The Recognitions (80 page)

The painter concerned for his mortal safety, indifferent because he fears to scrutinize, paradoxically sacrifices that very safety, for he will not be allowed to escape painting. 

He will make paintings or they will revolt and make him, unhappy being in the grasp of them. He compulsively must, then, live them cold as they are, static, perversely with warmth and movement he cannot know but feel painfully, a bird with broken eggs inside. 

On the other hand, a no-painter—resourceful as he may be, cannot paint. He cannot say, well, "I did not get the job but I shall say I got it any-how"—by this distortion of fact he deludes, not himself, but other persons, until, that moment arrives to receive the reimbursement. With nothing of value to show the fact will disappear. There is no fact but value. 

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain. 

It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the pleasure they enjoy at this. 

They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously de-stroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, how-ever, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us. 

Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realiza-tion obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by
absolute
death.

——Close your eyes for the next sixty seconds and try to walk around the room . . .

The man behind the bar reached up and turned it off.

—I got a friend he's got a glass eye with the American flag on it, said the man on the outside.

The man behind the bar poured whisky until it ran over his fingers. —This'll put lead in your pencil. He pushed it in a wet trail across the bar. —Now if you got somebody to write to you're all set.

—Here's Rose.

At the far end of the bar Otto stepped aside for the dumpy woman who came in the door. Her nose was red, so were her eyes.

—What's the matter, Rose? Cold enough for you? Otto joined the cold coin on the bar with a warm one from his pocket, signaled with his empty beer glass, and put it back down beside the newspaper, folded there on the bar across one of the girls in the vice probe, whose dark glasses he had been staring at. 

To his left, the mirror and the window conjoined at such an angle that vehicles on the street outside appeared to come into one another head-on. A bus telescoped and disappeared. He with- drew his bloodshot eyes and turned them straight before him; but he did not see his face for the sign F
RANKS AND
K
RAUT 20¢
was pasted on the mirror just above his collar. Below, where his hands met sensitively on the empty beer glass, twitching somewhat, touching at the fingertips, frankfurters turned on hot rollers, slowly, receding and coming forward, passing each other forward and back with dull nudges like fat jointless fingers in meditation. He withdrew his left hand back into the loose sling. 

—Here, pussy pussy pussy, said the dumpy woman. 

—We got three of them. 

—I lost mine, said the dumpy woman. —I raised him from this big. He had blood in his kidney. 

—Human beings has to go too. 

—I lost two husbands that way. Overnight. 

Otto signaled with his empty glass. Then a tall blonde, in a fur cape, wearing dark glasses, walked to meet herself in the glass. Otto turned and looked out the window. He could not see her. He looked in the mirrored pillar behind him, and saw her coat-sleeve disappear. He looked before him, and saw her merge into herself. He looked out of the window again, and saw a man in a Santa Claus suit. 

—Could I have a beer here? he said. He waited. Then he put down his empty glass and walked toward the back, taking out his wallet. 

In the telephone booth a moment later he sat with the receiver to his ear, listening to a clock ticking in the Sun Style Film office. Finally a voice came through. 

—Hello? Otto said, and named the man and himself in introductory greeting. —I'm sorry I've been so long calling you, but I ... Yes, but . . . What? No, about Central America. You remember, I ... When can we get together for a ... No, it was Peru and northern Bolivia, you remember . . . Yes, I ... What? But I ... you . . . Well that bastard, he repeated to himself, leaning back against the wall of the booth. —"We have nothing to discuss." Well that bastard. That bastard. Then the sling gave way. 

He came out with his wrist pressed against his wallet. He had forty-one dollars. —And why I gave a five-dollar bill to that Harlem nigger yesterday, to keep an eye out for that damn dispatch case. Damn it. That black bastard too. 

The dumpy woman was drinking a manhattan. —I can feel it down to my toes, she said. Her stockings sagged over her broken shoe backs. 

—Who you saving the cherry for, Rose? 

The man behind the bar turned the radio on again, and left it while it warmed to strains of Mozart. Otto's glass was still empty, but he stood there as though unable to call and command, staring at the man's striped necktie, the signal of another final club which had not invited him to join. 

—What's the matter, Rose? You blushing? 

Otto waited a moment longer. Mozart continued, rising and gathering to exquisite pauses: and each of these apertures was obligingly filled by a saxophone. Otto picked up the two cold coins, and left the newspaper on the bar. Mozart measured a subtle withdrawal; and a voice from the saxophone world heralded, 

——Here's an oldie, friends, Rudy Vallee singing,
Love Made a Gypsy Out of Me
. 

—Hey Jack, you want your newspaper? the man behind the bar called after him. 

—Never mind, Otto answered over his shoulder. —It's yesterday's. 

The tropic breeze ruffled Otto's linen, boarding that banana boat, then standing on deck gazing out over the Caribbean, a whisky-soda in his free left hand, skin warm with memory of the sun: so he stood, serene and unapproachable, in the memory of the unsteady figure appearing now (wearing a new green muffler which enhanced the yellowness of his skin), an old friend whom Otto only now fully appreciated, and would like to see again. He passed the steamed windows lowering a handkerchief, where two black rings witnessed what desperate barriers are the fine hairs of the nostrils, and pulling open the door of the Viareggio, interrupted this with his entrance: 

—Philogyny? I thought you said phylogeny. 

—I said, misogyny recapitulates philogyny. 

—Misogamy . . . ? 

—Never mind. 

—What's the name of this book you're writing? 

—Baedeker's
Babel
. 

Noting only the striped tie on the taller of these two, Otto brought the handkerchief up again, and got by them. 

—And you say you've become a misologist? 

