The Recognitions by William Gaddis

painting, and with increasing frequency broke his gaze at the window to get to work. He was most clear-headed, least feverish, in these early hours when, as unsympathetically as the daylight, his own hand could delineate the reasonable crowded conceits of separation. 
    Only once, going to the window before it was light, he was stopped in his tracks by the horned hulk of the old moon hung alone in the sky, and this seemed to upset him a good deal, for he shivered and tried to leave it but could not, tried to see the time on the clock but could not, listened, and heard nothing, finally there was nothing for it but to sit bound in this intimacy which refused him, waiting, until the light came at last and obliterated it. 
    Then, mornings just before sunrise he could hear his father's steps on the east porch below. And though he heard the voice speaking sometimes, he never made out a word. 
    Wyatt missed the sound of sleighbells. On his first attempt at a long walk outside, he went down to the carriage barn and found it locked and silent. 
    —Yes, his ... his time came, Gwyon said, clearing his throat and pulling at one hand with the other behind him. 
    —But you ... no one told me. 
    —Well, we ... you were sick, while you were sick I didn't want to upset you. 
    —But, then what did you do? 
    —Yes, I ... I buried him, down there, down behind the barn there. 
    —How did it happen, did he just . . . It's funny, some of the things I ... sometimes I think I remember things that are . . . that couldn't . . . like . . . He looked up earnestly, pausing now as though he expected to be prompted, to see his father watching him with eyes which, had he known it, blazed with the same wild intensity as his own in fever. —It's . . . sometimes it's bewildering . . . , he faltered, looking down as Gwyon looked away, turned his back and showed his twisting hands behind him. But only for a moment. Gwyon swung round, looking very different, reassured, and tried to smile with, 
    —You're well? You're well now, almost well? Yes, it's bewildering, bewildering . . . He changed the subject clumsily. —Like the bulls. Yes, people say they're kept in a dark cell before they're let into the arena, into the bright sun, to confuse them, but that . . . that . . . you should see their confidence, their grandeur when they come in, a great moment, that, when they come in, they . . . their heads up, tossing their heads when they come in ... He paused to look up and see if he'd relaxed Wyatt's attention, then went on enthusiastically, —It's after that, after they stick those . . . the banderillas in the shoulders, you can hear them rattling in the bull's shoulders, a regular dance of fury, it's after that their legs start to cave outward, after that they just stand, bewildered, looking around . . . before the sword, the . . . they say you don't kill with the sword but with the cape, the art of the cape . . . He relaxed himself as he spoke, moving about the room until he got near the door, talking as though in a hurry to be gone, but he paused there to finish with, —The sword, when the sword is in and the bull won't drop, why, they use the cape then, to spin him around in a tight circle so the sword will cut him to pieces inside and drop him. His legs stiffen right out when they stab him in the brain. Do you want anything? But you're up, you're up now. Do you want anything? I'll send Janet up, Gwyon finished and got out to the stairs. 
    When Janet arrived, Wyatt had her help him out and down the stairs, but he left her in the house when he went down the lawn with his cane. A large stone had been pushed into place against the hole in the hillside, among thorn bushes now bearing early blackberries. The place had been the kitchen midden for as long as he could remember. In his weakness he could not move the stone from its place, for it was very great; and when he started back for the house he tripped against a row of small stakes, driven into