The Recognitions (129 page)

illness destroys; a curse on life, which death interrupts!" You know Buddha's immaculate conception, and dead of an indigestion of pork? "Age, illness, death, could they be forever enchained!" I have to trust him, for we're here together now, and penitent for rape and murder. —You've . . . killed someone? Ludy said looking up at last from the bread crumbling in his hand, to see the lines round the same dull eyes draw into the beginnings of a wince, so close he could see the clotted buds of veins broken beneath the skin of the eyelids, as the lips tried to force the wince into a smile but only become tighter and tighter as Stephen spoke, breathless but not excited, a purely physical halting of his voice, as though there were not enough breath at once to finish all that he had to tell. —In Africa, Algeria, the bullet went right through and broke his neck, in Sidi-bel-Abbès, I'll tell you. J'ai le Canard he'd got tattooed across his forehead, in the broken letters of a child's hand . . . He paused, looking into Ludy's face anxiously, an appealing moment, until he brought up the last of the bread and bit into it fiercely, hunched to catch the crumbs in his empty palm. —"Mon Legionnaire!" A ghoum, simpering up to the table where we sat, I and the poor policeman arguing if daylight time was black upon the moon. "Et toi, divine Mort, où tout rentre et s'eíface, accueille tes enfants dans ton sein étoilé . . ." The poor policeman read Leconte de Lisle. And he called me romantic! for planning escape to the desert. "Shave and clean up a bit," he says, "or I must arrest you." No money, no papers, it's more shameful than being naked out in the streets in daylight. But at night we talked, the girl gashed with tattoos in Djelfa, or her in Biskra wearing louis d'or at her throat and a safety pin in her ear. "The desert is well patroled, and you're dead in four hours without water. It's romantic! I won't permit it. I have my duty to do. You speak of reality. No, I know these stunts," he goes on, we were friends, understand, "hiring a camel and setting off in secret, to journey a night and a day and turn your mount loose in the desert, and lie down and wait for the dawn. 'Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre et de 1'espace, et rends-nous le repos que la vie a trouble.' " Then he looks at his watch. We were friends for some time there. The blue gash down her forehead, and up the chin and the heels, three hundred francs in Sfax on a Saturday night, the gold louis d'or and the feathers and bars in the door. Or tea in Bou-Saâda, she offers it bristling there on the rug on the floor, the porches ready to fall from the fronts of the houses, and her mother stays in the room, guarantee that she's Ouled-Naïl for the dance that shocks the French tourists, the musicians play to the wall and it jumps like something was living and jumping inside, in town, while their stripes stretch over the edge of the desert near the shells of colonists' houses. But here where the Legion's quartered, the black beard grows, "Defense de raser," she tells me, "les médicastres francais s'entendent," encouraging crabs. And the guards wilt with bayonets fixed in the street. So here's Han, in the Legion, a ghoum, coming up to our table on the walk outside the cafe. Le Cafard tattooed on his forehead, but wait. That's nothing, you'll see, when they took down his pants. He stops to spit on the road, and looks up like an animal, "You! You have come here to join us! What pleasure this is, to see you, at last, here, to join me again. Hey? . . . how fine it will be now, together. Where have you been all this time, since Koppel, remember? Do you remember? The old fool he was. And Frau Fahrtmesser, and Minchen, the pig and her daughter, remember? How happy we were! Die Jungfrau? And how young! Do you remember all that? And now! my dear friend, how fine it will be, together. At first it is hard, but I can watch out for you, hey? At first the Legion is hard, but with me, you and me, you . . . but you . . . but that's why you're here? to join us? to join me in ... this? . . ." And he holds up his khaki shirt ounched in a fist, standing over me. "Yes, no other reason for coming to bel-Abbès, but to ... come in ... with me?" So the sun had gone down, and when I drew back and said "No," he stared for a minute. He stared, and he hissed, "And now you! We were cheated, now you ... I will tell you both how we were cheated. They betrayed us, and now ... I will tell you." He spoke low, he was gathering force that might have escaped in his voice, and his shoulders climbed higher restraining, until he could say, "I hate you. I hate you very much. Do you understand how I hate you? Even then, I hated you . . . there was something missing, and I always hated you, even then, or ... it wouldn't be so missing." Then he rushed at me. The bullet caught him right through, and broke his neck. Sir-reverence, the bastard was dead. And since then, I've been wandering. The policeman turned up his face with the toe of a boot, and then let the blue letters roll back in the dirt, and the wind blew the blond head full of dirt from the street, and since then I've been traveling. "Get away! You were not even here! Do you understand? Get away!" And what could I do? The policeman . . . we were friends for some time there. He stood over that thing in the dirt with his gun in his hand, and when two or three people had seen it he put it away unfired, and looked at his watch, and since then I've been moving. He knew. We'd talked so much together, he knew he was sending me on, and since then I've been voyaging, until I came here. It's a place here to rest, to 878

