Seize the Day

by Saul Bellow

  The doctor looked at him with his deadly brown, heavy, impenetrable eyes, his naked shining head, his red hanging underlip, and said, “You have lots of guilt in you.”

  Wilhelm helplessly admitted, as he felt the heat rise to his wide face, “Yes, I think so too. But personally,” he added, “I don’t feel like a murderer. I always try to lay off. It’s the others who get me. You know—make me feel oppressed. And if you don’t mind, and it’s all the same to you, I would rather know it when you start to treat me. And now, Tamkin, for Christ’s sake, they’re putting out the lunch menus already. Will you sign the check, and let’s go!”

  Tamkin did as he asked, and they rose. They were passing the bookkeeper’s desk when he took out a substantial bundle of onionskin papers and said, “These are receipts of the transactions. Duplicates. You’d better keep them as the account is in your name and you’ll need them for income taxes. And here is a copy of a poem I wrote yesterday.”

  “I have to leave something at the desk for my father,” Wilhelm said, and he put his hotel bill in an envelope with a note. Dear Dad, Please carry me this month, Yours, W. He watched the clerk with his sullen pug’s profile and his stiff-necked look push the envelope into his father’s box.

  “May I ask you really why you and your dad had words?” said Dr. Tamkin, who had hung back, waiting.

  “It was about my future,” said Wilhelm. He hurried down the stairs with swift steps, like a tower in motion, his hands in his trousers pockets. He was ashamed to discuss the matter. “He says there’s a reason why I can’t go back to my old territory, and there is. I told everybody I was going to be an officer of the corporation. And I was supposed to. It was promised. But then they welshed because of the son-in-law. I bragged and made myself look big.”

  “If you was humble enough, you could go back. But it doesn’t make much difference. We’ll make you a good living on the market.”

  They came into the sunshine of upper Broadway, not clear but throbbing through the dust and fumes, a false air of gas visible at eye level as it spurted from the bursting buses. From old habit, Wilhelm turned up the collar of his jacket.

  “Just a technical question,” Wilhelm said. “What happens if your losses are bigger than your deposit?”

  “Don’t worry. They have ultramodern electronic bookkeeping machinery, and it won’t let you get in debt. It puts you out automatically. But I want you to read this poem. You haven’t read it yet.”

  Light as a locust, a helicopter bringing mail from Newark Airport to La Guardia sprang over the city in a long leap.

  The paper Wilhelm unfolded had ruled borders in red ink. He read:

  MECHANISM VS FUNCTIONALISM

  ISM VS HISM

  If thee thyself couldst only see

  Thy greatness that is and yet to be,

  Thou would feel joy-beauty-what ecstasy.

  They are at thy feet, earth-moon-sea, the trinity.

  Why-forth then dost thou tarry

  And partake thee only of the crust

  And skim the earth’s surface narry

  When all creations art thy just?

  Seek ye then that which art not there

  In thine own glory let thyself rest.

  Witness. Thy power is not bare.

  Thou art King. Thou art at thy best.

  Look then right before thee.

  Open thine eyes and see.

  At the foot of Mt. Serenity

  Is thy cradle to eternity.

  Utterly confused, Wilhelm said to himself explosively, What kind of mishmash, claptrap is this! What does he want from me? Damn him to hell, he might as well hit me on the head, and lay me out, kill me. What does he give me this for? What’s the purpose? Is it a deliberate test? Does he want to mix me up? He’s already got me mixed up completely. I was never good at riddles. Kiss those seven hundred bucks good-by, and call it one more mistake in a long line of mistakes—Oh, Mama, what a line! He stood near the shining window of a fancy fruit store, holding Tamkin’s paper, rather dazed, as though a charge of photographer’s flash powder had gone up in his eyes.

