The Recognitions (84 page)

portioned as it was to the camel passing through the eye of the needle. Mr. Pivner thumbed through the pages, glancing at the familiar chapter headings, Fundamental Techniques in Handling People . . . Six Ways to Make People Like You . . . Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking . . . and his head nodded. He was very tired. In the background, unattended, the radio poured out, subdued, the Reformation Symphony. Why so much attention, so much time spent on this book resting in his narrow lap? Mr. Pivner found safety in numbers; any publication with a circulation of a million reassured him, and in a land where mental diseases tolled more people than all other human ills combined, a circulation of four million was more reassuring than anything else could be: for every twenty-five literate citizens over the age of fourteen, one had bought this book, not to guess at how many single dog-eared, underscored copies had circulated among the remaining twenty-four. Assuredly then, it was more than safe; it was an integral part of life around him, those who sneered notwithstanding (for they too were forced to share his life, to be won and to be influenced, no matter their faiths, their aspirations, no matter their reasons for courtesy, their grounds for love, how could they presume to distinguish what they offered from what they were given?); and those who decried and denounced it might be condemned out of hand as dangerous at best, bitter, ungrateful at the least, failing not virtue (which has no definition and no country) but that conspiracy of self-preservation known as patriotism. The tic, which came in Mr. Pivner's lower lip just left of center when he was tired, came now, and waked him to a look of indecisive emotion. It would not stop, but pulled his lip down in quick throbs, as though he had abruptly been asked a question whose answer he knew, and feared to give. He looked suddenly at his watch. He raised it, and held it to his ear. He stood up (still holding the book, open) picked up the telephone, and dialed O, —I'd just like to know what time it is, he said. (—Do you want the time bureau?) —No, I just wanted to know if you had the time, please. (—I'm sorry, we're not permitted to give out that information . . .) He hung up, and looked at the radio, waiting. The Reformation Symphony made him nervous, as all such music (called "classical") did, as the word Harvard did; but sometimes he was struck with a bar of "classical" music, a series of chords such as these which poured forth now, a sense of loneliness and confirmation together, a sense of something lost, and a sense of recognition which he did not understand. It must be time to take his medicine, before he left to go downtown. The symphony continued as he left it, and went into the bathroom. He preferred that music to which he did not have to listen. It was only the human voice on the radio that stopped him, that raised his head in expectation, as though it were about to impart something of great personal significance, to him. Indeed, that was always the tone in the voice, disembodied; and still listening, expectant, he would sit back, and wait. He had been laughed at, by someone who said, —But you don't listen to that stuff? Why do you let it bother you? and of advertising in print, —But you don't read that stuff, do you? What do you let it bother you for? What was this anomaly in him, that still told him that the human voice is to be listened to? the printed word to be read? What was this expectant look, if it was not hope? this attentive weariness, if it was not faith? this bewildered failure to damn, if it was not charity? The room was filled with the strident ring of a telephone bell. It shivered the metal sails on the man o' war, brought forth an un-disciplined tinkle of broken glass, and a frantic shade of movement concerted in seizure: breathing the hoarse aspirate initial of greeting, waiting, listening, everything stopped: —Hello! This is Meribeth Watzon, speaking for the New York Telephone Company . . . the radio confided without changing the expression of its features, grill and knobs and a lighted smile; and what shadows moved in the room were slow about retiring, those that remained borne still on the walls including the black shape of the cradled telephone where he had dropped it dead, for almost a minute. Mr. Pivner stood quivering. He'd just broken his last container of insulin. It was too late to go out and return. —Friends, don't take my word for it. You owe it to yourself to get the details of our free offer. And listen, friends, the next time you . . . True, the janitor in Mr. Pivner's office building did not yet call him by his first name. True, the divorce rate had almost doubled since the publication of the book before him. True, he read in headlines of men in the governments he helped to elect, men who might not know their work, but they certainly knew how to deal with people, men who strode forth from the front page in expensive clothes, smiling, the hand raised in bonhomie, on their way to appear before investigating committees interested in their remarkable incomes, withering the smiles which had brought a good price in the market place. ". . . dashed off in a moment of sincere feeling . . ." As he put the green scarf around his neck, his lower lip pulled, and he tried 502

