The Recognitions (91 page)

when the whole face turned on him, turned bloodshot eyes in a desolation of contempt. Instantly Mr. Pivner returned square before him: "But the kind that burns in young girls panties." And after a shrugged fluster and buttoning beside him, he was alone. —Is that old jerk going to come in here every night now, just sitting here in the lobby? the tall bellboy demanded as he emerged a moment later, and the night manager approached him. —Perhaps you would care to wait in the bar for the rest of the evening, sir? —That young man, Mr. Pivner managed, —he, who just left? —I believe he has been a guest of the hotel. —Oh well yes, well then, no ... Mr. Pivner lowered his eyes to the shining tips of the night manager's shoes. —But ... ! he looked up suddenly: eyes as bright, and incurious as the shoetops, dismissed him. —If the young man you have described . . . —Yes, thank you, thank you . . . Mr. Pivner hurried into the bar, and there ordered orange juice. He sounded weary and unprepared for surprises, even one so familiar as the dim image already resident, awaiting but the raising of his eyes, in the tinted mirror. To one side of him, a blonde sagged slightly in his direction. Her elbow edged nearer to his own a gold cigarette case, and he politely averted his eyes to avoid reading the inscription, withdrawing, bumping the man on his right. Mr. Pivner cleared his throat, as one prepared to apologize. But the other merely darted a pin-pointed glance at him and turned away, straightening a lapel where hung a boutonnière shabby enough to appear, in this light, made of paper. And Mr. Pivner settled his rimless glasses back closer to his eyes to stare forth into the tinted glass whose length construed the three figures in vacancy, maintaining a dim reality of its own, embracing their shades in subterranean suspense. To one side, the blonde opened her purse, and exchanged a muffled pleasantry with the bartender. From the other side came a gasp. Mr. Pivner cleared his throat, as though prepared to apologize but unable to think, so quickly, of anything specific to apologize for. But the sharp eyes gleamed at something beyond him, and with such intensity that his own were drawn in a reflex to look to where the blonde paid for her drink. But all Mr. Pivner saw, in the dim light, was a crisp twenty-dollar bill exchange hands: or so it looked to him, moonblind in the tinted gloom of that landscape where the three of them hung, asunder in their similarity, images hopelessly expectant of the appearance of figures, or a figure, of less transient material than their own. 

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence. —Darwin, The Origin of Species 

—It reminds me rather of that convent, the one at ... Champigneulles, was it? Near Dijon, said a tall woman, looking round her. —The one that was turned into a madhouse. 

—I know what you mean, said the girl beside her. —Everyone keeps changing size. The tall woman looked at her quizzically, and noted that both of her wrists were bandaged. She took a step back; the girl took a step forward. —What do you do? —I? Why . . . when? —Write? —Oh, said the tall woman, recovering, —I support my husband. He writes. He's an editor, you know. He's editing Esther's book. —Who's Esther? —Why, my dear, she's our hostess. There, talking with the tall fellow in the green necktie. She turned, as her husband approached with a martini. —What an interesting group of people, she said. —And what interesting music. —It's Handel, he said, handing her a glass. —The Triumph of Truth and Justice. She looked around her, and raised the glass to her lips. —Do you think next year we might get to the Narcissus Festival in Hawaii? Drinks were spilled, another brown line burnt on the mantel, people collided, excused themselves and greeted one another, and Ellery, tucking the green silk tie back in his jacket, said, —Just stop talking about it for a while. Who's that? he added, nodding at a blond girl. —I don't know. She came with somebody. She's going to Hollywood. —I want another drink, Ellery said, and went toward the blonde. 568

