Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

by Saul Bellow

  “Let’s go to the US Embassy and open it before witnesses,” said Cantabile. “And let the principals get their asses down to the Place de la Concorde, too.”

  “Have you seen the film Caldofreddo?” said Barbash to me.

  “I saw it last night. Beautiful performance by Mr. Otway.”

  “And does it resemble the original story by you and Mr. Fleisher?”

  I now saw that a stenotypist sat in the corner at her tripod making a record of this conversation. Shades of Urbanovich’s court! I became Citrine the witness. “It couldn’t have had any other source,” I said.

  “Then how did these guys get it? They stole it,” said Cantabile. “They might have to face a plagiarism rap.”

  As the envelope was handed around to be examined, a pang passed through my lower bowel. What if distracted, mad Humboldt had stuffed an envelope with letters, with old bills, with fifty lines on an extraterrestrial subject?

  “You are satisfied,” said Maître Furet, “that this is the unopened, original object? It will be so deposed.”

  The Harvard business types agreed that it was on the up and up. Then the envelope was slit open—it contained a manuscript headed, “An original movie treatment. —Co-authors, Charles Citrine and Von Humboldt Fleisher.” As the pages passed from hand to hand I breathed again. The case was proven. There was no doubt about the authenticity of this manuscript. Scene by scene, shot by shot, the picture followed our outline. Barbash made an elaborate and detailed statement for the record. He had obtained a copy of the shooting script. There were almost no departures from our plot.

  Humboldt, bless him, had done things right this time.

  “This is thoroughly legitimate,” said Barbash. “Authentic beyond dispute. I take it you people are insured against such claims?”

  “What do we care about that!” said Cantabile.

  There was, of course, an insurance policy.

  “I don’t think our writers ever said anything, one way or another, about an original story,” one of the young men remarked.

  Only Cantabile carried on. His idea was that everybody should be in a fever. But to business people it was just one of those things. I hadn’t expected such coolness and decorum. Messrs. Furet, Barbash, and the Harvard Business graduates agreed that long costly lawsuits ought to be avoided.

  “And what of Mr. Citrine’s co-author?”

  So that was all that the name Von Humboldt Fleisher meant to these MBAs from one of our great universities!

  “Dead!” I said. This word reverberated with feeling only for me.

  “Any heirs?”

  “One, that I know of.”

  “We’ll take this matter to our principals. What sort of figure have you gentlemen in mind?”

  “A big one,” said Cantabile. “A percentage of your gross.”

  “I think we’re in a position to ask for a statement of earnings,” Barbash argued.

  “Let’s be more realistic. This will be viewed mainly as a minor nuisance claim.”

  “What do you mean minor nuisance? It’s the whole picture,” Cantabile shouted. “We can kill your group!”

  “A little calmer, Mr. Cantabile, please. We have a serious claim here,” said Barbash. “We’d like to hear what you say after serious consideration.”

  “Would there be any interest,” I said, “in another idea for a screenplay from the same source?”

  “Is there one?” said one of the Harvard businessmen. He answered me smoothly, unsurprised. I couldn’t help admiring his admirable schooling. You couldn’t catch a man like this out.

  “Is there? You just heard it. We’re telling you so,” said Cantabile.

  “I have here a second sealed envelope,” I said. “It contains another original proposal for a picture. Mr. Cantabile, by the way, has nothing to do with this. He’s never even heard of the existence of this. His participation is limited to Caldofreddo only.”

  “Let’s hope you know what you’re doing,” said Ronald, angry.

  This time I knew perfectly well. “I’m going to ask Mr. Barbash and Maître Furet to represent me also in this matter.”

  “Us!” Cantabile said.

  “Me,” I repeated.

  “You, of course,” Barbash quickly said.

  I hadn’t lost tons of money for nothing. I had mastered the commercial lingo at least. And as Julius had observed I was a Citrine by birth. “This sealed envelope contains a plot from the same brain that conceived Caldofreddo. Why don’t you gentlemen ask the people you represent whether they’d like to have a look at it. My price for looking—for looking only, mind you—is five thousand dollars.”

  “That is what we want,” said Cantabile.

  But he was ignored. And I felt very much in command. So this was business. Julius, as I’ve mentioned before, was forever urging me to recognize what he liked to call the Romance of Business. And was this the famous Romance of Business? Why it was nothing but pushiness, rapidity, effrontery. The sense it gave of getting your way was shallow. Compared with the satisfaction of contemplating flowers or of something really serious—trying to get in touch with the dead, for instance—it was nothing, nothing at all.

  Paris was not at its most attractive as Cantabile and I walked by the Seine. The bankside was now a superhighway. The water looked like old medicine.

  “Well, I got ‘em for you, didn’t I? I promised I’d make you money. What’s your Mercedes now? Peanuts. I want twenty percent.”

  “We agreed on ten.”

  “Ten if you cut me into that other script. Thought you’d hold out on me, didn’t you?”

  “I’m going to write to Barbash to say that I want you to be paid ten percent. For Caldofreddo.”

  He said, “You’re ungrateful. You never read the paper, you schmuck, and the whole thing would have passed you by without me. Just like the Thaxter business.”

