Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

by Saul Bellow

  VIII.

  The terrible trip over, Corcoran comes back to New York and publishes his book. It is a great success. His wife leaves him and sues for divorce. She knows she is not the heroine of those tender scenes. Laverne is outraged when she discovers that he repeated the same trip, sacred to her, with Hepzibah. She can never, she says, love a man capable of such a betrayal. To make love with another woman among those flowers, by moonlight! She knew he was a married man. That, she was willing to tolerate. But not this, not the breaking of the faith. She never wants to see him again.

  He is therefore alone with his success, and his success is enormous. You know what that means....

  “Charles, here is my gift to you. It is worth a hundred times more than the check I put through. A picture like this should gross millions and fill Third Avenue with queues for a year. Insist on a box-office percentage.

  “You will make a good script of this outline if you will remember me as I kept remembering you in plotting this out. You took my personality and exploited it in writing your Trench. I have borrowed from you to create this Corcoran. Don’t allow the caricatures to get out of hand. Let me call your attention to the opinion of Blake on this subject. ‘Fun I love,’ he says, ‘but too much Fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than Fun, & Happiness is better than Mirth. I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination &: Vision. . . . The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule & Deformity, & by these I shall not regulate my proportions.” “

  Humboldt added a few sentences more. “I have explained why I wrote such a Treatment. I wasn’t really strong enough to bear the great burdens. I haven’t made it here, Charlie. Not to be guilty of a final failure of taste, I will avoid the heavy declaration. Let’s say I have a leg already over the last stile and I look back and see you far back laboring still in fields of ridicule.

  “Help my Uncle Waldemar all you can. Be sure that if there is a hereafter I will be pulling for you. Before you sit down to work at this scenario play a few sides of The Magic Flute on the phonograph, or read The Tempest. Or E. T. A. Hoffmann. You are lazy, disgraceful, tougher than you think but not yet a dead loss. In part you are humanly okay. We are supposed to do something for our kind. Don’t get frenzied about money. Overcome your greed. Better luck with women. Last of all— remember: we are not natural beings but supernatural beings.

  Lovingly, Humboldt”

  twenty-nine

  So now I know why we missed the Scala,” said Renata. “We had tickets for tonight. All that glow—that gorgeous performance of The Barber of Seville—a chance to be part of the greatest musical audience in Europe! And we sacrificed it. And for what? To go to Coney Island. Coming back with what? A goofy outline. I could laugh about it,” she said. In fact she was laughing. She was in a good humor and had seldom been more beautiful, the dark hair drawn back and secured at the top, giving a sense—well, a sense of rescue, silken and miraculous. The dark hues with the red suited Renata best. “You don’t mind missing out on the Scala. In spite of all your credentials you don’t really care much for culture. Deep down, you’re from Chicago after all.”

  “Let me make it up to you. What’s at the Met tonight?”

  “No, it’s Wagner, and that “Liebestod” drags me. Actually, as everybody is talking about it, let’s see if we can get in to see Deep Throat. All right, I can see you getting ready to make a remark about sex films. Don’t do it. I’ll tell you what your attitude is—When it’s done it’s fun, but when it’s seen it’s unclean. And remember that your wisecracks show no respect for me. First I do things for you, and then I become a woman of a certain class.”

  Still, she was in good heart, chatty and highly affectionate. We were lunching at the Oak Room, far from the beans and wieners of the nursing home. We should have given those two old geezers a treat and taken them out. At lunch Menasha might have told me much about my mother. She died when I was an adolescent and I longed to hear her described by a mature man, if such Menasha was. She had come to be a sacred person. Julius always insisted that he couldn’t remember her at all. He had his doubts about my memory altogether. Why such keenness (approaching hysteria) for the past? Clinically speaking, I guess the problem was hysteria. Philosophically, I came out better. Plato links recollection with love. But I couldn’t ask Renata to creep along with two old boys to some seafood joint on the boardwalk and spend a whole afternoon helping them to read the menu and to deal with clams, wiping butter from their pants, looking away when they popped out their detachable bridges, just so I could discuss my mother. To her it was odd that an elderly fellow like me should be so eager to hear reminiscences of his mother. Contrast with these very old guys might make me look a bit younger, still it was also possible that she would lump us all together in her irritation. Thus Menasha and Waldemar were deprived of a treat.

