— I'd suggest Murti-Bing, said the young man with no novel to advance.
— Oh, where is that? said the tall woman. — I don't believe I've ever eaten there.
— Fifty million tons of food a year eaten in New York, what does that mean?
— Something terrible happened, Stanley. Agnes put her hand on his.
— I'm sorry, Stanley said. — If you'll just give me my glasses. .
— No, dear, I'm not talking about that, and that was so long ago, that night. . She was looking in her purse. — Here, she said, — you'll have to read it yourself. What am I going to do, Stanley? Her hand shook as she dragged the letter from her bag. — It was a terrible thing to do, an unforgivable thing to do to this poor man but he's got to forgive me, and how can I… what can I do to
… so he will?
Stanley unfolded the letter from the Police Department; and Agnes felt a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turned. — Did you see a kitty-cat here, lady?
— Why there was a kitten here somewhere, Agnes said, looking round her, — but I guess the kitty-cat has gone to bed. What are you doing up so late?
— My mummy sent me up to get some sleeping pills, but I can't find the lady who. .
— Now don't you bother the nice lady, said Agnes, rummaging in the bottom of her large purse, taking out a French enameled thimble case. — I have some right here. Is three enough? You just take these down to Mummy. And I've already written him. She looked up at Stanley.
— Thank you, lady. Where'd you get the funny watch?
— Why, Mickey Mouse is my loyal faithful friend, said Agnes. — I can always trust him.
— What have you got the funny things sticking on your face for?
— Where. . Agnes raised her hand, to feel the strip of tape at her temple, put there to discourage wrinkles when she lay down. — Oh my God, and they've been there. . why didn't someone. .
— What are they for, lady? the child asked as Agnes tore them off, and opened her compact.
— Go along down to Mummy now, for God's sake.
— He would understand, if you went to him, Stanley said, handing the letter back. — If you went to him and. .
— I couldn't face him. To ask forgiveness. .
— Is a sublime test of humility. .
— And he's really rather an awful person I think. .
— And from your interiors an even greater trial.
— I want to do something, and. . but don't you think I might just send him something? Maybe some sort of nice gift. . yes, something nice and you know fairly expensively nice for his daughter?
— I think, Stanley commenced soberly, — that really, for your own good. .
— Oh, let's stop thinking about it for a little while, she interrupted. — I just get so… tired of the terrible things I get in the mail. She smiled up at him briskly, and tightened her grasp on his hand. — Tell me about your music, Stanley, this long whatever-it-is that you've been working on for so long. Oh, and your tooth? I'm sorry, I forgot to ask.
— I think it went away, the toothache, it didn't last, but my work, it's an organ concerto but it isn't finished yet.
— But you've been working on it for months.
— For years, he said. — And you know, I look at the clean paper that I'm saving to write the finished score on, and then I look at the pile of… what I've been working on, and, well I can see it all right there, finished. And yet, well. . you know I never read Nietzsche, but I did come across something he said somewhere, somewhere where he mentioned "the melancholia of things completed." Do you. . well that's what he meant. I don't know, but somehow you get used to living among palimpsests. Somehow that's what happens, double and triple palimpsests pile up and you keep erasing, and altering, and adding, always trying to account for this accumulation, to order it, to locate every particle in its place in one whole. .
— But Stanley, couldn't you just… I don't know what a palimsest is, but couldn't you just finish off this thing you're working on now, and then go on and write another? She ran her hand over his, resting on the chair arm there; and Stanley called her by her Christian name for the first time. — No, that's. . you see, that's the trouble, Agnes, he said. — It's as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it's as though finishing it strikes it dead, do you understand? And that's frightening, it's easy enough to understand why, killing the one thing you. . love. I understand it, and I'll explain it to you, but that, you see, that's what's frightening, and you anticipate that, you feel it all the time you're working and that's why the palimpsests pile up, because you can still make changes and the possibility of perfection is still there, but the first note that goes on the final score is… well that's what Nietzsche. .
— All I know about Nietzsche is that he's decadent, that's what they say.
Stanley withdrew his hand, and it hung in air for a moment, like an object suddenly unfamiliar, which he did not know how to dispose of. — He was, because of… well that's the reason right there, because of negation. That is the work of Antichrist. That is the word of Satan, No, the Eternal No, Stanley said, and put his hand in his pocket.
Agnes Deigh looked at her own hand on the arm of her chair. Two of the tanned fingers rose, and went down again; and when she looked over to where the critic had joined Benny on the couch, and sat, smoothing down the back of his hair, her face took the expression of the man she looked at, one of contemptuous, almost amused indulgence, though she did not have the dark hollows in her face, nor the brow and the forehead worn so with this expression that it looked natural; rather she looked uncomfortable, saying, — Those two look like they're discussing the same thing we are, and he should know, that one. . — You know what I thought of immediately just now when I looked up and saw them? Stanley said, earnestly. — I thought of El Greco before the Inquisition, arguing the dimensions of angels' wings. He looks like an Inquisitor, that dark fellow. People laugh at arguments like that now, and how many angels can dance on the end of a pin. But it's not funny, it's very wonderful. Science hasn't explained it, and you know why, because science doesn't even understand the question, any more than science understands. . You know, Agnes, this concerto I'm working on, if I'd lived three hundred years ago, why. . then it would be a Mass. A Requiem Mass.
— Einstein. . someone said.
— Epstein. . said someone else.
— Gertrude. .
— Of course you're familiar with Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty. Have you ever observed sand fleas? Well I'm working on a film which not only substantiates it but illustrates perfectly the metaphor of the theoretic and the real situation. And after all, what else is there?
— Who was it that said, "a little lower than the angels"?
— That? it's in that poem about "What is man, that thou art mindful of him." That was Pope.
— Which one?
At this point, Anselm, in a shirt torn at the shoulder, his hair tousled and on end, unshaven, and clutching a magazine and two books, appeared in the door. No one seemed to notice him; and he stood there silent for some time.
The music had got quite loud. — There, you see? said someone more loudly, — I told you. It is Handel. The Gods Go A-Begging, so there!
Benny's face was fleshy. Moreover, though it was not puffy, it seemed to be flesh recently acquired, and his expressions seemed, if such a thing were possible, to have difficulty in reaching the surface or, once arrived, to represent with conviction the feelings which had risen from within. So it appeared; though it may be that this want of precision pervaded the source itself, and his amorphous facade faithfully expressed confused furnishings, broken steps mounting deep stairwells, rooms boarded up, in disuse, and rooms of one character being used for new and timely purposes in the interior castle, whose defenses were not yet adjusted to the new tenancy but being constantly hastily altered in the midst of skirmishes, before that battle which would be the last.