The Recognitions (32 page)

Stanley turned and asked timidly, —And, Anselm? what are you doing now? 

—I keep myself busy sawing toilet seats in half for half-assed critics, Anselm said without turning to him, without taking his eyes from the tall figure stooped in the green wool shirt. 

Otto cleared his throat. —That ahm girl on the couch, she . . . do you know her? Anselm looked at him for the first time, and he added —I mean, and cleared his throat.

—That's Phryne. Anselm watched the lack of response on Otto's face. —Phryne. Don't you know Phryne, for Christ sake? I thought I just heard you talking about Praxiteles. 

—Well yes I was but, I mean when Cicero says that Praxiteles, that all Praxiteles has to do is remove the excess marble, to reach the real form that was there all the time underneath, I mean inside . . . 

—And he reached Phryne. Haven't you ever seen it? 

—Seen what. 

—Praxiteles' statue of Phryne. Who the hell do you think was hiding inside his block of stone but a high-class whore. They've got it in the Vatican with the rest of the high-class whores. I just wanted to be Eve before the Fall, Anselm mimicked in a whimper, —for Christ sake. 

Stanley was staring fixedly at the floor. 

Anselm wiped his mouth. —Look at Agnes, he said, —with all the little faggots around her. Christ. He looked vaguely in that direction for a moment, then returned to Stanley. —When are you going to Italy? he demanded, and as quickly turned on Otto, who drew up his cigarette like a smoking weapon of defense, but Anselm merely said, —There's this broken-down old church where he wants to play the organ, something he wrote he wants to play on their organ. "Seated one day at the organ," hey Stanley? How does it go, "weary and ill at ease"? And your fingers running idly over the . . . hey! He was gone, after someone with a bottle. —Give me some beer. 

Somewhere a sober voice said, —I suppose you might call me a positive negativist. Elsewhere, —Of course he'll never write another book, his bookshelves are crammed with books in different jackets and every one of them inside is that book of his. From a conversa-sation on the excellent abstract composition in isolated fragments of Constable, rose Adeline's voice, —like the solids in Oochello . . . Above them all the Worker's Soul hung silent, refusing comment; though the red lead recalled bridges built by horny hands, sexually unlike any that fluttered glasses beneath it now, the spots of rust a heavy male back straining between girders, generically different from any weaving here. For all its spatters of brightness, that canvas looked very tired, hanging foreign and forlorn over the sad garden. There, Anselm paused with a glass in one hand, treating his chin with a piece of (No. 1/2) sandpaper in the other. 

Stanley turned to Hannah and asked with solicitude, —But what about your painting? 

—They took it Monday. 

—Took it? Otto repeated. 

—I rented a Modigliani last month, I couldn't pay another month rent on it so they took it back. I can't live without that painting. I don't have any place to hang it, but I can't live without it, it was more beautiful than my mother. But what do
they
care? All they want is their lousy twenty dollars. 

—But that much money, you could buy a good print, Otto commenced, —a Picasso . . . 

—Picasso, he paints like he spits. 

—Well, of course . . . Otto said uncomfortably, —and the ... I mean, if a painter is only after a um immediate effects . . . 

—Some of them have set out to kill art, Stanley said quietly looking at the floor. —And some of them are so excited about discovering new mediums and new forms, he went on, looking up, between the two people he was talking to, —that they never have time to work in one that's already established. 

—Yes, and when they haven't studied their materials ... 

—Or they don't care, they just don't care. They don't. They accept history and they . . . they thumb their noses at it. 

—While you sit around and try to write music like Gabrieli. 

—If a painter knows his materials and respects them . . . 

—Oh Christ, what are you talking about? Hannah broke in. —The kind of crap you buy now in tubes, how do you know what you get? 

—Well of course, Otto agreed, moving his moist hand in the sling, —one can get more ink powder in a tube of cheap indigo than there is indigo, or no madder at all in rose madder, but . . . 

—All right, what do you blame the painter for, if a system of enterprise like this one screws him up? 

—Well you ... I mean . . . 

—You can buy as good colors today as have ever been made, Stanley said, —but there's a sort of a satisfaction grinding your own colors isn't there, here where everything you pick up is ready-made, everything's automatic. Where Henry James says, "to work successfully beneath a few grave, rigid laws . . ." 