—Ellery, please . . . But he was gone. She sat, holding her kitten. —What does it mean, said a heavy voice near her. —The garbage cans in the street, the kids on the East Side playing in the gutters, swimming in that filthy river, see? What does that mean? —Well she says Paris reminds her of a mouthful of decayed teeth, but I think Paris is just like going to the movies ... —A lovely little hotel near Saint Germain, I don't think 1 crossed the river more than twice all the time I was there. I really lived on the left bank, it's so much nicer, the architecture, the cloud formations over there . . . —Of course if you like Alps. I found them a fearfully pretentious bore myself ... I mean, what can you do with an Alp . . . —He's still in Paris. He wrote that he's just bought one of those delightful Renaults . . . —Oh yes, I do love them. An original? Esther stood up. Her face was flushed. The music disturbed her because it seemed the records were being played at random, one stray side of Handel after another in haphazard succession. She started toward the room which had been the studio, where the music came from, and bumped into a person who was saying, —Do you mean you've never heard of Murti-Bing? Before she was halfway across the room, her way was blocked by an immense glistening countenance. —Baby they told me you were looking for a doctor, and . . . —Do you know of one? Esther asked, too startled for poise. —No but I'm looking for one too. Maybe we can find one together . . . Esther found Rose sitting in the dark. —Isn't the music nice? I'm playing them, she said. —Yes, but perhaps, he wouldn't want any of them broken, Rose. —Oh, I won't break them, Rose said, smiling at her in the dark. Suddenly Esther put an arm around her; and then as abruptly withdrew it, and left her there with the phonograph. — Wasn't it silly of me. I tried to kill myself twice in two weeks. The second time I was out for two days. Sleeping pills. —How many did you take? —Twenty-three. Why? —I just wondered. It's always a good thing to know. Esther closed her eyes, as though shutting out sound, and moved on toward Don Bildow, whom she saw across the room talking with a gaunt man in an open-collar green wool shirt, and a stubby youth. —Yes, I'm almost finished it, said a woman beside her, to the editor. —It's to be called Some of My Best Friends Are Gentiles. I'm so weary of these painful apologies from our sensitive minorities. I often think how nice it must be among dogs, a bulldog saying, there's a grayhound, there's a basset, a Pekinese, none o£ them mind at all. They're all dogs. Here all you have to do is say a word like Jew or Catholic or Negro or fairy and someone looks ready to cut you up . . . —I'm sorry to interrupt, Esther said, —but who is that fellow talking to Don Bildow? The tall one. —He's a critic. I can't remember his name. He used to do books on Old Masses. —The other one calls himself a poet, said the woman who had been talking. —He's a professional Jew, i£ you know what I mean. Nearby, a man smoking something from a box whose label said, "Guaranteed to contain no tobacco" spoke to a fluttering blond boy who, someone must eventually remark, resembled an oeuf-dur-mayonnaise. The tall woman indicated him to her husband, with the query, —And who is that perfectly weird little person? He's been talking for simply hours about the solids in Oochello. Wherever that is. —He's one of our . . . more sensitive writers, her husband got out expelling air as though it were salt water. —Yes, she murmured, —I can see he has a good deal to be sensitive about. She watched, as the object of her gaze halted a pirouette of departure to say, —But all my dear friends are exotic, just all twisted and turned like the irregular verbs in any civilized language, and all from over-use! . . . The tall woman said thoughtfully, —Yes, and I tried to read his book. Didn't I? she added, turning to the other woman who, she noticed now, was wearing a maternity dress in collapsed folds, the pregnancy foiled. Then as though bringing a topic from nowhere she smiled and said, —Will you bring me a drink? to her husband; —I'm drinking for two now, to them both; and, —I don't know how he could have been so careless, to the other woman. As Esther crossed the room, Herschel caught her arm. —Baby, you must hear what Rudy's given his maid for Christmas. A hysterectomy! Isn't that the most thoughtful thing you ever heard? While the tall woman continued to stare toward the door, where the sensitive youth fluttered an escape against the current of entrants. —At least I think that's who it was, I remember the picture on the book jacket, posing with magnolias . . . She paused, to add, as he disappeared, —Or was that a book by Edna St. Vincent Mil-lay . . . ? And stepped aside for, —Big Anna! but what happened baby? How did you get here? —My Boy Scouts, I'll never speak to them again . . . —But I'm really upset about Rudy, Herschel went on, -that one called and has been in an auto smash somewhere. 57°

