by Saul Bellow
“Wilky,” said the old man, “have you gone down to the baths here yet?”
“No, Dad, not yet.”
“Well, you know the Gloriana has one of the finest pools in New York. Eighty feet, blue tile. It’s a beauty.”
Wilhelm had seen it. On the way to the gin game you passed the stairway to the pool. He did not care for the odor of the wall-locked and chlorinated water.
“You ought to investigate the Russian and Turkish baths, and the sunlamps and massage. I don’t hold with sunlamps. But the massage does a world of good, and there’s nothing better than hydrotherapy when you come right down to it. Simple water has a calming effect and would do you more good than all the barbiturates and alcohol in the world.” Wilhelm reflected that this advice was as far as his father’s help and sympathy would extend.
“I thought,” he said, “that the water cure was for lunatics.”
The doctor received this as one of his son’s jokes and said with a smile, “Well, it won’t turn a sane man into a lunatic. It does a great deal for me. I couldn’t live without my massages and steam.”
“You’re probably right. I ought to try it one of these days. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, my head was about to bust and I just had to have a little air, so I walked around the Reservoir, and I sat down for a while in a playground. It rests me to watch the kids play potsy and skiprope.”
The doctor said with approval, “Well, now, that’s more like the idea.”
“It’s the end of the lilacs,” said Wilhelm. “When they burn it’s the beginning of summer. At least, in the city. Around the time of year when the candy stores take down the windows and start to sell sodas on the sidewalk. But even though I was raised here, Dad, I can’t take city life any more, and I miss the country. There’s too much push here for me. It works me up too much. I take things too hard. I wonder why you never retired to a quieter place.”
The doctor opened his small hand on the table in a gesture so old and so typical that Wilhelm felt it like an actual touch upon the foundations of his life. “I am a city boy myself, you must remember,” Dr. Adler explained. “But if you find the city so hard on you, you ought to get out.”
“I’ll do that,” said Wilhelm, “as soon as I can make the right connection. Meanwhile—”
His father interrupted, “Meanwhile I suggest you cut down on drugs.”
“You exaggerate that, Dad. I don’t really—I give myself a little boost against—” He almost pronounced the word “misery” but he kept his resolution not to complain.
The doctor, however, fell into the error of pushing his advice too hard. It was all he had to give his son and he gave it once more. “Water and exercise,” he said.
He wants a young, smart, successful son, thought Wilhelm, and he said, “Oh, Father, it’s nice of you to give me this medical advice, but steam isn’t going to cure what ails me.”
The doctor measurably drew back, warned by the sudden weak strain of Wilhelm’s voice and all that the droop of his face, the swell of his belly against the restraint of his belt intimated.
“Some new business?” he asked unwillingly.
Wilhelm made a great preliminary summary which involved the whole of his body. He drew and held a long breath, and his color changed and his eyes swam. “New?” he said.
“You make too much of your problems,” said the doctor. “They ought not to be turned into a career. Concentrate on real troubles—fatal sickness, accidents.” The old man’s whole manner said, Wilky, don’t start this on me. I have a right to be spared.
Wilhelm himself prayed for restraint; he knew this weakness of his and fought it. He knew, also, his father’s character. And he began mildly, “As far as the fatal part of it goes, everyone on this side of the grave is the same distance from death. No, I guess my trouble is not exactly new. I’ve got to pay premiums on two policies for the boys. Margaret sent them to me. She unloads everything on me. Her mother left her an income. She won’t even file a joint tax return. I get stuck. Etcetera. But you’ve heard the whole story before.”
“I certainly have,” said the old man. “And I’ve told you to stop giving her so much money.”
Wilhelm worked his lips in silence before he could speak. The congestion was growing. “Oh, but my kids, Father. My kids. I love them. I don’t want them to lack anything.”
The doctor said with a half-deaf benevolence, “Well, naturally. And she, I’ll bet, is the beneficiary of that policy.”
