Free The Recognitions by William Gaddis Page B

brought them up, one by one, meaning them to serve for conversation, which he found difficult; but once arrived in the sickroom he would stand passing the book nervously fr.om one hand to the other until asked about it. He would look down, as though surprised to find it in his hands, a moment later be talking about it with a fervor which gradually became agitation, until he left off altogether and handed it over, as shy at the idea of trying to press on his son things which so interested him, as he was excited at the possibility of sharing them with him. Then he might simply stand, trying to keep one hand still in the other behind him, while he stared at the floor, in the acute embarrassment of this intimacy which the sickness had created between them. On the other hand, Wyatt read as much as he could, to prepare for these conversations which gave his father such pleasure, to break the silences whose strain showed so readily in that flushed face, and the short exhalations tainted with the sweet freshness of caraway. Sometimes Gwyon simply turned and rushed out of the room, with as much restraint as he could manage until he reached the door, as he did one day when he espied a stained familiar pamphlet among his son's papers on the floor. —Where did this come from! he demanded snatching it up open on a picture of a wreathed papal monogram tied at the foot with an anchor. —I found it, in the rubbish, on the rubbish heap, Wyatt faltered, —the kitchen midden years ago, behind the carriage barn. He stared at the covetous look on his father's face. —I didn't know . . . —And you've kept it, yes, all this time, kept it for me? Gwyon brought out without looking up from it, turning the spotted pages. —Did you read it? —Just, the Italian was difficult, I didn't know all the words, but the pictures . . . that? that monogram, with the anchor? —Yes, Gwyon murmured catching it under his thumb, —Clement's monogram, he was martyred, yes here, gettato a mare con un'ancora . . . they tied an anchor to his neck and threw him into the Black Sea. 
    —Yes into the sea with an anchor? like the man you told me about? The anchor caught on a tombstone, and the man coming down the rope in the celestial sea to free it, and he drowned? Listen, . . . But Gwyon, fearing the insistent monotone that crept into the boy's voice for the delirium it might forebode, hurried out of the room studying the picture of the subterranean sanctuary discovered beneath the basilica of Saint Clement of Rome, a sudden light in his eyes as though his senses were afloat with vapors from two thousand years before. 
    Gwyon's entrances were often as precipitous as this escape; and there were times Wyatt pretended to be asleep when he heard his father's approach upon the stairs. When he could not read, he painted, with an extraordinary deftness which consumed his whole consciousness, and often left him so tense that he passed into delirium. —Listen, I ... what was it? Listen . . . 
    It was the deliria that Gwyon feared, which left him doubly helpless, trying to conceal his anxiety behind his back in one hand twisting the other, and he hastened to call Janet who was, a good part of the time now, the only moving thing in the house. She remained, gibbering testimony to Aunt May's inquisition. 
    So far as anyone knew, she never left the house. Her voice had gained the timbre of that of a grown man when she raised it in the full volume of speech. But this was infrequent. She usually spoke in a hoarse whisper, lubricated by a salivary flow which she had difficulty controlling (and caused, though she did not know it, by a medicine compounded of mercury which she'd found in Aunt May's cabinet, renewed and taken reverently in uniform overdose since Aunt May's death). Her shoulders were broad, thighs narrowed, and with squarely muscular hands she plied an emery cloth to remove the fine filaments which darkened her chin. 
    In any other native household, her regular