—I have to find a doctor . . . —And you're so pretty tonight, and your nose, you know what they say about nos-es. Now you just drink this and we'll find you the cutest little doll-doctor . . . Oh! so pretty for Christmas Eve, all red and shiny like a candy cane. In the doorway, Maude hung back. —Do you think we could just go join the baby and live in Sweden, Amy? —Same thing there, he said. —I'll get you a drink. Can you really tell I've got this shirt on inside out? Someone was saying, —Rather like Pyramus and Thisbe, if you know what I mean, and of course everyone knows that he was so sensitive she had to put cotton in the bedsprings the first time so he wouldn't be embarrassed . . . That person quieted, nodding at who came in the door. Others turned to see Agnes Deigh, who said immediately, —It's really the most God-awful thing, will someone get me a drink? Is Stanley here? —Who's Stanley? —A funny boy with a mustache. She sat down, looking round her; but Stanley had not arrived, and she was soon enclosed behind a curtain of trouser-seats. —I really prefer books. No matter how bad a book is, it's unique, but people are all so ordinary. —I think we really like books that make us hate ourselves . . . —But . . . why doesn't someone just write a happy book . . . Maude had said that; but no one heard her. —If you had a judge who looked like your Daddy wouldn't you trust him? she asked a youth who turned on her with, —Trust that old bastard? Chr-ahst, he doesn't even trust himself. Do you want to buy a battleship? All Maude could say, looking round the room, was —How do all these people know each other? —Chr-ahst only knows. Do you like the party? —It's a little . . . chavenet. Don't you think? —Chr-ahst yes. Esther had retrieved her kitten, and stood holding it too tightly. At her elbow, someone said, —Well Ruskin dated his life from the first time he saw them. —Well, of course Ruskin, said the other. —He was in town just last week, wasn't he? said the tall woman. —I heard my husband talking about him. They had lunch together, I think . . . he's doing a book about stones . . . ? Across the room Ellery was turned toward her. He was talking to the blond girl, laughing, listening to her, she stood almost between them. The length of her back faced Esther. The heels were high, shoes narrow, legs slightly bowed. The whole of her figure up to the shoulders was slim as though waiting to be taken and turned, and

bent downward and back: Esther felt heavy, resting against the door jamb, shapeless, and her head was tired, full, aching dully. —All I want to do is rent a house in the south of France with four deaf mutes . . . said someone near her. The room before her was clean; but in her own mind it existed with the permanence granted only to shambles. Tenants whom she had not met stood like fixed dwellers in her life, never to be dispossessed: they had been borne to her as they were in their permanent blue suits and brown suits and black dresses and eyeglasses, permanently standing and turning, talking to and about one another, nourished and propagated by their own sounds and the maneuvering of cigarettes, leaving the act of life outmoded, a necessity of the past, a compulsion of ignorance: men raised cigarettes in erect threat; women proffered the olive-tongued cavities of empty glasses. —What's that music? someone asked her. —I don't know, it's something of Handel s I think, said Esther, pausing to listen to the strains of celebration written by the barber's son who had learned to play on a dumb spinet, as the anachronistic morning-sickness rose in her, and she put an arm across her sensitive breasts. Ellery blew a smoke ring toward her, a savage missile which the blonde reached out and broke on the air. —You'd better ask this nice lady right here, said a man who was fluttering a pamphlet titled Toilet Training and Democracy in one hand, leading a seven-year-old girl with the other. —I'm the little girl from downstairs, the child said to Esther. —Mummy sent me up to ask you could you give me some sleeping pills . . . Esther set off with her to the bathroom, where they interrupted someone who was looking through the medicine cabinet. —Oh, sorry ... he said, —just wanted to see if there were any razor blades here . . . He left with difficulty. Emerging a minute later, she was caught forcefully by the wrist. —Look, you've got a kitten, I've got to tell you the one about Pavlov and his kitten. You know Pavlov, he had dogs. Pavlov rang a bell and whfffft, they salivated, remember? The dogs I mean. Well this time Pavlov has a kitten . . . Voice and man were swept away, and Don Bildow was not where she had seen him. But Ellery was coming toward her smiling. She raised her face, smiling; and he stopped short, at the couch between them, where sitting alone was a man whose profession was as immediately obvious as that of the rickshaw boys of Natal, who whitewash their legs. A bow tie of propeller proportions stood out over extra-length collar bills on a white-on-white shirt, protected by many folds of a cloth which somehow retained the gracious dignity of transatlantic origin in spite of the draped depravity in its cut. -Benny! I'm glad you got here. —Business is business, said Benny, raising his glass. 572