rest here, finally, a place here to rest, and the work, to start it all over again, alone . . . —But these things . . . don't happen ... I have to go. —But wait! Wait! I haven't told you, when they took down his pants he's a face tattooed on his fundament! There's homage for a whole coven, wide eyes on the cheeks. Wait! . . . there's a kiss he'll remember. Ehh? And I knew it, going around with a bum like that, blue eyes . . . Wait! Fr. Eulalio, his eyes fixed reverently on his toes flattening in the sandals at each step, emerged first from the Capilla de los Tres with a measured tread, one which he was, however, seldom able to measure for more than ten paces. At that point, some enthusiasm usually took hold, and he inclined to break into a disciplined but irregular dance, no matter how retiring his partners proved, so they were from Outside. At this moment he even had his hands clasped, and for a parlous moment, stood stock still at the door. —I don't know whose tomb it is, but we might as well go the whole hog while we're here and take it in, said a woman, emerging. —Boy, that big picture was some mess wasn't it, the Rubins, said a fat man in a brown suit and yellow necktie, who had apparently joined them. Two cameras swung from his neck, and a light meter, all in new leather cases. —Rubins, was he a Spaniard? —Look at his name, Peedro Pablo, where else do you get a name like that? the woman with him answered. She was totally undistinguished, but for the ring she wore. It was gold, and large, and very modern, and suggested those articles which are advertised as "silent defenders." The tall woman waited for her husband. Fr. Eulalio stood entranced with the morning's haul. But looking up, he commenced to vibrate, as though a marvelous set of springs were concealed under his robe; and if anything was required to set them in motion, it was the sight of the figure he saw now in fleeting glimpses of Irish thorn-proof, dodging behind the Moorish columns which surrounded them. For next to introducing himself to Americans, nothing gave him greater pleasure than introducing Americans to each other, and the opportunity of introducing four to one, and that one a noted writer, —un escritor muy distinguido, muy culto . . . He almost sprang across the Moorish fountain. The distinguished novelist saw there was nothing for it but surrender, and tried to compose himself as he was led forth, if only for that minute of courtesy which his position demanded. He came out wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers. —We didn't know you were Catholic! said the woman with the ring, delighted, extending that hand, and withdrawing it more slowly, separating her fingers and glancing down surreptitiously to see what the sticky gray matter lodged between them might be, while her husband, bobbing amid the leather cases, lost his good-natured grin as he shook hands, and retired to wipe his on the seat of his pants. —Well, you see . . . the distinguished novelist commenced; but he was unequal to it. He tried to arrange his debilitated features into a smile, and turned to the tall woman with a weak inclination which he meant as a bow. —We're going to see a tomb, -she said, —the tomb of ... somebody or other, have you seen it? —Yes, he answered instantly, and stared at her so oddly that she turned to her husband and said, —We can't just leave poor Huki-lau out there all alone, even if she is wearing that . . . protection, you never know. Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, moved busily enough among them to give everyone the feeling that they were in a crowded room, and as though for reassurance that this was not the case, the tall woman's husband turned his blank gaze up to the shreds of gray cloud which fled over the Moorish cloister. The distinguished novelist excused himself: he had a little work to do before lunch, and he got away. —It was him, that stuck his head in the church and asked me what I was doing there, the woman with the ring announced. —You wouldn't think he'd act that way here in a place like this. —Maybe he's just playing a game, the tall woman said vaguely, preoccupied with a high heel caught between the teeth of a broken mosaic. —My God . . . —It's hardly worth all this walking around everywheres, the woman with the ring said, —We haven't got any color fillum in the camera at all, they don't have it here. Fr. Eulalio, meanwhile, explained that the distinguished novelist had recently suffered the death of someone very close to him, a sobering conclusion which he had drawn from the customary manifest of the black necktie. Thus they were all slightly put off when the distinguished guest appeared in a calming Glen Urquhart plaid suit, and the necktie of the Honourable Artillery Company, though none of them knew its signification any better than he (for he'd just picked it out one day, passing Gieves's window in Old Bond Street, in London where he'd gone for first-hand experience of quite a different nature). It was a bracing pattern of jagged dark red strokes on a blue ground, and he looked quite restored. 88o

