleep in your chair? 

—Stay here, he said. —Lie down, Hannah. I'm going out. 

—But no, don't leave for me. Go back to bed. But you're all dressed? 

—Yes, stay here. I'm going out. 

—Is everything all right, Stanley? Has anything ... 

—Nothing has changed. Go to bed here, Hannah. I'm going out to Mass. 

In the hall, where he stopped in the communal toilet, he was troubled again by the problem in arithmetic penciled on the wall there. Someone had multiplied 763 by 37, and got 38,231. He had checked it, idly, two years before; then carefully, at every sitting since. Who had made the mistake? Was it too late to find them and tell therii? 10,000 . . . what? Had that person gained it? or lost it? Was it too late? Stanley looked at his wrist watch. He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish? 

—I'll go in and try the door first, said Otto. 

Feasley got out to follow, returned to get the leg out of the back seat, and rejoined him. The door was locked. —There's somebody awake inside, Otto said. Out on the sidewalk, he twisted the lock on the window grating. Feasley said, —I'll get a wrench, handed the leg to Otto and went back to the car. Suddenly the window shade shot up in Otto's face, the sash after it.

—What are you doing here? 

—Oh, I ... Hannah, I ... I mean we ... 

—What are you doing here at this window anyhow? 

—Why nothing I ... Hannah was dressed only in a shirt, for all he could see. —We just . . . well, so long Hannah. See you later, he called as he heard the car's engine racing behind him, and he ran toward it, the bare foot waving his goodbye to Hannah from under his arm. 

—He's got a girl in there, Hannah's sleeping with him, said Otto as they roared away. —Say listen, he said looking round him, —have you seen a little tan bag, a pigskin dispatch case? Suddenly frantic, he turned to look behind them in the car. The car slid around a corner, leaned to one side in a skid, recovered, skidded in the other direction, and Feasley was cursing as it went head-on into a pole. They got out. Otto looked, found nothing but the leg. —Come on. The hell with it. 

—But what about this thing? Otto said, wrapping the cloth around it more tightly as they walked fast up Little West Twelfth Street. 

—O Chrahst put it in an ashcan. 

He started to, but three men rounded the corner, and he tucked it back under his sling. They got a subway, vapidly curious people appearing on all sides around them. 

Stanley had taken a long bus ride, returning to the neighborhood of the hospital, and been walking for some time, it seemed, when he heard six o'clock strike nearby. Following the direction of the bells, he found the church and went in, mind seething as he stopped and genuflected. He moved toward a pew in the back, and had almost knelt beside her when he recognized Agnes Deigh. He clutched at her wrist. She started in terror away from him, awakened. 

—
Stanley? 

—You're
here
, he whispered. 

—Oh God. Her head lolled forward and away from him. —Take me home. 

—But you're here, at Mass. 

—I know it. Take me home. Stanley, now. 

—Look, we can't carry this thing all over town in broad daylight. It's beginning to smell, too. 

—Let's have a look. Chra-ahst, it's turning gray. 

Across from them a woman stared, but did not see them, her mouth working, her fingers working at her beads. It was the first car of the train, and at stops a voice rose, where at the glass which looked forward into the tube a woman talked, so close to her own image in that glass that it was steamed hy her breath. —They told us all about it, there it is in letters where anyone can read it, everyone knows, they're killing each other, boys killing each other millions of American boys are being killed you can read all about it ... 

The roar of the train drowned her out. 

—What shall I do with it? 

—Leave it on the seat, there in the corner. We'll get off at this stop. 

—he cut them both up and put them in suitcases and those are the people who travel on airplanes . . . The doors clapped to behind them, and they waited on the platform for another train. —My old man's going to get me this time, for mucking up that God-damned car again. 

A girl stood in front of them, waiting for the next train, on her way to work in a chewing-gum factory: Hestia, Vesta, virgin-sworn, the hearth and the home (a cheap fluff of a jabot she wore, imitation coral earrings, crippling shoes, under a thin elbow a tabloid catalogue of the day's misinformation). —Chrahst, I don't know whether it's a boy or a girl, after that little nigger at the party last night. Hey honey, do you want to make thirty-five cents? 

—No, I'm really
not
a Catholic any more, I just put that picture of Cardinal Spellman up there because that corner of the room needs a little
red
, said Agnes Deigh, almost recovered. —Do you want a drink? 

—
Now? 

—Stanley, you look exhausted too, she said. —Here, drink this, it will warm you. She handed him a glass of port, and swallowed down, herself, almost choking, some whisky. —What a God-awful mess this place is. He must have got here. Agnes looked around, at her own underclothing scattered broadcast in the living room. One of her best gowns was hung over her sunlamp, which was turned on.
—It is warming, Stanley said, drinking, —I can feel it all through me. 

—God, I'm so tired, she said, beginning to undress. —Will you help me? He followed her into the bedroom. —Thank God you found me. 

—What's this? Stanley said, aghast holding up a card he'd taken from the table, reading in a whisper —"Christ has come!"

