The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (68 page)

—I have to make this train.

—Gentlemen . . .

Few anywhere disagreed, but that the sun and the moon and the planets issued from a hole in the east, descended into one in the west and returned, by night, through a subterranean passage.

—Gentlemen, I have a religion too. I’m a drunkard.

Raging up and down the sky like a beast in a cage, says the Talmud, and unable to escape, enclosed in the firmament, the gates of its entrance and exit only at opposite ends.

—All right, yes, a train. Wait.

—Gentlemen . . .

—Hurry . . .

Down: down went Tammuz (slain by the boar’s tusk), entering at Babylon, the center of the earth, for there was the lid-stone to the lower world.

Thus the Assyrians invoked the bull who guarded the gates: O great bull, O very great bull, which stampest high, which openest access to the interior . . .

Please show your ticket at gate

—Leaving on track seven

Their death pursuing its descent, the Piute Indians followed the sun to that hole where it crawled in at the end of the earth, creeping constricted to earth’s center, there to sleep out the night, and to waken and creep on to the eastern portal. The sun emerges, eating the stars its children as it rises, its only nourishment; and those on earth at the dawn see only its brilliant belly, distended with stars.

This ticket is your receipt and baggage check. Please keep it with you until you reach destination
.

May the bull of good fortune, the genius of good fortune, the guardian of the footsteps of my majesty, the giver of joy to my heart, forever watch over it! Never more may its care cease.

(So reads the inscription of Esar-Haddon, whose father, the murdered
Sennacherib, had destroyed Babylon; and he, the son, returned to restore the sacred city, to rebuild the temple of Baal, and refurbish its gods.)

Thrown open, the gates on the eastern face of the temple meet the dawn as the golden tips of the obelisks burn, and the red rim appears from the underworld. Those on earth prostrate before it, and the gates close upon Baal, Who has entered His Temple.

It was a man, sure, that was hang’d up here;
A youth, as I remember: I cut him down.
If it should prove my son now after all—
Say you? say you?—Light!

—Kyd,
The Spanish Tragedy

Above the trees, the weathercock atop the church steeple caught the sun, poised there above the town like a cock of fire rising from its own ashes.

Few witnessed this inviolate miracle, for reverence here subscribed to roofs: worship was, as childhood had noted, an affair of defensive indecent enclosure, and few indeed the eyes raised on high unless assured the protective embrace of beams. As a matter of fact few eyes were ever raised at all, but rather lowered in consecrated embarrassment, finally closed in severe chagrin as the voice intoned, —The Lord’s mercy is from everlasting to everlasting unto those that fear Him.

When the eyes opened it was to stare at the back of the neck of another similarly occupied; and if the eyes were raised no further, the voices were: O God be-neath Thy guid-ing hand Our ex-iled fa-thers crossed the sea, they sang under that roof which rose to the level of the treetops outside, mounting New England gothic toward the white spire alerted by the weathercock which caught his eye, as he climbed the hill toward the Post Road. But even he, when he reached it, walked with his eyes lowered up the silent nave.

On either hand, the visages of the houses watched him pass, self-contained façades indifferent to his presence, but watching still, guarded, as he passed immediately before the panes and fanlights; and when with seven more steps he escaped their line of vision, they did not turn in indecorous curiosity but continued to stare out straight ahead. Unconcealed by walls, or coy behind hedges, sober-mouthed some of them with columns Ionic and Doric (with never the cheer of Corinthian), these miens of narrow clapboard
and eighteenth-century brick looked upon the passer-by without deviation or interruption, with stares neither crooked nor circuitous, the lineal stare of propriety.

(Beyond, there were, to be sure, occasional cupolas, sportive relics of nineteenth-century profligacy.)

He passed the Civil War monument which thirty years before had spiked the sky, and stood now dwarfed in deference to greater wars. (And the resolute iron cannon at its foot was replaced by a mobile 75, albeit crippled by loss of one of its wheels.)

As he reached the transept, the spire behind him burned at its tip with the light of the sun, and from it the bell labored the early hour. Beyond the lucent spire the sky was patched with small clouds which did not move, no more than the ragged-edged patches of snow, reflecting here that celestial course of the sun which he trod on earth.

