The Recognitions (76 page)

—No you don't, Otto. 

—I do. I love you. 

—No you don't, Otto. You don't even know who I am. 

Esme spoke to him calmly, explaining, as though to a child, an adult truth. 

—But I do. And even if I don't, is that my fault? 

—You had me all filled in before you met me, Otto. There was no room for me at all. 

—Esme, don't be ridiculous. 

—It is not ridic-ulous, Otto. It is only true, you do not know who I am. 

—But I've . . . you've . . . and I don't even know if you've been faithful to me, he burst out. 

—You can only be faithful to people one at a time, Otto. 

He sat staring at her face turned half from him. Then he reached up and turned it to him with one hand. Esme looked frightened. —Why are you beautiful? he demanded. Her eyes opened more widely, and she tried to lower her face. —Why are you? he repeated, looking at her. She did pull her chin back, and lower her face, silent. —Because you ... I look at your face, this flesh and bone so many inches high and wide, and the nose sticking out and the . . . the punctures of nostrils, and your lips and I ... and those two things that are eyes, and I ... why should that be beautiful, anyhow. What is it? ... and Otto's voice was suddenly constricted, —What is beauty . . . He cleared his throat, —that your face should be beautiful? . . . 

—If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist, she said. 

—Yes, well . . . well ... he muttered, lowering his eyes. —Look, he said when he raised them again. —Is it my fault if you haven't even let me know who you are? 

—But you never tried, Otto. No part of you ever tried. 

—Look, I've done everything I ever could for you, haven't I? I . . . I'm sick and tired of all this foolishness, this ... I apologize for behaving the way I have with some of your friends but . . . 

—You are the only one you make unhappy when you behave badly, Otto. You become the victim of your own observations. 

—Do you love me? 

—It is not so simple, Otto. 

—But you've said you did. She was silent. —I ... damn it, I get all mixed up with other people, he broke out finally, clenching his free hand over the hand protruding from the sling. —I ... it's like trying to tie a knot before a mirror, I know just what to do and then do everything backwards. He sat looking down. Then suddenly he raised his eyes and said, —Do you ... do I look like Chaby? 

Esme looked up at him. She did not smile, but her face cleared and it was lightened, as a smile would have lightened it. —Otto, she said. —No. Why did you ask me that? 

—I don't know. Never mind, he said lowering his eyes again. —It's just that I ... sometimes I feel my face and ... or I feel myself moving or looking at something in a way that I ... well never mind, never mind that. Never mind it then. 

Suggestion of the smile she had not smiled faded from her face, and quietly she said, —All right. 

—But no, I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I almost do, and then I lose it. Like a story I heard once, a friend of mine told me, somebody I used to know, a story about a forged painting. It was a forged Titian that somebody had painted over another old painting, when they scraped the forged Titian away they found some worthless old painting underneath it, the forger had used it because it was an old canvas. But then there was something under that worthless painting, and they scraped it off and underneath that they found a Titian, a real Titian that had been there all the time. It was as though when the forger was working, and he didn't know the original was underneath, I mean he didn't know he knew it, but it knew, I mean something knew. I mean, do you see what I mean? That underneath that the original is there, that the real . . . thing is there, and on the surface you ... if you can only . . . see what I mean? 

She had rested her head back and closed her eyes. He put his arm over her shoulders, and she sat forward. 

—Esme . . . The brief strokes of anxiety and sharp strokes of detail broke the fragments of expression on his face, and he seemed able to catch none of them and fix it congruent upon that image of original honesty which he clutched at so desperately beneath the surface, and the second surface, with each instant more confused in the succession of mocking streaks of parody which he could not control. A moment came when he might have thought, and even understood; but he had not time to embrace it, and it passed. —It's just . . . damn it, Esme . . . 

—Please don't swear at me, she said dully, her lowered eyes on a pigeon passing before them. 

—I'm sorry, but I ... Then he laughed with abrupt hoarseness. —Do you remember once when . . . Look, don't you see? I mean, you can't just live this way, you can't . . . wait, where are you going? 

—I have to go now, Otto. 

—But don't, Esme please don't go, I want to talk to you. 