  In the Oak Room she ordered Beluga caviar. She said it was her reward for taking the subway. “And after that,” she told the waiter, “lobster salad. For dessert, the profiterole. Mr. Citrine will have the omelette fines-herbes. I’ll let him order the wine.” And so I did, having been told what she wanted. I commanded a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. When the waiter left, Renata said, “I notice that your eye goes from right to left as you read the menu. There is no reason for the poor-boy bit. You can always make money, piles of it. Especially if you team up with me, I promise we’ll be Lord and Lady Citrine. I know the visit to Coney Island has made you downhearted. So I’ll give you a blessing to count. Look around this dining room and look at the women—see what kind of dogs important brokers, corporation executives, and big-time lawyers get stuck with. Then compare.”

  “You are certainly right. My heart bleeds for all parties.”

  The wine waiter came and made the usual phony passes, showed the label, and ducked down with his corkscrew. He then poured some wine for me to taste, and harassed me with perfunctory courtesies that had to be acknowledged.

  “Still, coming to New York was right, I now agree,” she said. “Your mission here is accomplished, and that’s all to the good because it’s about time your life was set on a real basis and you cleared away a few tons of rubbish. Your sentiments and deep feelings may do you credit, but you’re like a mandolin-player. You tickle every note ten times. It’s cute, but a little goes a long way. Were you about to say something?”

  “Yes, the strangeness of life on this earth is very oppressive.”

  “You’re always saying ‘on this earth.’ It gives me a creepy feeling. This old Professor Scheldt, the father of your pussycat Doris, has filled you up with his esoteric higher worlds and when you talk to me about this I feel we’re both going bonkers: knowledge that doesn’t need a brain, hearing without real ears, sight without eyes, the dead are with us, the soul leaves the body when we sleep. Do you believe all this stuff?”

  “I take it seriously enough to examine it. As to the soul leaving the body when we sleep, my mother absolutely believed that. She told me so when I was a kid. I find nothing strange in that. Only my head-culture opposes it. My hunch is that Mother was right. This can’t lead me into oddity, I already am in oddity. People as ingenious, as fertile in wishes as I am, and also my wonderful betters, have gone to their death. And what is this death? Again, nessuno sa. But ignorance of death is destroying us. And this is the field of ridicule in which Humboldt sees me still laboring. No honorable person can refuse to lend his mind, to give his time, to devote his soul to this problem of problems. Death now has no serious challenge from science or from philosophy or religion or art....”

  “So you think crank theories are the best bet?”

  I muttered something to myself, for she had heard this quotation from Samuel Daniel before, and her mandolin-playing figure prevented me from repeating it aloud. It was, “While timorous knowledge stands considering, audacious ignorance hath done the deed.” My t
hought was that life on this earth was actually everything else as well, provided that we learned how to apprehend it. But, not knowing, we were oppressed to the point of heartbreak. My heart was breaking all the time, and I was sick and tired of it.

  Renata said, “Really, what do I care—worship as you please is American and fundamental. It’s just that when you open your eyes there’s a sort of gloony gleam in them. That’s a made-up word, gloony. I loved it, by the way, when Humboldt said you were a promissory nut. I just loved that.”

  For my part, I loved Renata’s cheerfulness. Her roughness and frankness were infinitely better than her loving-pious bit. I had never bought that—never. But her cheerfulness as she laid caviar, chopped egg, and onion on Melba toast for me gave me wonderful extravagant comfort. “Only,” she went on, “you’ve got to stop twittering like a ten-year-old girl. And now let’s take this Humboldt thing straight on. He thought he was leaving you a valuable property. Poor character. What a gas! Who’d buy such a story? What’s it got? You’d have to do everything twice, first with the girl and then with the wife. It would drive an audience nuts. Producers are looking to go beyond Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Godfather. Murder on an El train. Naked lovers who bounce up and down when machine-gun slugs tear into their bodies. Dudes on massage tables who get bullets straight through their eyeglasses.” Ruthless, perfectly good-natured Renata laughed, sipping Pouilly-Fuissé, aware of how I admired her throat and the feminine subtlety of its white rings (here the veil of Maya was as vivid as ever). “Well, isn’t that it, Charles? And how does Humboldt compete? He dreamed about having magic with his public. But you didn’t have it either. Without your director, Trenck could never have made a big box office. You told me so yourself. What did you get for those Trenck movie rights?”

