The Recognitions (102 page)

him toward the panel door in the other end of the room. Mr. Schmuck joined them, halfway across, Mr. Sonnenschein three-quarters, and Basil Valentine reached them before they were all through that door, and closed it behind him. —They've gone in to look at dirty movies, said Miss Stein, watching them. —Art pictures the boss calls them. Too late, she had taken a step to follow. The tall woman was deflected from her course by a plump hand which hit her in the breast. She did not pause for an apology; and the bearded youth did not pursue her to offer one. He went right on with, —No, the story was published over there, and of course I have every right to sue her, she's ru-ined my London reputation. —But you've never been in London, have you? —Well I might go ... so there! No, don't you touch me . . . I'm going right over and discuss Martin Schoongauer's etchings with that exquisitely fifteenth-century-looking person. The tall woman interrupted her husband, who was absorbed in saying nothing to anyone. —Oh dear, I always say the wrong thing, I just don't stand a' Chinaman's chance . . . Then her voice stopped, as her eyes were halted by the man at her elbow whom she had met as Mr. Kuvetli. —A Chinese person's chance . . . she faltered on, bravely, —Oh dear, I do try . . . And at the far end of that great room the panel door opened to upset someone who was depending upon it as part of the wall. —Don't tell me that advertising does a cultural service by reproducing art, confusing the art and the product in people's minds, it corrupts the art by exalting the . . . ooops! —Pardon, said M. Crémer, stepping back while this speaker picked himself up and renewed his attack. —So your hair oil reproduces the Mona Lisa, that's patronage . . . —A magnificent work, Crémer went on, coming out, —bien en-tendu, le visage de la Vierge . . . —Yes that, of course, said the white-haired man behind him, —but most obviously the work of some restorer. Rather serves to show up the excellence of the rest of the thing, though, you might say. —Un sacrilege, ce visage-la, archaïque, dur comme la pierre, voyez vous, sans chaleur, sans cœur, sans sympathie, sans vie ... en un mot, la mort, vous savez, sans espoir de Resurrection. Last in the short line, Mr. Sonnenschein came out saying, —It's a price. It's a price. He looked over his shoulder, and started to say something, but the door closed in his face. The white-haired man bumped Crémer, who'd stopped abruptly, one foot full on an Aubusson rose, to say, —Your Monsieur Brown, he is ... typical? Here the sharkskinned Argentine approached, to excuse himself and ask if any of them were Mr. Brown? —He's right here . . . ummph . . . somewhere, the white-haired man said looking round over their heads. The Argentine looked, anxiously, with him. —You are here on ... business? Crémer challenged him. —My official commission is completed earlier, the Argentine answered, —but I am here with the hope to secure something of ... artistic? ... Crémer turned his back. —II va sans dire, he said, pausing to chuckle, —comme tout le monde sail bien, les grands tableaux de Goya qu'on trouve dans le Jockey Club de Buenos Aires sont des . . . faux. —A deodorant company reproduces the Madonna of the Rocks in an ad, and you call that . . . ooopsl Recktall Brown came through the panel door, with a fresh cigar in his mouth. He strode into the room and looked around with expectation, holding one heavy hand in the other behind him, and then the second in the first, his back turned to the direction he had come from, passing Crémer and the others so fast he had not seen them. —A laxative company reproduces the portrait of Doctor Arnolfini and his wife in full color, and that's supposed to be ... ooops! Basil Valentine came through the panel door, and stood there, pulling it closed behind him slowly as he looked over the room, pale, his lips tight but moved by the tongue which caressed the broken tooth. —Look, come on over to a safe corner, because I want to tell you that if there's one single cancer eating out this country, it's advertising. Basil Valentine cupped his hands to light a cigarette, for the one he had held up with a match was quivering. —But Doctor . . . Kuvetli is it? in the Fourth Dynasty the process of embalming and mummification . . . —I beg you to excuse me for a moment . . . Valentine watched him approach, the cigarette poised at his mouth, where he pressed his upper lip with a fingertip. —What is the trouble? what is happening? —Nothing, Valentine answered in the same low tone. —But there is something, you are very upset. How did you injure yourself? —An absurd accident ... 666

