The Recognitions (89 page)

aside with a firm narrow foot. —Shall we go in? he asked, still smiling, with a step back to hold the door open. The place was filled with noise coming from the opposite end, moaning which broke into a stifled scream, relapsed in a heaving sob, repeated, and repeated, interrupted by a hiss and spitting. The animals moved about their cages in the restless patterns of their lives, to turn their heads in that direction as they passed, across the front of the cage, round to the back, emerging again; and the tigers coming forth approached the bars as though they were coming straight through. Some of the animals did not move. A black panther, caged down across the way, stood watching, motionless but for the black tail whose weaving tip just cleared the floor. Other leopards sat waiting, and watched; an albino with pink eyes. The lion lay still, archetype of the calm of enduring vigilance, fore-paws extended. The racket went on, leaving only two apes, caged halfway down one side, generically unconcerned. —And you don't hate Brown, do you? Basil Valentine asked abruptly. —For what he's done to you. —Brown? hate him? for what he's done to me? —There's a favor I have to ask of you, Valentine went on, as though he considered his question answered. —That Patinir? I remember. You think I don't, but I remember. —No. Something else, Valentine commenced, his tone both fresh and casual. —The Stabat Mater? What do you plan doing . . . —She? . . . bury her and marry her, after all, she . . . —No, no. That painting, the last one you were working on. —Why? —Well, if you are as you say, through with all this, I ... thought I'd rather like to have it. What's the matter? —You? Yes, I told you, how fragile situations are! Every moment reshaping the past. You? you want it? —If you'd give it to me, as a ... to a friend, a favor to an old friend? Valentine put a hand out to his shoulder, but he turned away. —Everything down there's destroyed. I burned everything, I put everything into the fireplace and set fire to it. —But not that? not that picture too? —Why not? he demanded, turning. —If it was, as you said, becoming . . . not van Eyck, but what you want? —What I want? he whispered, and shuddered. Moans from the other end rose above the broken echoes of human voices. —The face, Valentine said. —The . . . reproach in that face, it was very beautiful, I thought. Then Valentine felt his wrist gripped tightly. —Yes, the reproach! That's it, you understand? They were halfway down the tiers of cages. —Gee lookit how he does it, said a boy before the apes' cage. —That's a her . . . and lookit her eat it, she's stoopin over and eatin it. The caterwauling rose. The two pumas, as they would prove to be, were in the last cage to the right. Next to them, and separated by a metal wall, a white African lioness brushed the bars of her cage, stalked to the back, and came forth round a tree trunk in the center, its length torn by her claws and teeth. Her tail wove to one side and the other, and she twisted to bare her teeth and snap at it, making no pause when the cries in the next cage broke. —Weh weh weh it's all right beautiful lady, yes, come on, you gonna eat it all up today? you gonna eat your tail all up? Yes . . . weh weh weh . . . said a woman before the cage, sharp-nosed, with too much make-up, she held out a skinny hand with a ring mounting a miserable stone, to the lioness. —Listen. You see why it's important now? Shocked as much by the smile fixed on him, as he was by the grip fastening his wrist, Valentine had started to withdraw. The instant his arm tightened the hazardous hand left it, but the smile persisted; and Valentine asked, —Why what's important? —Yes, clearing up all this, these . . . those fragments, if they won't believe me. If you saw it too, in that face? The eyes turned away, the eyes not looking at you, but the forgiveness, the . . . grace? Yes, but even in that, the reproach. If you saw it too, that reproach? You understand, then, don't you. How I've felt since that dream? The Seven Sins, when they come to confess, and be shrived? The second dream, I don't remember the first one, but the second one, he wakes up but he goes to sleep again over his prayers, and there's Reason preaching, a "field full of folk"? And one by one, Superbia, Invidia ... —Damn it ... ! —What? —I've dropped a glove somewhere, Valentine said in a tone which penetrated the cry of the puma. Before him the lioness came forward with her head lowered and out to one side, waiting for him to appear in her view. Then their eyes met, and without turning from her as she did from him, passing the bars, he added, —Come now, what is all this : . . —I'll tell you about it, listen. When I was away, I was dreamt, I mean I dreamt, I had two dreams I think, but the first one, I 548

