by Bellow, Saul
Assyrian or Babylonian, I explained, terraced, and not coming to a peak. Philip said, “Sending you to college was a mistake, although I don’t know what else you would have been fit for. Nobody else went past high school…. Kramm was okay, I guess.”
Yes, I said, Chink got Kramm to pay my college tuition. Kramm had been a doughboy, did Philip remember that? Kramm was squat but powerful, full-faced, smooth-skinned like a Samoan, and wore his black hair combed flat to his head in the Valentino or George Raft style. He supported us all, paid the rent. Our dad, during the Depression, was peddling carpets to farm women in northern Michigan. He_ couldn’t earn the rent. From top to bottom, the big household became Mother’s responsibility, and if she had been a little tetched before, melodramatic, in her fifties she seemed to become crazed. There was something military about the way she took charge of the house. Her command post was the kitchen. Kramm had to be fed because he fed us, and he was an enormous eater. She cooked tubs of stuffed cabbage and of chop suey for him. He could swallow soup by the bucket, put down an entire pineapple upside-down cake by himself. Mother shopped, peeled, chopped, boiled, fried, roasted, and baked, served and washed. Kramm ate himself into a stupor and then, in the night, he might come out in his pajama bottoms, walking in his sleep. He went straight to the icebox. I recalled a summer’s night when I watched him cutting oranges in half and ripping into them with his teeth. In his somnambulism he slurped away about a dozen of them, and then I saw him go back to bed, following his belly to the right door.
“And gambled in a joint called the Diamond Horseshoe, Kedzie and Lawrence,” said Philip. He did not, however, intend to be drawn into any reminiscences. He began, a little, to smile, but he remained basically gloomy, reserved. Of course. He had entered upon one of his biggest swindles. He changed the subject. He asked if I didn’t admire the way Tracy ran this large estate. She was a magician. She didn’t need interior decorators, she had done the whole place by herself. All the linens were Portuguese. The gardens were wonderful. Her roses won prizes. The appliances never gave trouble. She was a cordon bleu cook. It was true the kids were difficult, but that was how kids were nowadays. She was a terrific psychologist, and fundamentally the little bastards were well adjusted. They were just American youngsters. His greatest satisfaction was that everything was so American. It was, too—an ail-American production.
For breakfast, if I called the kitchen persistently, I could have freeze-dried coffee and a slice of Wonder bread. They were brought to my room by a black person who answered no questions. Was there an egg, a piece of toast, a spoonful of jam? Nothing. It wounds me desperately not to be fed. As I sat waiting for the servant to come with the freeze-dried coffee and the absorbent-cotton bread, I prepared and polished remarks that I might make to her, considering how to strike a balance between satire and human appeal. It was a waste of time to try to reach a common human level with the servants. It was obvious that I was a guest of no importance, Miss Rose. No one would listen. I could almost hear the servants being instructed to “come slack of former services” or “Put on what weary negligence you please”—the words of Goneril in King Lear._ Also the room they had given me had been occupied by one of the little girls, now too big for it. The wallpaper, illustrated with Simple Simon and Goosey Gander, at the time seemed inappropriate (it now seems sharply pertinent).
And I was obliged to listen to my brother’s praise of his wife. Again and again he told me how wise and good she was, how clever and tender a mother, what a brilliant hostess, respected by the best people who owned the largest estates. And a shrewd counselor. (I could believe that!) Plus a warm sympathizer when he was anxious, an energetic lover, and she gave him what he had never had before—peace. And I, Miss Rose, with $600,000 sunk here, was constrained to go along, nodding like a dummy. Forced to underwrite all of his sustaining falsehoods, countersigning the bill of goods he sold himself, I muttered the words he needed to finish his sentences. (How Walish would have jeered!) Death breathing over both the odd brothers with the very fragrance of subtropical air—magnolia, honeysuckle, orange blossom, or whatever the hell it was, puffing into our faces. Oddest of all was Philip’s final confidence (untrue!). For my ears only, he whispered in Yiddish that our sisters had shrieked like pa-pagayas_ (parrots), that for the first time in his life he had quiet here, domestic tranquillity. Not true. There was amplified rock music.