—Oh, stuff Henry James . . . Hannah commenced, and coughed. Otto had lit another cigarette. He turned upon her seriously unattractive face as though to accuse her of having made it so on purpose. 

—Of course, when Vainiger says ... he began, but she turned and set off toward a plate of crackers. 

—Are you a painter? Stanley asked Otto. 

—Me? Oh no, I just, I'm a writer, a playwright, I just finished a play. 

—I thought from the way you talked maybe you were.

—A playwright? 

—A painter. 

—Well I, no, in fact I would have thought that vou . . . And, but w.hat does Hannah do? 

—She really doesn't
do
so very much, Stanley admitted. 

A face lowered behind them, to contribute, —Hannah knows
The Sound and the Fury
by heart. 

—The sound and the fury? Otto turned. 

—
The Sound and the Fury
. Faulkner's novel, haven't you ever read it? 

—Of course I've read it, Otto said without an instant's hesitation. 

—Hannah knows it by heart. 

—She paints some, Stanley said in a vindicatory tone. 

—Paints! Did you see the abstract she did for the Army Air Force? the face persisted. —For a psychological test, they used it to pick out the queers, if you were queer the painting didn't look like anything, if you weren't it looked like a snatch. 

—A what? 

—What's the matter, you queer? 

—She painted still lifes, Stanley interposed helpfully. 

—It took her so long the fruit got rotten. 

—But Cézanne . . . 

—Now she paints landscapes but she has to put telephone poles in all of them to get perspective. Linear perspective. 

—How does she get on without working? 

—She says work is death. 

—People give her money? 

—Work is death. She's too strong to ask for charity. When she really needs something, that's different, we all helped her when she got her front teeth knocked out. The ones she has now are made of cellophane. She washes and does all her laundry in a subway ladies' washroom. 

—She's very . . . she has such integrity of purpose, Stanley said weakly. 

—Purpose? Otto repeated. —What purpose. 

—Just . . . purpose, Stanley said looking after their nameless companion. —I ought to leave, he added, shifting nervously, gazing toward that full-blown flower whose fey petals curled and yellowed round its white spore-bearing carpel, Agnes Deigh. She was reciting a limerick about Titian which ended, —climbed up the ladder and had 'er, to rhyme with rose madder. 

—What is she, anyhow? Otto asked as they drifted in that direction. 

—An agent, a literary agent, Stanley answered under his breath, and they arrived to fill a gap in the trouser-seat curtain around her. There was a silent moment: Agnes Deign and Otto compared sun tans. Then she said, —I'm collecting members for Art for Labor and Democracy. It's a party. 

—A party? someone from another cluster turned to ask. 

—A political party, darling, she said, and he retired. 

—I have no political interests, Otto said to her. 

—But you don't have to do anything. You just give me two dollars, that pays your dues and they have another member. 

—But why join if I'm not going to do anything? 

—They need members. They just want your name, darling. 

—I'm sorry, I'm afraid I really couldn't afford it. 

—Two dollars? 

—That isn't what I meant . . . But Agnes Deigh was talking to someone else. Otto retired, to recover composure with an eyebrow raised on nothing. 

The funeral spray was on the floor; and in the sunless garden round it the flowers wilted one way and another, toward each other and away. There was music, briefly. A girl's voice counterfeited by the phonograph sang, "I sold my heart to the junkman . . ." until the needle broke and the song was lost in a whirr and momentary dimming of the electric light. A healthy baritone voice from a girl with a tubercularly collapsed chest said, —But it isn't really a good novel at all, the only perceptive chapter is where the boy discovers he's queer. 

One, with an unconscionably persistent smile, his coat too long and trousers too short, was detailing the plot of his as-yet-unfinished novel, —slightly reminiscent of Djuna Barnes perhaps. A man is told that his girl is a lesbian, so he makes himself up as a girl and goes to a party where she'll be. He makes advances to her, she accepts, and he throws off his disguise and rapes her . . . The voice of Agnes Deigh rose, —But darling, you don't have to
do
anything. 