  “What Thaxter business?”

  “You see? You don’t know anything. I didn’t want to rattle you by telling you about Thaxter till the negotiations got started. You don’t know what happened to Thaxter? He was kidnaped in Argentina.”

  “He wasn’t! By whom, terrorists? But why? Why Thaxter? Have they hurt him?”

  “America should thank God for its gangsters. The Mafia at least makes sense. These political guys don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’re snatching and murdering all over South America without rhyme and reason. How should I know why they picked on him. He must have acted like a big shot. They let him send out one letter and he mentioned your name in it. And you didn’t even know you were all over the world press.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He appealed to the internationally famous historian and playwright Charles Citrine for help. He said you’d vouch for him.”

  “Those fellows don’t know what they’re doing. I hope they won’t harm Thaxter.”

  “They’ll be sore as hell when they find out he’s a phony.”

  “I don’t understand. What was he pretending? Whom did they take him to be?”

  “They’re very confused in all those countries,” said Cantabile.

  “Ah, my old friend Professor Durnwald is probably right when he says how nice it would be to hack off the Western Hemisphere at the isthmus and let the southern part drift away. Only there are so many parts of the earth of which that holds true now.”

  “Charles, the more commission you pay me, the less you’ll have left for those terrorists.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Oh, it’ll be you all right,” said Cantabile.

  forty

  Thaxter’s captivity by terrorists oppressed me. It made me grieve at heart to imagine him locked in a black cellar with rats and terrified of torture. He was, after all, an innocent sort of person. True, he was not perfectly upright but much of his wrongdoing was simply delirium. Restless, seeking a piece of the action, he had now been cast among even more violently hallucinated parties who cut off ears and planted bombs in mailboxes
or hijacked jet planes and slaughtered passengers. The last time I troubled to read a newspaper I noted that an oil company, after paying a ransom of ten million dollars, was still unable to obtain the release of one of its executives from his Argentine kidnapers.

  That afternoon from the hotel I wrote to Carl Stewart, Thaxter’s publisher. I said, “I understand Pierre has been abducted and that in his appeal for help he has named me. Well, of course, I will give everything I’ve got to save his life. In a way all his own, he is a wonderful man and I do love him; I have been his faithful friend for more than twenty years. I assume you have been in touch with the State Department and also with the US Embassy in Buenos Aires. Despite the fact that I have written on political matters I am not a political person. Let me put it this way, that for forty years during the worst crises of civilization I read the papers faithfully and this faithful reading did no one any good. Nothing was prevented thereby. I gradually stopped reading the news. It now appears to me, however, and I say this as a dispassionate observer, that between gunboat diplomacy at one extreme and submission to acts of piracy at the other, there ought to be some middle ground for a great power. In this regard, the flabbiness of the United States is disheartening. Are we only now catching up with the lessons of World War I? We learned from Sarajevo not to let acts of terrorism precipitate wars and from Woodrow Wilson that small nations have rights that great ones must respect. But that’s it and we have gotten stuck some six decades back and set the world a miserable example by allowing ourselves to be bullied.

  “To come back to Thaxter, however, I am wildly anxious about him. As recently as three months ago I would have been able to offer a ransom of $250,000. But that has been swept away by an unfortunate litigation. There is now more money on the horizon. I may soon be able to come up with ten or even twenty thousand and I am prepared to put up that much. I don’t see how I can go beyond twenty-five. You would have to advance it. I would give you my note. Perhaps some way could be found to repay me out of Pierre’s royalties. If these South American bandits let him go he’ll write a whopping account of his experiences. That’s the twist things have taken. Formerly life’s bitterest misfortunes enriched only the hearts of wretches or were of spiritual value exclusively. But now any frightful event may be a gold mine. I’m sure that if and when poor Thaxter makes it, if they release him, he will strike it rich by writing a book. Hundreds of thousands of people who at this moment don’t give a single damn about him will suffer with him intensely. Their souls will be wrung and they will gasp and cry. This is actually very important. I mean that the powers of compassion are now being weakened by an impossible volume of demands. We don’t need to go into that, however. I’d be very grateful to you for information, and you may regard this letter as binding on me to come up with dollars for Thaxter. He must have swaggered and put on the dog in his Stetson and Western boots till he impressed those Latin Maoists or Trotskyists. Well, I suppose it’s one of those World Historical things, peculiar to our times.”

  I got this letter off to New York and then flew back to Spain. Cantabile took me to Orly in a cab, now arguing for fifteen percent and beginning to make threats.

  As soon as I reached Pension La Roca I was handed a note on Ritz stationery. It was from the Señora. She wrote, “Kindly deliver Roger to me at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow in the lobby. We are going back to Chicago.” I understood why she stipulated the lobby. I wouldn’t lay violent hands on her in a public place. In her room I might go for her throat or try to drown her in the toilet bowl. So, in the morning, with the kid, I met the old woman, that extraordinary condensation of wild prejudices. In the great circle of the Ritz lobby under the dome, I handed the kid to her. I said, “Good-by, Roger darling, you’re going home.”

  The kid began to cry. The Señora couldn’t calm him and accused me of corrupting him, attaching him to myself with chocolates. “You’ve bribed the boy with sweets.”