After this lapse, he reversed himself with a vengeance. For a family dinner, we drove in two Jaguars to a Chinese restaurant, a huge showplace constructed in circles, or dining wells, with tables highlighted like symphonic kettledrums. Here Philip made a scene. He ordered far too many hors d’oeuvres, and when the table was jammed with dishes he summoned the manager to complain that he was being hustled, he hadn’t asked for double portions of all these fried won-tons, egg rolls, and barbecued ribs. And when the manager refused to take them back Philip went from table to table with egg rolls and ribs, saying, “Here! Free! Be my guest!” Restaurants always did excite him, but this time Tracy called him to order. She said, “Enough, Philip, we’re here to eat, not raise everybody’s blood pressure.” Yet a few minutes later he pretended that he had found a pebble in his salad. I had seen this before. He carried a pebble in his pocket for the purpose. Even the kids were on to him, and one of them said, “He’s always doing this routine, Uncle.” It gave me a start to have them call me Uncle.
Indulge me for a moment, Miss Rose. I am covering the ground as quickly as I can. There’s not a soul to talk to in Vancouver except ancient Mrs. Gracewell, and with her I have to ride in esoteric clouds. Pretending that he had cracked his tooth, Philip had shifted from the Americanism of women’s magazines (lovely wife, beautiful home, the highest standard of normalcy) to that of the rednecks—yelling at the Orientals, ordering his children to get his lawyer on the table telephone. The philistine idiosyncrasy of the rich American brute. But you can no longer be a philistine without high sophistication, matching the sophistication of what you hate. However, it’s no use talking about “false consciousness” or any of that baloney. Philly had put himself into Tracy’s hands for full Americanization. To achieve this (obsolete) privilege, he paid the price of his soul. But then he may never have been absolutely certain that there is any such thing as a soul. What he resented about me was that I wouldn’t stop hinting that souls existed. What was I, a Reform rabbi or something? Except at a funeral service, Philip wouldn’t have put up with Pergolesi for two minutes. And wasn’t I—never mind Pergolesi—looking for a hot investment?
When Philip died soon afterward, you may have read in the papers that he was mixed up with chop-shop operators in the Midwest, with thieves who stole expensive cars and tore them apart for export piecemeal to Latin America and the whole of the third world. Chop shops, however, were not Philip’s crime. On the credit established by my money, the partnership acquired and resold land, but much of the property lacked clear title, there were liens against it. Defrauded purchasers brought suit. Big trouble followed. Convicted, Philip appealed, and then he jumped bail and escaped to Mexico. There he was kidnapped while jogging in Chapultepec Park. His kidnappers were bounty hunters. The bonding companies he had left holding the bag when he skipped out had offered a bounty for his return. Specialists exist who will abduct people, Miss Rose, if the sums are big enough to make the risks worthwhile. After Philip was brought back to Texas, the Mexican government began extradition proceedings on the ground that he was snatched illegally, which he was, certainly. My poor brother died while doing push-ups in a San Antonio prison yard during the exercise hour. Such was the end of his picturesque struggles.
After we had mourned him, and I took measures to recover my losses from his estate, I discovered that his personal estate was devoid of assets. He had made all his wealth over to his wife and children.
I could not be charged with Philip’s felonies, but since he had made me a general partner I was sued by the creditors. I retained Mr. Klaussen, whom I lost by the remark I mad
e in the lobby of his club about electrocuting people in the dining room. The joke was harsh, I admit, although no harsher than what people often think, but nihilism, too, has its no-nos, and professional men can’t allow their clients to make such cracks. Klaussen drew the line. Thus I found myself after Gerdas death in the hands of her energetic but unbalanced brother, Hansl. He decided, on sufficient grounds, that I was an incompetent, and as he is a believer in fast action, he took dramatic measures and soon placed me in my present position. Some position! Two brothers in flight, one to the south, the other northward and faced with extradition. No bonding company will set bounty hunters on me. I’m not worth it to them. And even though Hansl had promised that I would be safe in Canada, he didn’t bother to check the law himself. One of his student clerks did it for him, and since she was a smart, sexy girl it didn’t seem necessary to review her conclusions.
