The Recognitions (92 page)

—Who's out to get me? —Well, you know that piece you did on Rilke last year, a lot of people . . . —Jesus Christ, whose fault was that? Everybody knows I wrote that Rilke's references were occasionally obscure, and that dumb Radcliffe girl I had typed obscene when she copied it. I'd like to know who the hell copy-read that. And putting a t in genial . . . —I was at Yaddo, said Bildow. Someone from the neighboring international set tried to join them, offering, —Just imagine Victor Hugo wanting the whole city of Paris renamed for him! This credential earned cold stares, frightening, not for their severity, but for the very bleakness of the faces engaged. —I hear you're going over, said Bildow's shorter friend, bleakly accusing. —Yes, in a month or two. I want to see for myself, said Bildow, fingering his brown and yellow tie, bleakly defensive. Then he added, —It's funny that Max isn't here. —What's so funny about it? That wise bastard . . . —He usually shows up at these cocktail parties, said Bildow. —What the hell ever made you print that poem of his, in the last issue? The one about Beauty disdaining to destroy him, that one. —Well, we ... It was . . . —Did you see his paintings? Crap, all of them, even if he has got a sense of form. —She looks like a good lay, said the stubby poet. —That blonde over there. —Do you know who that is? It's that dumb God damn Radcliffe girl, Edna, the one who screwed me up on that Rilke piece, the one thing I've written that's worth everything else put together, because I understood Rilke, I understood him because he understood suffering, he respected human suffering, not like these snotty kids who are writing now . . . He put his glass down empty, saw another, full, and picked it up before its owner had finished saying, —It's like the movies because there's everything spread out for you, and you just have to react, like at the movies you don't have to pay with your real emotions, you don't have to do anything . . . —And who's that over there, with all the queers around her? Agnes Deigh? Jesus Christ, I should think she'd get sick of playing mother to every God damn fairy in the city. Esther had sat down on the couch because it was the only place in the room to sit. At one moment, she had thought that if she did not sit down, she might fall; but even now, sitting, she felt that she was falling, and she forced her back against the back of the couch, raising her chin as though trying to surface, for it was not a sense of tumbling through air, the limbs absurdly extended and unaccounted for, toward sudden impact which would so abruptly account for their ridiculous efforts in an unalterable pattern of incongruous torsions; but of falling in water where no bottom waited to delineate finality. With penetration peculiar to distance, every sound seemed to reach her, though it was perhaps her own doing, trying to escape the sounds nearest her by straining for those beyond. —Maladjusted? To this? Well thank God I am. If I wasn't I'd go crazy, someone said across the room, while she listened. —But you've got to understand New York, it's a social experience. —That's why I like her, she's part woman, came a tittering asthmatic voice; and someone else was whistling slightly delayed accompaniment to a stretch of Handel's Water Music. The door opened, and she raised her head in hopeful anxiety, still unaware of how he would appear, the writer whom she had invited, and as afraid that he would not; and she lowered her eyes in disappointed relief, for the man who came in was carrying a baby, and immediately met by the girl with the bandaged wrists. —What did you bring it for? she greeted him, then turned to say, —This is my husband. He's late because he's been tight-rope walking. He has one set up in the apartment and he says he can't practice when I'm around and I'm around most of the time . . . In the middle of the room someone greeted the boy who had been looking for razor blades in the medicine cabinet with, —Charles Dickens, my God, they told me you'd gotten a job as publicity agent for the Hiroshima tourist bureau, Come see the Atom City and all that kind of thing . . . The kitten tore at the arm of the couch. Esther caught it, and drew it to her, Ellery's voice still the clearest in the room. He was talking to the blonde a few feet away. —Hollywood's through, honey. Why go way the hell out there when TV's right here in town. What do you think, Benny? Don't you like her for a spot in Lives of the Saints when it goes on video . . . ? Esther realized that all this time the quiet seated presence beside her had been eating. He followed a stuffed egg with a small hot frankfurter, then a fresh carrot. —I beg your pardon, she said. He made a sound, eating. —Are you a friend of ... —Hors d'oeuvres. All I ever get, hors d'oeuvres. I keep thinking Benny will take me somewhere where we'll eat, an invitation to dinner somewheres, but all I get is cocktail parties, all we do is drink, all over town. 578