“Let her be. I’d sooner die myself before I collected a cent of such money.”
“Ah yes.” The old man sighed. He did not like the mention of death. “Did I tell you that your sister Catherine—Philippa—is after me again.”
“What for?”
“She wants to rent a gallery for an exhibition.”
Stiffly fair-minded, Wilhelm said, “Well, of course that’s up to you, Father.”
The round-headed old man with his fine, feather-white, ferny hair said, “No, Wilky. There’s not a thing on those canvases. I don’t believe it; it’s a case of the emperor’s clothes. I may be old enough for my second childhood, but at least the first is well behind me. I was glad enough to buy crayons for her when she was four. But now she’s a woman of forty and too old to be encouraged in her delusions. She’s no painter.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a born artist,” said Wilhelm, “but you can’t blame her for trying something worth while.”
“Let her husband pamper her.”
Wilhelm had done his best to be just to his sister, and he had sincerely meant to spare his father, but the old man’s right, benevolent deafness had its usual effect on him. He said, “When it comes to women and money, I’m completely in the dark. What makes Margaret act like this?”
“She’s showing you that you can’t make it without her,” said the doctor. “She aims to bring you back by financial force.”
“But if she ruins me, Dad, how can she expect me to come back? No, I have a sense of honor. What you don’t see is that she’s trying to put an end to me.”
His father stared. To him this was absurd. And Wilhelm thought, Once a guy starts to slip, he figures he might as well be a clunk. A real big clunk. He even takes pride in it. But there’s nothing to be proud of—hey, boy? Nothing. I don’t blame Dad for his attitude. And it’s no cause for pride.
“I don’t understand that. But if you feel like this why don’t you settle with her once and for all?”
“What do you mean, Dad?” said Wilhelm, surprised. “I thought I told you. Do you think I’m not willing to settle? Four years ago when we broke up I gave her everything—goods, furniture, savings. I tried to show good will, but I didn’t get anywhere. Why when I wanted Scissors, the dog, because the animal and I were so attached to each other—it was bad enough to leave the kids—she absolutely refused me. Not that she cared a damn about the animal. I don’t think you’ve seen him. He’s an Australian sheep dog. They usually have one blank or whitish eye which gives a misleading look, but they’re the gentlest dogs and have unusual delicacy about eating or talking. Let me at least have the companionship of this animal. Never.” Wilhelm was greatly moved. He wiped his face at all corners with his napkin. Dr. Adler felt that his son was indulging himself too much in his emotions.
“Whenever she can hit me, she hits, and she seems to live for that alone. And she demands more and more, and still more. Two years ago she wanted to go back to college and get another degree. It increased my burden but I thought it would be wiser in the end if she got a better job through it. But still she takes as much from me as before. Next thing she’ll want to be a doctor of philosophy. She says the women in her family live long, and I’ll have to pay and pay for the rest of my life.”
The doctor said impatiently, “Well, these are details, not principles. Just details which you can leave out. The dog! You’re mixing up all kinds of irrelevant things. Go to a good lawyer.”
“But I’ve already told you, Dad. I got
a lawyer, and she got one, too, and both of them talk and send me bills, and I eat my heart out. Oh, Dad, Dad, what a hole I’m in!” said Wilhelm in utter misery. “The lawyers—see?—draw up an agreement, and she says okay on Monday and wants more money on Tuesday. And it begins again.”
“I always thought she was a strange kind of woman,” said Dr. Adler. He felt that by disliking Margaret from the first and disapproving of the marriage he had done all that he could be expected to do.
“Strange, Father? I’ll show you what she’s like.” Wilhelm took hold of his broad throat with brown-stained fingers and bitten nails and began to choke himself.
“What are you doing?” cried the old man.
“I’m showing you what she does to me.”
“Stop that—stop it!” the old man said and tapped the table commandingly.
