Mr. Sammler Planet

by Saul Bellow

  "What a stupid thing!"

  Eisen held his green baize bag. It contained his sculptures or medallions. Those Dead Sea pieces-iron pyrites, or whatever they were.

  "Let him give up the camera. Why doesn't he give it to him?" said Sammler.

  "But how do we prevail upon him?" said Eisen in a tone of discussion.

  "Get a policeman," Sammler said. He would have liked to say, too, "Stop this smiling."

  "But I don't know English."

  "Then help the boy."

  "You help him, Father-in-law. I am a foreigner and a cripple. You're older, true. But I just got to this country."

  Sammler said to the pickpocket, "Let go. Let him go."

  The man's large face turned. New York was reflected in the lenses, under the stiff curves of the homburg. Perhaps he recognized Sammler. But nothing was said.

  "Give him the camera, Feffer. Hand it over," Sammler said. Feffer, with a stare of shock and appeal, looked as if he expected soon to lose consciousness. He did not bring down his arm.

  "I say let him have that stupid thing. He wants the film. Don't be an idiot " Feffer may have been holding out in expectation of a squad car, waiting for the police to save him. It was hard otherwise to explain his resistance. Considering the Negro's strength-his crouching, squeezing, intense animal pressing-power, the terrific swelling of the neck and the tightness of the buttocks as he rose on his toes. In straining alligator shoes! In fawn-colored trousers! With a belt that matched his necktie-a crimson belt! How consciousness was lashed by such a fact!

  "Eisen!" said Sammler, furious.

  "Yes, Father-in-law."

  "I ask you to do something."

  "Let them do something." He motioned with the baize bag to the bystanders. "I only came forty-eight hours ago."

  Again Mr. Sammler turned to the crowd, staring hard. Wouldn't anyone help? So even now-now, still!-one believed in such things as help. Where people were, help might be. It was an instinct and a reflex. (An unexasperated hope?) So, briefly examining faces, passing from face to face to face among the people along the curb-red, pale, swarthy, lined taut or soft, grim or adream, eyes bald-blue, iodine-reddish, coal-seam black-how strange a quality their inaction had. They were expecting gratification, oh! at last! of teased, cheated, famished needs. Someone was going to get it! Yes. And the black faces? A similar desire. Another side. But the same. Though there was nothing to hear, Sammler had the sense that something was barking away. Then it struck him that what united everybody was a beatitude of presence. As if it were-yes-blessed are the present. They are here and not here. They are present while absent. So they were waiting in that ecstatic state. What a supreme privilege! And there was only Eisen to break up the fight. Which was, after all, an odd sort of fight. Sammler did not believe that the black man would choke Feffer into unconsciousness; he would only go on squeezing, screwing the collar tighter until Feffer surrendered the Minox. Of course, there was always a chance that he might strike him, pull a knife, stab him. But there was something worse here than this event itself, namely, the feeling that stole over Sammler.

  It was a feeling of horror and grew in strength, grew and grew. What was it? How was it to be put? He was a man who had come back. He had rejoined life. He was near to others. But in some essential way he was also companionless. He was old. He lacked physical force. He knew what to do, but had no power to execute it. He had to turn to someone else-to an Eisen! a man himself very far out on another track, orbiting a very different foreign center. Sammler was powerless. To be so powerless was death. And suddenly he saw himself not so much standing as strangely leaning, as reclining, and peculiarly in profile, and as a past person. That was not himself. It was someone-and this struck him-poor in spirit. Someone between the human and not-human states, between content and emptiness, between full and void, meaning and not-meaning, between this world and no world. Flying, freed from gravitation, light with release and dread, doubting his destination, fearing there was nothing to receive him.

  "Eisen, separate them," he said. "He's been choked enough. The police will come, and then there will be arrests. And I must go. To stand here is crazy. Please. Just take the camera. Take it. That will stop this."

