The Recognitions (72 page)

—A poodle? 

—If I'm going to be a dog I want to be something I like. He took a temperate sip of his small beer, and turned to the plate glass. The wind had gone down, and the snow continued to fall. —Do you think the sun will ever shine again? he asked no one. 

The wind had gone down; and without its driving force the snow came on in residual particles, remnants of violence left moving loosely in the air, with no apparent direction. It had not settled heavily round the parsonage, because of the slight and exposed elevation, but every crevice and corner was packed as though the wind had come from every quarter in its brief paranoid career. The snow was packed round the dining-room window where, well inside, Reverend Gwyon's face reflected the slight clearing of the sky with raised eyebrows. The dining table, where he sat resting both hands before him, was an oval to which leaves might be added to accommodate a dozen people, though no such need had risen in years. Just the reverse, in fact, might better have served the interests of economy implicit everywhere, not a penurious economy but "sensible," sensible that is to waste, superfluity, extravagance, which might here have dictated that the table contract its surface even further, to the strict necessity of one man's setting: and for another man than this, it might well have done so (considering the withering glances of most of Gwyon's forebears, many of whom ate in the kitchen when alone, one of whom, long before the coming of the incandescent 'lamp, took his meals to a small upstairs closet, as its floor still showed, or the dour John H. (whose picture was nowhere to be seen) who, after he had reached his majority, was never known to eat indoors again). Not that Gwyon ever sat down to a groaning board, or ate with smorgasbord perambulation: there was seldom more than one monochrome dish at a time before him. But so much did his presence require this large open surface before him, that when he was joined at a meal he glanced up incessantly as though aware that the table was crowded, and, when his guest sat on his right hand, each time Gwyon turned his attention in that direction he would grip the edge of the table in the other, supporting the balance which this alien presence threatened, or sit staring straight ahead, steadying the thing with both hands planted flat upon it. So he sat now, muttering a steadying, —Hmmm, every few moments, and raising his glance like an eccentric weight, unsure where it would drop. 

The expletive outburst which had issued in a tone of alternate expectation of the right thing, whatever it was, and surprise, when it did not come forth, had stopped as suddenly as it began. Now only breaks and brief beginnings came from one part of the room and then another, from the corner where all Good works were conceived, to the low table under the window. —Superbia . . . Ira . . . Invidia . . . Avaritia, yes, there ... "I would desire that this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I might lock you up in my good chest: O my sweet gold!" ... do you remember that? I ... well never mind, no matter. Covetousness, no matter . . . And the voice trailed off again. 

Reverend Gwyon exhaled, sniffed caraway. 

—Now, the priesthood . . . the ministry, I mean . . . yes, I heard about you, some time ago, John . . . John . . . what was it? He'd seen you, stopped in to see you, I mean hear you and then see you. A priest. John . . . 

Their eyes met across the room for an instant. —Yes, yes, Gwyon said dropping his eyes quickly, speaking in a tone of dismissal. —No weight to him at all. Claimed to be a priest. No weight to him at all. He paused, holding the table down. —No mystery at all, he added in a mutter. But movement brought his eyes up again, he watched the hands embrace one another, break, reach out, a small pitcher picked up, juggled between them and almost lost, put down with one hand as the other caught up a streamer of newspaper, with —What's this? 

The newspaper clipping slid across the table. —Yes, that's something I've been looking for, Gwyon said, reaching for it. —Some . . . figuring, a calculation. Written in the margin, in pencil, was this:

  Μειϑρας   =  40 + 5 + 10 + 9 + 100 + 1 + 200  =  365

  Αβραξας   =    1 + 2 + 100 + 1 + 60 + 1 + 200  =  365

—Yes, there, Reverend Gwyon said, getting hold of it. He put it face down on the table, and covered it with his forearm. His lips were working. He stared straight ahead through the window at the sky. 

Janet entered, to place two dishes on the table. 

—Here, what's this? what's this? Gwyon demanded, looking at them. 

—This is bread; and this is fish, said Janet, and raised her eyes across the table. 

—Fish? Gwyon repeated. 

—And bread, she confirmed, standing over the meager portion as though waiting for something to happen. Her upper gum lay exposed, forgotten. 

