Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

by Saul Bellow

  Polly did not seem bothered by this. I thought her far too good for Cantabile. But then in every couple there is a contrast-gainer. I could see that he amused Polly, with her white skin, red hair, fine legs. That was why she was with him. He really amused her. For his part he pushed me to admire her. He also boasted about his wife’s education—what an achiever she was— and he showed me off to Polly. He was proud of us all. “Watch Charlie’s mouth,” he told Polly. “You’ll notice that it moves even when he isn’t talking. That’s because he’s thinking. He thinks all the time. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” He grabbed up a book, the biggest on the table. “Take this monster —The Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics—Jesus Christ, what the hell is that! Now Charlie tell us, what were you reading here?”

  “I was checking something about Origen of Alexandria. Ori-gen’s opinion was that the Bible could not be a collection of mere stories. Did Adam and Eve really hide under a tree while God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day? Did angels really climb up and down ladders? Did Satan bring Jesus to the top of a high mountain and tempt him? Obviously these tales must have a deeper meaning. What does it mean to say ‘God walked’? Does God have feet? This was where the thinkers began to take over, and—”

  “Enough, that’s enough. Now what’s this book say, The Triumph of the Therapeutic?”

  For reasons of my own I wasn’t unwilling to be tested in this way. I actually did read a great deal. Did I know what I was reading? We would see. I shut my eyes, reciting, “It says that psychotherapists may become the new spiritual leaders of mankind. A disaster. Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell. The same point in Knock by Jules Romains. Is hypochondria a creation of the medical profession? According to this author, when culture fails to deal with the feeling of emptiness and the panic to which man is disposed (and he does say ‘disposed’) other agents come forward to put us together with therapy, with glue, or slogans, or spit, or as that fellow Gumbein the art critic says, poor wretches are recycled on the couch. This view is even more pessimistic than the one held by Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority. A natural disposition to feelings of emptiness and panic is worse than that. Much worse. What it really means is that we human beings are insane. The last institution which controlled such insanity (on this view) was the Church—”

  He stopped me again. “Polly, you see what I mean. Now what’s this, Between Death and Rebirth?”

  “Steiner? A fascinating book about the soul’s journey past the gates of death. Different from Plato’s myth—”

  “Whoa, hold it,” said Cantabile, and he pointed out to Polly: “All you have to do is ask him a question and he turns on. Can you see this as an act in a night club? We could book him into Mr. Kelly’s.”

  Polly glanced past him at me with full and reddish-brown eyes and said, “He wouldn’t go for that.”

  “It depends how they sock it to him downtown today. Charlie, I had another idea on the way out here. We could tape you reading some of your essays and articles and rent the tapes to colleges and universities. You’d get a pretty nice little income out of that. Like that piece on Bobby Kennedy which I read at Leaven-worth, in Esquire. And the thing called ‘Homage to Harry Houdini.’ But not ‘Great Bores of the Modern World.’ I couldn’t read that at all.”

  “Well, don’t get ahead of yourself, Cantabile,” I said.

  I was perfectly aware that in business Chicago it was a true sign of love when people wanted to take you into money-making schemes. But I couldn’t lay hold of Cantabile in this present mood or get a navigational fix or reading of his spirit, which was streaming all over the place. He was a highly excited and, in that Goethean hospital, a sick citizen. I wasn’t perhaps in such great shape myself. It occurred to me that yesterday Cantabile had taken me up to a high place, not exactly to tempt me, but to sail away my fifty-dollar bills. Wasn’t he facing a challenge of the imagination now—I mean, how was he going to follow such an act? However, he seemed to feel that yesterday’s events had united us in a near-mystical bond. There were Greek words for this—philia, agape, and so on (I had heard a famous theologian, Tillich the Toiler, expound their various meanings, so that now I was permanently confused about them). What I mean was that the philia, at this particular moment in the career of mankind, expressed itself in American promotional ideas and commercial deals. To this, along the edges, I added my own peculiar embroidery. I elaborated people’s motives all too profusely.