—Are you in television too? —No, God help me. Benny and me went to school together. He coughed, and took another small hot frankfurter, as though an-noyed at this interruption in his meal. —Benny and me went to school together, he repeated. —See this suit? This is Benny's. He gave it to me. —It's a lovely suit, Esther said, looking at the gray flannel sleeve which came halfway down the man's forearm. —A very nice gift. —Now it's too conservative for Benny, he can't wear things like this any more he says. Honest, you can't imagine a different guy than Benny when we went to school together, quiet and real serious. He was going to do great things then, he was going to design the most beautiful bridges you ever saw, and look at him now. Even a year ago I saw him and he was real, like the guy I used to go to school with. He isn't real any more. The tray was abruptly lifted away, and he grabbed two frankfurters and a stuffed egg. —Look at them, he said, watching casual hands pick up stuffed eggs, frankfurters, an occasional carrot. —You'd think they were hungry, the way they eat. Look at that woman with the white fingernails, does she look hungry? His meal was done, and he turned to Esther for the first time. —Do you know anything about player pianos? —I'm afraid not, I've never really been interested . . . —I've written a history of the player piano. A whole history. It took me two years, it's got everything in it. What's the matter with people. What do they want to read about, sex all the time? Politics? Why, did you know, he went on in a spicy tone, —the Crown Princess of Sweden, the Queen of Norway, the Sultan of Johore, all of them had piano players? And Anna Held, Julia Marlowe, President McKinley, they had player pianos. And Pope Pius X, the Wright brothers, the ships of the Russian navy . . . —If you want something to eat, Esther interrupted, —I'm sure that out in the kitchen . . . —Anything, he said, but his eagerness was weary, for just then art had taken appetite's place. —Some day I'm going to have it printed myself, on Japanese onion-skin, bound in vellum ... I don't know. Am I the only one that.'s hungry? Doesn't anyone else ever eat in New York? He stopped to pick some egg off the flannel sleeve. —White vellum with gold stamping . . . —I'm sure that in the kitchen ... —Well, here you are! Benny stood over them, unsteadily, with a dripping glass in each hand. —Are you all right? He leaned over and spoke to Esther in a low tone, —Are you keeping my friend here supplied? He always needs a drink, poor fellow. We went to school together. I've had to take him to every party in town the last two weeks, I don't know what he does with himself when I'm up at the studio. Esther felt that she had regained her strength, and stood as the arm beside her reached dutifully up for the glass. She did not see Ellery and the blonde, and started toward Don Bildow when Herschel took her arm. —Baby there is a kitchen here isn't there? Because we must have just a little but-ter . . . and baby, has Rudy come yet? You know Rudy don't you? You must, he designed this new Doukhobor dress, the one that comes off with a touch, isn't that fright-fully Tolstoy? And now he's designing sports clothes for nuns. Why, before he's through he'll end up in the Church himself! Isn't that too camp? Why even Agnes says . . . —Bathysiderodromophobia. And that's only one of his troubles. —But why does simply everyone join the Roman Church? When there are so many other divinely amusing religions .around. —I think sun worship would be the most divinely inspiring thing, why just imagine everyone here running around without a stitch on ... —I'd like to start right now . . . —I want a new messiah . . . —Baby we all do ... —That tall stooped one in the open green shirt over there, I'd follow him any-where . . . —And it wouldn't do you a bit of good, said Agnes Deigh, leaning forward with a cigarette in her mouth, looking for a light. —He'd probably break every single little bone in your body. —How fer-wocious! Agnes introduce me, promise. Of the three lights proffered, Agnes Deigh leaned over one and then sat back, lowering her cigarette. —Darling he's not any stronger than you are. —But he looks so m-timate. —He does, Agnes said, looking across the room. —That's because he has myopia. —Agnes darling you sound bit-ter. What's he to Hecuba, baby? —Oh God, let's not talk about it. I spent most of a year listening to his troubles with his wife, with his childhood, with religion, with his work, honestly, nursing him . . . —Agnes, how angrwy you are! She had, indeed, got a stern look on her face which none of them had ever seen; but as quick as it had come, it softened to one of weary disappointment. Then she said thoughtfully, not looking at anyone, —The people who demand pity of you hate you afterward for giving it, They always hate you afterward. She watched him plod across the room as though in deep snow. 580