  “The price was three hundred thousand. The producer took half, the agent took ten percent, the government took sixty percent of the rest, I put fifty into the house in Kenwood which now belongs to Denise. . . .” Renata’s face, when I recited figures and percentages, was wonderfully at peace. “That’s how my commercial success breaks down,” I said. “And I would never have been capable of doing it on my own, I agree. It was all Harold Lampton and Kermit Bloomgarden. As for Humboldt he was not the first man to go down trying to combine worldly success with poetic integrity, blasted with poetic fire, as Swift says, and consequently unfit for Church or Law or State. But he thought of me, Renata. His scenario gives his opinion of me—foolishness, intricacy, wasted subtlety, a loving heart, some kind of disorganized genius, a certain elegance of construction. His legacy is also his affectionate opinion of me. And he did his very best. It was an act of love—”

  “Charlie, look, they’re bringing you the telephone,” said Renata. “It’s terrific!”

  “You’re Mr. Citrine?” said the waiter.

  “Yes.”

  He plugged in the instrument and I spoke to Chicago. The call was from Alec Szathmar. “Charlie, you’re in the Oak Room?” he said.

  “I am.”

  He laughed with excitement. We two who had sparred in the alley with boxing gloves as children hitting each other in the face until we were winded and dazed were now men, and had risen in the world. I was lunching elegantly in New York; he was phoning me from a paneled office on La Salle Street. Unfortunately, the messages he gave me did not suit the plush occasion. Or did it? “Urbanovich is going along with Denise and Pinsker. The court says you must post a bond. The figure is two hundred thousand dollars. This is what happens when you ignore my advice. I told you to hide some money in Switzerland. No, you had to be aboveboard. You weren’t going to do anything gross. That’s the kind of snobbery that does you in. You want austerity? Well, you’re two hundred grand closer to it than you were yesterday.”

  A slight echo told me that he was using an amplifier. My replies were heard on the squawk box in his office. This meant that his secretary, Tulip, was listening. Because of the affectionate interest this woman took in my doings, Szathmar, always the showman, sometimes invited her to listen in on our conversations. She was a fine woman, somewhat pale and heavy, and carried herself in the sad high-hearted style of the old West Side. She was devoted to Szathmar, whose weaknesses she knew and forgave. Only Szathmar himself was conscious of no weaknesses. “What will you do for dough, Charlie?” he said.

  The first thing to do was to conceal the facts from Renata.

  “There’s no immediate problem. I’ve got a small balance with you, still, haven’t I?”

  “We agreed that I would repay the condominium loan in five annual installments, and you’ve already gotten this year’s payment. I suppose the decades of free legal advice I gave you don’t count for a thing.”

  “You also put me on to Tomchek and Srole.”

  “The finest domestic-relations people in Chicago. They couldn’t work with you. No one could.”

  Renata passed me another bit of Melba toast with caviar, grated egg, onion, and sour cream.

  “Now I’ve given you message number one,” said Szathmar. “Message number two is to call your brother in Texas. His wife has been trying to reach you. Nothing has happened. Don’t lose your head. Julius is going to have open-heart surgery. Your sister-in-law says they’re going to transplant a few arteries for the angina. She thought his only brother should know. They’re going up to Houston for the operation.”

  “Your face is completely changed, what is it?” said Renata as I put down the telephone.

  “My brother is going to have open-heart surgery.”

  “Oh-oh!” she said.

  “Quite right. I must go there.”

  “You’re not asking me to postpone this trip again?”

