A full minute passed before the door was answered. Even then, Esther returned quickly to her typewriter and sat over it biting a thumbnail, while he crossed the room to stand and look out the window, turned to stare into the empty studio, and finally sat on the couch and opened a book. It was a collection of plates of the work of early Flemish painters. A single snap of the typewriter brought him up straight. — What was that? he asked.
— A comma. She looked regretfully at the page before her. — It makes a lot of difference sometimes, a period or a comma. She suddenly looked round. — Where is he, he isn't with you?
— I just left him, we've been up at the Metropolitan. He said he wanted to take a walk.
— I knew he wasn't with you, she said sitting back and speaking more slowly, — and yet, by now sometimes I just don't know, I don't even know whether he's here with me or not.
Otto looked up, to see her staring at the floor, and he cleared his throat. — Is this his, this book on Flemish painters?
— No, it's mine, she said looking up vaguely. — He has something against reproductions.
— Yes, Otto agreed, open upon a Dierick Bouts, — but these art especially good, aren't they. This kind of stringency of suffering, this severe self-continence of suffering that looks almost peaceful, almost indifferent. But in a way it's the same thing, this severe quality of line, this severe delicacy and tenderness. She was staring at him, but he did not look up. He turned pages, and continued to speak with casual and labored confidence. — You can see how well these men knew their materials, using color like a sculptor uses marble, not simply filling in like cartoons but respecting it, using it as a servant of the pattern, the tactile values, this, this van Eyck, the white headdress on Arnolfini's wife, how sharp the lines are, look at how smoothly they flow, it's perfect painting in stand oil, isn't it. It isn't difficult to see why Cicero says. what's the matter? He'd glanced up, to see her eyes fixed on him.
— Nothing, go on, she said, fascinated.
— Nothing, I was just going to say. that passage in Cicero's Paradoxa, where Cicero gives Praxiteles no credit for anything of his own in his work, but just for removing the excess marble until he reached the real form that was there all the time. Yes, the um. masters who didn't have to try to invent, who knew what. ah… forms looked like, the um. The disciple is not above his master, but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master.
— Who said that? she asked after a pause, still looking fixedly at him.
— Yes, Saint Luke. He was the patron saint of painters.
— Was?
— Well I mean I guess he still is, isn't he. Otto closed the book and stood up looking for a place to put it.
— Is that all? she asked finally.
— All what?
— About Flemish painters?
— Well Esther, I like them, and the… I mean the discipline, the attention to detail, the separate consciousnesses in those paintings, the sort of… I guess it's both the force and the flaw of those paintings, the thoroughness with which they recreate the atmosphere, and the, I mean a painter like Memling who isn't long on suggestion and inferences but piles up perfection layer by layer. But, well it's like a writer who can't help devoting as much care to a moment as to an hour.
— Otto. She got up and came toward him.
— But God devotes as much time to a moment as He does to an hour, Otto brought out abruptly, as though defending himself, or someone very close to him. She stood before him, looking into his face querulously.
— Esther.
— Do you have a cigarette? she asked, stepping back. He fumbled and gave her one, lit it for her, then got the package out and took one for himself.
— Esther, look, is something wrong? he asked as she sat down on the couch and started to turn pages of a book, without looking at the words.
— Nothing, it just gets… I don't know, she said, and started looking at the pages, running her thumb down the lines as though seeking an answer there. He stood over her, blowing out smoke, as though the cigarette were an occupation in itself, until she said, — Here's a lovely passage, it's something of Katherine Mansfield's, a review she wrote. She held it up and he took it as though he might find some solution there himself. — It's too bad, such a lovely thing hidden away in an old review.
— Yes, he said, covetously, and read it again. He got out his pencil. She saw the book in his pocket and asked what it was.
— Spinoza, Otto answered taking it out. — I'm glad you reminded me, he lent it to me a long time ago, and just asked me if I'd leave it here.
Esther thumbed the pages. — Did you get all the way through it?
— Well, I mean not all the way really. We were talking about quiddity once, and he…
— About what?
— Quiddity, what the thing is, the thing itself, and he said that Kant says we can never know…
— Is this all you talk about? Quiddity, philosophers.
— But Esther.
— Doesn't he talk about himself to you?
— Well, I mean in a way he's always talking about himself, but he, you know, for instance when he said, But aren't we all trying to see in the dark? I mean. you know.
— I know, she said, staring at her hands. — But he must say something about me?
Otto stood looking down at her hair, at her shoulders and the curve of flesh at her neck. He laughed, a slight, nervous, and confidential sound; and when he spoke his voice was more strained with casualness than before. — As a matter of fact, today he said sometimes he felt like the homunculus that ah, I forget, the Greek god of fire made, and then um another god criticized it because he hadn't put in a little window where they could see its secret thoughts. She did not move, and when she remained silent Otto repeated his nervous sound of a laugh. — I mean, he didn't mean anything, you know. What?
— I know, she repeated in a whisper.
— He didn't mean.
— Do you know what it's like?
— What what.
— Do you know what it's like? Living with someone like him, living with him, do you know what it's like? Do you know what it's, like, being a woman and living with him?
— But Esther.
— To come into the room, and see him staring, without blinking, just staring, not an insane stare but just sitting and looking? Last night he was sitting there, that way, and the music on the radio, I can still hear the announcer's voice afterward because it was such a relief, it was the Suite Number One in C Major of Bach, and afterward all he said was, such precision. Such precision.
— But that's true, it's. Otto came down on the sofa beside her.
— Yes but it isn't human. He put a hand on hers. — It isn't a way to live, she said in the same dull voice, her hand dead under his. — It isn't… is it strange that he has ringing in his ears? Is this dream of his strange, this damned damned dream he has? That after an hour's silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness. That's all, it took him an hour to work that out. Strange? that he can drink down a pint of brandy, and be just as he was before. Nothing happens. Nothing happens, except he blinks even less. Yes, a… man of double deed, I sow my field without a seed…
— Esther, you mustn't get so…
— When the seed began to blow / 'Twas like a garden full of snow.
— Look, it won't last, he said taking both her hands. — He can't just go pn, like this.