—Whisky-soda, Otto ordered at the bar, slurring his tone in casual rudeness as he imagined one used to command. 

—Where's the head in this place? Someone bumped him. —Right through that door, it's called Tiffany's here. 

—But I ordered whisky-and-soda. 

—You said whisky sour. Sixty-five cents. 

Max's back was turned to him at a near table, where a battered copy of
Collectors Quarterly
lay open to
Mother and Child II
, under the elbow of a man hunched in a green wool shirt who was saying to Max, —You had some work at the New School, well look. Would I have to prepare "my lectures? or could I just bullshit. Otto took a step toward the table. He was blocked by a haggardly alert face, speaking to someone behind him, —She would have drownded herself if she could have found something to drownd herself in. And the response over Otto's shoulder, —She's been way out for a long time, man. You can't fool with horse without getting hooked. 

—That magazine, Otto said to a girl standing behind the table, —do you know what happened . . . where it ... 

—A bear chewed it. 

—What? I mean that . . . 

—Oh I thought you meant this
Vogue
. She held up a tattered copy of Vogue. —A bear chewed this in Yellowstone Park, the craziest bear . . . She turned her back and went on with her conversation, —Oh very very very very very much . . . 

—Hello. Can you buy me a beer? 

—Hello Hannah, of course, I'd be glad to. Otto ordered it, handed her the dripping glass, and said, —Really, I've just had the most maddening . . . 

—Thanks, said Hannah, and returned to the tall colored boy she'd been talking to, and shared her glass with him in the corner. At Otto's side a blond boy in dungarees said, —I tell you I felt just for all the world like Archimedes in his crwazy bathtub . . . But how could I? I tell you I was stuck. And at the near table, a green wool elbow knocked a glass of beer over
Mother and Child II
. 

Otto winced, saw Stanley seated staring at a cup of coffee, started to approach, saw it was Anselm seated with him staring at nothing, and stopped. The haggard boy came up to their table and dropped into a chair with neither invitation nor greeting. 

—You know how I made her the first time I made her? Anselm went on. —I described a wet dream to her, one I'd had about her, she listened as though it had really happened, and then before she knew it I was in again. He laughed, but sounded weary, not really interested in what he was talking about, and sat drumming blunt nail-bitten finger-ends on the table. 

—She was probably high then, the haggard boy commented dully. 

—You shouldn't . . . Stanley commenced. 

—What are you pretending you're worried about her now for? Christ, she didn't make it, did she? 

—She could never make anything real, man. The gas was on all right, but there was air coming in all over the place. 

—Just the same, Stanley appealed, —if her intention . . . 

—Her intention! what's that to you? Christ, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? She ought to get her ass into a nunnery. 

Stanley said nothing. He lowered his eyes, sipped his coffee, and opened a newspaper. 

—What does Saint Jerome say about women? Anselm persisted. —She's the gate of Hell. "A foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil," says Chrysostom . . . And he broke off, watching Otto's approach without recognition. 

Otto got round the two young men whom he had interrupted with his entrance. —I'm doing for writing what Bruckner did for music, said one. —So what did Bruckner do for music? —Well put it this way, I'm doing in writing . . . 

—Freud! . . . came borne in a pleasing Boston-bred voice from a tall girl. —Hahaha . . . Freud my ahss. 

—You know what the trouble is, like Pascal says, all the malheurs in this world come from a man's inability to sit alone in a small room, said the taller of them. —Can I buy you a drink? He was wearing a tie from the first crossing of the Queen Elizabeth. 

—But why . . . ? why? Stanley repeated, plaintive and incredulous. —Why would Max say a thing like that? He'd know it's not true, that Hannah and I were . . . sleeping together . . . ? He looked up and included Otto in his appeal. Anselm was laughing. He shrugged. 

—I am one to tell you, my lord, Stanley and a palindrome are making the beast with two backs, he said, and took Stanley's newspaper. 

—But why do they . . . people have to ... say such things? 

—People? You sound like it's the first time in history somebody got laid, Anselm said, his tone musing and vague. —Das Unbe-schreibliche, hier wird's getan . . . He did not look up, from the paper, whose pages he turned without apparent pauses to read. —Das ewig-Weibliche, for Christ sake, he mumbled. 

Otto stood unable to turn away, bound by the hurt accusal in Stanley's eyes, which lowered uncertainly back to the table. 

—The last time I saw her, the haggard boy said, —she had to have somebody around her all the time, so she could ask if she'd really done something or gone somewheres. She looked like she was going to flip then. 

Anselm tore something out of the paper and pushed it across the table. —This ought to cheer you up, Stanley, he said. —The bell tower at Saint Mark's is ready to flip too. 

—She told me once the reason her eyes bug out like that is some doctor gave her henbane, did you know that? She said she can even see the stars in the daytime. If she'd really wanted to make it she would have sliced her wrists like Charles . . . 

—For Christ sake! will you . . . stop talking about it? Anselm broke out at the haggard boy suddenly, then looked at Stanley who was staring dumbly at the headline. —You better get over there before the whole thing falls down, Anselm said to him. 

—Hannah . . . Otto interrupted, —tried to kill herself? I just saw her. 

—Hannah! Anselm looked up and laughed at him. 

—It was Esme, Stanley said quietly. —Last night. 

—But what happened? 

—You're spilling your drink. What are you drinking whisky sours for anyhow? Anselm demanded. 

—She flipped, man. Chaby found her with the gas on. Then the haggard boy returned to Anselm. —Did you hear about Charles? His old lady came from Grand Rapids to take him back there, she's a Christian Science. 

Otto put his glass on the table. He looked back as though minutes were hours, and the hours had been days since he'd seen her: he had driven her to it. His chest expanded as he got his breath and turned away.