Knowledgeable sympathizers when they ask who represents me are impressed when I tell them. They say, “Hansl Genauer? Real smart fellow. You ought to do all right.”
Hansl dresses very sharply, in Hong Kong suits and shirts. A slender man, he carries himself like a concert violinist and has a manner that, as a manner, is fully convincing. For his sister’s sake (“She had a wonderful life with you, she said to the last”), he was, or intended to be, my protector. I was a poor old guy, bereaved, incompetent, accidentally prosperous, foolishly trusting, thoroughly swindled. “Your brother fucked you but good. He and his wife.”
“She was a party to it?”
“Try giving it a little thought. Has she answered any of your letters?”
“No.”
Not a single one, Miss Rose.
“Let me tell you how I reconstruct it, Harry,” said Hansl. “Philip wanted to impress his wife. He was scared of her. Out of terror, he wanted to make her rich. She told him she was all the family he needed. To prove that he believed her, he had to sacrifice his old flesh and blood to the new flesh and blood. Like, ‘I give you the life of your dreams, all you have to do is cut your brother’s throat.’ He did his part, he piled up dough, dough, and more dough—I don’t suppose he liked you anyway—and he put all the loot in her name. So that when he died, which was never_ going to happen…”
Cleverness is Hansl’s instrument; he plays it madly, bowing it with elegance as if he were laying out the structure of a sonata, phrase by phrase, for his backward brother-in-law. What did I need with his fiddling? Isn’t there anybody, dear God, on my_ side? My brother picked me up by the trustful affections as one would lift up a rabbit by the ears. Hansl, now in charge of the case, analyzed the betrayal for me, down to the finest fibers of its brotherly bonds, and this demonstrated that he was completely on my side—right? He examined the books of the partnership, which I had never bothered to do, pointing out Philip’s misdeeds. “You see? He was leasing land from his wife, the nominal owner, for use by the wrecking company, and every year that pig paid himself a rent of ninety-eight thousand dollars. There went your profits. More deals of the same kind all over these balance sheets. While you were planning summers in Corsica.”
“I wasn’t cut out for business. I see that.”
“Your dear brother was a full-time con artist. He might have started a service called Dial-a-Fraud. But then you also provoke people. When Klaussen handed over your files to me, he told me what offensive, wicked things you said. He then decided he couldn’t represent you anymore.”
“But he didn’t return the unused part of the fat retainer I gave him.”
“’/ be looking out for you now. Gerdas gone, and that leaves me to see that things don’t get worse—the one adult of us three. My clients who are the greatest readers are always in the biggest trouble. What they call culture, if you ask me, causes mostly confusion and stunts their development. I wonder if you’ll ever understand why you let your brother do you in the way he did.”
Philip’s bad world borrowed me for purposes of its own. I had, however, approached him in the expectation of benefits, Miss Rose. I wasn’t blameless. And if he and his people—accountants, managers, his wife—forced me to feel what they felt, colonized me with their realities, even with their daily moods, saw to it that I should suffer everything they had to suffer, it was after all my_ idea. I tried to make use of them._
I never again saw my brother’s wife, his children, nor the park they lived in, nor the pit bulldogs.
“That woman is a legal genius,” said Hansl.
Hansl said to me, “You’d better transfer what’s left, your trust account, to my bank, where I can look after it. I’m on good terms with the officers over there. The guys are efficient, and no monkey business. You’ll be taken care of.”