don't remember the first one. But the other one, sitting bolt up-right in a chair, was it? And there she was, she touched me. Her lips were blue like indigo, and she ... I didn't understand it then, but now, you can see, yes that reproach, if you saw it too. You can see that I can't just go to her, like this, after what I've done and, done to her. That I couldn't just go to her and offer her this . . . what's left. —What is it, all this, this dream . . . ? Valentine interrupted, not turning nor raising his voice, nor his attention which seemed to seethe and recede with the shape of the lioness looming toward the bars and retiring. —This she, this face in that study . . . ? —Yes, and you see why it's crucial. Why, when we've settled all this and we can leave . . . —Leave! Valentine took a step back, without looking round his hand caught the wrist rising before him. —Tell me, what are you talking about? —She . . . —She? This . . . stabat Mater . . . dolorosa, it's she standing-over you, is it? isn't it? Yes, you've told me, this blessed Queen of Heaven? . . . Valentine looked up quickly as the lioness turned away. The hissing in the next cage rose to broken cries. —Yes, your mother, isn't it? Your . . . "sainted mother"? —My mother? He twisted in Valentine's hold, which was not tight but rigidly closed on his wrist. Beyond Valentine's shoulder, across the way, the rigid pattern of the bars was broken by dark blond hair and dark eyes, the abrupt, aware delicacy of a woman of undamaged beauty, who turned from the leopard cage to look for the child with her. She carried a fur coat over the arm of a tailored suit, and her expensive walking shoes lent purpose to the steps of her slender frame, deceptively fragile, full-bosomed and, again, so well tailored that that modesty was such only because she could afford simplicity, turning now to catch, for an instant, the eyes in the distraught face turned, for no reason, to her. He mumbled, or cleared a constricted throat, which was it? and she moved on quickly. —Your . . . blessed Queen of Heaven? Basil Valentine seemed to force attention to his words as he stared into the cage where the lioness came forth again with her head lowered, turning, to look up, paused at the bars with forelegs crossed left over right, and then with no effort leaped to one side and was gone. —This woman, the "women's voices," and did I see the moon last night? this . . . good heavens, like Lucius in the Golden Ass, eh? Valentine faltered on, unwilling to pause and allow contradiction, postponing denial with whatever memory crowded upon him, casting up shattered shapes and fragments, shapes and smells. —And you, I suppose you went down and plunged your head seven times in the sea? You . . . "Little by little I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, bright and mounting out of the sea and standing before me . . ." One recalls her "odoriferous feet" but . . . yes, so it's not, then? Not your mother at all, that reproach and all the rest of it ... ? Unwilling to stop until his hold was broken, unwilling to let go the wrist until it turned from his hand, unwilling to listen, until their embrace was sundered by laughter. —My mother? why she . . . good God, she in the painting? —Yes, you told me, you know . . . A boy in the remnants, or perhaps the beginnings of a Boy Scout uniform had got between Valentine and the bars, and reached out over the rail. —Gimmeyatail, Zimba, he said. The sharp-nosed woman repeated, —Yes, weh weh weh . . . The lioness approached, looking beyond them. —It's some girl you've picked up, is it? And all this talk about clearing things up, it's all some notion she's . . . —No. Not that, all that is still itself, it's only part of itself. —Really . . . —Do you hear me? —Really, and tell me, who is this . . . Solveig of yours? this Senta? The girl you've been using to model, I suppose, didn't Brown say he'd sent along something? —Listen . . . —And how is it I didn't see her? the night I dropped in on you. —But she doesn't . . . we've never even . . . —Gimmeyatail Zimba, the boy said between them and the cage. —Or is it all in this phantasy of yours, eh? —Yes, I'm working it out, and everything fits, everything fits so far, everything. And, that dream? I told you about that. Why, you've dreamt? and afterward, you meet them, who you dreamt of? What an advantage! . . . you know things they don't know, things about them they don't know that you know, things they've done, they never suspect you know. Why, they can go right on talking as though nothing had happened. Yes, like the saints, Rose of Lima? and what innocency of hers was woven into her past by her Jesuit confessor! What defense have they against our phantasies? And meeting her again, can she imagine what she's shared? where she's been enjoyed, in privacy? Can she imagine the postures and pleasures she's shared? And you know, all the time. What an advantage you have, over people you've dreamt of! •-Gimmeyatail gimmeyatail gimmeyatail . . . —So you understand, how important this is? How crucial . . . 550