—What do you think of the idea? —Terrific. —I've got the guy all lined up. We're going to pay his family when he goes through with it, half now, half on delivery. But it's got to look accidental. —Listen to this, said Benny. —I thought of this last night. —What? An angle? —Well, I didn't know whether you wanted to gag it up or make it arty or what. You know. We could have built a nice artistic number around it. Some ballet, with a story line in the background. Sweet. Or I thought if you wanted to gag it up we could make a kind of musical out of it. You know? Girls. Exploding cigars. —Yeah but look, that's not quite . . . —I know, we couldn't do that angle anyway, the cigars. We've got a couple of good cigar accounts that would yell. No. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, what you guys really want is stark human drama. The real thing. So listen to this. I thought of this last night. —Yeh ... —From a church. He does it from a church steeple. —Christ! Benny, you'll win the Nobel Prize for that. It's a natural. —I figured how we can make it look accidental enough. There's this church up in the Bronx right across from a dancing school. We'll have the cameras up there doing a show on kids learning ballet dancing, see? Then when we get the word all we have to do is break in and dolly them around right out the window. Beautiful camera angle. —But what about the priest? He might screw it up if he's around. —He'll be around. He'll be busy inside, saying a Mass. —It's terrific. That's all I can say. Ellery spoke with his eyes lowered, in thoughtful admiration. Then he raised them. —You deserve a drink. Where'd you think of it, alone or in a story conference? —In church, said Benny. —But Anna baby, came a voice from the end of the couch, filling the gap of Ellery's marveling silence, —they boiled Sir Thomas More's head for twenty minutes just so it would hold together, before they stuck it up on London Bridge . . . —Right there, said the tall woman, nearer Esther, —in front of God and everybody. That's the way those things always happen. Do you think I have on too much perfume? I have sinus trouble and I never know. Isn't it warm in here. —Well, your furpiece . . . Esther began, turning to face her. —I know, my dear, but to tell you the truth I don't dare put it down anywhere. —I'm sure it would be safe in my bedroom. —Oh, then you're Esther. My dear I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . . —It's all right, you're probably right. I don't know a lot of the people here myself. —Tell me Esther, has he come yet? —Who? —Your guest of honor, of course . . . —Do you know him? —Hardly. But I've seen his picture so many times. And I own his book. I heard him speak once, about families, I mean about having children and that sort of thing. I can't bear them myself. I mean bear them, literally you know, she laughed. —A tipped uterus, you know. There seem to be so many nowadays, you run into a tipped uterus wherever you turn . . . They both turned hopefully to look across the room, where the door opened. —My dear he is probably someone quite notable. You have to be, to go about with an alarm clock strung around your neck . . . —Mendelssohn Schmendelssohn, someone else said. —I'm talking about music. —Wasn't that silly of me, said the tall woman, watching Esther cross the room toward the couch. —Telling her a thing like that when here I am two months gone. It just goes to show what habit will do. —I think Sibelius' fourth is his best. —Fourth, schmorth; it's his only. —It just goes to show that you can't trust nature. Across the room, Mr. Feddle already was engaged, inscribing a Copy of Moby Dick. He worked slowly and with care, unmindful of immediate traffic as though he were indeed sitting in that farmhouse in the Berkshires a century before. Maude looked up and said, —Isn't it funny, how dark it seems over there, I mean where they are, do they make the corner dark or did they just gather there because it's dark there . . . Then she saw that the heavy-set man was in uniform, and said, —Oh. What are you? —Army Public Relations, he said, looking up again at the group in the dark corner. —They look like something out of a Russian novel, he said. —Chavenet, said Maude, looking up at him with wide unblinking eyes. —Yeh, him, said the officer. —Just because I'm not an intellectual don't mean I don't read books. Together they stared across the room; and Maude, feeling his warm hand on the back of her neck, relaxed somewhat. A few years before, someone who had once seen one rather unfortunate print of Mozart (it was in profile, the frontispiece in a bound score of the Jupiter Symphony printed in Vienna), and soon after looked once at the profile of the man now standing stoop-shouldered across the room in an open-collar