Past the highway’s curve (and the arrow there, pointing the wrong way to delude barbarians), the mile from the railway station, and he had not paused; nor so much as raised his eyes but once when they were raised by the transfiguration of the gold cock in the sun. Mirabile dictu: another blue day. What a narrow chin in his hand, when he raises his hand there, then taps two fingers on his lips and looks over the shoulder quickly. Bells, from far down the nave there. —God of our fa-thers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung bat-tle line (fingers stifle the lips) hymn no 383. Singing way, over the shoulder elders from preference heard no music, alarm it was for it set something living in them, and would that their children believe no such thing existed, to hang their heels on the air. But they heard, they heard and what’s more without humility and nor lightened nor lost set instanter to compose, whipped their children to practice as they’d been done for discovery. The bell again. Again. Adeste —ad esse fidelis: hymn no 223 larynges distended A,M,D,G, infra dig dominocus: Oh for a Faith that Will Not Shrink.

Demons the motes in a sunbean, said Blessed Reichelm (though serious statisticians precisely populated hell’s habitant host at 1,758,064,176): the Saxons driven through a river blessed upstream by bishops (kept their sword-arms dry). Blessed Leo X, could nicht anders, the 95 Thæces stuck to the door, in the beginning this end:

Town founded 1666 annus mirabilis Oh gosh Oh gee h-Holy Cowrist w-We got a big job ahead of us interdenominational infra supra sub threw the inkpot: Nunnery lecture, illustrated, Pagan ceremony, robed priests, Nuns, high altar, &c. A wail from the tomb. See girl in dungeon. Uncle Sam to the rescue. Public invited. Collection 50¢ leadeth us not into temptation.

Surprise! to be kissed on the cheek so. After all that time. There,
over the shoulder describe necessity without touching me. Abscondam faciem meam white Christ the fugitive. Consider me with my nose gone, knock on wood, —or ask Helen for a piece, she found it: rub it, Aladdin, Constantine, Nicodemus blown back by the wind from the river m-Mthrfckr et considerabo novissima eorum (sic)

The birth of a nation. Let in the light Open the nunneries And save the girls. Free lemonade, Mineral water, Shower baths Coming! to Haggard’s Gospel Tent A drama of eighteen live people This is a clean high-class lecture exposing the whole Roman Catholic Religion from the Confession Box to the Nunneries, High Priests, Mother Superior, Altar Boy, Six Nuns, Holy Altar, Holy Candles, Holy Water, Holy Gods Just as it looks in Catholic Churches everywhere. With the mother giving her daughter to the church for a supposed more holy life, daughter taking the Carmelite nun vow (Black Veil) buried alive, thrown into a dungeon and how are they to be rescued

He stopped to cough, and courteously caught the cough away from the air in his open palm and walked on again. Courteous, to this flood of unspeakable hyperduliacs, and why? to be rescued and wear a stinking merkin for a beard? If she is only a woman (but a good cigar is a smoke) with Eve caught by the furbelow, Hae cunni (the oldest catch we know): Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, praebeat ille nates (I seem to mean usefulness), but Thisbe’s gray eye on Alfonso Liguori —There is no mysticism without Mary. Stabat Mater shrouded in the decent obscurity of a learned language, fœmina si furtum faciet mihi virque puerque: dolorosa while Origenal sin wields the blade. Carnelevarium (the heart came out very late) reveling in lavish polymastia (Zwei Brüste wohnen, ach! in meiner Seele) now, in Martinmas, Saint Martin’s given or only Lent to SS Pelagia & Mary of Egypt, thence to Thaïs, Kundry, Salome, and even Saint Irene; Costanza (D
^s
ac Redemptor, S.J.), Valeria Messalina, Marozia in the garden, in the Garden, Messalina in the gardens of Lucullus hic jaceted age 26 years, Thrawn Janet’s black man gone down the garden wall, and the men et ardet: Anaxagoras pre-empted in contemptu Christianae fidei; Lucretius (dead of an overdose of love philter) preempted, —Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta. I.e., exhomologesis (c. 218) by Calixtus I. Pelagic miles distant, on the Rock, resident Barbary apes pelt stones at the local Y.M.C.A. In Spain Ignatius’ militant limp and Xavier 4′6″ exhomolojesuis abhor the shedding of blood, and the Inquisitor De Arbues describes Love ex hac Petri cathedrâ without raising a Welt. Amor perfectissimus explaining what is dark by what is darker still: Who then was the gentleman? (I mean the excluded.) Not Philo, De Exsecrationibus!
not Philo, certainly not Aristobulus busy-handed Alexandrine Jew to prove plagiarism: Pythagoras Socrates Plato Homer & Hesiod, all plagiarized from Moses, one and all. Pues díme Sigismundo, dí: El delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido. Calixtus, then, after all? Politicking, No, no, don’t listen to them 1870! Nono the winner: infallible (what is that racket?). The College of Cardinals turns to look. —It’s Arkansas, crying Non placet.

