by Bellow, Saul
“You have clever ways of expressing yourself, Mr. Wrangel. Are you saying that Victor is nothing but a promoter?”
“Not for a minute. He’s a colorful, powerful, intricate man. Unlike the other critic crumb-bums, he has a soul. Really. As for being a promoter, I can’t see how he could hold the forefront if he didn’t do a certain amount of promoting and operating. Well, what’s the status of innocence, anyway, and can you get anywhere without hypocrisy? I’m not calling Victor a hypocrite; I’m saying that he has no time to waste on patsies, and he’s perfectly aware that America is one place where being a patsy won’t kill you. We can afford confusion of mind, in a safe, comfortable country. Of course, it’s been fatal to art and culture….”
“Is this your way of asking me_ how corrupt Victor is?” Katrina asked. Heavy distress, all the more distressing because of its mixed elements, came over her. Should she tell Wrangel off? Was it disloyal to listen to him? But she was fascinated and hungry for more. And Victor himself would have thought her a patsy for raising the question of loyalty at all. Too big for trivial kinds of morality, he waved them off. And Wrangel was taking advantage of Victor’s brief absence, crowding in as many comments as he could. He was very smart, and she now felt like a dope for bothering him with her elephant.
He was trying to impress her, strutting a little (was he trying also to make time with her?), but his passion for understanding Victor was genuinely a passion.
“Victor is a promoter. He did well by himself, solidly. But he hasn’t faked anything. He really studied the important questions of art—art and technology, art and science, art in the era of the mass life. He understands how the artistic faculties are hampered in America, which isn’t really an art land. Here art isn’t serious. Not in the way a vaccine for herpes is serious._ And even for professionals, critics, curators, editors, art is just blah!_ And it should be like the air you breathe, the water you drink, basic, like nutrition or truth. Victor knows what the real questions are, and if you ask him what’s the matter here he would tell you that without art we can’t judge what life is, we can’t sort anything out at all. Then the ‘practical sphere’ itself, where planners,’ generals, opinion makers, and presidents operate, is no more real than the lint under your bed. But even Victor’s real interest is politics. Sometimes his politics are idiotic, too, as they were during the French student crisis, when he agreed with Sartre that we were on the verge of an inspiring and true revolution. He got carried away. His politics would have made bad art. In politics Victor is still something of a sentimentalist. Some godlike ideas he has, and a rich appreciation of human complexities. But he couldn’t be engrossed in the colors of the sky around Combray, as Proust was. He’s not big on hawthorn blossoms and church steeples, and he’ll never get killed crossing the street because he’s having visions.”
Katrina said, “In Victor’s place, I don’t know how I’d feel about such a close study.”
“Shall I tell you something? There was more than one hint of Victor Wulpy in the adventures of Buck Rogers.”
This little guy, the celebrity covered by People_—opinionated, sensitive, emotional—was definitely an oddball. Under the flame-shaped bulbs with their incandescent saffron threads, delicacy, obstinacy, and bliss were mingled in his face.
He began now to tell her about his son, an only child. “By my second wife,” he said. “A younger woman. My Hank is now twenty-one. A problem from the beginning. He was born to startle. Some kids are dropping acid, stealing cars—that was the least of it. If he signed checks with my name, I could handle it by keeping my checking account low. He made the house so terrible that he drove his mother out. She couldn’t take it, and she’s now living with someone else. Illegal dealings started when Hank was about fourteen. Chased on the highway by the police. He held out money on dope dealers and they tried to kill him. No communication between me and the boy—too much sea-noise in his head. He’s in a correctional prison now where I’m not allowed to visit. There the recidivists are treated like infants. Their diet is infantile—farina—and they’re forced to wear diapers. The theory must be that the problem lies in infancy, so there’s a program of compulsory regression. That’s how human life is interpreted by psychological specialists.”
“Heartbreaking,” said Katrina.
“Oh, I can’t afford to be heartbroken. He’s my crazy Absalom. His mother is finished with him. She’ll talk to me. To him, never. He resembles her physically: fair-haired and slight, the boy is. A born mechanic, and a genius with engines, only he’d take apart my Porsche and leave the parts lying on the ground.”
“Does he hate you?”
“He doesn’t use such language.”
Why, the boy may kill him in the end, Katrina thought. The one who’s loyal may be the one who pays with his life.