  I looked at the clock. Renata wouldn’t be here for forty minutes yet. She would arrive fragrant painted fresh and even majestic in one of her large soft hats. I didn’t want Cantabile to meet her. For that matter I didn’t know that it was such a good idea for her to meet Cantabile. When she looked at a man who interested her she had a slow way of detaching her gaze from him. It didn’t mean much. It was only her upbringing. She was schooled in charm by her mama, the Señora. Though I suppose that if you are born with such handsome eyes you work out your own methods. In Renata’s method of womanly communication piety and fervor were important. The main point, however, was that Cantabile would see an old guy with a young chick and that he might try, as they say, to get leverage out of this.

  I want it to be clear, however, that I speak as a person who had lately received or experienced light. I don’t mean “The light.” I mean a kind of light-in-the-being, a thing difficult to be precise about, especially in an account like this, where so many cantankerous erroneous silly and delusive objects actions and phenomena are in the foreground. And this light, however it is to be described, was now a real element in me, like the breath of life itself. I had experienced it briefly, but it had lasted long enough to be convincing and also to cause an altogether unreasonable kind of joy. Furthermore, the hysterical, the grotesque about me, the abusive, the unjust, that madness in which I had often been a willing and active participant, the grieving, now had found a contrast. I say “now” but I knew long ago what this light was. Only I seemed to have forgotten that in the first decade of life I knew this light and even knew how to breathe it in. But this early talent or gift or inspiration, given up for the sake of maturity or realism (practicality, self-preservation, the fight for survival), was now edging back. Perhaps the vain nature of ordinary self-preservation had finally become too plain for denial. Preservation for what?

  For the moment Cantabile and Polly were not paying a great deal of attention to me. He was explaining to her how a convenient little corporation might be set up to protect my income. He spoke of “estate-planning,” with a one-sided grimace. In Spain working-class women give themselves a three-fingered prod in the cheek and twist their faces to denote the highest irony. Cantabile grimaced in the same way. It was a question of keeping assets from the enemy, Denise, and her lawyer, Cannibal Pinsker, and maybe even Judge Urbanovich himself.

  “My sources tell me the judge is in the lady’s corner. How do we know he isn’t on the take? There’s plenty of funny business at the crossroads. In Cook County is there anything else? Charlie, have you thought of making a move to the Cayman Islands? That’s the new Switzerland, you know. I wouldn’t put my dough in Swiss banks. After the Russians have gotten what they want out of us in this détente, they’ll make their move into Europe. And you know what’ll happen to the dough stashed in Switzerland—all that Vietnam dough and Iranian dough and Greek colonels’ and Arab oil dough. No, get yourself an air-conditioned condominium in the Caymans. Lay in a supply of underarm antiperspirant and live happy.”

  “And where’s the dough for this?” said Polly. “Has he got it?”

  “That I don’t know. But if he has no money why are they peeling his toes downtown? Without an anesthetic? I can put you onto a good thing, Charlie. Buy some contracts in commodity futures. I’ve cleaned up.”

  “On paper you have. If this fellow Stronson is straight,” Polly said.


  “What are you talking about—Stronson? A multimillionaire. Didn’t you see his big house in Kenilworth? The marketing degree from the Harvard Business School on his wall? Besides, he’s been trading for the Mafia and you know how those fellows resent being took. They alone would keep him in line. But he’s completely kosher. He has a seat on the Mid America Commodity Exchange. The twenty Gs I gave him five months ago he doubled for me. I’ll bring you his company’s literature. Anyway, Charlie only has to lift his hand to make a pile. Don’t forget he had a Broadway hit and a big box-office movie, once. Why not again? Look at all this paper lying around. These scripts and shit could be worth plenty. There’s probably a gold mine right here, you want to bet? For instance, I know that you and your pal Von Humboldt Fleisher once wrote a movie scenario together.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My researcher wife.”