  But he’s waiting for my reaction. I have to say something to him about his poem. It really is no joke. What will I tell him? Who is this King? The poem is written to someone. But who? I can’t even bring myself to talk. I feel too choked and strangled. With all the books he reads, how come the guy is so illiterate? And why do people just naturally assume that you’ll know what they’re talking about? No. I don’t know, and nobody knows. The planets don’t, the stars don’t, infinite space doesn’t. It doesn’t square with Planck’s Constant or anything else. So what’s the good of it? Where’s the need of it? What does he mean here by Mount Serenity? Could it be a figure of speech for Mount Everest? As he says people are all committing suicide, maybe those guys who climbed Everest were only trying to kill themselves, and if we want peace we should stay at the foot of the mountain. In the here-and-now. But it’s also here-and-now on the slope, and on the top, where they climbed to seize the day. Surface narry is something he can’t mean, I don’t believe. I’m about to start foaming at the mouth. “Thy cradle …” Who is resting in his cradle—in his glory? My thoughts are at an end. I feel the wall. No more. So ——k it all! The money and everything. Take it away! When I have the money they eat me alive, like those piranha fish in the movie about the Brazilian jungle. It was hideous when they ate up that Brahma bull in the river. He turned pale, just like clay, and in five minutes nothing was left except the skeleton still in one piece, floating away. When I haven’t got it any more, at least they’ll let me alone.

  “Well, what do you think of this?” said Dr. Tamkin. He gave a special sort of wise smile, as though Wilhelm must now see what kind of man he was dealing with.

  “Nice. Very nice. Have you been writing long?”

  “I’ve been developing this line of thought for years and years. You follow it all the way?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who this Thou is.”

  “Thou? Thou is you.”

  “Me! Why? This applies to me?”

  “Why shouldn’t it apply to you. You were in my mind when I composed it. Of course, the hero of the poem is sick humanity. If it would open its eyes it would be great.”

  “Yes, but how do I get into this?”

  “The main idea of the poem is construct or destruct. There is no ground in between. Mechanism is destruct. Money of course is destruct. When the last grave is dug, the gravedigger will have to be paid. If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don’t know what you’ve got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality …”

  “I realized you were no beginner,” said Wilhelm with propriety. “I have only one criticism to make. I think ‘why-forth’ is wrong. You should write ‘Wherefore then dost thou …’ ” And he reflected, So? I took a gamble. It’ll have to be a miracle, though, to save me. My money will be gone, then it won’t be able to destruct me. He can’t just take and lose it, though. He’s in it, too. I think he’s in a bad way himself. He must be. I’m sure because, come to think of it, he sweated blood when he signed that check. But what have I let myself in for? The waters of the earth are going to roll over me.

  V

  Patiently, in the window of the fruit store, a man with a scoop spread crushed ice between his rows of vegetables. There were also Persian melons, lilacs, tulips with radiant black at the middle. The many street noises came back after a little while from the caves of the sky. Crossing the tide of Broadway traffic, Wilhelm was saying to himself, The reason Tamkin lectures me is that somebody has lectured him, and the reason for the poem is that he wants to give me good advice. Everybody seems to know something. Even fellows like Tamkin. Many people know what to do, but how many can do it?

  He believed that he
must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted—must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible. First he had to get out of the city. No, first he had to pull out his money….

  From the carnival of the street—pushcarts, accordion and fiddle, shoeshine, begging, the dust going round like a woman on stilts—they entered the narrow crowded theater of the brokerage office. From front to back it was filled with the Broadway crowd. But how was lard doing this morning? From the rear of the hall Wilhelm tried to read the tiny figures. The German manager was looking through his binoculars. Tamkin placed himself on Wilhelm’s left and covered his conspicuous bald head. “The guy’ll ask me about the margin,” he muttered. They passed, however, unobserved. “Look, the lard has held its place,” he said.

  Tamkin’s eyes must be very sharp to read the figures over so many heads and at this distance—another respect in which he was unusual.

  The room was always crowded. Everyone talked. Only at the front could you hear the flutter of the wheels within the board. Teletyped news items crossed the illuminated screen above.

  “Lard. Now what about rye?” said Tamkin, rising on his toes. Here he was a different man, active and impatient. He parted people who stood in his way. His face turned resolute, and on either side of his mouth odd bulges formed under his mustache. Already he was pointing out to Wilhelm the appearance of a new pattern on the board. “There’s something up today,” he said.

  “Then why’d you take so long with breakfast?” said Wilhelm.