It is true, he was happier taking lunch in the chill room at that small table near the windows, knee to knee with a calm lay brother appointed to the task, the heavy red cloth drawn over their laps and warm to the waist from the brazier underneath, with a cage over its coals to protect toes protruding from sandals, an arrangement rather like a communal Persian bed he had seen somewhere (not Persia). —We've had plenty of experiences to write home about already, said the woman with the ring at the long table where lunch had just commenced, presided over by a placid Franciscan who spoke no English. The tall woman closed her pill box with a snap, as her husband poured his second glass of wine, and the woman with the ring crossed herself and got her napkin in place in one utilitarian gesture. —We even got held up by a highwayman, her husband confirmed. —It was on a train. —Y«u still call it a highwayman anyway, her husband said patiently, smiling his cheery smile. —And he even talked English. —It was broken English. And what do you think he told us? That we're just as much to blame, because we're there, that the victim abets the violence just by being there, he said, and he even made a quotation to prove it. —From Dante he told us. He took all our money, at gun-point. —Every peseeta we had on us. —But he didn't take the cameras, the fat man said, —I guess he didn't know how much they were worth. —He said he ought to do us a favor and throw them out the window, can you imagine? My . . . don't they keep it cold here, she shivered. Her husband got out his billfold and found a scrap of paper. —Here's a souvenir of it. He made me write this down so I'd remember to get this book and read it. Transcendent Speculations on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual, that's a mouthful isn't it. I wrote this down at gun-point. —Can you imagine? she demanded of the distinguished novelist, and he shook his head as though indeed he could not. Then he turned to the soup which the old woman put before him, and commenced to eat with a look on his face as though, perhaps, he could. —Well you can't complain, said the fat man good-naturedly, —when you set out on an adventure trip in a country like this, like Mamie and me here with nothing but the clothes on our back. Right, Mamie? Then he lowered his attention, to wipe a spot from his yellow tie on the edge of the tablecloth. —We didn't even bring a car over this time, said the woman with the ring. —We're going right down to the Holy Week in Seville as soon as we leave here. I wanted to see the big fair they have in Valencia too but I don't know how long we're over here for, it's not till later. They call it the Fallas, it's all fireworks. Then she turned to the tranquil figure at the table head, and addressed him in what she believed was his language, for she, with some of the girls back home, had taken a course, preparing for exactly such opportune exigencies as this. —Cuando tiene las Fallas en Valencia? she asked, and repeated, —las Fallas? . . . but since she pronounced it phallus, the good Franciscan answered with a gelid smile and offered her the bread. The tall woman cleared her throat, passed the wine decanter in answer to no one's request as far up the table as she could reach, and said that somewhere she had read that in this very monastery a monk had been put under a pot for refusing to go out and beg, and that he was still there. Had anyone seen it? —The pot, I mean. No, but when the woman with the ring and her husband were in Granada, a guide took them on a tour through the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, and they had had to look at the crippled and deformed orphans, —which wasn't really the kind of thing we came all the way over here to see, we didn't know where he was taking us. —That cathedral they have there, it's the biggest one I ever saw. —And the sound when that gypsy boy's head hit the pavement . . . The distinguished novelist remained bent over his plate; and whether or not he appeared as contemplative as he believed, he did at least thus thwart any attempts to draw him into conversation, until, that is, someone asked him directly if he liked the art here . . . —Ahm ... —Like that big El Greco, the picture of the . . . —What? Is it safe? Is it still ... he broke out, looking up abruptly. —What? —No . . . nothing, I ... I was thinking of something else. The . . . ahm, yes it's a ... an excellent picture, the ahrn plasticity of the modeling, the transition of ahm the heavy oils laid on transparent ones, a great clarity of ahm religious purpose without getting lost in a maze of details, of ahm . . . for fear that there may be no ... Ahm . . . —I've seen another picture of his, they make me nervous, everybody seems to wiggle too much in them. —We saw a