to hold it tight—Friends, you owe it to your own health, and your family's . . . And King David, what did he say in his chamber over the gate, after Joab had dispatched his son still hung in the branches of the terebinth tree? Mr. Pivner pulled on his overcoat, and put the needle and syringe into a pocket. He turned off the radio, courteously, waiting until the voice had finished a sentence. He left the book of selective quotations out on the table, next the photograph album. True, one must select; impossible to quote all that Shakespeare ever wrote, to prove a point he never embraced; impossible to print the words of Rosalind, when she said, "But these are all lies: men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Mr. Pivner stood in the doorway for a moment, looking back into the small apartment before entering the world of loss which came when he turned off the light. He remembered years back, when he had bought that book; and in the doorway, still lighted, a fragment of gold arrested him, gold now like the double eagle of the nineteenth century, bored as those words had pierced him, with the sound of the counterfeiter's drill, hollowing out the coin, and filling it with lead, and sealing it so, a very difficult counterfeit to detect. He had bought that book hoping to win friends. He wondered if other people had bought it for the same reason. The button at his hand clicked, the place disappeared in darkness, as the days of faith were gone, all gone into the dark, gone to earth under Fort Knox, and in the cemetery at Hatton Gap, Arkansas, where, a bare half-century before, Moses had polled six votes in the presidential election, and John the Baptist, three. And the Buddha? And the Gainas? And the morning? and the evening? Morning, evening, noontime, night: what was the shape of Mr. Pivner's soul? round, or oblong? And its atoms, worth as much as iodine atoms? worth five cents? Or were they of a different kind: round, smooth, and especially mobile? And a good price in the market place, say . . . thirty pieces of silver? —Whhhhassafuksamatter? This delicate question went unanswered, for the man who asked it was alone on the street corner. He waved his rolled-up newspaper at no one, and then stood smiling. —So. You wonanswer? Ascared? he challenged. The light above his head changed, on one side, from red to green, on the other from green to red. A bus approached. It stopped, and so he got on it. He put his fare in the box, and stopped halfway down the aisle, -MERRY CHRISTMAS! No one answered. —Sgoddam too bad, he said. —I got on a funeral hearse. Snobody's funeral, snobody to bury. Merry Christmas in a cemetery. He sat down, and opened his newspaper. After a few minutes of patiently staring at the words there, he asked the man across from him, —Wherzis bus go? —I don't know, said the other. —Fine thing, you don't know. I congradulate you. You're the first man I've met in New York'll admit he don't know something. Con-gradulations. He extended a hand which swung emptily in the air between them. The bus stopped, and as his neighbor got off he called, —Look out, don't break your leg or we'll have to shoot you . . . He sat back and stared at the newspaper. Across the top of it were printed chapters from Genesis, which was being serialized for the holiday season, as a public service. —I'll be damned, it's the Bible, he said loudly. —You get the Bible in the newspaper, he said, addressing the man who had sat down across from him, next to a lady with a baby in arms. —Whdyou think of that. You know why that is? He looked up and down the bus. —Sbecause any of these fine people would feel like a jerk reading the Bible in public, they'd be ashamed to. But if they're oney reading the newspaper, that's all right. Merry Christmas! You don't have to go to college four years to know that. Am I right? Am I right? he demanded of this man across from him. —Yes, Mr. Pivner said, lowering his eyes from the card above the man's head, and raising them again, to read, UNBELIEVABLY REALISTIC SEE FOR YOURSELF $8.00 PER CARAT —Merry Christmas! the man threatened. —Merry Christmas, Mr. Pivner answered him. He was very tired. He had stopped at a drugstore to buy his medicine, but not taken the time for the injection, fearful of missing his rendezvous, planning to take his injection in the men's room of the hotel, when he got there. Still, at this critical instant, his training did not fail him. He recalled chapter nine ("Wouldn't you like to have a magic phrase that would stop argument, eliminate ill feeling, create good will . . . ? All right. Here it is . . .") —I don't blame you a bit for feeling as you do, said Mr. Pivner, recalling the words of John B. Gough, quoted on the following page (". . . when he saw a drunken bum staggering down the street: 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.' "). Then he had a strange sensation on one leg. He drew it toward him, and looked, as the woman lifted the baby away from the large spot on his trousers. —You can't hardly blame the baby, 5°4