The front door was opened and closed three times in quick succession, the first draft catching the flower of Agnes Deigh's patronage to detach a frayed petal and waft it across the room. —Buster! —Sonny! —But how did you get here? The second was Stanley; and the third a dark-skinned man about five feet tall in a snappy gray sharkskin suit, who looked round cheerfully, raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and accepted a drink. (He was, in fact, the Argentine trade commissioner, at the wrong party.) Maude sat with her eyes closed, moving her head slightly in the hand of the man in uniform. —I just don't do happy things any more, she was saying. —I guess because it's easier not to, because when you do, and then remember them, it's much worse than if you never did them, it's much better if you don't have happy things to remember, and then you don't remember them and get sad because you're not doing them any more, it's easier just not to have anything to remember . . . He leaned forward and blew softly into her hair. —Who's looney now? someone said, as Mr. Feddle worked his way along the wall, with the care of coastal shipping not to venture into the open sea; his cargo was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he sought dockage where he might inscribe it in peace. Benny was approaching the very attractive girl who spoke with Boston accents. The tall woman said, —Then it's your husband who writes. What sort of thing? —God knows, said the girl with the bandaged wrists, —God and the Congregation of the Holy Office. Everything he writes goes right on the Index, and I can't read it. —Then you're Catholic? —My God yes. The very attractive girl, indicating Benny, turned to Ed Feasley and said, —Tell your friend I'm a lost horizon, will you? —Chr-ahst, Feasley said, —I don't know him. He looks like a brush salesman in that outfit. Maybe I can sell him a suit. She raised her eyebrows. —Well Chr-ahst I've got to do something. Ever since I smashed this last car up I've been living on the free lunch at the Harvard Club, and going through the cushions of the big chairs there looking for change that drops out of those old bastards' pockets. Chr-ahst. Benny turned unsteadily toward Agnes Deigh; but she had got up and gone to put an arm around Stanley, who shrank away. —Stanley, something awful has happened . . . she began, and looked over his shoulder to see the dark face of the critic. —Hullo, he said. —How is everything, Agnes? —Well enough, I suppose, she answered, and took her arm from Stanley's shoulders. —I didn't know you knew Esther. —I just met her, he said. His tone was dull. —How's your own novel coming along? She sounded impatient. —Well, I haven't finished it yet, but . . . —And the autobiography of Dostoevski? —Look Agnes, don't start that with me tonight, that autobiography crap. —Relax, Agnes Deigh said. —Have another drink. —All right. But just don't start ... —I'm not starting anything. Now relax. —You must be having a good time here. I never saw so many queers in one room, queers and uptown fluff and cheap advertising ... Agnes Deigh turned her back. —Stanley, I have something I want to talk to you about, she said, and led him back to her chair. Benny walked toward the other side of the room, where Ellery stood with the blonde backed up against a cabinet, his hand in the shadows there, hardly moving. Benny's lip was trembling. —Lady . . . lady . . . Esther felt her skirt being pulled, and looked down to see the little girl from downstairs. —Mummy sent me up to ask you for some more sleeping pills . . . —Just a minute, she said as she looked, and put her hand on the child's head. —You've got lots of friends, haven't you, the little girl said, looking up at her. —Mummy used to too, but not any more . . . —You must meet Mister Crotcher, said someone to Esther, beside her. It was Buster Brown (whom she did not know either). The pair had approached like a depraved version of body and soul, the one on little cat-feet (as he himself remarked), the other in a brown suit of heavy material, nearer the floor with each step, as though wheeling a barrow full of cement. He shook Esther's hand with an air of great fatigue. —But you didn't tell us what you do, said Buster to him. —I'm a writer, he answered. —Oh. What sort of thing do you do? Esther asked, dropping the weight of his hand, and looking down as though she expected to see it drop to the floor. —Write. —Yes, but ... ah ... fiction? —My book has been translated into nineteen languages. —I must know it, Esther said. —I must know of it. —Doubt it, said the modest author. —Never been published. —But you said . . . —I've translated it myself. Nineteen languages. Only sixty-six more to go, not counting dialects. It's Celtic now. A lovely language, Celtic. It only took me eight months to learn Celtic. It ought to go in Celtic. —You mean be published? 582