Time, essential for growth, seemed to have forgotten the place, abandoned this garden which had never seen the sun, neither known the songs nor the fertilizing droppings of birds; still there might be worms, and one would hesitate to pry under to prove that there were not. In spite of not being tall, Otto looked loftily over the dusty scene, as he had upon the simmering market in the Central American port two weeks before. Here, as there, he poured disdainfully casual and acrid tobacco smoke over the traders, stood with one foot extended, an eyebrow raised. Occasionally he flicked at the ends of his new mustache, or affected difficulty with his sling. No one had mentioned either. 

In spite of the fact that the couch was out of sight, he set off toward it, suddenly remembering the perennial hunt; and by now he had had enough to drink to encourage him toward the woman sought after in vain, die Frau nach der man sich sehnt (as Gordon called her in Act III). So he knew the eyes that looked beyond and did not acknowledge him, the hands which offered but protected, and these were the places one was forced to seek her in New York, no matter the shadows, the choking air, this Ewig-Weibliche, the Eternal Helen. Then he suddenly heard Jesse Franks's voice saying, —She looks like some friggin madonna, and, no more realizing the wonder in that remark than the man who had spoken it, shut it out. 

—I haven't seen you for months, said someone beside him. They shook hands. 

—I've been in Central America, said Otto, brandishing the sling. 

—Were you? I didn't know it. 

Otto recognized him: the young man who wore his coat too long and trousers too short. The unconscionable smile, Otto remembered unpleasantly, not a smile to make one feel cheerful in its presence and persistence. Rather its intimation was that the wearer knew all of the dismal secrets of some evil jungle whence he had just come, a place of surreptitious traffic in fetid sweetish air where the fruits hung rotten on the trees. —How do you like my painting? This, of course, was Max. 

—The colors are good, said Otto warily to his host. The smile was not cold, but its very attempt to show itself open and honest revealed disarming calculation. It was a smile that had encouraged many to devote confidences, which gaining the cold air of outdoors they regretted, and mistrusted him accordingly. He dealt largely in facts, knowing for instance that most Hawaiian grass skirts are made in Switzerland, that Scottish Border ballads originated in the Pacific islands, that Scotch tartans are made in Switzerland, British army swords in Germany. It was for these moments that Otto wanted to carry a gun, not to flourish, certainly not to fire, simply to feel it heavily protective under his arm. —Did it take you long? he asked. 

—Thinking it out was the main thing, said Max. 

—It always is. I've just finished a play and . . . 

—Do you know Ed Feasley? He was at Harvard too, said Max, who had studied locally. 

—Hello, said Ed. —Chrahst we were in the same class. You know, I called you up a couple of months ago. I looked you up in the phone book when I came to New York and called. I got some man. He seemed to know you, but he didn't know where you were. 

—That must have been my father, Otto said. 

There was the sound of collision across the room, as Anselm went down. 

—That last time I saw you, said Otto, —you were playing golf down here, driving golf balls down Thompson Street. 

—I was drunk, said Ed, whose father owned a battleship works. —Just happened to have some clubs in the car. 

—What are you doing now? 

—Not a God-damned thing. The old man told me he'd give me a ten-per-cent commission if I'd sell one of his God-damned boats, I think the old bastard's just kidding me. He wants me to go to work in one of his plants. Start from the bottom. 

—What happened to that girl you were going to marry? 

—O Chr-ah-st, Ed said wearily. His old-school drawl relieved him of the burden of blasphemy. —I've decided to write a book about her instead. He was a tall well-built fellow with a very small head, what was known as the university type before those institutions let down their barriers, now viewed by the frail round-heads who have penetrated as definite evidence of degeneration of the race. 

—I guess we're all writing, Otto said cheerfully. —I've just finished a play ., . . 

—Wha'd you do to your hand anyway? Ed asked. 

—I've been in Central America. A revolution . . . 

—Wha'd you go down there for? 

—I was working, but when this revolution started, well, you know, you get mixed up in things, before you know it. And to see a dozen policemen coming at you on motorcycles, after you've strung piano wire ... 

—Mister Feddle, said Max, —I'm so glad you came. This interloper was an old man, who seemed glad to be here.