“Well, Dad, she hates me. I feel that she’s strangling me. I can’t catch my breath. She just has fixed herself on me to kill me. She can do it at long distance. One of these days I’ll be struck down by suffocation or apoplexy because of her. I just can’t catch my breath.”
“Take your hands off your throat, you foolish man,” said his father. “Stop this bunk. Don’t expect me to believe in all kinds of voodoo.”
“If that’s what you want to call it, all right.” His face flamed and paled and swelled and his breath was laborious.
“But I’m telling you that from the time I met her I’ve been a slave. The Emancipation Proclamation was only for colored people. A husband like me is a slave, with an iron collar. The churches go up to Albany and supervise the law. They won’t have divorces. The court says, ‘You want to be free. Then you have to work twice as hard—twice, at least! Work! you bum.’ So then guys kill each other for the buck, and they may be free of a wife who hates them but they are sold to the company. The company knows a guy has got to have his salary, and takes full advantage of him. Don’t talk to me about being free. A rich man may be free on an income of a million net. A poor man may be free because nobody cares what he does. But a fellow in my position has to sweat it out until he drops dead.”
His father replied to this, “Wilky, it’s entirely your own fault. You don’t have to allow it.”
Stopped in his eloquence, Wilhelm could not speak for a while. Dumb and incompetent, he struggled for breath and frowned with effort into his father’s face.
“I don’t understand your problems,” said the old man. “I never had any like them.”
By now Wilhelm had lost his head and he waved his hands and said over and over, “Oh, Dad, don’t give me that stuff, don’t give me that. Please don’t give me that sort of thing.”
“It’s true,” said his father. “I come from a different world. Your mother and I led an entirely different life.”
“Oh, how can you compare Mother,” Wilhelm said. “Mother was a help to you. Did she harm you ever?”
“There’s no need to carry on like an opera, Wilky,” said the doctor. “This is only your side of things.”
“What? It’s the truth,” said Wilhelm.
The old man could not be persuaded and shook his round head and drew his vest down over the gilded shirt, and leaned back with a completeness of style that made this look, to anyone out of hearing, like an ordinary conversation between a middle-aged man and his respected father. Wilhelm towered and swayed, big and sloven, with his gray eyes red-shot and his honey-colored hair twisted in flaming shapes upward. Injustice made him angry, made him beg. But he wanted an understanding with his father, and he tried to capitulate to him. He said, “You can’t compare Mother and Margaret, and neither can you and I be compared, because you, Dad, were a success. And a success—is a success. I never made a success.”
The doctor’s old face lost all of its composure and became hard and angry. His small breast rose sharply under the red and black shirt and he said, “Yes. Because of hard work. I was not self-indulgent, not lazy. My old man sold dry goods in Williamsburg. We were nothing, do you understand? I knew I couldn’t afford to waste my chances.”
“I wouldn’t admit for one minute that I was lazy,” said Wilhelm. “If anything, I tried too hard. I admit I made many mistakes. Like I thought I shouldn’t do things you had done already. Study chemistry. You had done it already. It was in the family.”
His father continued, “I didn’t run around with fifty women, either. I was not a Hollywood star. I didn’t have time to go to Cuba for a vacation. I stayed at home and took care of my children.”
Oh, thought Wilhelm, eyes turning upward. Why did I come here in the first place, to live near him? New York is like a gas. The colors are running. My head feels so tight, I don’t know what I’m doing. He thinks I want to take away his money or that I envy him. He doesn’t see what I want.
“Dad,” Wilhelm said aloud, “you’re being very unfair. It’s true the movies was a false step. But I love my boys. I didn’t abandon them. I left Margaret because I had to.”
“Why did you have to?”
“Well—” said Wilhelm, struggling to condense his many reasons into a few plain words. “I had to—I had to.”
With sudden and surprising bluntness his father said, “Did you have bed-trouble with her? Then you should have stuck it out. Sooner or later everyone has it. Normal people stay with it. It passes. But you wouldn’t, so now you pay for your stupid romantic notions. Have I made my view clear?”