  “I hope Renata is happy in her new state,” I said.

  “She certainly is. Flonzaley is a high type of man. His IQ is out of this world. Writing books is no proof that you’re smart.”

  “Oh how true that is,” I said. “And after all burial was a great step forward. Vico said there was a time when corpses were allowed to rot on the ground and dogs and rats and vultures ate your near and dear. You can’t have ; he dead all over the place. Although Stanton, a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, kept his dead wife for nearly a year.”

  “You look worn out. You have too much on your mind,” she said.

  Intensity does that to me. I know it’s true, but I hate to hear it said. Despair rises up. “Adiós, Roger. You’re a fine boy and I love you. I’ll see you in Chicago soon. Have a good flight with Grandma. Don’t cry, kid,” I said. I was threatened by tears myself. I left the lobby and walked toward the park. The danger of being struck by speeding cars, masses of them battering from all directions, prevented me from shedding more tears.

  At the pensión I said that I had sent Roger home to his grandparents until I could readjust myself. The Danish lady from the embassy, Miss Volsted, was still standing by to do the humane thing for my sake. Depressed by Roger’s leaving I was almost demoralized enough to take her up on it.

  Cantabile telephoned every day from Paris. It was of the greatest importance for him to figure in these deals. I should have thought that Paris, with the many opportunities it offered a man like Cantabile, would distract him from business. Not a bit. He was all business. He kept after Maître Furet and Barbash. He irritated Barbash greatly by going over his head and trying to negotiate independently. Barbash complained to me from Paris. The producers, Cantabile told me, were now offering twenty thousand dollars in settlement. “They should be ashamed of themselves. And what kind of impression did Barbash make on them to get such a puny, insulting offer! He’s no good. Our figure is two hundred thousand.” Next day he reported, “They’re up to thirty now. I’ve changed my mind again. This Barbash is real tough. I think he’s sore at me and taking it out on them. What’s two hundred to them, with such a box office? A pimple on the ass. One thing—we have to think about the taxes, and whether we should take payment in foreign currency. I know we can get more in lire. Caldofreddo is doing a tremendous business in Milan and Rome. The suckers are standing ten deep. I wonder why the cannibalism gets the Italians, raised on pasta. Anyhow, if you’ll take lire you can get a lot more money. Of course, Italy is falling apart.”

  “I’ll take dollars. I have a brother in Texas who can invest them in a good thing for me.”

  “You’re lucky to have a kind brother. Are you feeling antsy down there in spic-land?”

  “Not a bit. I’m very much at home. I read anthroposophy and I meditate. I’m doing the Prado inch by inch. What about the second scenario?”

  “I’m not in on that, so why ask me?”

  I said, “No, you’re not.”

  “Then I don’t see why I should tell you a damn thing. But I’ll tell you anyway, out of courtesy. They are interested. They’re damn interested. They’ve offered Barbash three thousand dollars for a three-week option. They say they need time to show it to Otway.”

  “Otway and Humboldt look very much alike. Maybe the resemblance means something. Some invisible link. I’m convinced that Otway will be attracted by Humboldt’s story.”

  Next afternoon Kathleen Tigler arrived in Madrid. She was on her way to Almería to begin work on a new film. “I’m sorry to tell you,” she said, “that the people to whom I sold the option on Humboldt’s scenario have decided not to take it up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You remember the outline that Humboldt bequeathed to both of us?”

  “Of course.”

  “I should have sent you your share of the three thousand. Part of my purpose in coming to Madrid was to talk to you about it and draw a contract, settle with you. You’ve probably forgotten all about it.”

  “No, I hadn’t forgotten,” I said. “But it just occurred to me that I’
ve been trying on my own to sell the same property to another group.”

  “I see,” she said. “Selling the same thing to two parties. It would have been very awkward.”

  All this while, you see, business was going on. Business, with the peculiar autonomy of business, went its own way. Like it or not, we thought its thoughts, spoke its language. What did it matter to business that I suffered a defeat in love, or that I resisted Rebecca Volsted with her urgently blazing face, that I investigated the doctrines of anthroposophy? Business, sure of its own transcendent powers, got us all to interpret life through its practices. Even now, when Kathleen and I had so many private matters to consider, matters of the greatest human importance, we were discussing contracts options producers and sums ‘ of money.

  “Of course,” she said, “you couldn’t be bound legally by an agreement I entered into.”

  “When we met in New York we spoke about a film outline Humboldt and I concocted in Princeton—”

  “The one Lucy Cantabile asked me about? Her husband also phoned me in Belgrade and pestered me with mysterious questions.”

  “—to divert ourselves while Humboldt was scheming to get the chair in poetry.”

  “You told me it was all nonsense, and I thought no more about it.”

  “It was lost for twenty years or so, and then someone got around to stealing our original story and turned it into the picture called Caldofreddo.”

  “No! Is that where Caldofreddo comes froml You and Humboldt?”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Of course I have. Otway’s big, big hit was created by the two of you? It’s not to be believed.”

  “Yes, indeed. I’ve just come from a meeting in Paris at which I proved our authorship to the producers.”