Mr. Sammler Planet

by Saul Bellow

  "Gazania Pavonia is darling. Well, come out in the sun and enjoy the weather. I feel much better when you take an interest in me. I'm glad you understand that I took the moon thing for you. You aren't going to give up the project, are you? It would be a sin. You were made to write the Wells book, and it would be a masterpiece. Something terrible will happen if you don't. Bad luck. I feel it inside."

  "I may try again."

  "You must."

  "To find a place for it among my preoccupations."

  "You should have no other preoccupations. Only creative ones."

  Mr. Sammler, smelling of sandalwood soap, decided to sit in the garden to wait for Emil. Perhaps the soap odor would evaporate in the sun. He didn't have it in him to rinse again in the onyx bathroom. Too close in there.

  "Bring your coffee out."

  "I'd like that, Shula." He handed her the cup and stepped onto the lawn. "And my shoes are wet from last night."

  Black fluid, white light, green ground, the soil heated and soft, penetrated by new growth. In the grass, a massed shine of particles, a turf-buried whiteness, and from this dew, wherever the sun could reach it, the spectrum flashed like night cities seen from the jet, or the galactic sperm of worlds.

  "Here. Sit. Take those things off. You'll catch cold. I can dry them in the oven." Kneeling, she removed the wet shoes. "How can you wear them? Do you want to catch pneumonia?"

  "Is Emil coming straight back or waiting for that lunatic?"

  "I don't know. Why do you keep calling him a lunatic? Why is Wallace a lunatic?"

  To a lunatic, how would you define a lunatic? And was he himself a perfect example of sanity? He was certainly not. They were his people-he was their Sammler. They shared the same fundamentals.

  "Because he flooded the house?" said Shula.

  "Because he flooded it. Because now he's flying around with his cameras."

  "He was looking for money. That's not crazy, is it?"

  "How do you know about this money?"

  "He told me. He thinks there's a fortune here. What do you think?"

  "I wouldn't know. But Wallace would have such fantasies-Ali Baba, Captain Kidd, or Tom Sawyer treasure fantasies."

  "But he says-no joking-there's a fortune of money in the house. He won't rest until he finds it. Wouldn't it be a little mean of Cousin Elya…"

  "To die without saying where it is?"

  "Yes." Shula seemed slightly ashamed, now that her meaning was explicit.

  "It's up to him. Elya will do as he likes. I assume Wallace has asked you to help find this secret hoard."

  "Yes."

  "What did he do, promise a reward?"

  "Yes, he did."

  "I don't want you to meddle, Shula. Keep out of it."

  "Shall I bring you a slice of toast, Father?"

  He didn't answer. She went away, taking his wet shoes.

  Above New Rochelle, several small planes snored and buzzed. Probably Wallace was piloting one of them. Unto himself a roaring center. To us, a sultry beetle, a gnat propelling itself through blue acres. Sammler set back his chair into the shade. What had been in the sun a mass of pine foliage now resolved itself into separate needles and trees. Then the silver-gray Rolls turned the corner of the high hedges. The geometrical, dignified, monogrammed radiator flashed its rods. Emil stepped out, looking upward. A yellow plane flew over the house.

  "That must be Wallace for sure. He said he was going to fly a Cessna."

  "I suppose it is Wallace."

  "He wanted to try the equipment on a place he knows."

  "Emil, I've been waiting to go to the station."

  "Of course, Mr. Sammler. But right now there aren't many trains. How is Dr. Gruner, do you know?"

  "I spoke to him," Sammler said. "No change."

  "I'd be glad to take you to town."

  "When?"

  "Very soon."

  "It would save time. I have to stop at home. You aren't going back to the airport for Wallace?"

  "He was going to land at Newark and take the bus."

  "Do you think he knows what he's doing, Emil?"

  "Without a license they wouldn't let him fly."

  "That's not what I mean."

  "He's the type of kid who wants to put things together his own way."

  "I'm not sure he'll ever know…"

  "He finds out as he goes along. He says that's what Action painters do."

  "I could have more confidence in the process. I don't think he should be flying about today. His feelings, whatever they are-rivalry with his father, grief, or whatever-may carry him away."

