The Recognitions by William Gaddis Page A

what is it? 
    —Go to your room, Gwyon brought out, trying to rescue him. 
    Aunt May started from her chair with, —To his room! . . . but Gwyon's upraised hand seemed to halt her, and she turned on the small retreating figure with, —To your room, go to your room then, and read . . . read what we've been reading, and I'll be up before supper to see if you know it. 
    —What have you been reading? Gwyon asked her, a strain in his voice. 
    —He's learning about the Synod of Dort. 
    —Dort? Gwyon mumbled, dropping his hand. 
    —Dort. The final perseverance of the saints. Good heavens, you . . . 
    —But . . . the child ... 
    —Did you see the guilty look on his face? His sinful . . . 
    —Sinned! Where has he sinned . . . already . . . 
    —That you, as a Christian minister, can ask that? You . . . Suddenly she came closer to Gwyon, who stepped back into the hall away from the assault of her voice. —Not his sin then, but the prospect, she came on in a hoarse breathless voice, near a whisper, as though she were going to cry out or weep herself, —the prospect draws him on, the prospect of sin. 
    She stood there quivering, until the sound of Gwyon's footsteps had disappeared back down the hall. Then she sniffed, biting her lower lip, and stepped into the hall herself. 
    Later that evening Reverend Gwyon stood over the littered desk in his study, staring through the glass at the darkness beyond. —The final perseverance of the saints! he muttered. Then he turned to the door, as though he had heard a sound there. He waited, a hand out to the doorknob, for the faint knock to be repeated, but there was nothing. He had just turned away when he heard a creaking in the corridor, but whether it was someone moving slowly and carefully away, or only renewed betrayal of the constant conflict among those sharp angles of woodwork, he never knew. 
    The house was large and, perhaps it was the unchanging, un-gratified yearning in the face of Camilla on the living-room mantel, eyed from the wall across by the dour John H., it held a sense of bereavement about it, though no one had come or gone for a long time. 
    While even Aunt May's medieval posture could not credit her stomach as a cauldron where food was cooked by heat from the adjacent liver, she sought evidences of the Lord's displeasure in foreign catastrophes and other people's difficulties, and usually found good reason for it. Among provinces where He retained sway was that of creativity; and mortal creative work was definitely one of His damnedest things. She herself had never gone beyond a sampler, atoning there in word and deed for any presumption she might have made, at the age of ten, in assuming creative powers: 
    Jesus permit thy gracious name to stand
    As the first effots of an infants hand
    And while her fingers o'er this canvass move
    Engage her tender heart to seek thy love
    With thy dear children let her share a part
    And write thy name thy self upon her heart
    That absent r was not, like the flaw in Oriental carpets, an intentional measure of humility introduced to appease the Creator of perfection: she had been upset about it now for half a century, and would have torn out her mistake with her teeth as a child, had not a weary parental hand stopped her. (So she worked NO CROSS NO CROWN in needle-point, still hung unfaded in her room.) 
    But it was why Wyatt's first drawing, a picture, he said, of a robin, which looked like the letter E tipped to one side, brought for her approval, met with —Don't you love our Lord Jesus, after all? He said he did. —Then why do you try to take His place? Our Lord is the only true creator, and only sinful people try to emulate Him, she went on, her voice sinking to that patient tone it assumed when it promised most danger. —Do you remember Lucifer? who Lucifer is? 
    —Lucifer is the morning star, he began hopefully, —Father says . . . 
    —Father says! . . . her voice cut him through. —Lucifer was the