Read Online The Recognitions by William Gaddis - Free Book Online Page B

Bonaventura: no more mother than he, the prospect of eternal roasting for millions of unbaptized children did not bring the flutter of an eyelash: "The sight of the pains of the damned heaps up the measure of the accidental joys of the righteous," and with his words on her own lips, she firmly expected to see Saint Bonaventura heaping her own measure in the Life ahead. But even that torrid landscape chilled and shattered, pierced by the sleighbells, more pointed for their infrequency, to stop her breath if she were speaking, or raise her voice to the defense when she read. 
    —It's all right indeed, all right for a man who goes to bullfights! she brought out next day at table, summoning this distant detail to interrupt the conversation between father and son. —Bringing a ... a creature like that back from Africa, there should be a law against it. 
    —Creature? Gwyon repeated. 
    —That creature you brought back, that's what you're talking about isn't it. Isn't it? 
    —I was telling . . . talking about that painting, there, the table under the window. 
    —There ought to be a law against it, bringing back creatures like that. 
    —Oh, oh Heracles, yes, you mean, it's forbidden, yes, taking them from Gibraltar, he commenced, confused, answering. 
    —Breaking the law, proud of yourself! Her glasses went blank with light as she returned her attention to her plate; and Wyatt, after the pause of her absenting herself, asked: 
    —How were you certain it was the original? Suppose . . . 
    —That took some . . . umm . . . conniving, getting it through customs. It's prohibited, you know, taking works of art out of Italy . . . 
    —Italy! Aunt May cut in across the table. —You never told me you had been in Italy! Never. You never told me that! 
    —Strange I never mentioned it, Gwyon said. 
    —Mentioned! You never told me, she said getting up from the table. 
    —What earthly difference ... 
    —Earthly! No earthly difference, as you say. No earthly difference, at all. For someone who tells stories about evil spirits who deceive good people by keeping the path to Paradise littered with filth, no earthly difference at all, she went on nearing the door. —At least you spared Camilla that! she finished, and was gone. Gwyon left the table a moment later, with a mutter of apology to his son, though he did not look up at him, and went out to the porch, where he stood looking straight up at the sun. 
    On pleasant days, such as this was, Aunt May still went out to tend her hawthorn tree. This afternoon, when she came in from it, she was impressively silent. Gwyon might have thought it was the Italian incident, but she said quietly, —I saw a moor hen this afternoon. (The moor cock was their family crest.) —And no male anywhere in sight. I have not seen a male moor hen for years. 
    Though slow, she still moved with energy. Her world had finally shrunk to her books and her hawthorn tree. When questions of foreign suddenness were asked she looked up startled and afraid, as though some worldly circumstance might intrude upon her preparations for departure. As the days passed, she sang in a weak voice which she believed maintained a tune, a hymn which, as she remembered, came to her from John Wesley, expressing her divine longing, ready sometimes, it seemed, like Saint Teresa, "to die of not being able to die."
    —O beautiful aspect of death
    What sight on earth is so fair
    What pageant, what aspect of life
    Can with a dead body compare, 
    came her wail on the vivid spring air to the ears of living things. 
    She put an old smock over her housedress and tied a shielding bonnet to her head. Over the morning grass alive with creatures smaller than its own blades her old garden shoes trod. A robin took to the air before her as she approached the hawthorn tree, torn from the ground and lying flat, pink blossoms among the weeds. Her voice in its singing stopped in disbelief. Frantically she raised the tree and pushed it