—Yes, published in Celtic. Sooner or later I'll hit a language where they'll publish it. Then I can retire to the country. That's all I want, to retire to the country. Erse is next. —It must be an awfully dirty book, said Buster. Mr. Crotcher gave him a look of firm academic hatred which no amount of love, in any expression, could hope to erase. —It is a novel about ant life, he said. —Lady, could you take me into the bathroom . . . —You'll have to excuse me, Esther said, gripping the child's hand. —Gee, lady, said the little girl as they crossed the room, —you ought to watch out for your baby. —What? —You ought to change his pants, she said pointing. Esther saw the baby on the floor, trying to climb the leg of a small dark-skinned man in light gray. On the other side of the room the girl with bandaged wrists was saying to her husband, —What'd you do with it? —Some girl borrowed it, he said. —You'll know her, she's got a green tongue. —The baby's all right, if that's what you're talking about, said the tall woman. —A nice-looking man seems to be playing some sort of game with it. She turned to her husband and said, —Who do you suppose that flashy little dago is? —But that's what's wonderful about France, someone said. —Simply ev-rything is for sale. —We've found the loveliest French restaurant, a girl said. —Everything is flavored with garlic, that's how you can tell . . . She was interrupted by the Duchess of Ohio who asked if her name were Maude. —Why no. Why? —They've told me that someone named Maude knows where you can get babies by post from Nor-way! —Do you want one? —Baby, I feel like I'm going to have one. The girl stared. —There hasn't been anything like this since the Morro Castle, said the tall woman, looking round. —I expect everyone to burst into Nearer My God to Thee at any moment. —Chr-ahst, what a party, said a young man to Esther, stopping her as she came from the bathroom, the little girl dodging obstacles, running for the door. —Could I get you a drink? —It's my party, and you're very welcome, said Esther, feeling ill again. —Oh Chrahst, I'm sorry. Ed Feasley was folding together four dirty five-dollar bills. He put them into his pocket. —Damned lucky bit of business, he said. —What? —You see that seedy-looking guy in the green shirt? —Oh yes, I know him, he's ... —I just sold him a suit. —But ... he doesn't look as though . . . your suits would fit him, Esther went on, automatically, making conversation. —I wouldn't sell him one of my old things, Feasley said. —I told him to go up and get a suit at Brooks. He can charge it to my old man. What else am I supposed to do? Sell a battleship? They stood looking over the room. —How do you know all these people? —I really don't, to tell the truth, Esther said, looking for any she could identify. There was James Leak, who said he had published a book called With Gun and Camera in Flatbush and Green-point, though no one had ever seen a copy, and was now at work exposing the Swiss conspiracy to dominate the world. There was Arthur, with a beard, who was writing a new life of Christ, to be published under another name, the same name he had used when he reviewed his first book, published under his own name, a satire on the Bible so badly received that he joined the chorus of its detractors and got even with himself by quoting Charles Reade and George Borrow, calling it an excrescence of over-refinement. —Yes, he was saying to a girl named Izarra (she had got that off a liquor bottle; her real name was Minna Vesendorf). —Of course it's going to be autobiographical. All books are. Someone else was saying, —When I finish this psychoanalytic critique of Mother Goose I'm going right on to the Revelation of Saint John the Divine ... Someone else said, — She went into a cream dream talking about Ischia last night . . . Nearby, someone asked about a slim middle-aged man just out of earshot, who had been appointed instructor in one of the better eastern boys' boarding schools. —Well I don't think he really realizes what he's doing, he just lies beside them and kisses them . . . —It's all right just so long as he doesn't turn them over . . . —And where did you get those eyebrows? someone in that corner asked the Duchess of Ohio, who was waving an old magazine. —If I didn't have these eyebrows I couldn't look so fer-wocious. The magazine was Dog Days, open to the picture of Ch. Dictator von Ehebruch. —Of course I believe in Art, said a girl with a green tongue, near them. —But not just to look at. —Chr-ahst, I mean, you know? I mean, Chrahst, don't you wonder what they're trying to do, all of them? I mean, look at this wild-eyed guy that just came in ... —God! said Esther, clutched