Basil Valentine turned and laughed in his face. —Really, really my dear fellow. No, he said, clutching the single gray glove before him. —The "somber glow" at the end of the second act, is it? the duet with Senta, is that it? ... "the somber glow, no, it is salvation that I crave," eh! "Might such an angel come, my soul to save," your Flying Dutchman sings, eh? Good heavens! And up they go to heaven in a wave, or whatever it was? Really! And all that foolishness you were carrying on with the last time I saw you, that "I min Tro . . ." and the rest of it, that Where has he been all this time? and your Solveig answers In my faith? In my hope? In my, . . . good heavens! You are romantic, aren't you! If you do think you mean all this? And then what, They lived happily forever after? —But listen, listen, she . . . —No, no, it's too easy. After all, you know. With no interruption, Valentine paused, looking into the cage of the lioness. The lioness had come to the middle of the cage, watching him. She went round the tree trunk where her tail followed close, circling it. She stopped and moaned at the tail. She turned and bit at it. Then she moaned and faced him again. He did not speak until threatened by the voice beside him, then went on derisively, —And Saint Rose of Lima! Why, this sudden attempt to set the whole world right, by recalling your own falsifications in it? And then? Happiness ever after? Then you will be redeemed, and redeem her, and . . . good heavens knows what! And then, what next? First it's Shabbetai Zebi, now it's the Flying Dutchman? Listen to me, he went on, his voice dropping, —this lost innocence you're so frantic to recover, it goes a good deal farther back, you know. And this idea that you can set everything to rights at once is ... is childish. I know what it's like with Brown, of course I know, I know you can't go on like that. But you and I, my dear fellow . . . The broken cries from the next cage had stopped, given over to heaving and groans. —What! You and I, what! —Listen to me, Basil Valentine said, suddenly closing his grip on the wrist he'd recovered, without taking his eyes from those of the lioness. —Do you remember, when I told you that the gods have only one secret to teach? Neither was looking at the other. Over Valentine's shoulder, the blond woman reached the child who had run to her. She was bent down now, listening, her skirt drawn tight, her jacket full with the weight of her breasts, her face alive with attention. —Were they really fighting? she asked, still inclined over the child, being led back to the next cage where the pumas were, in her voice that tone children accept as awe, delighting to shock the innocence of those who awe them. —That secret, do you remember? said Basil Valentine still holding him tight there and still looking, himself, into the cage of the lioness. —What Wotan taught his son? the only secret worth having? —But how were they fighting? —The power of doing without happiness, Basil Valentine said. —See? said the child. She saw. She pulled the child to her, and looked quick into the other faces before the puma cage. They were all men. They all found her upturned face instantly, caught her dark eyes, one with a smile, one grinned an intimate recognition, until seeking escape she found herself looking into eyes familiar from a minute before, eyes not drawn to her by this instant of leveling, but still fixed on her, eyes which made no response at all. So she continued to stare at him, where he stood held in Valentine's grip there, for moments, finding sanctuary where she could recover all so abruptly assaulted, in eyes which shared nothing, recognúed nothing, accused her of nothing: but those moments passed and, recovering, she groped for escape. But that lack of response held her, that lack of recognition no more sanctuary than the opened eyes of a dead man, that negation no asylum for shame but the trap from which it cried out for the right to its living identity. She clutched the child by the shoulder, as one essays handhold climbing from a pit, and turned to stare into the cage of the pumas, reddening over her face and neck and, though none knew it but she, to the very breaking-away of her breasts. The sun was visible, white, in a sky which showed no premonition but in its fleeting neighborhood. The fat woman had followed it, from her chill seat near the seals to another, facing the sun, though she did not look up so far, no further than passing waist-levels, mouthing behind her damp wad, or the faces of children. —Frerra jacka, frerra jacka, dormay-voo? one sang. —What's that? asked the smallest. —Soney malatina, soney malatina . . . —What's that mean? asked the smallest, and the string of the balloon slipped from her finger. —It don't mean nothin stupid it's French, and lookit you lost the balloon already. How old Valentine might have looked, to someone who'd