—Oh Stanley, you're not supposed to see that. It's a Christmas card. 

—
Christmas card!
But who . . . 

—Don't be upset, Stanley. From that Swedish boy they call Big Anna. 

—But it's . . . disgusting, this picture . . . 

—I know, Stanley. But these things happen in the world. Throw it in the wastebasket. No, don't tear it up, just throw it in the basket. 

—But . . . why do you
know
those people? 

—Oh Stanley, she said, and paused bent double over a rolled-down stocking. —Don't you see, Stanley, sometimes people like that are . . . are easier for a woman. They're safer somehow . . . She had taken off her stockings then, in the pause, and stood up dressed only in her slip. She picked up a plant, and carried it into the other room. —I just can't stand to have anything living and breathing in the same room where I'm trying to sleep. She sat down on the bed again with a glass of water, and laid two sleeping pills beside it. —God, what a smell of perfume he left in the place. He must have dropped the bottle. Oh, come Stanley, sit here. You do understand about people like that don't you? Just don't think about them. You've got to be philosophical, darling. Thank God you found me in that church. 

—Yes, thank God, who led you there. 

—But Stanley dear . . . 

—You were at Mass, he said. 

—I'm
not
a Catholic any more, I tell you.

—You will always be a Catholic. It is not for you to say. But why have you strayed so far? he asked, sitting beside her. 

—Even when I was a child, I was frightened out of it, it seemed. Once in my convent school, I remember when we were all sent to look at a reliquary. It was ... I don't know, a splinter of the Cross, or a crumb of something. They even had one that they said contained a bit of the original darkness that Moses called down on the world, imagine. Yes, I think it was a crumb, from the biscuit that bled when it was trampled by Zwingli's soldiers. But I didn't go, I went to a movie instead. The next day in class I was told to get up and describe the reliquary, and I gave a wonderful description, about it being big and fancy and gold, with a peep-hole and a magnifying lens so you could see the speck inside. Then they whipped me, and told me that it hadn't even been on exhibit, it was away being cleaned . . . 

—But these things are our trials as children to prepare us ... —And I used to chew the wafer, she went on, almost somniloquent, in an arrested whisper. —I couldn't hold it in my mouth without chewing it. The more I knew it was sinful, the more I chewed His Body, I
had
to chew it ... 

—These sins we commit as children . . .
But now Agnes had breathed deeply and sat back. She glimpsed her face in a boudoir mirror and said, —Don't I look awful, my eye ... 

—What happened to it? 

—At that party, that terrible party, in the ladies' room, another woman hit me with her hand bag. This has gone far enough, she said. She didn't think I was really a ... she thought I was one of the people in costume. Agnes was staring at the floor. Then she sniffed and turned to Stanley with a smile forcing her lips. —But analysis is safer, and you have the same confessional. 

—But don't you understand what happened this morning? he brought out fervently. —You didn't know you were coming to Mass, but you were directed there, as I was, as He led me there to ... 

She put an arm around his shoulders, and her strap came undone. Mickey Mouse pointed to 6:45. —Stanley, she said. —You're such a boy. 

Dawn, somewhere beyond the incinerator plant which had won first prize in functional architecture a decade before: Fuller was busy in Mr. Brown's bathroom, picking up every piece of Mr. Brown's hair he could find and putting it into an envelope. Esme wakened for a moment in a strange bed, looked at the arm round her, could identify neither its owner nor its sex, and went back to sleep. Esther woke, hearing sounds which seemed to have been going on for a long time; as though she'd heard a key turn in the lock hours before, and footsteps, and the sound of a voice, or voices. But she lay still, and closed her eyes, as she did always on the dull sounds of Rose's dreams. In the street below, young policemen raced the engines of their motorcycles to arrogant pitch, and roared to duty. In the East Fifty-first Street station-house, Big Anna sat on a bench weeping. —But nobody even saw my gown, he cried. —We saw it, Jack, said the man behind the desk, turning to another policeman in shirtsleeves, —Is he known? Anselm was descending the steps of the I.R.T. West Side subway, on all fours. Adeline had just closed a door behind her, having wakened beside someone with short-cut hair and heavy hands, whom she remembered having taken for a man the night before. Herschel was not to be wakened until some hours later, by two sailors in a Chelsea hotel room, where he lay bandaged over chest and back, the protective gauze of Dutch Siam, tattoo artist. 

Dawn, just as it came to Australian skies, a woman of bad character in a cloak of red possum skins. 

What Stanley marveled at most was the wealth, of her that had appeared as her garments came off. There was so much of her. She stood, wiping the make-up from her face turned away, and he stared at her thighs from behind, as a collector stares at the fine patina glazed over the courses of worms, for those vast vermiculated surfaces were furrowed so. Terror struck him. He started to rise from the bed and reach for his shirt. Too late. She was there, tumbling the marvelous cucumiform weights down upon a chest which looked as though it would cave in under such manna. —Look, she said, joy of this world recovered, raising herself so that her front swung pendulant over him, unequaled, and unequal lengths untouched by baby's hand, —you can play telephone with them.