  Then, handsome Eisen, shrugging, grinning, making a crooked movement of his shoulders, working them free from the tight denim, stepped away from Sammler as if he were doing an amusing thing at his special request. He drew up the sleeve of his right arm. The dark hairs were thick. Then shortening his grip on the cords of the baize bag he swung it very wide, swung with full force and struck the pickpocket on the side of the face. It was a hard blow. The glasses flew. The hat. Feffer was not immediately freed. The man seemed to rest on him. Obviously stunned. Eisen was a laborer, a foundry worker. He had the strength not only of his trade but also of madness. There was something limitless, unbounded, about the way he squared off, took the man's measure, a kind of sturdy viciousness. Everything went into that blow, discipline, murderousness, everything. What have I done! This is much worse! This is the worst thing yet. Sammler thought Eisen had crushed the man's face. And now he was just about to hit him again, with his medallions. The black man took his hands from Feffer and was turning. His lips came away from his teeth. Eisen had gashed his skin and the cheek was bleeding and swelling. Eisen clinked his weights from his wrist, spread his legs. "He'll kill that cocksucker!" someone in the crowd said.

  "Don't hit him, Eisen. I never said that. I tell you no!" said Sammler.

  But the bag of weights was speeding from the other side, very wide but accurate. It struck more heavily than before and knocked the man down. He did not drop. He lowered himself as though he had decided to lie in the street. The blood ran in points on his cheek. The terrible metal had cut him through the baize.

  Eisen now heaved his weapon back over his shoulder, prepared to slam it down on the man's skull. Sammler seized his arm and twisted him away. "You'll murder him. Do you want to beat out his brains?"

  "You said, Father-in-law!"

  They quarreled in Russian before the crowd.

  "You said I had to do something. You said you had to go. I must do something. So I did."

  I didn't say hit him with these damned irons. I didn't say to hit him at all. You're crazy, Eisen, crazy enough to murder him."

  The pickpocket had tried to brace himself on his elbows. His body now rested on his doubled arms. He bled thickly on the asphalt.

  "I am horrified!" Sammler said.

  Eisen, still handsome, curly, still with the smile, though now panting, and the peculiar set of his toeless feet, seemed amused at Sammler's ludicrous inconsistency. He said, "You can't hit a man like that just once. When you hit him, you must really hit him. Otherwise he'll kill you. You know. We both fought in the war. You were a Partisan. You had a gun. So don't you know?" His laughter, his logic, laughing and reasoning at Sammler's absurdities, made him repeat until he stuttered. "If in-in. No? If out-out. Yes? No? So answer."

  It was the reasoning that sank Sammler's heart completely. "Where is Feffer?" he said, and turned away.

  Feffer, resting his forehead against the bus, was getting back his breath. Putting it on, no doubt. To Sammler this exaggeration was revolting.

  Damn these-these occasions! he was thinking. Damn them, it was IIya who needed him. It was only IIya he wanted to see. To whom there was something to say. Here there was nothing to say.

  Now he heard someone ask, "Where are the cops?"

  "Busy. On the take. Writing tickets, someplace. Those shits. When you need 'em."

  "There's plenty of blood. They better bring an ambulance."

  The light upon the dull kinks, the porous carbon-cake of the man's head, still dropping blood, showed his eye shut. But he wished to get to his feet. He made efforts.

  Eisen said to Sammler, "This is the man, isn't it? The man you told about who followed you? Who showed you his jinjik?"

  "Get away from me, Eisen."

  "What should I do?"

 
; "Go away. Get away from here. You're in trouble," said Sammler. He spoke to Feffer, "What have you to say now?"

  "I caught him in the act. Please wait awhile, he hurt my throat."

  "Nonsense, don't put on agony with me. This is the man. He's badly hurt."

  "I swear he was picking the purse, and I got two shots of him."

  "Did you, now!"

  "You seem angry, sir. Why are you so angry with me?"

  Sammler now saw the squad car, the whirling roof light, and the policemen coming out at a saunter, pushing away the crowd. Emil drew Sammler away to the side of the bus and said, "You don't want any of this. We have to go."

  "Yes, Emil, of course."

  They crossed the street. Avoid getting mixed up with the police. They might detain him for hours. He should never have stopped at the fiat. He should have gone directly to the hospital.

  "I think I would like to sit in the front with you, Emil."

  "Why, sure. Are you all shook up?" He helped him In. Emirs own hand was shaking, and Sammler himself had trembling arms and legs. An extraordinary weakness came up the legs from beneath.

  The great engine ignited. Coolness poured from the air conditioner. Then the Rolls entered traffic.

  "What was all that about?"

  "I wish I knew," said Sammler.

  "Who was that black character?"

  "Poor man, I can't really say who he is."