  "If it was my dad, I'd be at the hospital right now. It's different, now. We old guys have to go along."

  Lifting his cap to extend the shade over his eyes, he gazed after the speeding Cessna. He revealed his long, full-bottomed Lombard nose. He had the wolfish North Italian look. His skin was tight. Perhaps he had been, as Wallace insisted, Emilio, a fierce little driver for the Mafia. But he was now at the stage of life at which the once-compact person begins to show an elderly frailty. This appeared in the shoulders and at the back of the neck, where the creases were deep. He was connected with the very finest, the supreme land vehicle. No competition with aircraft. He leaned against the fender, arms folded, making sure that no button scratched the finish. He held the hair-fragrant cap and tapped himself. He lightly struck the descending terraces, the large wrinkles of his forehead.

  "I figure he wants shots from every altitude. He's flying low, all right."

  "If he doesn't hit the house, I'll be very pleased."

  "He could rack up the perfect score, after flooding the joint. You wonder, will he want to top that?"

  Mr. Sammler brought out the folded handkerchief to slip under the lenses before removing his glasses, covering his disfigurement from Emil. He was unable to stare up longer, his eyes were smarting.

  "How can one guess?" said Sammler. "Yesterday he said that it was his unconscious self that opened the wrong pipe."

  "Yes, he talks that way to me, too. But I've been eighteen years with the Gruners and know that character. He's very, very disturbed about the doctor."

  "Yes, I think he is. I agree. But that little machine… Like an ironing board with an egg beater. Are you a family man, Em-do you have children?"

  "Two. Grown up and graduated."

  "Do they love you?"

  "They act like it."

  "That's already a great deal."

  He was beginning to consider that he might not reach New York in time. Even Elya's request for clippings might delay him too long. But-one thing at a time. Then Wallace 's engine grew louder. The noise attacked one's skull. It gave Sammler a headache. The injured eye felt pressure. The air was parted. On one side nuisance, on the other a singular current, an insidious spring brightness.

  Blasting, shining, clear yellow, the color of a bird's bill, the Cessna made another, lower pass at the house. The trees threshed under it.

  "He's going to crash. He'll hit the roof next time."

  "I don't think he can buzz it any closer while snapping pictures," Emil said.

  "He must certainly be below the permissible point."

  The plane, rising, banking, grew smaller; you could hardly hear it now.

  "Wasn't he about to strike the chimney?"

  "It looked close, but only from our angle," said Emil.

  "They shouldn't let him fly."

  "Well, he's gone. Maybe that's it."

  "Shall we start?" said Sammler.

  "I'm supposed to pick up the cleaning woman at eleven-I think the phone has been ringing."

  "The cleaning woman? Shula's in the house. She will answer."

  "She's not," said Emil. "When I drove up I saw her in the road, walking along with her purse."

  "Going where?"

  "I wouldn't know. To the store, maybe. I'll get the phone."

  The call was for Sammler. It was Margotte.

  "Hello, Margotte. Well-?"

  "
We opened the lockers."

  "What did you find, what she said?"

  "Not exactly, Uncle. In the first locker was one of Shula's shopping bags, and in it there was only the usual stuff. Christian Science Monitors from way back, clippings, and some old copies of Life. Also a great deal of student-revolt literature. SDS. Dr. Lal was shocked. He was very upset."

  "Come, what about the second locker?"

  "Thank God! We found the manuscript there."

  "Intact?"

  "I think so. He's looking through it." She spoke away from the phone. "Are pages torn out? No, Uncle, he doesn't think so."

  "Oh, I am very glad. For him, and for myself. Even for Shula. But where is the copy she made on Widick's machine? She must have misplaced or lost that. But Dr. Lal must be delighted."

  "Oh, he is. He's just going to wait at the soda fountain. It's such a chaos in Grand Central."

  "I wish you had knocked at my door. You knew I had to get to town."

  "Dear Uncle Sammler, we thought of that, but there was no room in the car. Am I mistaken, or are you irritated? You sound annoyed. We could have dropped you at the station." What Sammler refrained from saying was that he and Lal might have dropped her, Margotte, at the station. Was he annoyed! But even now, with skull-pressure, eye-pangs, he did not want to be too hard on her. No. She had her own female vital aims. No sense of the vital aims of others. His tension now. "Govinda was so anxious to leave. He insisted. However, the trains are fast. Besides, I phoned the hospital and talked to Angela. Elya's condition is just the same."