The snow had hardened into reefs along his path and he narrowly avoided falling a number of times, even though he looked nowhere now but there where he walked. Schizophobic, how near the edge can he approach? how much longer disdain simple ruses?—Give me force and matter, and I will refurbish the world! Blame Descartes, then! resisting with some fortitude the purchase of a bowler hat, and wearing a cigar, and even then preferring perhaps a dry Brazil-filled, Java-bound, Sumatra-wrapped panatella: but soggy all-Havana is more weighingful, and; temptation to stop along the way, weary, damned weary, damned weary of it passing the campfires so many tents pitched with such care to the pegs insisting permanence when (God blind me) by their nature they are tents and Lord love me by the nature of things they will blow away, by the nature of force and matter blown away and the God-damned Cartesian with them. Mauled by luxuries, asking now no more than some well-chronicled illness to stir the viscera into affirming its existence within, the member without. Caveat: —On which side do you dress, Job? Mauled by luxuries, Oh doctor Æsculapius found out the hard way lightningstruck. Reality defined by the (luxury) gratuitous crime. Peace by (luxury) war. Love by (luxury) mugging, rape, Senta retires with Sabine smile of satiety, Thankyou ma’am. —E ucciso da una donna! M’hai tu assai torturato?! Su! Parla! Odi tu ancora? Guardami! . . . Son la Tosca! Son la Diva! . . .

Arsk Saint Bernard about women, their face is a burning wind, he’ll tell you, arsk him, their voice the hissing of serpents, he’ll tell you.

(fa un ultimo sforzo:) Soccorso! . . .

In rehearsal: Chrysippus. Cleanthes. Zeno. Pyrrho. Again, the story of Hipparchia’s courtship, spare no details (the dress of Telephus and Crates then the groom are especially amusing) but one: —Kissed on the cheek after years, was it? A, M, D, G, sequence of unsurprise (Lao-tse’s 84-year gestation), right Nicodemus? right? under a burning bush (I lost my wife) Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, dixit, pinxIt.

Sang, —Varé tava soskei . . . soskei . . . Mermaid mahn stole my heart away.

(verso:) Ti soffoca il sangue? . . . il sangue? . . .

Configuring shapes and smells (damnation) sang —Yetzer hara, in the hematose conspiracy of night When they shout gfckyrslf Come equipped her morphidite.

Arse Alexander VI for a loan of his concave emerald, watching the rape of (Christian) girls through it. —Ah! è morto! . . . Or gli perdono! . . . E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma!

Then he fell. He fell twice. The first time, a stone turned under his foot as he reached a slope of the east lawn of the parsonage. He went down on one knee, got up immediately and three steps later he slipped again. The ground was hard, and he caught himself on the back of a hand, and remained, down, for a good half-minute, looking at the back of his hand where he’d torn it, not badly but enough to bring blood. He sat until he’d got his breath; and the bull on the ground, its gold dull in the dull light, held his eyes, glistening themselves no more than the dulled jewels of its collar. For the first time, the sharp edge of the air startled him deeply, cutting his lungs as he breathed it. The hand with the blood to mark it he reached to the bull and rested it there; and his other he rubbed over his dry face, then to his bare head. That hand stopped there and the fingers drew together against the skull as though to wring out the occupant brain. He had a bad headache. It seemed to have been going on for some time, throbbing with permanence. His hand reached the back of his neck and closed again there, squeezing the muscles and tendons in its hold. They were sore. He spat on the ground. Then he coughed. The air was still. Cold came to him evenly. Again he hastened to get up, for his body was drawing the cold right up out of the earth.

His expression, which all this time had been one of confusion, drew gradually together as he rose, bringing the gold bull up with him, and under his arm. As the diffused look of bewilderment left him, his features lay in a concentration of anxiety, staring up toward the house. The sun had just touched the peak there and begun to descend; and again, for the first time, the sounds which he distinguished seemed to have been going on for some time. As long, that is, as he might have been within earshot: a regular ka-klack, ka-klack, ka-klack was the least sound, coming apparently from the house itself, and an irregular series of hammer blows from beyond. It was the voice, however, which arrested him. It was neither sharp nor loud, but lingered, and was gone, and rose again on this cold air, leaving off and rising like the smoke of a boat gone under a bridge, and emerging.