It was very clear. Wilhelm seemed to hear it repeated from various sides and inclined his head different ways, and listened and thought. Finally he said, “I guess that’s the medical stand-point. You may be right. I just couldn’t live with Margaret. I wanted to stick it out, but I was getting very sick. She was one way and I was another. She wouldn’t be like me, so I tried to be like her, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Are you sure she didn’t tell you to go?” the doctor said.
“I wish she had. I’d be in a better position now. No, it was me. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stay. Somebody had to take the initiative. I did. Now I’m the fall guy too.”
Pushing aside in advance all the objections that his son would make, the doctor said, “Why did you lose your job with Rojax?”
“I didn’t, I’ve told you.”
“You’re lying. You wouldn’t have ended the connection. You need the money too badly. But you must have got into trouble.” The small old man spoke concisely and with great strength. “Since you have to talk and can’t let it alone, tell the truth. Was there a scandal—a woman?”
Wilhelm fiercely defended himself. “No, Dad, there wasn’t any woman. I told you how it was.”
“Maybe it was a man, then,” the old man said wickedly.
Shocked, Wilhelm stared at him with burning pallor and dry lips. His skin looked a little yellow. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” he answered after a moment. “You shouldn’t let your imagination run so free. Since you’ve been living here on Broadway you must think you understand life, up-to-date. You ought to know your own son a little better. Let’s drop that, now.”
“All right, Wilky, I’ll withdraw it. But something must have happened in Roxbury nevertheless. You’ll never go back. You’re just talking wildly about representing a rival company. You won’t. You’ve done something to spoil your reputation, I think. But you’ve got girl friends who are expecting you back, isn’t that so?”
“I take a lady out now and then while on the road,” said Wilhelm. “I’m not a monk.”
“No one special? Are you sure you haven’t gotten into complications?”
He had tried to unburden himself and instead, Wilhelm thought, he had to undergo an inquisition to prove himself worthy of a sympathetic word. Because his father believed that he did all kinds of gross things.
“There is a woman in Roxbury that I went with. We fell in love and wanted to marry, but she got tired of waiting for my divorce. Margaret figured that. On top of which the girl was a Catholic and I had to go with her to the prie
st and make an explanation.”
Neither did this last confession touch Dr. Adler’s sympathies or sway his calm old head or affect the color of his complexion.
“No, no, no, no; all wrong,” he said.
Again Wilhelm cautioned himself. Remember his age. He is no longer the same person. He can’t bear trouble. I’m so choked up and congested anyway I can’t see straight. Will I ever get out of the woods, and recover my balance? You’re never the same afterward. Trouble rusts out the system.
“You really want a divorce?” said the old man.
“For the price I pay I should be getting something.”
“In that case,” Dr. Adler said, “it seems to me no normal person would stand for such treatment from a woman.”
“Ah, Father, Father!” said Wilhelm. “It’s always the same thing with you. Look how you lead me on. You always start out to help me with my problems, and be sympathetic and so forth. It gets my hopes up and I begin to be grateful. But before we’re through I’m a hundred times more depressed than before. Why is that? You have no sympathy. You want to shift all the blame on to me. Maybe you’re wise to do it.” Wilhelm was beginning to lose himself. “All you seem to think about is your death. Well, I’m sorry. But I’m going to die too. And I’m your son. It isn’t my fault in the first place. There ought to be a right way to do this, and be fair to each other. But what I want to know is, why do you start up with me if you’re not going to help me? What do you want to know about my problems for, Father? So you can lay the whole responsibility on me—so that you won’t have to help me? D’you want me to comfort you for having such a son?” Wilhelm had a great knot of wrong tied tight within his chest, and tears approached his eyes but he didn’t let them out. He looked shabby enough as it was. His voice was thick and hazy, and he was stammering and could not bring his awful feelings forth.