  "He took two mean wallops, there."

  "Eisen is brutal."

  "What did he have in that bag?"

  "Pieces of metal. I feel responsible, Emil, because I appealed to Eisen, because I wanted so badly to get to Dr. Gruner."

  "Well, maybe the guy has a thick skull. I guess you never saw anybody hitting to kill. You want to lie down in back for ten minutes? I can stop."

  "Do I look sick? No, Emil. But I think I will shut my eyes. " Sammler was sick with rage at Eisen. The black man? The black man was a megalomaniac. But there was a certain-a certain princeliness. The clothing, the shades, the sumptuous colors, the barbarous-majestical manner. He was probably a mad spirit. But mad with an idea of noblesse. And how much Sammler sympathized with him-how much he would have done to prevent such atrocious blows! How red the blood was, and how thick-and how terrible those crusted, spiny lumps of metal were! And Eisen? He counted as a war victim, even though he might anyhow have been mad. But he belonged in the mental hospital. A homicidal maniac. If only, thought Sammler, Shula and Eisen had been a little less crazy. Just a little less. They would have gone on playing casino in Haifa, those two cuckoos, in their whitewashed Mediterranean cage. For they used to get the cards out when they weren't scandalizing the neighborhood with their screams and slaps. But no. Such individuals had the right to be considered normal. They had liberty of movement, on top of it.. They had passports, tickets. So then, poor Eisen flew across with his works. Poor soul, poor dog-laughing Eisen.

  They all had such fun! Wallace, Feffer, Eisen, Bruch, too, and Angela. They laughed so much. Dear brethren, let us all be human together. Let us all be in the great fun fair, and do this droll mortality with one another. Be entertainers of your near and dear. Treasure hunts, flying circuses, comical thefts, medallions, wigs and saris, beards. Charity, all of it, sheer charity, when you consider the state of things, the blindness of the living. It is fearful! Not to be borne! Intolerable! Let us divert each other while we live!

  "I'll park here and go up with you," said Emil. "They can give me a ticket if they like."

  "The doctor is not back?" said Emil.

  Obviously not. Angela sat alone in the hospital room.

  "Then O. K. I'll be standing by if you want me."

  "I seem to be smoking three packs a day. I'm out of cigarettes, Emil. I can't even concentrate on a newspaper."

  "Benson and Hedges, right?"

  When he left she said, "I don't like to send an elderly elderly person on errands."

  Sammler made no reply. The Augustus John hat was in his hand. He didn't lay it on the clean newmade bed.

  "Emil is part of Daddy's gang. They're very attached."

  "What's happening?"

  "I wish I knew. He was taken down for tests, but two hours is a long time. I assume Dr. Cosbie knows his stuff. I don't like the man. I don't go for the magnolia charm. He acts as if he ran a military academy in the South. But I'm not one of the boys. Drill is not my dish. He's cross, cold, and repulsive. One of those good-looking men who don't realize that women dislike them. Take the straight chair, Uncle. You like those better. I have to talk to you."

  Sammler drew the seat under him, and out of the light-he couldn't bear to face windows through which nothing but blue sky was visible. He saw trouble. Himself aroused, he was sensitive to all the signs. Another woman would have had a hectic color; Angela was candle-white. The amusing husky voice, copying Tallulah's perhaps, fell short of amusement. Her throat was prominent, it looked swollen, and the light brown brows, penciled out like wings, kept rising. She tried at times to give a look of appeal. She was angry, too. It was heavy going. Even wrinkling her forehead seemed difficult. Something was obstructed. With a low necked satin blouse she wore a miniskirt. No, Sammler changed that, it was a microskirt, a band of green across the things. The frosted hair was pulled back tightly; the skin was full of female qualities (the hormones). On her cheeks large gold earrings lay. A big, shapely woman childishly dressed, erotically playing the kid, she was not likely to be taken for a boy. Sitting near her, Sammler could not smell the usual Arabian musk. Instead her female effluence was very strong, a salt odor, similar to tears or tidewater, something from within the woman. Elya's words had taken effect strongly-his "Too much sex." Even the white lipstick suggested perversion. But this was curiously without prejudice. Sammler felt no prejudice about perversion, about sexual matters. Nothing. It was too late in the day for that. Too much heat was on. Much larger powers of distortion were at work. The smash of Eisen's medallions on the pickpocket's face was still with Sammler. His own nerves, in the elementary way of nerves connected this with the crushing of his eye under the rifle butt thirty years ago. The sensations of choking and falling-one could live through that again. If it was worth living through. He waited for the rubber bump of Elya's wheeled stretcher against the door.