shared with him the cruel familiarities of youth. Or are there moments of intimacy, of which only strangers are capable? of which those known, and suffered over years, could never conceive, so seeking for their own reflection in the attrition of familiarity. So the fat woman, mouthing —grot-zy, grot-sy . . . behind her damp wad looked up as though she might in that instant know the history of every line around his eyes but only lacked the time to set it down, set it down anywhere, even in her own; or set it down in prescience, not magic, not art, but only history before it happened: not age as mere accom- plishment, but in performance, living out what would be lived out, age knowing itself, earning itself in that instant and gone. Until all she could have told, if she'd been interrupted a moment later, sur-prised? indignant? mouthing —grott-sy, probably all she could answer would be, —How old he looked, just then, throwing that gray glove into the ashcan when he came out of the cat house. —What now? the sun? A priest of Mithras, was it? Come along, my dear fellow, I'll tell you why Mithraism failed, the greatest rival Christianity ever had. It failed because it lacked central authority. It spread all over the country with the Roman Legions, but Christianity was a city religion, and power lies in cities, remember that. And what was it you said? A man's damnation is his own damned business? It's not true, you know. It's not true. Why, good heavens, this suicide of yours? Why, like Chrysippus then? feeding figs and wine to an ass, and dying of laughter? Look! look there, in the sky where it's still blue, that line? That white line the airplane's drawn, do you see it? how the wind's billowed it out like rope in a current of water? Yes, your man in the celestial sea, eh? coming down to undo it, down to the bottom, and they find him dead as though drowned. Why, this . . . pelagian atmosphere of yours, you know. Homicide, was it? What was it Pascal said, There's as much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and others? . . . no, but that was Montaigne wasn't it. He stooped a little, finding his way up the steps to the street. At the corner the three children stopped, to look at a deer hung there by its hind feet, to remark, —Lookit where they stuck the paper flower! From down the block two women approached. —And I just haven't been the same since the Morro Castle . . . the tall woman said, and laughed. —And I wish I could, but I can't, this dismal cocktail party tonight, my husband has to go, he's her editor, and I'm his wife. We're going to miss the Narcissus Festival in Hawaii again this year, I told him we'd just have one of our own . . . Basil Valentine's hands were clenched deep in his coat pockets. —Now? a Turkish bath? he muttered. —Well don't worry, those fragments, I'll be there tonight, I'll be at Brown's. And he looked up, as though watching something blown on the wind. Ahead, the three children approached a figure sprawled on the sidewalk, and a little boy on a tricycle wheeling round it.—What's that? asked the smallest. —A man, what's it look like? —It looks like a Sanny Clans. What it's wearing, it looks like it was a Sanny Glaus suit, don't it? —How could it be a Sanny Glaus? It don't have a wite beard. —But it's getting a beard. Valentine's look was not so steady: he raised it every three or so steps with that sort of blank surprise of a man glancing up to where he has been used to seeing a mirror upon entering a room, and finding a blank wall. —At Philippi? he murmured. —Yes . . . Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then. Like the sky, his eyes remained unclouded, but (perhaps it was the sky beyond him that did it) simply darkened, evenly, assuming a hard solidity and the enduring texture of gray, as the sky itself was doing, as one might have seen, looking up at them both. The tall woman turned her friend in at a door before the stubble-chinned figure sprawled on the walk in front of her house, —Right under the dining-room window, in fact, right here, as she remarked, —in front of God and everybody. She almost tripped over the tricycling child, but got the rail and down the steps to say, —My husband says that's when you have to be careful, around lunchtime, that's when most of them jump, when the streets are full of people, they do it then for the publicity. Above her the sky darkened. She did not look at it, but went in with her eyes on her own hand laid out at elegant length on her friend's fur; while behind her, outside, the tricycle wove smaller and smaller circles, as its rider watched over the left shoulder how close the rear tire could come to the fingers on the pavement. By late afternoon it was snowing. The flakes were small, blown neither one side nor the other, nor falling direct to earth, but filling the air with continuous movement. Mickey Mouse pointed to ten minutes of four. The first thing she saw when