—But you must tell me what all this is, there is something very wrong here tonight . . . —There is nothing wrong with anything but . . . with anything that concerns you, Valentine answered quickly. —Ah, but you cannot ... —I can do anything I wish, Valentine said heatedly, turning his back on the room. —I am most concerned to see you lose ... to see you so disturbed, said the other, backed against the wall there. —It is never a good thing. —I've lost control of nothing. —And you expect some trouble? —Nothing that . . . with which I am not familiar. —Are you armed? —Armed? Good heavens, do you expect someone to ... attempt my life? —Ah, but not so loudly . . . Valentine backed a step from him. He looked the man up and down. —What the devil is all this . . . ? Do you think you're here to ... keep a watch on me? All this, I assure you, he went on, —I assure you it has nothing to do witn any but personal concerns, do you understand me? And that man over there ... he started to turn, nodding over his shoulder at Brown's heavy back. Then he suddenly closed in again. —And you, are you armed? he demanded. He had only a smile in return, a smile which did not spread beyond the lips, nothing else moved from the point of the beard to the sharp black eyes. —Give it to me, Valentine said. —But if, as you say, this is all no more than a personal affair ... —Give it to me, I say. —But in matters of this sort, your authority does not extend . . . —Damn you! hand it over, and stop . . . The vein stood out, pounding in Basil Valentine's temple. —My authority extends where I take it, he said, opening his dinner jacket and shielding the figure before him as the square weight of an automatic pistol passed between them. —And now . . . —Ah yes of course, I have read the book, a charmingly cynical thing of its kind. It is written with such . . . freshness . . . He stroked his beard with one finger, as Basil Valentine composed himself quickly, buttoning his dinner jacket and stepping back to allow the intrusion of a man whom neither of them appeared to know, —such naïveté, that one may imagine the author himself quite innocent of comprehending the full meaning of the deceit implicit in the scandalous behavior which he recommends, in order to win friends and, as it follows, influence people. Did you not have this feeling, Mister . . . Mister . . . ? Valentine had retired a step, and then another, about to turn. But he said, —Valentine. And now ... —Of course . . . He had not taken his sharp eyes from Valentine's face but for an instant. —Of course I have implicit faith in your judgment, in matters of this sort. —Thank you, Valentine said, bowing quickly from the waist and excusing himself, —I must see our host for a moment. —Of course . . . —It proves no more than that the ends justify the means, and that eventually connivance is necessary to the accomplishment of good, said the intruder, carrying on with some perspicacity what he believed to be a conversation. —I believe that we can call its success in a society supposedly based in reason, as logical an outcome as the pragmatic approach of modern American psychoanalysis, he went on, though the man to whom he was now talking had favored him with the briefest scrutiny, and stood now looking over his shoulder toward the center of the room, where Basil Valentine collided with Fuller, who was retreating backwards with a loaded tray. —You idiot! Idiotl —Oh yes sar, yes sar . . . —Here, what do you mean calling Fuller an idiot? —Oh Mister Brown sar, Mister Valentine sar . . . And if Basil Valentine was surprised, Fuller was astonished; if Valentine was discountenanced, Fuller was thoroughly alarmed at this guttural defense from the last source either of them might ever have expected. Recktall Brown stood with his hands flattened across his belly one upon the other, the diamonds hidden beneath the thick joint of a finger. And as Valentine's eyes turned to the pools floating rash defiance in those thick lenses, Fuller made good his escape. On the shifting surfaces of voices, rising, hesitating, and breaking, rolling deeply and fading away, moving in even swells, shattering in conflict, figures moved around them, as Recktall Brown took out a cigar with one hand, found the penknife with the other, and stood there, waiting. —Whatever this game of yours is, it's gone far enough, Valentine got out finally. Recktall Brown just looked at him. He began to trim the end of the cigar. Finally he said, —It's my party. —But you can't . . . you can't ... 668