  "Has Wallace shown up? He was supposed to land at Newark."

  "He didn't. I've got to tell you about Brother. When did you see him? I heard from Margotte about the pipes."

  "In the flesh? I saw him last night. And this morning in the sky."

  "Oh, so you watched him looping around, that idiot."

  "Has he had an accident?"

  "Oh, don't worry, he isn't hurt. I wish he had given himself a good bang, but he's like a Hollywood stunt man."

  "He hasn't crashed, has he?"

  "What do you think! It's already an item on the radio. He scraped his wheels off on a house."

  "Dear Lord! Did he have to parachute? Was it your house?"

  "He made a crash landing. It was some big place in Westchester. God alone knows why that creep should be out buzzing houses when we're in this predicament. It's enough to drive me mad."

  "You don't mean that Elya heard this on the radio!"

  "No, he didn't hear. He was already going down in the elevator."

  "You say Wallace isn't hurt?"

  "Wallace is in seventh heaven. Overjoyed. He had to have stitches in his cheek."

  "I see. He'll have a scar. All this is terrible!"

  "You have too much sympathy for him."

  "I do admit that all this feeling sorry for people can be wearing. I also am provoked by him."

  "You should be. They really ought to put my kid brother away. Lock him up in an asylum. You should have heard him babbling."

  "Then you've spoken to him?"

  "He had some guy to describe the beautiful landing. Then he took the phone in person. Something terrific. As if he had reached the North Pole by bicycle. You know we'll be sued for damages to the house. The pl
ane is wrecked. Civil Aeronautics will take away his license. I wish they'd take him away, too. But he was very high. He said, 'Shouldn't we tell Dad?'"

  "No!"

  "Yes," said Angela. She was furious. With Dr. Cosbie, with Wallace, with Widick, Horricker. And she was bitter with Sammler, too. And he himself was far from normal. Far! The injured black man. The blood. And now, confronted by all that superfeminity, sensuality, he saw everything with heightened clarity. As he had seen Riverside Drive, wickedly illuminated, after watching the purse being picked on, the bus. That was how he was seeing now. To see was delicious. Oh, of course! An extreme pleasure! The sun may shine, and be a blessing, but sometimes shows the fury of the world. Brightness like this, the vividness of everything, also dismayed him. The soft clearness of Angela's face, the effort of her brows-the full mixture of fineness and rankness he saw there. And the sun was squarely at the window. The streaked glass ran with light like honey. A barrage of sweetness and intolerable brightness was laid down. Sammler did not really want to experience this. It all rose against him, too dizzy, too turbulent.

  "I can see that you and Elya went on talking about that event."

  "He won't let it alone. It's cruel. Both to himself and to me. I can't stop him."

  "What is there for you to do but give in? He's the one with the thing to do. There should be no arguments. Perhaps young Mr. Horricker should come up. Why doesn't he come? Show that he doesn't take it too much to heart. Does he, by the way?"

  "He says so."

  "Maybe he loves you."

  "Him? Who knows. But I wouldn't ask him to come. That would be using Daddy's illness."

  "You don't want him back?"

  "Want him? Maybe. I'm not sure."

  Was there a successor in view? Human attachments being so light, there were probably lists of alternates, preconscious reserves-men met in the park while walking the dog; people one had chatted with at the Museum of Modern Art; this fellow with the sideburns; that one with dark sexy eyes; the person with the child in a sanitarium, the wife with multiple sclerosis. To go with quantities of ideas and purposes there were quantities of people. And all this came from Angela's conversation. He heard and remembered everything, every drab fact, every crimson touch. He didn't want to listen, but she told him things. He had no wish to remember, but he remembered it all. And Angela really was a beauty. She was big, but a beauty, a healthy young woman. Healthy young women have their needs. Her legs were-her thighs nearly all shown down from the green ribbon of skirt-she was, beautiful. Horricker would suffer, knowing he had lost her. Sammler was still thinking things through. Tired, dizzy, despairing, he still thought. Still in touch. With reality, that is.