“Enough of that,” said Wrangel. “Getting back to Victor. It wasn’t by his opinions that he influenced my attitudes toward art, but by the way he was. I don’t really like_ his ideas. In the old days I would compare him mentally to Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom I personally admired although critical of his policies.”
Like Roosevelt! Of course! Both handicapped men. Katrina made some rapid comparisons. Beila was like Eleanor Roosevelt. She, Trina, was like Missy Le-Hand. Katrina remembered hearing that Missy LeHand, with whom Roosevelt had had a love affair, fell ill and crept away to die, and Roosevelt, busy with the war, had no time to think about her, didn’t ask what had become of her. FDR was as cold as he was great. Victor, too, talked about the coldness and isolation of people—the mark of the Modern. The Modern truth was severe. Making love to a middle-class woman, it was necessary to indulge her sentiments ot warmth, but to a hard judgment these had no historical reality. There was monstrousness and horror in Modern man. Useless to deny dehumanization. That was how Victor would talk, when he lay in bed like one of Picasso’s naked old satyrs. But you, spread beside him—the full woman, perhaps the fat woman, woman-smelling—you perhaps knew more about him than he knew himself.
They now saw Victor working his way back to the booth, and Wrangel signaled to the waitress to serve their lunch. The glazed orange duck looked downright dangerous. Circles of fat swam in the spiced gravy. Famished, Victor attacked his food. His whiskey glass was soon fingerprinted with grease. He tore up his rolls over the dish and spooned up the fatty sops. He was irritable. Wrangel tried to make conversation, as a host should do. Victor gave him a gloomy if not sinister look—a glare, to be more accurate—when Wrangel began to point out connections between cartoons and abstract ideas. When people spoke of ideas as “clear,” didn’t they mean reductive? Human beings, in reduction, represented as things._ Acceptable enough if they were funny. But suppose the intention wasn’t funny, as shorthand representations of the human often were, then you got an abstract condensation of the Modern theme. Take Picasso and Daumier as caricaturists (much deference in this to Victor, the expert). It might be fair to say that Daumier treated a social subject: the middle class, the courtroom. Picasso didn’t. In Picasso you had the flavor of nihilism that went with increased abstraction. Wrangel in his rolls of fur and his chin supported by silk scarf and cotton bandanna was nervous, insecure of tone, twitching.
“What’s this about reason?” said Victor. “First you tell me that ideas are trivial, they’re dead, and then what do you do but discuss ideas with me?”
“There’s no contradiction, is there, if I say that abstract ideas and caricature go together?”
“I have little interest in discussing this,” said Victor. “It’ll keep until you get back to California, won’t it?”
“I suppose it will.”
“Well, then, stow it. Skip it. Stuff it.”
“It’s a pity that my success in sci-fi should be held against me. Actually I’ve had a better than average training in philosophy.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood for philosophy. And I don’t want to discuss the nihilism that goes with reason. I figure you’ve done enough to fuck up
the consciousness of millions of people with this mishmash of astrophysics and divinity that has made you so famous. Your trouble is that you’d like to sneak up on real seriousness. Well, you’ve already made your contribution. Your statement is on record.”
“You yourself have written about ‘divine sickness,’ Victor. I would suppose that any creature, regardless of his worldly status, had one ticket good for a single admission if he has suffered—if he paid his price.”
But Victor wouldn’t hear him out. He made a face so satirical, violent, so killing that Katrina would have turned away from it if it hadn’t been so extraordinary—an aspect of Victor never manifested before. He drew his lips over his teeth to imitate bare gums. He gabbled in pantomime, not a sound coming out. He let out his tongue like a dog panting. He squeezed his eyes so tight that you couldn’t see anything except the millipede brows and lashes. He put his thumbs to the sides of his head and waggled his fingers. Then he slid himself out of the booth, took up the duffel, and started for the door. Katrina, too, stood up. She held Vanessa’s fiddle in her arms, saying, “I’d apologize for him if you didn’t also know him. He’s in very bad shape, Mr. Wrangel, you can see that for yourself. Last year we nearly lost him. And he’s in pain every day. Try to remember that. I’m sorry about this. Don’t let him get to you.”
“Well, this is a lesson. Of course, it makes me very sad. Yes, I see he’s in bad shape. Yes, it’s a pity.”
It had cut him up, and Katrina’s heart went out to Wrangel. “Thank you,” she said, drawing away, turning. She hoped she didn’t look too clumsy from the rear.