  There were no reserved seats in the room, only customary ones. Tamkin always sat in the second row, on the commodities side of the aisle. Some of his acquaintances kept their hats on the chairs for him.

  “Thanks. Thanks,” said Tamkin, and he told Wilhelm, “I fixed it up yesterday.”

  “That was a smart thought,” said Wilhelm. They sat down.

  With folded hands, by the wall, sat an old Chinese businessman in a seersucker coat. Smooth and fat, he wore a white Vandyke. One day Wilhelm had seen him on Riverside Drive pushing two little girls along in a baby carriage—his grandchildren. Then there were two women in their fifties, supposed to be sisters, shrewd and able money-makers, according to Tamkin. They had never a word to say to Wilhelm. But they would chat with Tamkin. Tamkin talked to everyone.

  Wilhelm sat between Mr. Rowland, who was elderly, and Mr. Rappaport, who was very old. Yesterday Rowland had told him that in the year 1908, when he was a junior at Harvard, his mother had given him twenty shares of steel for his birthday, and then he had started to read the financial news and had never practiced law but instead followed the market for the rest of his life. Now he speculated only in soy beans, of which he had made a specialty. By his conservative method, said Tamkin, he cleared two hundred a week. Small potatoes, but then he was a bachelor, retired, and didn’t need money.

  “Without dependents,” said Tamkin. “He doesn’t have the problems that you and I do.”

  Did Tamkin have dependents? He had everything that it was possible for a man to have—science, Greek, chemistry, poetry, and now dependents too. That beautiful girl with epilepsy, perhaps. He often said that she was a pure, marvelous, spiritual child who had no knowledge of the world. He protected her, and, if he was not lying, adored her. And if you encouraged Tamkin by believing him, or even if you refrained from questioning him, his hints became more daring. Sometimes he said that he paid for her music lessons. Sometimes he seemed to have footed the bill for the brother’s camera expedition to Brazil. And he spoke of paying for the support of the orphaned child of a dead sweetheart. These hints, made dully as asides, grew by repetition into sensational claims.

  “For myself, I don’t need much,” said Tamkin. “But a man can’t live for himself and I need the money for certain important things. What do you figure you have to have, to get by?”

  “Not less than fifteen grand, after taxes. That’s for my wife and the two boys.”

  “Isn’t there anybody else?” said Tamkin with a shrewdness almost cruel. But his look grew more sympathetic as Wilhelm stumbled, not willing to recall another grief.

  “Well—there was. But it wasn’t a money matter.”

  “I should hope!” said Tamkin. “If love is love, it’s free. Fifteen grand, though, isn’t too much for a man of your intelligence to ask out of life. Fools, hard-hearted criminals, and murderers have millions to squander. They burn up the world—oil, coal, wood, metal, and soil, and suck even the air and the sky. They consume, and they give back no benefit. A man like you, humble for life, who wants to feel and live, has trouble—not wanting,” said Tamkin in his parenthetical fashion, “to exchange an ounce of soul for a pound of social power—he’ll never make it without help in a world like this. But don’t you worry.” Wilhelm grasped at this assurance. “Just you never mind. We’ll go easily beyond your figure.”

  Dr. Tamkin gave Wilhelm comfort. He often said that he had made as much as a thousand a week in commodities. Wilhelm had examined the receipts, but until this moment it had never occurred to him that there must be debit slips too; he had been shown only the credits.

  “But fifteen grand is not an ambitious figure,” Tamkin was telling him. “For that you don’t have to wear yourself out on the road, dealing with narrow-minded people. A lot of them don’t like Jews, either, I suppose?”

  “I can’t afford to notice. I’m lucky when I have my occupation. Tamkin, do you mean you can save our money?”

  “Oh, did I forget to mention what I did before closing yesterday? You see, I closed out one of the lard contracts and bought a hedge of December rye. The rye is up three points already and takes some of the sting out. But lard will go up, too.”

  “Where? God, yes, you’re right,” said Wilhelm, eager, and got to his feet to look. New hope freshened his heart. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  And Tamkin, smiling like a benevolent magician, said, “You must learn to have trust. The slump in lard can’t last. And just take a look at eggs. Didn’t I predict they couldn’t go any lower? They’re rising and rising. If we had taken eggs we’d be far ahead.”