—Bring me some eggs, Gwyon said curtly. She stood there. Reverend Gwyon brought his head up sharply. A quick baffled look at the food on the table, and the figure standing over it, and Janet was gone. A bell's tinkle followed, from the kitchen, and Gwyon clicked his lips at this signal of delay, fixing his elbows on the table as though to steady it while the figure beside him sat down. 

—Fish! . . . 

Gwyon shipped his oars; or sat, at any rate, as though he had done so, his hands drawn up before his face. There the fingers continued in agitated movement, dissembling the single persistent element in the variety of expressions passing over his face. Each expression embraced his features familiarly: each one was familiar to his face, but seldom had they followed one upon another in such swift succession, as the rate of his commutation between one past and another, the distant past and that more recent, increased; and the shocks of the present, those intervals when he was interrupted as he might have been changing vehicles, came more fre-quently. A gleam, however, persisted in Gwyon's eyes, a look of keen attention which commenced to glitter with something near cunning each time he turned it surreptitiously on his obstreperous passenger, now hunched over the plate of fish, eating ravenously. 

Janet entered, bearing a single plate in her gloved hands. She was not looking where she put it down but straight across the table. The fish was almost gone. Reverend Gwyon lowered a hand and pushed the newspaper clipping aside to make room for the plate being lowered before him, noticing the clipping as he did so, recalling, —That food package, Janet? She said nothing; and Gwyon had to look up at her face to see her faint nod. Her face looked more blue than it did usually, for Janet had gone quite pale in the past few minutes. She went out saying, —There is no egg, over her shoulder, and left Gwyon staring into a plate of white navy beans. 

The fish was gone, and the outburst commenced abruptly with, —That cross, you know, that cross, I've always . . . but I mean just now I didn't . . . The hand stopped in the middle of gesturing to the hall, where the cruz-con-espejos still lay on the floor. 

Gripping the table edge with one hand, Gwyon snatched at the newspaper clipping with the other. He was too late; and could do no more than watch it picked up as though the wind had got it, and spread it out on the air between them. On one side a little girl in long white stockings stared out obliquely from an indistinct picture, on the other, the sharp eyes of a man from under the even division of a shiny widow's peak. 

—This ... 

—That, said Gwyon, planting a hand on the paper as it fell back to the table, —is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all. Confession of her attacker, it says here. Why, this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. And this picture? taken when he was young of course, why this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso, a very respectable man in San Zwingli. I knew him there, Reverend Gwyon went on muttering, —years after the crime. Years after. His hand held the paper down flat on the table between them. —Years after, Gwyon repeated, hiding the marginal calculations with his sleeve. 

—Yes, but she . . . she ... 

—She? . . . Gwyon looked up anxiously when he did not go on, to see him stopped, confused and preoccupied. It was a bone, in the last mouthful of fishmeat, and Gwyon's own face twitched, watching him remove it. 

—But now, he went on more evenly, rid of the fishbone, —now I feel recovered. A lot recovered. Yes, here I am, he said, and though their eyes had caught one another's at a number of angles, he now looked Reverend Gwyon full in the face for the first time. —And I ... you must wonder what I've been doing, all this time? 

Gwyon lowered his eyes. He started to make a steadying sound, but was interrupted as soon as his voice broke in his throat; and so he began to eat the navy beans. 

—Yes, now here we are, and . . . because down there, things got confused down there, dreadfully confused. I couldn't begin to tell you everything that happened, everything ... I hardly know myself, except ... I hardly believe it now, I hardly believe they actually did happen. And so I ... well there, so I just left it all there, it was getting to be so unreal anyhow that it ... and I ... well here, here to go on from where reality left off, to recover myself, and . . . After all, it's what I was trained for, and I ... the ministry, a career with the times, in keeping with the times. He took a hand from the edge of the table to rub it over his face. —And all that . . . fabrication, there's no reason to believe it ever existed, and she . . . that city? If I fell among thieves? Why, there are places more real, there are places in books, there are people in plays more real than ... all that. It was turning into a ... a regular carnival. With a quick look up from his plate, Gwyon saw him shake his head slightly, four fingers pressed to a temple, then he broke out with the same constricted laugh. —Yes, a carnival, remember? O flesh, farewell! and he jumped up so suddenly that Gwyon dropped his fork and got hold of the table with both hands, like a man grabbing for the gunwales in fear of capsizing. 