I had been taken care of before, Miss Rose. Walish was dead right about “the life of feeling” and the people who lead it. Feelings are dreamlike, and dreaming is usually done in bed. Evidently I was forever looking for a safe place to lie down. Hansl offered to make secure arrangements for me so that I wouldn’t have to wear myself out with finance and litigation, which were too stressful and labyrinthine and disruptive; so I accepted his proposal and we met with an officer of his bank. Actually the bank looked like a fine old institution, with Oriental rugs, heavy carved furniture, nineteenth-century paintings, and dozens of square acres of financial atmosphere above us. Hansl and the vice president who was going to take care of me began with small talk about the commodity market, the capers over at City Hall, the prospects for the Chicago Bears, intimacies with a couple of girls in a Rush Street bar. I saw that Hansl badly needed the points he was getting for bringing in my account. He wasn’t doing well. Though nobody was supposed to say so, I was soon aware of it. Many forms were put before me, which I signed. Then two final cards were laid down just as my signing momentum seemed irreversible. But I applied the brake. I asked the vice president what these were for and he said, “If you’re busy, or out of town, these will give Mr. Genauer the right to trade for you—buy or sell stocks for your account.”
I slipped the cards into my pocket, saying that I’d take them home with me and mail them in. We passed to the next item of business.
Hansl made a scene in the street, pulling me away from the great gates of the bank and down a narrow Loop alley. Behind the kitchen of a hamburger joint he let me have it. He said, “You humiliated me.”
I said, “We didn’t discuss a power of attorney beforehand. You took me by surprise, completely. Why did you spring it on me like that?”
“You’re accusing me of trying to pull a fast one? If you weren’t Gerdas husband I’d tell you to beat it. You undermined me with a business associate. You weren’t like this with your own brother, and I’m closer to you by affection than he was by blood, you nitwit. I wouldn’t have traded your securities without notifying you.”
He was tearful with rage.
“For God’s sake, let’s move away from this kitchen ventilator,” I said. “I’m disgusted with these fumes.”
He shouted, “You’re out of it! Out!”
“And you’re in_ it.”
“Where the hell else is there to be?”
Miss Rose, you have understood us, I am sure of it. We were talking about the vortex. A nicer word for it is the French one, le tourbillon,_ or whirlwind. I was not out of it, it was only my project to get_ out. It’s been a case of disorientation, my dear. I know that there’s a right state for each of us. And as long as I’m not in the right state, the state of vision I was meant or destined to be in, I must assume responsibility for the unhappiness others suffer because of my disorientation. Until this ends there can only be errors. To put it another way, my dreams of orientation or true vision taunt me by suggesting that the world in which I—together with others—live my life is a fabrication, an amusement park that, however, does not amuse. It resembles, if you are following, my brother’s private park, which was supposed to prove by external signs that he made his way into the very center of the real. Philip had prepared the setting, paid for by embezzlement, but
he had nothing to set in it. He was forced to flee, pursued by bounty hunters who snatched him in Chapultepec, and so forth. At his weight, at that altitude, in the smog of Mexico City, to jog was suicidal.
Now Hansl explained himself, for when I said to him, “Those securities can’t be traded anyway. Don’t you see? The plaintiffs have legally taken a list of all my holdings,” he was ready for me. “Bonds, mostly,” he said. “That’s just where I can outfox them. They copied that list two weeks ago, and now it’s in their lawyers’ file and they won’t check it for months to come. They think they’ve got you, but here’s what we do: we sell those old bonds off and buy new ones to replace them. We change all the numbers. All it costs you is brokerage fees. Then, when the time comes, they find out that what they’ve got sewed up is bonds you no longer own. How are they going to trace the new numbers? And by then I’ll have you out of the country.”
Here the skin of my head became intolerably tight, which meant even deeper error, greater horror anticipated. And, at the same time, temptation. People had kicked the hell out of me with, as yet, no reprisals. My thought was: It’s time / made a bold move. We were in the narrow alley between two huge downtown institutions (the hamburger joint was crammed in tight). An armored Brink’s truck could hardly have squeezed between the close colossal black walls.
“You mean I substitute new bonds for the old, and I can sell from abroad if I want to?”
Seeing that I was beginning to appreciate the exquisite sweetness of his scheme, Hansl gave a terrific smile and said, “And you will. That’s the dough you’ll live on.”
“That’s a dizzy idea,” I said.