—We have talked, she said, looking him in the face; and Otto reached up and drew an alterant stroke on his mustache. 

—I want to marry you, Esme. I, you can't go on this way, I mean so insecure, the way you live, and I want to, if I can save you from . . . 

—Save me from! she broke in, mocking. —It is always saving from, she said lowering her eyes, —and never saving for. Everyone fights against things, but people do not fight for things. 

Otto stood unsteadily beside her, as though ready to curb her if she turned away. —And I ... even if you don't love me now, I . . . like Saint John of the Cross said, "Where there is no love, put love, and take out love," and I ... 

She looked up at him, surprised, at that. Then she said, —Is that how he meant it? Before Otto could answer she went on, lowering her eyes again, —No, how did he know what he meant. When people tell a truth they do not understand what they mean, they say it by accident, it goes through them and they do not recognize it until someone accuses them of telling the truth, then they try to recover it as their own and it escapes. The saints were very mean people. 

—Yes, I ... yes that's it, and I ... I want to marry you. 

She looked up and smiled at him. —How could I marry you, if I haven't got any stomach? 

—Esme, stop it, I really mean it. I mean, you know I'm sincere. I've always been sincere with you. 

She put her hand on his. —Otto, she said. —Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves. 

—Esme . . . 

—I have to go away. 

—All right then, damn it, go. 

She turned and walked away from him. Then he was beside her again. 

—Esme ... 

—What is it, Otto? she asked in a quiet voice, looking at him like a stranger whom she did not know. 

—Esme, I ... look, please . . . 

—Goodbye, Otto, she said gently. 

—Esme . . . 

She walked away from him easily. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning. 

Gazing wistfully into a shop window filled with ladies' lingerie, including a brassiere in black lace with black satin hands cupping the mannequin's composition bosom, Anselm stood with a six-year-old girl by the hand. In his other hand, Anselm had Tolstoy's Kingdom of God, but it was folded in a magazine with a girl and an umbrella, and nothing else, on the cover, so that all that showed of the small book was the spine. The little girl was looking up the street, in the direction of Stanley's approach, and she pulled her escort in that direction, but he hung back, rubbing the rough inflammations on his chin, and staring into the shop window. 

Stanley might have gone on without disturbing that reverie, and so home to work (he was carrying his cardboard practice keyboard and a book), but Max was approaching from the other corner, pausing now to greet Otto, who came from the direction of the park. 

Without a word Anselm took Stanley's book from his hand, looked at it and handed it back, muttering something. Then he said abruptly, —I dreamt about you last night. Stanley looked anxious. —I know it was you, it must have been you, Anselm went on, before the others came near. —I was crossing the street in this dream and somebody, somebody I knew well, it must have been you, was coming across the other way with something cradled up in his arms like a baby. It was wrapped in a black shawl, I just took for granted it's a baby, and then he said, then you said, I want you to meet my mother. I look and it was a tiny little old woman, this tiny little old woman was in the shawl ... 

—Yes, but ... all right, but . . . 

—What's the matter? Anselm was looking at him with intense curiosity. 

—I just wish you wouldn't . . . Stanley looked one way and the other and down. —It's sort of ... 

—It was, it was strange, it was kind of a nightmare. 

Stanley raised his eyes, and they looked at each other intently until Max was upon them. Then Anselm laughed suddenly, pulling the little girl round between them, and spoke as though carrying on the same conversation. —Come on, play us something. Look, Stanley brought his instrument, he said, brandishing his magazine at the practice keyboard which Stanley held defensively in front of him. —He's going to play us something by Vivaldi. Come on, Stanley, for Christ sake don't be so bashful, some of that nice Jesuit baroque music, be-do-be-boo, be-be, boody doody boo . . . did you hear the one about the boy who sat up on the rock? and fitted fiddle strings . . . 

—Please . . . Stanley began. 

—Here comes Otto, Max said. 

—And with every erection he played a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach. 

—I have to get home, Stanley said. 

—To what, your five-fingered honeymoon? 