—But here, I feel like I'm being watched here. I always felt that way, but . . . secure, being watched. He paused in the corner where all Good works were conceived. —You're watching me, aren't you! He caught Gwyon's glittering eye, and then turned toward the window, but did not reach it, he was stopped by the low table there and stared down at it. —It . . . you see? he said turning, and his whole face was softened in a sickly smile, —this . . . "in hell is all manner of delight" ... he coughed, —when the Seven Sins pay a call? But no matter, his features drew tight again and he looked away. —Not now, he whispered. 

Gwyon, seated firmly, feet planted wide apart on the floor as though the hull were rolling, watched him standing there looking out through the glass. Outside the window, the snow fell in heavier smaller particles, at different angles to the earth, here in foreground from right to left, and beyond from left to right, not swirling but apparently on separate planes. There was a long pause before he spoke, more quietly, without turning from the glass, —And when the seed began to grow, 'twas like a garden full of snow . . . do you remember that? 

Attentive as he was, Reverend Gwyon did not seem to be listening: all of his attention was in his eyes which, narrow and widen as they might with the expressions of his face, had not lost their gleam. Since the moment he had, as it were, almost tumbled into the tailsheets, he sat erect and more firm at the head of the table. His face, which had reflected coming forth from his own memory to the present, and then retreating to extreme confines of memory lying centuries beyond his years, now seemed to embrace them all in sudden intensity as he leaned forward. 

At that moment Janet came in with a sail of wrapping paper. —If Reverend will write their name on this, she said, reefing it, —for I cannot write foreign, and she handed over the stub of a black crayon. Subdued, with a quick look at the fishbones and not elsewhere, she took that plate in a square gloved hand and went out, leaving Gwyon staring at the wrapping paper, the concentration in his face gone as suddenly as it had come there. Then his hand came up slowly and plotted the words of address to Estre-madura. His lips moved, and seemed to draw the clear even whisper across the smooth table to themselves. 

—And if beauty did provoke thieves, sooner than gold? The path I've come on, and you'd remember, here, how as an ... ape to nature, I excelled. The path the foul spirits kept clean, but it's over. By all that's ugly, it's done. 

Real Monasterio
, Gwyon wrote, his lips moving,
de Nuestra Señora de la Otra Vez
, as the whisper came closer, and broke out in a voice over his head, 

—What's this? Spain? 

—Spain? Gwyon repeated. He dropped the crayon stub, looking up, and his large hand trembled over the newspaper clipping. 

—Going to Spain? 

—It doesn't snow there, Gwyon said lowering his eyes, until they fixed on the little girl in long white stockings. —But the cold, on the hill where . . . He shuddered. —That land! he broke out. —Damned, empty land, you're part of it when you're there. Part of it, that self-continent land, and when you're out, outside, shut out, and look back on it, you look back on its emptiness from your own, look over its ragged edges to its ... its hard face, refuses to admit you've ever touched it. He was staring blankly at the newspaper clipping. 

—But this isn't . . . you can't go now? 

Gwyon looked him full in the face for the first time. —Spain is a land to flee across, he said, motionless, forcing the other face to lower in chagrin at the sight of his own undetermined features, as loss spread from his eyes out to the edges of his face, the emptiness in the eyepiece of a telescope where a point of light expands into a field of space and a worldless universe. 

—She . . . They ejaculated at the same instant. 

—She came to me there, Gwyon went on with somniloquent evenness, —in this monastery. I was almost asleep, and I felt her hand. I got up, I got to the window as fast as I could, and there, the moon had sent a stream of light in, across the room, right across the room to me. There it was in the sky. The moon . . . warm, like the moon . . . 

—Yes but you can't . . . I'm not a child any more! and you can't . . . you used to tell me the Thessalonian witches tried to draw it down . . . Gwyon watched him vacantly as he turned away, abrupt movements round the far end of the table as though evading the image, or a mock image of the figure Gwyon had conjured. —And if it's she standing over us ... ?