big Pietà in Granada, I like him better. Aren't you chilly? The distinguished novelist attacked the fish on the plate before him. It stared up with one round insolent eye, and he severed the head at one blow. The world of art settled, that of religion reared intrepidly. —That was probably the village idiot. —But won't they let him in church? the tall woman demanded. —In our church at home, of course I haven't been in it recently but we used to have one, an idiot I mean. Every small town had one, just like they had a town drunk and a Jew, but of course we didn't have any of these little boys in red sleeves to get him out the door. And that boy swinging that brass thing on the end of the chain made me frightfully nervous. It looked like it was going to blow up any minute. The fat man looked self-conscious, and stopped to rub another spot from his necktie. —And were you in the sacristy when they were getting that old priest ready to send on? I don't know, all that lace, and the way those little boys flit about . . . She saw the distinguished novelist looking at her uneasily, and went on hurriedly, —I don't mean to say they're that way or anything but . . . one hears things, she murmured, looking down at her plate. —Tell me, she whispered to the woman next to her, —what are these perfectly weird little things we're supposed to be eating. —Lentils. Haven't you ever eaten them? —I've read about them, the tall woman said and put down her fork. —To tell the honest truth I don't really see how they eat like this all the time. I've had the johnny-trots ever since we got here. From all the oil. Do you have . . . —I take reducing pills. You swallow one before a meal and it blows up like a balloon in your stomach. You lose your appetite. Not that one wouldn't here anyhow. Have you looked at the bread? I don't mean tasted it, but just look at it. It's practically turning red. —My husband would know what it is, said the woman with the ring, examining a piece of the bread. She broke it, and the fine gray texture crumbled. —My husband's in food chemistry. He studied toxicology at Yale. Her husband took the bread from her and examined it with a pocket magnifying glass. —He's with the Necrostyle people, she said, —you must know their products? Then she nudged her husband, and whispered that maybe he was being impolite, —because they're very sensitive, these people. Even if they're monks. —Micrococcus prodigiosus, he pronounced, snapping the glass closed and looking up with his cheery smile, —It forms sometimes on stale food kept in a dry place. Looks like blood, doesn't it. —He's giving you a funny look, the woman with the ring said to her husband. And when at a sign from the figure at the head of the table, the bread was taken unobtrusively away, she whispered, —Oh dear, I wonder if we hurt his feelings . . . And she'd just started to speak to the tall woman, in a very low tone of frank confidence, —They're pretty behind the times over here, when we landed the customs almost arrested me, they thought my Tampax was incendiary bombs . . . Then she realized that the figure at the head of the table was addressing her, in slow careful syllables. —He's explaining about the bread, she whispered aside, listening, —why it's funny. Concentrating, her lips moved as though to wrest the words from his, syllable by syllable while he spoke, and turning to explain when he paused, —because it's real hard to get flour over here, especially if you're poor like monks, they have to get it off the black market. That isn't exactly the way he put it, she amended when his silence unleashed her full confusion. —He says they even get food packages from America, like there was this Protestant minister who came here on a visit about thirty years ago and he always sends them these packages of food, they just got one lately. Then this is where I got sort of. mixed up, she confessed, while the figure at the head of the table watched her querulously. —I think it's something he wants me to explain to him, because in this last food package they just got there was some kind of powdery stuff in a tin box they mixed with the flour when they made this bread, and it came out funny. Maybe it was cereal, except I'm not sure what's the Spanish word for cereal. Maybe it was wheat germ, my husband could probably explain it to him, like enriched bread like we have home, except I don't know what's the Spanish for wheat germ. She sighed, looking almost wistfully at the scrap of bread by her husband's hand on the table, a hard crust, the crumbled fine gray texture flecked with spots "like blood." —Home, she repeated —Now, with it's almost Easter . . . She sighed again, and smiled pensively, looking far away and rubbing the slight hair shade on her upper lip. —Isn't it nice we're all merkins. At the head of the table, the figure nodded to her his thanks for her explanation to the other exotic guests and she, seeking to please him still further, was fishing for something in her bosom. The ring got caught, and finally she extracted it along with a string of beads which proved to be a rosary. —And see this here? she said to the others. —This little heart-shaped thing in the middle is full of 884