  “We can easily fly from Texas.”

  “You’ve got to go?”

  “Of course, I must.”

  “I’ve never met your brother, but I know he’s a rough man. He wouldn’t cancel his plans for you.”

  “Now Renata he’s my only brother, and these are frightful operations. As I understand it, they break into your chest, remove the heart, lay it on a towel or something, while they circulate the blood by machine. It’s one of those demonic modern technological things. Poor humankind, we’re all hurled down into the object world now. . . .”

  “Ugh,” said Renata, “I hope they never make such a jigsaw puzzle of me.”

  “Darling Renata, in your case the very thought is blasphemous.” Renata’s breasts, when the support of clothing was removed, fell slightly to the right and to the left, owing to a certain enchanting fullness at the base of each and perhaps because of their connection with the magnetic poles of the earth. You did not think of Renata as having a chest in the usual human way—certainly not my brother’s human way, gray-haired and stout.

  “You want me to go to Texas with you, don’t you,” she said.

  “It would mean a great deal to me.”

  “And to me, too, if we were husband and wife. I’d go there twice a week if you needed support. But don’t expect to take me in tow and show me off to a dirty old man as your floozy. Don’t go by my behavior as a single woman.”

  This last was a reference to the night she locked me out and lay beside Flonzaley the mortuary king. She had been weeping, to hear her tell it, while I telephoned frantically. “Marry me,” she said to me now. “Change my status. That’s what I need. I’ll make you a wonderful wife.”

  “I should do it. You’re a glorious woman. Why should I bandy arguments with you?”

  “There’s nothing to argue about. I’m going to Italy tomorrow, and you can meet me in Milan. But I’ll be walking into the Biferno leather shop in a weak position. As a divorced woman who floats around with a lover I can’t expect my father to be enthusiastic, and, practically speaking it’ll be harder for him to have an emotional catharsis over me than if I were an innocent girl. As for me, I still remember how Mother and I were put out on the street—right on the Via Monte Napoleone, and how I stood in front of his show window with all th
e beautiful leather and cried. To this day when I go into Gucci and see the luxury luggage and handbags I feel almost like fainting from rejection and heartbreak.”

  Some statements are meant to pass, some to echo. The words “my behavior as a single woman” continued to reverberate, as it was her tactical intention that they should. But it was impossible to marry her just to keep her honest for a few days in Milan.

  I went up to the mansard room and got the operator to connect me with my brother in Corpus Christi.

  “Ulick?” I said, using his family name.

  “Yes, Chuckie.”

  “I’m coming down to Texas tomorrow.”

  “Ah, they’ve told you,” he said. “They’re going to hack me open on Wednesday. Well, come along if you haven’t got anything else to do. I thought I heard that you were going to Europe.”

  “I can leave the country from Houston.”

  He was of course pleased that I wanted to come but he was distrustful, and he wondered whether I might not be angling for some advantage. Julius in fact loved me but affirmed and even believed that he didn’t. My brotherly intensity flattered him. But he was too clear-headed to deceive himself. He was not a lovable man and if he held an important place in my feelings, and those feelings were intricate and keen, the reason was either that I was queerly undeveloped, immature, or that possibly without knowing what I was doing I was involved in a con. Ulick saw rackets everywhere. A stout character, sharp-faced, handsome, his eyes were big alert and shrewd. A mustache in the style of the late Secretary Acheson mitigated the greediness of his mouth. He was a strutting heavy graceful rapacious man who wore checks, stripes, gaudy but elegantly fitted. Somewhere between business and politics he had once made a fortune in Chicago, connected with the underworld although without being a part of it. But he fell in love and left his wife for the other woman. In the divorce he was wiped out, losing his Chicago possessions. However, he made a second fortune in Texas and raised a second family. It was impossible to think of him without his wealth. It was necessary for him to be in the money, to have dozens of suits and hundreds of pairs of shoes, shirts beyond inventory, cuff links, pinkie rings, large houses, luxury automobiles, a grand-ducal establishment over which he ruled like a demon. Such was Julius, my big brother Ulick, whom I loved.