his arm and thrilled him for an instant, left him dumb. Esther crossed the room, her face flushed, as though this abrupt challenge temporarily suspended the consuming terror which had become the fabric of her own life, just as the flush in her cheeks replaced the transparent whiteness which had come over her face only hours before. —Look, where's your kitten? Only someone who loves kittens could understand ... —Please, let go of me. —But you've got to hear this. The kitten ... I mean Pavlov had an experiment with lights, and when he rang a bell . . . whhffft —Esther . . . —Darling haven't you had enough? . . . —Esther darling, the tall woman stopped her, —that music seems awfully loud, even for Bach . . . Darling where are you going? what's the matter? The music was The Great Elopement: a chill horn raised her, twisted her up and exalted her for a moment; and then she was let go, and lowered evenly on strings. —He's here, Esther said, her flush already failing. —He's come . . . here. —He has? . . . But I don't see anyone, said the tall woman looking over the room with her head cocked back, drawing her eyelids to the level of her lashes which did not move and she looked quite disdainful, —anyone who looks like a Kwa-ker, certainly . . . certainly no one whose picture I've ever seen on a book jacket . . . Then she lowered her face so quickly that the smooth proud hollows where her eyes lay became furrowed, drawn together by the brows, and —Who do you suppose? . . . she murmured, watching Esther hurry toward the door and there seize the arm of a figure with neither hat nor coat nor tie, immediately obscured by her back. —You've come back . . . here? Esther said almost in a whisper. —I didn't know you had a party. I ... I won't interrupt. —But you . . . come . . . Esther drew the arm she had seized to her in a convulsive gesture, then as though shocked at this she almost let it go, but did not, turning, toward the bedroom hall, trapped for an instant in the brown eyes of the critic upon her, a gaze she broke and went on, restraining the tension of the music in the wrist gone rigid in her hold. —Come in, in ... into the bedroom. All these people, it's not . . . not . . . where have you been? she asked when they gained the cover of the hall. —In a Turkish bath, he answered promptly. —Oh no, you ... I mean . . . close the door. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding with a hand on either side of her, and looked at him. He started toward the closet. Then she said, —You . . . and her voice quavered, so she stopped and made an effort to swallow, trying to draw together the great hollow behind her tongue. —Almost as though I knew you were coming, she said, and then added, —and expected you. At that he turned to her, and Esther shuddered, for his face was drawn in the mild surprise her memory knew so well, for here now, just as there, she had intruded upon him. There he was, in her memory, usually seated but sometimes standing at a window with his back turned, unaware of her approach so that no matter the circumstances or her intentions, she became stealthy, and might even try to retire and leave him there; but he always turned, like this, intruded upon, composing the lines of his surprise into expectation, looking at her, waiting. But all this happened very fast, and sometimes, before she knew it she'd set fire to his hair, or saw it so, what was the difference? or saw him streaming blood down the side of his face (as he had that morning when they had news that the warehouse, where his early paintings were stored, had burned, and he came in with a razor cut on his cheek), and this same mild expectancy, waiting to be told. But now he turned away. —I've just come to pick up some things, he said, and he stood there holding one hand in the other before him, looking down. She watched the lines of his face become confused again, and still sitting on the edge of the bed she asked him, —What things? —Well, the . . . there must be some clothes. Some clothes. Because this . . . He stopped again, holding a black wilted lapel, and looked at it. —It's been so long, she said, starting to get up. But then she only clasped her hands around a knee, and stayed. —Are you going away? she asked him, and sorry she had for he looked bewildered and not at her. —You're not going to stay? she added abruptly. —To stay? he repeated, and looked at her. —You haven't come back to ... to stay? . . . with me? Her knee slipped from her clasped hand. —Why no I ssstopped in to ... pick up some things, I ... there's somewhere I have to go tonight, something I have to ... do. He spoke each word as though intending another, misshaping them with his lips, and stood there uncertainly. —You see, I ... he commenced again, but she interrupted briskly as she stood. —It's all right, I simply wondered. A woman likes to know these things. —But you ... 586