can you? said the woman. Mr. Pivner stared at his trousers as he stood up. The tic in his lip pulled it down in quick throbs, and he said nothing. —Sit down. Merry Christmas, said the man who sat beside the only empty seat in the bus. Mr. Pivner sat down. He was very tired, and nervous. He lifted the wet portion of his trouser away from his leg, and looked out the window. His destination lay some fifteen blocks on. —I congradulate you. You're the first man I've met, said his companion. —D'you want to read the Bible? I got it right here. He disappeared for a moment under a flurry of newspaper. The bus bore on, block after block. Chapter six, How to Make People Like You Instantly: ("So I said to myself: 'I am going to try to make that chap like me . . . What is there about him that I can honestly admire?' ... I instantly saw something that I admired no end"), —What a wonderful head of hair you have, said Mr. Pivner. The man beside him looked at the thin hair on Mr. Pivner's head, and then clutched a handful of his own. —Lotsa people like it, he said. Then he sat back and looked at Mr. Pivner carefully. —Say what is this, are you queer or something? Mr. Pivner's eyes widened. —I ... I ... —Where you going? —I get off here, said Mr. Pivner, and got out of the bus when it stopped, six blocks from his destination. It was a cold night, and the wind blew, concentrating on the wet spot on his trousers. How could he explain that, to his son? He walked on, suffering, more weary, against the wind, hoping now that the wind would dry that place before he reached the hotel. He stopped outside its doors, to pull the green muffler from his coat. The wind helped him to whip it into plain sight. —Whhhhelllll, here we are, said a familiar voice beside him. —My friend! Merry Christmas! —Not now, said Mr. Pivner, quivering a hand in the air. He stepped toward the hotel. —That's the idea. A drink for Christmas, said his companion, accompanying him. —Merry Christmas! You know, I've got a religion too, my friend. Mr. Pivner paused at the revolving door. He said, —Go away. —We're going to have a Christmas drink, friend. We're going to be friends. Like Damon and Pissyass, ha, hahahahaha . . . The revolving door swung, emptying Mr. Pivner into the lobby where he stood weaving from the shock of the warm air, blinking his eyes, looking. The revolving door continued its round: —VVhhhay, Merry Christmas! Mr. Pivner reeled. He fell toward the tall bellboy, who caught him by the shoulders. He tried to speak; but he only gurgled. He was barely conscious. He was being taken out of the lobby. —Whoooufff ... I have a religion too gentlemen . . . —Get them out of here, out the side door. —Merry Christmas gentlemen . . . what's this, the policemen's ball? —It looks bad for the hotel, taking them out the front way. —I seen the little one, standing out in front there, fooling with his clothes, said the tall bellboy when quiet was restored. —It's no good for the hotel, that kind of thing. Too early yet, said the manager. —Even so, you got to be charitable for them. —He passed right out in my arms, just like my old man. Some of them you can't keep away from it, like my old man, you could blindfold him and tie him to the bed, but he always finds it. They both stepped aside to let a breathless young man pass. One arm was concealed under his coat. He stopped to pull at his muffler, looking round him. Then he checked his coat and went into the bar with the muffler stil] around his neck. —Don't tell me that kid ain't had one too many, said the tall bellboy. —So it's Christmas, said the manager. The mirror behind the bar was tinted, and of such a slight convexity that those who appeared within its confines wore healthy complexions, figures not distorted but faces slightly slimmer, and he appeared the more grave, she assumed delicacy, lost weight and the years gathered conspiring under the chin. Otto's pale lips, drawn in tension, appeared as thin dark lines of determination, the straggle of hairs on the upper lip a diffidently distinctive mustache. He raised an eyebrow. He moistened his lips, and curled the upper one. Left eyebrow raised, eyelids slightly drawn, lips moistened, parted, down at corners, his quivering hand anchored by the glass, he turned to look at the woman beside him. She was staring straight ahead. He returned to the mirror, where her eyes in ambush caught him and he felt tricked, out-maneuvered; and he quickly returned his eyes to their own reflection. Kettle drums rolled in some semi-classical pursuit from hidden untended amplifiers, rolling to crescendos which manifested capture, then withering as the prey escaped. The blonde coughed. It was not the delicate unnecessary cough of a lady, drawing attention which she snares with her eyes, but a visceral sound of submission to reality. Nonetheless, looking at her he saw only her eyes as she turned and got down from the bar 506