green wool shirt, remarked that he looked (for all the world) like Mozart. Safe away by a century and a half, this was repeated often, most especially by those who persisted as his friends, wished to say something complimentary about him, and had never seen the frontispiece to the Vienna-bound Jupiter Symphony. —I know him, the tall one, Maude said. —He's been around a long time. He looked up, as though he might have overheard her, and he looked offended; but if she had seen him more often, anywhere, and in any circumstance, she would have realized that he always looked offended. Bildow, who was talking, looked slightly offended. So did the stubby young man whose belligerent interest was poetry. They might have been offended by the conversation immediately beside them, a group as unattractive as their own but in another way: crackling with brittle enthusiasm, these guests pursued one another from the Royale Saint Germain (across the street) to the Deux Magots; out to the Place des Vosges and back to the Flore; across the river to the Boeuf sur le Toit and back to the Brasserie Lipp (—It was Goering's- favorite place in Paris you know); briefly to the Carnavalet and back to the Reine Blanche (—That's where I saw how tough the French police can be . . .). —And laundry so expensive, eighty francs a shirt . . . —Of course none of us had baths in our rooms, but there was a charming boy from Virginia whose bathtub was always free after eleven in the morning . . . —I managed very well, just washing in the bidet . . . Wherever encountered, it seemed that their one achievement had been getting across that ocean once, and getting back to retail wares which they deprecated but continued to offer, all they had in stock at present though a sparkling variety was on order (—Cyprus sounded like a marvelous place, I heard that they have these trumpets there, and at night when they go to bed they put one end out the window and the other end . . .). —We didn't get time to do Italy this time, anyhow it's really more important to get to know one place really well, we were in Paris for almost a whole week . . . Each one inclined from wistful habit to say, —Well I've only been back a couple of weeks, and ... or, —I just got back recently, and ... or, —Well I've only been back a little while, but . . . , realizing in the back of their minds that seasons had changed since the!r return, that the same season they had spent there was approaching again here, realizing, in spite of those vivid images which conversations like this one refurbished, that they were back, and their wares not for sale, but barter only, and in kind. —I guess it was Corfu I meant, anyway when you walk down the street in the evening you hear these really mellifluous sounds from these trumpets . . . —Well we were there when our ambassador laid a wreath on the grave of the unknown soldier. He dropped to his knees, and everybody in the crowd was so touched by his reverent act, then he fell flat on his face ... —You're talking about my hus-band! cried the one who had thanked Esther for her lovewy party, in passing, paused then to make a face at Don Bildow over their shoulders, and went on. —I never saw anything like that, even at the Au Soleil Levant. What was it? —The Duchess of Ohio. Bildow turned his unimpressive back. —There isn't a good lay in this whole room, said their stubby companion, with a look as though recalling some severe unkindness done him privately years before. It was, in fact, a look he seldom lost. The tall stooped one undid the next button of his wool shirt, and said, —What about Esther, what about her? —It's funny you never knew her. She was around a lot, before she got married. That summer your wife shot herself, Esther was all over the place. —I was at Yaddo, said the critic. He smoothed the hair on the back of his head, but it stood up again immediately he lowered his hand; and the likeness to the Mozart print was remarkable again, not for the heavy and long upper lip, and the prominent nose, but the weight of the hair which he wore as consciously as the eighteenth-century man, though not for reason of that infestation of daunted vanity known as fashion, but for his own unintimi-dated reason: it made his head look bigger, inferring its contents to be a brain of the proportions which Science assures us we all might have, if we had wings. —I heard you sold out, he said to Bildow. —What did I have to do with it? You know how much it costs to run a magazine. He smoothed down and released his obedient hair. —Are you using my Dostoevski piece in this issue? —Ahm . . . not in this one, but ... —Jesus Christ, you've had it up there for over a year. I'll finish the book before you print it, probably. —Well, you know. There's politics up there like everywhere else. 5?6