Victor was waiting for her in the concourse and she spoke to him angrily. “That was bad behavior. I didn’t like being a party to it.”
“When he started on me with Daumier and Picasso, I couldn’t stand it, not a minute more of it.”
“You feel rotten and you took it out on him.”
He conceded this in silence.
“You didn’t behave well with me, either. You never said a word about your conversation with Kinglake, and whether we’re getting out of here or not.”
“He’s sending a corporate plane for us. He says it can get through.”
“Now, you know I’m in trouble if I’m stuck in Detroit overnight.”
“You’re not going to be stuck. A plane is coming for us.”
Once more, thousands of people. Nothing she could think of accounted for the sorrow she was feeling in the crowd-crazed concourse. Victor stopped beside the blazing window of a costume jewelry boutique and stared down into her face. He was speaking to her. She could not hear. Her ears seemed plugged.
“You should have told me sooner. You know my anxiety about being stuck.
“Why should_ I put up with a guy like Wrangel?” he said. “Thousands of people zero in on me. They come to clean up their act, or make a bid to change their act altogether. They want better clichщs to live by. A man like Wrangel has to achieve another ‘self because he’s in a position he never expected to reach. When he turned up in the Village long ago, he made himself striking by re-stringing his violin or by being a comic-strip plot spinner whose real_ life was with Hegel and Pascal. Now he’s become a big pop symbol, so he’s completely lost. Wears arctic fox. All right, if you don’t stand up to the real conditions of life and stand up to them with strength and shrewdness, you are condemned to live by one poor fiction or another, of which you are the commonplace interpreter.
Their commonplaces sting these guys without mercy, and drive them to try to be original. See how hard Wrangel was trying. He wanted me to adopt him and be his spiritual uncle or something—too old for a father. A while back I got a letter from a guy, an artist, who works in fire extinguishers. He said he was guarding the human soul from the arsonists of evil. He would never paint anything except fire extinguishers. He demanded my blessing, /have no Secret Service to protect me. I have to fend ‘em off myself.”
“All right…. Now, what are we supposed to do until the plane arrives?”
“There’s a hotel on these premises, upstairs, out of this madhouse. Kinglake has reserved a room for us.”
“Thank God! I can’t face any more shoving and pushing up and down the corridors,” said Katrina. “What kind of plane are they sending?”
“A plane. How should I know? You’re overreacting. This is not such an awful crisis. The Negro woman wouldn’t desert the kids, and there’s your sister.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you. My sister is half bonkers.”
“I had words with Kinglake about Felsher, the man who is supposed to introduce me. I said he was an old Stalinist bum, and he’d give a low tone to the occasion. It’s too late to change the program, but I put my objection on record.”
“Can we go up to the room, Victor? You have a rest. I have to use the phone.”
They made their way to the hotel desk. They were expected. Victor signed the card and he refused a bellhop. “We don’t want help. Nothing to carry. We’re just waiting for our plane.” Why should it cost a buck to put the key in the lock?
When he came into the room, Victor pitched himself heavily on the bed and Katrina removed his shoes. They must have been size sixteen. Nevertheless, his feet were delicate in shape. A human warmth was released from these shoes when she pulled them off. She stacked pillows behind his head. As he made himself comfortable, he was aware again of the bristling of nerve ends in the belly. Surgical damage. The frayed ends of copper wires. Hair-darts ingrown.
“I’m calling my sister. Don’t worry, I’ll tell the operator to cut in.”
She went down the list of numbers Dotey had given her. People answered who were rude and hung up—behavior was getting worse and worse. At last she reached her sister, who said she was on the far South Side, fifteen miles from home, twenty-five from Evanston. Hazardous driving. “Too bad about all this snow,” she said. It was, however, satisfaction and not sympathy that her voice expressed.
“Did you call Evanston? Is Ysole there?”
“Ysole wanted me to tell her where you were. She didn’t believe you were in Schaumburg. She said that Krieggstein phoned in several times. He does stand by you, doesn’t he? He’s in love with you, Trina.”
“He’s a friend to me.”
“Where are you, by the way?”
“We had to land in Detroit.”
“Detroit! Jesus! I heard that O’Hare was closing. Can you get back?”
“A little late. Not too much. Did Ysole say that Alfred had called? By now the psychiatrist has told the lawyer about the canceled appointment, and if his lawyer has heard, so has mine.”
“You encourage Krieggstein too much,” said Dotey.