—I can't xvhat. Brown did not raise his eyes from what he was doing. —Good God ... Brown raised his eyes at that, to stare at the face before him. He looked very tired: that was the only way to explain the expression on his face which he lowered quickly, as though his features, so familiar in the daylight of triumph, or wrath, or satisfaction, might betray him. He finished trimming the cigar, and folded the penknife closed in his hand. —What did you do that for? he asked quietly, as he raised his face, and with it the cigar, —about the money in the account? Like you just told me in the back room . . . the money I'd already paid him like he earned it. With the last word, he bit the cigar. —What do you think I did it for?! Valentine stared. —And what are you suddenly so ... My God, what's come over you? —What did you do it for? —To slow him down a little, to make him think twice before he went on with this . . . idea of his . . . But you . . . you . . . —And he's trying it anyways. Recktall Brown turned away. Valentine got round in front of him, and broke out again, —What's come over you? Why you . . . and that picture you just showed, in the back room, they know something's wrong. They won't say anything, they won't even say anything to each other but they know something's wrong. You couldn't have chosen a more stupid moment. What are you trying to do, see how far you can push them? Recktall Brown lit the cigar, and then laughed in his face. —They know something's wrong all right. Who the hell told you to paint that face on it? They loved that, didn't they? Then a man appeared before them and said, —Merry Christmas, Brown . . . holding out a glass across the. table of the Seven Deadly Sins. —What's this? Brown said, taking it. —I don't know. Whatever you're serving. —Listen, you go find Fuller, and tell him to bring out some of that good brandy, the ones with the blue ribbons on. Whoever that was, was gone. There he stood, staring, as his vision shrank from the gold and the wealth of colors and delicate forms of Hieronymus ßosch to the mass of his own hands. As Crémer and a few others came up behind him, he stood back and made a gesture with the spatula shape of his thumb. —That's a beautiful thing, he said. —Sar? —What does Ds videt mean? —Sar? breaks in upon him again. —God sees ... or is watching, Valentine murmurs with a sharp breath. —Fuller? —Sar a gentlemahn whom I do not recollect enter demandin me to open the bottles you keep so close with the blue ribbons upon them . . . —That's right, Fuller. —Yes sar. Fuller stands before him, finally able to move his hands, which he takes one in the other, clasped before him, and with a wrenching motion turns his sagging figure away. —Fuller! —Sar? Fuller startles, with a flash of gold. Recktall Brown stands looking at him, the full of his lower lip moving as though behind it the tongue is searching for something on the face of the gum. And finally, —Stand up straight, Fuller, Brown said, and turned away. M. Crémer was finishing a conversation as they approached. —Enfin, there is so little of fine art in the world, one should not question too closely ... ? As said Coulanges . . . pictures are bullion. Someone had turned the radio on; but there was still enough noise in the room to keep it unnoticed. Here and there, a few guests departed. As they came up they were, in fact, again discussing the painting they had been shown privately a little earlier; discussing, that is, not the painting itself, but the face of the central figure, as though in that portion they had found a mutually satisfactory repository for peripheral doubts. —It is done with some taste, certainly, the R.A. mumbled. —Taste! Crémer exclaimed, smiling at Brown and Basil Valentine to include them in the hind end, at any rate, of this conversation. —Taste is one thing, and the genius to create quite another. Eh? . . . Fie glanced up, and stopped at the expression on Valentine's face which, whatever it might have been, was exaggerated by the swollen lip into one of extreme contempt. And the white-haired man, who was not looking at Basil Valentine, took up agreeably, —Yes, when I was young, you know? I recall considering my work ... as a sort of mmph . . . disciplined nostalgia for the things I umm . . . might have done. Eh? Yes. Yes . . . mmmph, he mumbled, looking down as Basil Valentine's expression turned upon him. Then he went on to break what he would later describe as an "awkward silence" with, —That face in there, don't you know . . . the face on the . . . ummph the figger 670