she entered her apartment was the unnatural radiance of the sunlamp. Agnes Deigh paused there, still holding her keys, as though to appreciate fully the affliction before her, worse second by second as she hesitated, considering what might have happened had she not arrived; even perhaps that there was still time for her to leave, quietly as she had come, back into the trans-figurating weather: but before she was able to contain this possibility sufficient to examine it, and find there one of those mortal shocks with which life rarely presents us opportunity to abandon the bonds of circumstances woven with such care, and start off upon any of a thousand alternative courses among which, like the needle in the haystack, lies the real one: habit betrays us, as it betrayed Agnes Deigh. She put a hand on the Swede's shoulder, and made a sound. —Owwwayy . . . what . . . what . . . —How long have you been asleep under this thing? —What time is it? —Almost four, she said, and finally turned the sunlamp off. —Oh my God, my God, I've been here for . . . owwwww ... what shall I do? . . . the Swede wailed. —There's some butter. I'll get some butter. So that is what she did. —I'll die . . . she heard him a minute later from the bathroom, applying it. —How could it happen? But just look at mel . . . Instead she looked away, and said, —I wish you'd . . . But she had looked away in time, and broke off, biting her lip, her eyes fixed at the same level (staring at a table lamp) as though she could not raise them. —Baby, Ba-by! Oooooooooo. —I wish you'd put something around you, she said, recovered, looking up, and caught her lip again, for it had almost happened again: she had almost said what she did not know she meant, instead of what she meant to say; just as, that day in the office when she had intended to ask, Are you Catholic? . . . and had suddenly heard herself demand, Do you believe in God? The Swede had got back into the bathroom. Agnes Deigh sat down, and opened the only letter that was waiting for her. She read, Dear Madam . . . The case you reported to us as sadism and brutality reported by you to this precinct Tuesday December 20 at 10:17 A-M-resulted in false arrest for which you may be held responsible. Dr. Weis-gall who you accused, was punishing his daughter in which case unless injury results no third party is obliged to intervene. This case is marked closed in our files but we feel it our duty to warn you that if at future date you accuse someone of criminal action that you investigate the facts thoroughly before reporting it to the Police. We also feel it our duty to warn you that Dr. Weisgall may be justified in communicating with you as agent of his unjust arrest, and any future action will take place between yourself and the injured party . . . —Baby who sent you ros-es? The Swede had emerged, clothed. Agnes looked up. She made a sound, almost told him, and bit her lip on that stark erect syllable. Then her telephone rang. —What? she said into it, shaken. —Hello? . . . (-Hello, Mrs. Deigh? —Baby I've got to find a doctor. —Yes, what is it? who is it? (—I'm sorry, this is Stanley and I think I left my glasses at your house once, and when could I ... how . . . —I hate to run off like this baby but I'll call you, from the hospital probably, but I can't go to the hospital on Christmas Eve . . . —Stanley, Stanley, I ... I'm so glad you called. Yes, I found them. I found your glasses, Stanley. But I won't be home now, I'm going to a party in a little while. But could you come there? Couldn't you meet me there? (—But I'm getting a toothache, but yes, all right, I can come for a little while but I have to go up to this new hospital where they moved my mother . . . —Yes here, here's the address . . . She lead it to him; and almost a full minute passed after she'd hung up the phone and sat, staring at the letter she'd just received, before she looked up and realized she was alone. Immediately she got pen and paper and started to write. "Dear Doctor Weisgall. I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am for my recent mistake. How can I explain it to you so that you will forgive me? A woman's life is not . . ." She stopped and read that; as she would stop and read again, and again, until the letter on the edge of the wastebasket started, "Dear Doctor Weisgall. Perhaps it is not until late in life that we realize that we do not, ever, pay for our own mistakes. We pay for the mistakes of others, and they . . ." And the letter which fluttered to the floor, "Dear Sir. I trust that you are intelligent enough to distinguish between a vulgar act of meanness and revenge, which God knows I have no reason to commit, and the act of a citizen and a human being doing what she believes . . ." when she got up to find two strips of tape. Then she stood at the window stretching the skin at her temples, sticking the tape there to discourage wrinkles while she rested. Unblinking, she stared out at the snowfall a minute longer; and when she turned on the room