  I laughed at this, quite loudly. A movie scenario!

  “You remember it?” said Cantabile.

  “Yes, I remember. How did your wife hear of it? From Kathleen. . . ?”

  “Mrs. Tigler in Nevada. Lucy is in Nevada now interviewing her. Has been for about a week, staying at this Mrs. Tigler’s dude ranch. She’s running it alone.”

  “Why, where’s Tigler, did he take off?”

  “For good, he took off. The guy is dead.”

  “Dead, is he? She’s a widow. Poor Kathleen. She’s got no luck, poor woman. I’m sorry about Kathleen.”

  “She’s sentimental about you, too. Lucy told her that I knew you, and she sent you regards. You got any message for her? Lucy and I talk on the telephone every day.”

  “How did Tigler die?”

  “Shot in a hunting accident.”

  “That figures. He was a sporting man. Used to be a cowboy.”

  “And a pain in the ass?” said Cantabile.

  “Could be.”

  “You knew him personally, then. Not much regret, hey? All you say is poor Kathleen. Now what about this movie that you and Fleisher wrote?”

  “Oh yes, tell us,” said Polly. “What was all that about? Two minds like yours, collaborating—wow!”

  “It was piffle. Nothing to it. At Princeton we diverted ourselves that way. Simply horseplay.”

  “Haven’t you got a copy of it? You might be the last to know, commercially, what there was in it,” said Cantabile.

  “Commercially? The Hollywood big-money days are over. No more of those fancy prices.”

  “That side of it you can leave to me,” said Cantabile. “If we have a real property, I’ll know how to promote it—director, star, financing, the whole ball of wax. You have a track record, don’t forget, and Fleisher’s name hasn’t been completely forgotten yet. We’ll get Lucy’s thesis published, and that’ll revive it.”

  “But what was the story?” said Polly, bent-nosed, fragrant, idling her legs.

  “I have to shave. I need my lunch. I have to go to court. I’m expecting a friend from California.”

  “Who’s that?” said Cantabile.

  “His name is Pierre Thaxter, and we edit a journal together called The Ark. It’s really none of your business anyway. . . .”

  But of course it was his business, because he was a demon, an agent of distraction. His job was to make noise and to deflect and misdirect and send me foundering into bogs.

  “Well, tell us a little about the movie,” said Cantabile.

  “I’ll try. Just to see how good my memory is,” I said. “The thing started with Amundsen the polar explorer and Umberto Nobile. In Mussolini’s time Nobile was an Air Force officer, an engineer, a dirigible commander, a brave man. In the Twenties he and Amundsen headed an expedition over the North Pole, and flew from Norway to Seattle. But they were rivals and came to hate each other. On the next expedition, with Mussolini’s backing, Nobile went it alone. Only his lighter-than-air ship crashed in the Arctic and his crew were scattered over the ice floes. When Amundsen heard of this, he said, ‘My comrade Umberto Nobile’ —whom he detested, mind you—’is down at sea. I shall rescue him.’ So he chartered a French plane and filled it with equipment. The pilot warned him it was overloaded and wouldn’t fly. Like Sir Patrick Spens, I remember saying to Humboldt.”

  “What Spens?”

  “Just a poem,” Polly told Cantabile. “And Amundsen was the fellow who beat the Scott expedition to the South Pole.”

  Pleased to have an educated dolly to brief him, Cantabile took the patrician attitude that drudges and bookworms would give him what trifling historical information he needed.

  “The French pilot warned him, but Amundsen said, ‘Don’t teach me how to run a rescue expedition.’ So the plane rose from the runway but it fell into the sea. Everyone was killed.”

  “Is that the picture? But what about the guys on the ice?”