in the van der Goes, the highlights round about the eyes, don't you know. Won't do, won't do at all. —Won't do? Valentine demanded abruptly. —Eh? Oh dear no, won't do at all. Zinc white, don't you know. Zinc white. I think you'll come upon that when you make an analysis of the pigments, don't you know. —Zinc white? —Oh dear, yes. An umm eighteenth-century color, don't you know. Then (after what Créiner would later describe as un silence de mort) the older man bumbled on with, —Odd sort of fellow you had in here earlier . . . eh! Damned odd, eh? Bit of a lunatic, you might say, eh? Prancing about with mmph two suits of clothes on him, eh? I mean, you know? Rather . . . mmph. Ever seen the fellow before? —Oh yes . . . Basil Valentine came in, his voice very level, and even and cutting. He offered a cigarette from a packet of Virginia. —Mad, of course, as you say. He drinks, you know . . . —Oh yes, drinks, eh? Ummph . . . shouldn't be surprised. —A morbid condition aggravated by drink, I suppose would be more to the point. He has all sorts of delusions about himself, Valentine went on, turning to Recktall Brown. —He's been quite a problem for some time, hasn't he. —He wasn't drunk just now, when he was in here, Brown answered looking up at each of them. —He wasn't eh? Oh dear, I shouldn't like to run on him drunk then, eh? Ho ho, hmmph . . . Oh dear no. Can't have that sort of thing. —And if he comes back? Valentine's tone rang with a summons. —If he comes back . . . Recktall Brown commenced, looking down before him. —One has the police? . . . Crémer said with a shrug. —Après tout, charge de défendre . . . —Shouldn't hesitate a moment . . . mmph, calling them in. Might get about it right now. This sort of thing, don't you know. Can't have it, don't you know. Basil Valentine murmured something, smiling with the slight distortion his lip compelled, and started to turn away. Recktall Brown swung on him and demanded, —Where are you going? —If you can spare me for a moment, Basil Valentine rasped, —I thought I might put some ice on this . . . swelling. And he touched the lip with a fingertip and left them. —My, he's a bit . . . mmph . . . rather touchy tonight. Eh? Mmhp . . . yes. We all are a bit . . . mmp . . . eh? I beg your pardon, miss. Eh? —Is it true the British Museum has a toupee that George the Third had made for himself out of his mistresses' . . . —I daresay . . . mmp! What was that, young woman? Ghood heavens! Ghood heavens! . . . He towered over Miss Stein for a moment and then got by her, though from the disparity in their presences and the haste he made in his escape, he might have stepped over her. —Ghood heavens . . . eh? he addressed Crémer's pinched back. —The damnedest . . . presumption. Mmmph . . . going upstairs are we, eh? Ummp. There's a pretty thing. German, I should think. Eh? Polychrome wood, fifteenth century or so. Saint John Baptist, eh? L'minp. Shame he's lost an arm here. Damn shame. He paused for a moment there on the landing, running a finger over the coarse-grained marrow of the break, and then followed the heels up the stairs before him muttering, —Eh? . . . The armor? good heavens, no one wants to look at armor . . . Miss Stein returned to her companions to say, —Talk about how polite the English are supposed to be, he wouldn't even answer me. Just the same, I should think a thing like that would scratch. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? There was a clanking sound from above, but no one turned to the balcony to see that the headpiece had been lifted from the suit of armor up there. No one, that is, except the sharply bearded sharp-eyed man at the other end of the room who, despite his attentive conversation, had been watching the activity aloft since it had begun. The bearded young art critic was speaking in French, managing it with such urbanity, indeed, that his little friend (the one cheered on earlier as resembling an oeuf-dur-mayonnaise) told him later, with demure awe, that he had not been able to understand a word of it; no marvel of ignominy, really, for the harassed Lyonnais who was listening could not understand a word of it either, and attempted, at aspirate intervals, to swing things in his own direction with commentaries in a series of grotesque syllables which might, in Lyons, have passed for English by default. This impressive bout drew the attention of someone who believed himself to be talking to an Egyptologist named Kuvetli, and (perhaps it was the fluttering of the plump hands over there, and the impassive mien before him) became so familiar as to draw a simile upon mimicry among the butterflies, citing, for his thesis, —The female of Papilio cynorta, in the Uganda . . . while over his shoulder the Egyptologist sought a face he could not locate. Basil Valentine had, all this time, been holding a cloth-covered 672