her moving eyes found the roses. They were full blown with the steam heat: and that instant her gaze struck them, three petals fell. The snowflakes frolicked about the Swede's face, which was growing larger and more brilliantly red by the minute. He hit at them, as though they were a flight of insects sent to plague him. It did no good. They came from every hand until, seeing a bar, he fled from the white swarm inside, where patrons looked with impolite interest at his high buttered countenance. He got into the telephone booth, after only one drink, and dialed. —I came out in this blizzard to find a doctor but I don't know any doctors . . . (—My doctor's away . . . on vacation ... in prison ... I can't think which . . . The tone was vague. He dialed three more numbers, got no answer, and returned to the bar to try to think of telephone numbers. —Nothing? —Nothing. Nothing at all, except this . . . wet, said Maude, standing against the door she had closed behind her. Snow crystals melted and dripped from her coat to the floor. —I had to come home in a taxicab. —The same judge? —Oh yes, and I almost hate him even though he does look like Daddy. —That's a good sound reason itself. —Arny please don't be cruel, not today. It's Christmas Eve, Arny. I feel so awful. Even when my doctor said, Does she look like she's malingering to you? Would you undergo an operation on your spine if you were malingering? And their lawyer said he was sorry but . . . Oh Arny, I get so tired. —Do you want a drink? —No. My doctor gave me some morphine. Are you drinking this early? — Just a couple before I have to start drinking at the party. —Arny I wish you wouldn't drink so much. Have you filled out the papers? —What papers? — The papers. You know, the ones for the ... I can't pronounce it, for Sweden. He planned to fill out these papers, declaring their fitness as parents, after the party. Now he poured the last of a bottle of whisky into his glass and sat down slowly, making a wry face, supporting the lower part of his abdomen with a hand inside his trouser pocket. —I'm hungry, he said abruptly. —I didn't have any lunch. —Do you want some spaghetti? Maude said vaguely. —Spaghetti in the middle of the afternoon? he mumbled, as she went toward the kitchen. But what Maude thought was spaghetti turned out to be a box of waxed paper. She offered salad; but they were out of whisky. When he went out for some, she sped him with, —But get a quart, there's something sinful about a pint of whisky. —Sinful? —Well, naughty . . . She sat down wearily, and had hardly managed to assume that suspended look of a passenger on a railway train which came over her when alone, when the telephone and the doorbell both rang at once. She shuddered right through her frame, put out a hand in each direction, and finally got to the door. But when she'd let Herschel in, and picked up the telephone, all she could say was, -What? (—Baby do you know a doctor? I need a doctor. —A bone doctor? Maude managed. She looked helplessly at Herschel. (—I've just had the most terrible accident . . . —Baby are you in the hospital? Herschel answered, taking the thing. (—No but I will be, if you'll just tell me a doctor. —But where are you, baby? I always told you this would happen, no one can drive the way you do and go on living in this world . . . (—But it isn't an automobile accident, I have sunstroke. —Who is this? (—It's me. —Oh you! I thought it was you-know-who. Sunstroke? Are you drinking? (—Second-degree burns at the very least, stop asking sillies. —Listen baby we're going to a party. You just come there and we'll find you the cutest little doll-doctor you ever! Now listen, here's the address . . . And when he'd hung up, Herschel turned to Maude. —And I've had the most . . . just most day, you cannot dream where I woke up! Can you tell I have this shirt on inside out? —Who was that? Maude asked, motioning at the telephone. —It was Rudy, I think he'd been in an auto crash, or something. He said the strangest things, he must have hit his head, and so I just told him to come right along to Esther's cocktail, baby is there a clean shirt? Because I can't possibly go anywhere in this. He followed her into the bedroom, where Maude opened a bureau drawer and took out Arny's last clean shirt. When Arny arrived, with a full quart by the throat, Herschel was already revealing his latest arcanum: —Chavenet. It really doesn't mean anything, but it's familiar to everybody if you say it quickly. They mention a painter's style, you nod and say, Rather . . . chavenet, or, He's rather derivative of, Chavenet wouldn't you say? Spending the summer? Yes, in the south of France, a little villa near Chavenet. Poets, movie stars, perfume . . . shavenay, Herschel brayed becomingly. The evening of this feast day, for so it was, perennially addressed to SS Adam