  "I know. I've spoken to him."

  "Well, you see? And he has to have some tests, so you would only have to wait if you were here. Now I'm taking Dr. Lal home to lunch. There's so much he doesn't eat, and Grand Central is a madhouse. And it smells so of hot dogs. Because of him, I notice it now for the first time."

  "Of course. Home is better. By all means."

  "Angela talked to me in a very, mature way. She was sad, but she sounded so calm, and so aware." Margotte's kind and considerate views of people were terribly trying to Sammler. "She said that Elya was asking for you. He very much wishes to see you."

  "I might have been there now…"

  "Well, he's down below anyhow," she said. "So take your time. Have lunch with us."

  "I need to stop at the house. But no lunch."

  "You wouldn't be in the way. Govinda likes you so much. He admires you. Anyway, you are my family. We love you like a father. All of us. I know I am a pest to you. I was to Ussher, too. Still, we loved each other."

  "Well, well, Margotte. All right. Now let's hang up."

  "I know you want to get away. And you don't like long phone conversations. But Uncle, I'm insecure about my ability to interest a man like Dr. Lal on the mental level."

  "Nonsense, Margotte, don't be a fool. Don't get on the mental level. You charm him. He finds you exotic. Don't have long discussions. Let him do the talking."

  But Margotte went on talking. She was putting in more coins. There were bongs and chimes. He did not hang up. Neither did he listen.

  Further tests for Elya he took to be a tactic of the doctors. They protected their prestige by appearing to make real moves. But Elya himself was a doctor. He had lived by such gestures and had to submit to them now and without complaint. That certainly he would do. Now what of Elya's unfinished business? Before the vessel wall gave out did he really want to go on about Cracow? To talk about Uncle Hessid, who ground cornmeal and wore a derby and fancy vest? Sammler could recall no such individual. No. Elya with strong family feelings he could not gratify, wanted Sammler there to represent the family. His thin, lean presence, his small ruddy face, wrinkled on the one side. It was even more than piety for kinship which the age, acting through his children ("high-IQ moron, fucked-out eyes"), had leveled with derision and knocked flat. And Gruner called upon Sammler as more than an old uncle, one-eyed, growling peculiarly in Polish-Oxonian. He must have believed that he had some unusual power, magical perhaps, to affirm the human bond. What had he done to generate this belief? How had he induced it? By coming back from the dead, probably.

  Margotte had much to say. She did not notice his silence.

  By coming back, by preoccupation with the subject, the dying, the mystery of dying, the state of death. Also, by having been inside death. By having been given the shovel and told to dig. By digging beside his digging wife. By this digging, not speaking, he tried to convey something to her and fortify her. But as it had turned out, he had prepared her for death without sharing it. She was killed, not he. She had passed the course, and he had not. The hole deepened, the sand clay and stones of Poland, their birthplace, opened up. He had just been blinded, he had a stunned face, and he was unaware that blood was coming from him till they stripped and he saw it on his clothes. When they were as naked as children from the womb, and the hole was supposedly deep enough, the guns began to blast, and then came a different sound of soil. The thick fall of soil. A ton, two tons, thrown in. A sound of shovel-metal, gritting. Strangely exceptional, Mr. Sammler had come through the top of this. It seldom occurred to him to consider it an achievement. Where was the achievement? He had clawed his way out. If he had been at the bottom, he would have suffocated. If there had been another foot of dirt. Perhaps others had been buried alive in that ditch. There was no special merit, there was no wizardry. There was only suffocation escaped. And had the war lasted a few months more, he would have died like the rest. Not a Jew would have avoided death. As it was, he still had his consciousness, earthliness, human actuality-got up, breathed his earth gases in and out, drank his coffee, consumed his share of goods, ate his roll from Zabar's, put on certain airs-all human beings put on certain airs-took the bus to Forty-second Street as if he had an occupation, ran into a black pickpocket. In short, a living man. Or one who had been sent back again to the end of the line. Waiting for something. Assigned to figure out certain things, to condense, in short views, some essence of experience, and because of this having a certain wizardry ascribed to him. There was, in fact, unfinished business. But how did business finish? We entered in the middle of the thing and somehow became convinced that we must conclude it. How? And since he had lasted-survived-with a sick headache-he would not quibble over words-was there an assignment implicit? Was he meant to do something?