  “The men on the ice sent out radio messages and these were picked up by the Russians. An icebreaker named the Krassin was sent to find them. It cruised among the floes and rescued two men, an Italian and a Swede. There had been a third survivor— where was he? The explanations given were fishy and the Italian was suspected of cannibalism. The Russian doctor aboard the Krassin pumped his stomach and under the miscroscope he identified human tissue. Well, there was a frightful scandal. A jar containing the contents of this fellow’s stomach was put on display in Red Square with a huge sign: “This is how fascist imperialist capitalist dogs devour each other. Only the proletariat knows morality brotherhood and self-sacrifice!”

  “What the hell kind of movie would this make,” said Cantabile. “So far it’s a real dumdum idea.”

  “I told you.”

  “Yes, but now you’re sore at me, and you’re glaring. You think I’m a moron, in your department. I’m not artistic and I’m unfit to have an opinion.”

  “This is only background,” I said. “The picture, as Humboldt and I worked it out, opened in a Sicilian village. The cannibal, whom Humboldt and I called Signor Caldofreddo, is now a kindly old man and sells ice cream, the kids love him, he has an only daughter who’s a beauty and a darling. Here nobody remembers the Nobile expedition. But a Danish journalist turns up to interview the old guy. He’s writing a book about the Krassin rescue. The old man meets him in secret and says, ‘Leave me alone. I’ve been a vegetarian for fifty years. I churn ice cream. I am an old man. Don’t disgrace me now. Find a different subject. Life is full of hysterical situations. You don’t need mine. Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace.’ “

  “So the Amundsen and Nobile part of it is worked around this?” said Polly.

  “Humboldt admired Preston Sturges. He loved The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and also The Great McGinty, with Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, and Humboldt’s idea was to work in Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and even the Pope.”

  “How the Pope?” said Cantabile.

  “The Pope gave Nobile a large cross to drop on the North Pole. And we saw the movie as a vaudeville and farce but with elements of Oedipus at Colonus in it. Violent spectacular sinners in old age acquire magical properties, and when they come to die they have the power to curse and to bless.”

  “If it’s supposed to be funny, leave the Pope out of it,” said Cantabile.

  “Backed into a corner, the old Caldofreddo flares up. He makes an attempt on the journalist’s life. He pries loose a boulder on a mountainside. But then he has a change of heart and throws himself on the rock and fights it till the man’s car passes in the road below. After this Caldofreddo blows his icecream vendor’s bugle in the village square, he summons everyone and makes a public confession to the townspeople. Weeping, he tells them that he’s a cannibal. . . .”

  “Which punctures his daughter’s romance, I suppose,” said Polly.

  “Just the reverse,” I said. “The villagers hold a public hearing. The daughter’s young man says, ‘Think of what our ancestors ate. As apes, as lower animals, as fishes. Think what animals have eaten since the beginning of time. And we owe our existence to them.’ “<
br />
  “No, it doesn’t sound like a winner to me,” said Cantabile.

  I said it was time to shave, and they both accompanied me to the bathroom.

  “No,” Cantabile said again. “I don’t think it’s any good. But have you got a copy of this thing?”

  I had started the electric shaver but Cantabile took it from me. He said to Polly, “Don’t sit down. Go fix that egg for Charlie’s lunch. Go on, now, go to the kitchen.” Then he said, “I’ll shave first. I don’t like to use the machine when it’s heated up. The temperature of the other guy upsets me.” He ran the buzzing shining machine up and down, pulling at his skin and twisting his face. “She’ll fix your lunch. Pretty, isn’t she! What do you make of her, Charlie?”

  “A stunning girl. Signs of intelligence, too. I see by the left hand that she’s married.”

  “Yes, to a drip who makes TV commercials. He’s a hard worker. Never at home. I see a lot of Polly. Every morning when Lucy leaves for her job at Mundelein, Polly arrives and gets in bed with me. I see this makes a bad impression on you. But don’t put on with me, you lit up when you saw her, and you’ve been trying to make a hit with her, showing off. That extra little try. You don’t have it when you’re among men.”