and Eve, and the 40 Maidens martyred at Antioch, was brisk or cold, according to one's resources. The people in the streets had not changed; most of them, certainly, were the same people who might be seen passing the same points with the same expressions at the same hour on almost any of the three hundred sixty-five feast days of the year. Nevertheless, something had happened. There was a quality in the air which every passing figure seemed to intensify, a professional quality, as everyone became more consciously, more insistently, what the better part of the time he either pretended, or was forced to pretend himself to be. This was as true for each quantum in the bustling stream of anonymity, moving forth in an urgency of its own, as it was for such prodigies of the tyranny of public service as the policemen offering expressionless faces cut and weathered in the authority of red stone, and their contraries, a porous group in uniforms of low saturation and low brilliance gathered round something on the sidewalk before the American Bible Society, an object so compelling that it gave their diligent chaos the air of order. It appeared to be a gigantic male Heidi. —Cross the arms on the chest, Maurice. All right there, get his feet. Wait a minute, don't lift yet until I tell you. The policemen, busy elsewhere attending the smooth functioning of that oppressive mechanism which they called law and order, looked as unlikely of ever being seen in any other combination of lip, nostril, and cold eye, badge, uniform, and circumstance, as Saint-Gaudens' statue of the Puritan; in the same way the Boy Scouts hazarded neither past nor future, heirs to all the ages and the foremost files of time notwithstanding, they composed and expressed a pattern endowed with permanency. —Look out f'his head, you want to break something? —How'd it get so red? —He's red all the way down. I looked. —So how'd he get that way? —You tell us, your father's a doctor. Be Ye Doers of the word, and not hearers only, said a lighted sign behind them. In the window was a large loose-leaf book, whose lined pages were filled in a cramped round hand. A sign beside it said, It took Mrs. Gille / 75 years to / copy the Bible//The Bible / was presented / to her son / at Christmas. There was a picture of Mrs. William Gille, of New York City, and her hand-copied Bible. —You passed First Aid, Maurice? —Merit badge. —What do you say? —Artificialresperation? —Right. Take his feet there and twist. —He won't roll. He's big. —Twist. They stepped back, as the hulk rolled, and the nose hit the pavement. —Cup the face in the arm, there. —O.K. Get on him. —You get on him. —I'll get on him. —We'll both get on him. —O.K. Ready with your side? One two three go ... —Ughhh —two, three . . . push, two, three . . . push, —Sweet little boys. —He's talkin. He said somethin. —He's got me by the knee. —Sweet little boys. The police too were busy, in as serious, if less concerted pursuits. In the Fourteenth Street I.R.T-B.M.T. subway station one of them reached Hannah. A policewoman handed that nomadic laundress over to the stronger arm of the law. —You might at least have given me time to rinse them, Hannah said, a note of hauteur distinct in her voice as she gathered the wet clothes up under her arm. Earlier, she had gone to see Stanley. She had knocked at his door and found him not at home. Even going round to the front and peering through the bars of the grating and the dirty window, all she had been able to see was in order, that silent patient order of things abandoned. She could make out the picture of the cathedral at Fenestrula, the stacks of paper, palimpsests on the left, untouched to the right, twelve empty staves to a page but already dedicated and, she realized with a twinge of cold, as though the cold brought it to her clearly for the first time, not to her. Peering in she saw all this, even enough of the bed to ascertain that it, too, was empty. She could see everything in his room, in fact, except the crucifix, for it hung above the bed, next to the window through which she peered. This willful insistence of finality was so pervasive that, on those occasions which seemed to resist, an element which might too easily have been called fateful intruded, heavy-handed some wheres as though fate had become exasperated; in others, no more than the cajoling hand of co-operation. Stanley's mother had been transferred to a first floor room in a large municipal hospital, pleading, the entire journey, for her possessions. After Stanley's visit, her attendants might have noted that there was something more than the usual immediate anxiety in her voice, which had deepened with her demands to a tone which implied that they would never have opportunity to separate her from another of them. Had they brought her appendix? her tonsils? her severed limb . . . and her teeth? The denture was put into a clean glass on the bedside table, 560