  "I never want to annoy Lal," said Margotte. "He's gentle and small. By the way, Uncle, is the cleaning woman there?"

  "Who? Cleaning?"

  "You say charwoman. So is that the char? I hear the vacuum running."

  "No, my dear, what you hear is our relative Wallace in his airplane. Don't ask me more. Well see each other later."

  He found his sodden shoes baking in the kitchen. Shula had set them on the open door of the electric oven and the toes were smoking. That, too! hen he had cooled them, he labored to put them on with the handle of a tablespoon. The recovery of the manuscript helped him to be patient with Shula. She did not actually step over the line. The usefulness of these shoes, however, was at an end. They were ready for the dustbin. Not even Shula herself would want to retrieve them. And the immediate problem was not shoes, he could get to New York without shoes. Emil had already gone to fetch the charwoman. Taxis were listed in the Yellow Pages, but Sammler did not know which company to call, nor how much it might cost. He had only four dollars. Not to embarrass the Gruners you had to tip fifty cents at least. There was also fare to the city. Longmouthed, silent, and with a hectic color, he tried to make the penny calculations. He saw himself, somewhere, eight cents short, trying to convince a policeman that he was not a panhandler. It would be better to wait. Perhaps Emil would meet Shula in the road, bringing her back with the char. Shula usually had money.

  But Emil returned with the Croatian woman alone, and when he had shown her the water damage, he put on his cap, and, behaving to Sammler like a chauffeur, not at all treating him like a poor relation, he opened the silver door.

  "Would you like the air conditioner
, Mr. Sammler?"

  "Thank you, Emil."

  Examining the sky, Emil said, "It looks as if Wallace has all his pictures. He must be on his way to Newark."

  "Yes, he's gone, thank God."

  "I know the doctor wants to see you." Sammler was already seated. "What's the matter with your shoes?"

  "I had trouble getting them on, and now I can't lace them. There's another pair at home. May we stop at the apartment?"

  "The doctor talks about you all the time."

  "Does he?"

  "He's an affectionate fellow. I don't want to badmouth Mrs. Gruner, but you know how she was."

  "Not demonstrative."

  Emil shut the door, and very correct, walked behind the car and let himself into the driver's seat. "Well, she was very organized," he said. "As lady of the house, first class. Like laid out with a ruler. Reserved. Fair. O. K. She ran the place like IBM-the gardener, the laundress, the cook, me. The doctor was grateful, being a kid from a rough neighborhood. She made him real Ivy. A gentleman." Emil backed the slow, silver high-bodied car, poor Elya's car, out of the drive. He gave Sammler the proper options of conversation or privacy. Sammler chose privacy and drew shut the glass panel.

  Mr. Sammler's root feeling (a prejudice, if you like) was that women with exceedingly skinny legs could not be loving wives or passionate mistresses. Especially if with such legs they also had bouffant hairstyles. Hilda had been an agreeable person, cheerful, amiable, high-pitched, even at times breezy. But strictly correct. Often the doctor would demonstratively embrace her and say, "The world's best wife. Oh! I love you, Hil." He would clasp her from the side and kiss her on the cheek. This was permitted. It was allowed under a new dispensation which acknowledged the high value of warmth and impulsiveness. Undoubtedly Elya's feelings were strong, unlike Hilda's. But impulsive? There was in his conduct a strong element of propaganda. It came to him, perhaps, from the American system as a whole and showed his submissiveness. Everyone, to everyone, had a way of making propaganda for the good. Democracy was propagandistic in its style. Conversation was often nothing but the repetition of liberal principles. But Elya had certainly been disappointed in his wife. Sammler hoped that he had love affairs. With a nurse, perhaps? Or a patient who had become a mistress? Sammler did not recommend this for everyone, but in Elya's case it would have been beneficial. But no, probably the doctor was respectable. And it's a doomed man that woos affection so much.