  “Then why didn’t we take them?”

  “We were just about to. I had a buying order in at .24, but the tide turned at .26 ¼ and we barely missed. Never mind. Lard will go back to last year’s levels.”

  Maybe. But when? Wilhelm could not allow his hopes to grow too strong. However, for a little while he could breathe more easily. Late-morning trading was getting active. The shining numbers whirred on the board, which sounded like a huge cage of artificial birds. Lard fluctuated between two points, but rye slowly climbed.

  He closed his strained, greatly earnest eyes briefly and nodded his Buddha’s head, too large to suffer such uncertainties. For several moments of peace he was removed to his small yard in Roxbury.

  He breathed in the sugar of the pure morning.

  He heard the long phrases of the birds.

  No enemy wanted his life.

  Wilhelm thought, I will get out of here. I don’t belong in New York any more. And he sighed like a sleeper.

  Tamkin said, “Excuse me,” and left his seat. He could not sit still in the room but passed back and forth between the stocks and commodities sections. He knew dozens of people and was continually engaging in discussions. Was he giving advice, gathering information, or giving it, or practicing—whatever mysterious profession he practiced? Hypnotism? Perhaps he could put people in a trance while he talked to them. What a rare, peculiar bird he was, with those pointed shoulders, that bare head, his loose nails, almost claws, and those brown, soft, deadly, heavy eyes.

  He spoke of things that mattered, and as very few people did this he could take you by surprise, excite you, move you. Maybe he wished to do good, maybe give h
imself a lift to a higher level, maybe believe his own prophecies, maybe touch his own heart. Who could tell? He had picked up a lot of strange ideas; Wilhelm could only suspect, he could not say with certainty, that Tamkin hadn’t made them his own.

  Now Tamkin and he were equal partners, but Tamkin had put up only three hundred dollars. Suppose he did this not only once but five times; then an investment of fifteen hundred dollars gave him five thousand to speculate with. If he had power of attorney in every case, he could shift the money from one account to another. No, the German probably kept an eye on him. Nevertheless it was possible. Calculations like this made Wilhelm feel ill. Obviously Tamkin was a plunger. But how did he get by? He must be in his fifties. How did he support himself? Five years in Egypt; Hollywood before that; Michigan; Ohio; Chicago. A man of fifty has supported himself for at least thirty years. You could be sure that Tamkin had never worked in a factory or in an office. How did he make it? His taste in clothes was horrible, but he didn’t buy cheap things. He wore corduroy or velvet shirts from Clyde’s, painted neckties, striped socks. There was a slightly acid or pasty smell about his person; for a doctor, he didn’t bathe much. Also, Dr. Tamkin had a good room at the Gloriana and had had it for about a year. But so was Wilhelm himself a guest, with an unpaid bill at present in his father’s box. Did the beautiful girl with the skirts and belts pay him? Was he defrauding his so-called patients? So many questions impossible to answer could not be asked about an honest man. Nor perhaps about a sane man. Was Tamkin a lunatic, then? That sick Mr. Perls at breakfast had said that there was no easy way to tell the sane from the mad, and he was right about that in any big city and especially in New York—the end of the world, with its complexity and machinery, bricks and tubes, wires and stones, holes and heights. And was everybody crazy here? What sort of people did you see? Every other man spoke a language entirely his own, which he had figured out by private thinking; he had his own ideas and peculiar ways. If you wanted to talk about a glass of water, you had to start back with God creating the heavens and earth; the apple; Abraham; Moses and Jesus; Rome; the Middle Ages; gunpowder; the Revolution; back to Newton; up to Einstein; then war and Lenin and Hitler. After reviewing this and getting it all straight again you could proceed to talk about a glass of water. “I’m fainting, please get me a little water.” You were lucky even then to make yourself understood. And this happened over and over and over with everyone you met. You had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood, not to know the crazy from the sane, the wise from the fools, the young from the old or the sick from the well. The fathers were no fathers and the sons no sons. You had to talk with yourself in the daytime and reason with yourself at night. Who else was there to talk to in a city like New York?