“I’m one of many. He courts ten ladies at a time.”
“So he says. It’s you he’s fascinated by. After Victor goes, he’ll close in. You may be too beat to resist him.”
“You’re being very ugly to me, Dorothea.”
Victor had pulled a pillow over the top of his head like a cowl. His eyes were closed, and he said, “Don’t tangle with her. Bottle up your feelings.”
“Let’s conclude. I’m tying up a customer’s line,” said Dotey.
“I count on you to stand by….”
“To go to Evanston tonight is out of the question. I’ve accepted a dinner invitation.”
“You didn’t mention that last night.”
“I’m sitting with business associates,” Dotey was saying. “You can reach me at home between six and eight.”
“All right,” said Katrina. Very quietly, obedient to Victor, she put down the phone.
“Be a sweetheart and turn off the air-conditioning, Katrina. I hate this fucking false airflow in hotels. The motor gets me down. These places more and more resemble funeral parlors.”
Katrina’s face as she turned the switch was blotched with the stings her sister had inflicted on her. “Dotey has like an instinct against me. When I’m in trouble she’s always ready to give me more lumps.”
�
��You’ll manage without her. We’ll fly back in an executive jet. You’ll go to Evanston in a limousine.” To these words of comfort Victor added, “The kids love a snowfall. They’re out playing, and they’re happy. I’d give you odds.” Even he was somewhat surprised by the gentleness of his tone. He was in a melting mood. It seemed to him that even when making faces at Wrangel he hadn’t felt harsh—playful rather. How to see such an occurrence: Chief Iffucan, the Indian in his caftan, the old man with henna hackles. Barbarous charm. It was possible for Wulpy to take such a view. The irritation of his scars had abated. He did not listen to Katrina’s next conversation, which was with Ysole. What he was led to consider (again, a frequent subject) was the limits he had never until lately reckoned with. Now he touched limits on every side: “Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.” For the representative of American energy and action these omnipresent touchable bounds were funny-lamentable. What was a weak_ “barbarian”? Newfangled men needed strength. Philosophers of action must be able to act. Of course, Wulpy had had his intimations of helplessness (the biblical “appointed bounds” didn’t count, those were from another life—the_yivrach katzail,__ “he fleeth as a shadow,” he had studied as a boy). The bad leg had not been a limitation. It had been an aid to ascendancy. As perhaps the foot of Oedipus had been. But no longer than three years ago he had had his mother lying in the backseat of his beat-up Pontiac, serving for the afternoon as an ambulance. An old cousin had telephoned to say that his mother was virtually speechless in the nursing home where he kept her. He had finally gone to inspect this unspeakable tenement. He packed her bag and checked her out of there. That afternoon, a day of killing heat, he drove from one joint to another and tried to place her. He visited nursing homes, locking her in the car (bad neighborhoods) while he climbed stairs—the torment of getting two feet on each tread—to look at bedrooms, enter kitchens and bathrooms, and discuss terms with a bedlam population of “administrators,” otherwise “dollar psychotics,” who tore the money from you. (Not that he didn’t fight for every buck. “Licensed abuse,” he told them. “A horrible rip-off.”) At four o’clock he had still not found the right place for her, that semiconscious regal monument in the backseat of his jalopy. And while he drove around Astoria and Jackson Heights, Katrina—in fantasy—drove her car behind him, tailgating him between red walls of dead brick. This imaginary Katrina wore nothing but a coat, under which she was naked, in a state of sexual readiness. When he parked and hobbled into a building, he imagined that she had pulled up behind, invisibly, and that she was streaming under the buckled Aquascutum coat. That this was a commonplace fantasy, he knew well. But he accepted it. Apparently he needed to imagine the woman-slime odor—that swamp-smell—and the fever that came with it was peculiarly his. At last Wulpy had found a good place, or maybe just gave up, and his mother was carried in while he wrote the check. The old girl seemed indifferent by now. In a matter of months she was dead, leaving Victor with his ideas and his travels, his erotic activities—the whole vivid stir: an important man, making important statements, publishing important articles. Shortly after his mother died, he himself entered Mass. General. There he escaped death, but became aware that it was necessary to consider the appointed bounds. Something like a great river was going to change its course. A Mississippi was about to find a new bed. Whole cities would drown. Mansions would float across the Gulf of Mexico, lifted from their foundations, and come aground on the sands of Venezuela.