—To ... to work, Stanley said, as Anselm turned to look across the street, where a tall man hunched in a green wool shirt gave a nod of recognition slight enough to be disavowed if it were not returned. Max nodded back agreeably. —Who is that? Stanley asked Max. 

—Some half-ass critic, Anselm said, —a three time psychoanaloser. He spat into the gutter. —With his fake conversion to the Church. You remember that little tiny girl that used to be around? she came about up to his waist. He used to take her home and dress her in little girl's clothes and rape her. 

—Too much Dostoevski, Max said. 

—The stupid bastard with his half-ass conversion, Anselm muttered, looking from the child who held his hand, glazedly at the sidewalk. —Christ, he said, rubbing his chin, —that's what kills me, a guy like that ... as a colored girl, in a plaid skirt which Max identified from behind as the Stuart tartan, passed saying —Reading Proust isn't just reading a book, it's an experience and you can't reject an experience ... to the boy she was with. 

—It's the Black Watch, said Anselm, and turning to Stanley, 

—Why don't you change your luck, Stanley. You . . . God damn it what are you looking at me that way for? . . . 

—I ... I'm cold, Stanley said lowering his eyes. His jaw was shaking. 

—Cold! You . . . you . . . What did you do to your face, any-way? What's the matter with your chin, anyway? Anselm burst out suddenly. 

—I got mixed up this morning, Stanley said handling his chin, —and I shaved with the toothpaste instead of ... 

—With the toothpaste! Anselm said, withdrawing with a quick shock of a laugh. —You ought to try a cored apple filled with cold cream, you . . . 

—And last night I had a terrible experience, Stanley went on, agitated, looking up at both of them. —I went into a delicatessen to get a can of soup and some bread, and the man behind the money ... I mean behind the cash register was counting up the money and there was some in a paper bag on the counter, and I picked up the wrong bag and almost went out with the money, and when I went back with it and said I was sorry they . . . they weren't nice about it at all. 

A blond boy in tight-fitted dungarees passed saying, —Zheeed . . . 

—Well what the hell would you go back with it for? 

—They almost called the police. 

—Stanley's Christian spirit will undo us all, said Max, who had been standing back. 

—Yeah, we'd make him a saint if it wasn't so God damn expensive, Anselm retorted, looking at Stanley. —Three million lire for a lousy canonization, he muttered. 

—No, he won't do. Max stepped back and looked Stanley up and down. —He eats meat. His body would putrefy before they could get the halo on. Poor peasant girls from southern Europe make the best ones, brought up on beans. 

—That's true, said Anselm, musing, looking down. Then he looked up querulously at Max. 

From the drugstore behind them came a fat youth who looked, at this distance, to have his beard painted on. It dripped to a point at his chin. —If
she
won't pray for me, I don't know who will, he was saying animatedly, tossing the words about before him with plump fluttering hands. The boy with him took his arm as they crossed the street. 

Max had nodded. —He gave my show a good write-up, Max explained. 

—Do you know him? Stanley asked. 

—You can't go to a single vernissage without seeing him. He says stupid things with a manner, you know, he has a certain style, so that people remember him as clever. 

—People like that make me nervous, Stanley said. 

—People like what. 

—When they're so ... queer. 

—Queer! Anselm burst out, and continued to watch them cross the street. —That one, queer? He's not a homosexual, he's a Lesbian. Max laughed; and Anselm went on, —And that boy poet with him, for Christ sake. Poet! . . . these limp flabby-assed little . . . boy poets who sit around waiting for somebody to give them the business in their . . . Jesus Christ, these boy poets and their common asphodel. Anselm laughed again, a tight constrained laugh looking across the street at the receding couple. —Their common asphodel, he laughed, taking the magazine from under Max's arm, and recovering the fit of abstraction he'd sunk into a moment before as he turned the pages. 

—I liked your poem, Stanley said to Max. —The one they just published? That line about Beauty, serenely disdains to destroy us? 

—Yes, you . . . almost dropped this, Max interrupted quickly, righting the practice keyboard which was gripped in Stanley's hands, with a quick glance at Anselm. But Anselm had apparently not heard. He looked up from the magazine to nod over his shoulder at the approaching figure, and said,