by Saul Bellow
At the restaurant I discover that I am not hungry at all, but now I have no alternative and so I eat. The stairs are a little more difficult this time. I come into the room breathing hard, and turn on the radio. I smoke. I listen to half an hour of symphonic music, disturbed when I fail to catch the announcer before he begins to advertise someone’s credit-clothing. By one o’clock the day has changed, has taken on a new kind of restlessness. I make my effort to read but cannot key my mind to the sentences on the page or the references in the words. My mind redoubles its efforts, but thoughts of doubtful relevance are straggling in and out of it, the trivial and the major together. And suddenly I shut it off. It is as vacant as the street. I get up and turn on the radio again. Three o’clock, and nothing has happened to me; three o’clock, and the dark is already setting in; three o’clock, and the postman has bobbed by for the last time and left nothing in my box. I have read the paper and looked into a book, I have had a few random thoughts. …
“Mr. Five-by-five,
He’s five feet high
An’ he’s five feet wide …”
and now, like any housewife, I am listening to the radio.
The landlady’s daughter has cautioned us not to play it too loudly; her mother has been bedridden for more than three months. The old woman is not expected to live long. She is blind and very nearly bald; she must be close to ninety. I see her at times, between the curtains, as I go upstairs. The daughter has been managing the house since September. She and her husband, Captain Briggs, live in the third-floor apartment. He is in the Quartermaster Division. A man of about fifty (much older than his wife), he is solid, neat, gray, and quiet-spoken. We often see him walking outside the fence, smoking a last cigarette before retiring.
At four-thirty I hear Mr. Vanaker next door, coughing and growling. Iva, for some reason of her own, has named him the “werewolf.” He is a queer, annoying creature. His coughing, I am convinced, is partly alcoholic and partly nervous. And it is also a sort of social activity. Iva does not agree. But I know that he coughs to draw attention to himself. I have lived in rooming houses so long that I have acquired an eye for the type. Years ago, on Dorchester Avenue, there was an old man who refused to shut his door but sat or lay facing the hall and watched everyone, day and night. And there was another on Schiller Street in whose washbasin you could always hear the water running. That was his manner of making himself known to us. Mr. Vanaker coughs. Not only that, but when he goes to the toilet he leaves the door ajar. He tramps down the hall, and a moment later you hear him splashing. Iva lately complained about this to Mrs. Briggs, who thereupon tacked a notice on the wall: Occupant please close door when using and wear bathrobes to and fro. So far it hasn’t helped.
Through Mrs. Briggs we have learned a number of interesting facts about Vanaker. Before the old woman took to bed he was continually urging her to go to the movies with him. “When it should be plain to anybody Mamma can’t see a thing.” He was formerly in the habit of running down to answer the phone in his pajama trousers only—the reason for the bathrobe warning. The Captain had to step in and put an end to that. Marie has found half-smoked cigars ground out on the floors of unoccupied rooms. She suspects Vanaker of snooping through the house. He is no gentleman. She cleans his room, and she knows. Marie has high standards for white conduct, and her nostrils grow wider when she speaks of him. The old woman, Mrs. Kiefer, once threatened to put him out, she claims.
Vanaker is energetic. Hatless, he hurries in his black moleskin jacket up the street and between the snowy bushes. He slams the street door and kicks the snow from his boots on the first step. Then, coughing wildly, he runs up.
At six, I meet Iva at Fallon’s for supper. We eat there quite regularly. Sometimes we go to the “Merit” or to a cafeteria on Fifty-third Street. Our evenings are generally short. We turn in before midnight.
December 17
It is a narcotic dullness. There are times when I am not even aware that there is anything wrong with this existence. But, on the other hand, there are times when I rouse myself in bewilderment and vexation, and then I think of myself as a moral casualty of the war. I have changed. Two incidents in the past week have shown me how greatly. The first can hardly be called an incident. I was leafing through Goethe’s Poetry and Life and I came upon the following phrase: “This loathing of life has both physical and moral causes. …” I was sufficiently stirred by this to read on. “All comfort in life is based upon a regular occurrence of external phenomena. The changes of the day and night, of the seasons, of flowers and fruits, and all other recurring pleasures that come to us, that we may and should enjoy them—these are the mainsprings of our earthly life. The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier we are; but if these changing phenomena unfold themselves and we take no interest in them, if we are insensible to such fair solicitations, then comes on the sorest evil, the heaviest disease—we regard life as a loathsome burden. It is said of an Englishman that he hanged himself that he might no longer have to dress and undress himself every day.” I read on and on with unacccustomed feeling. Goethe’s heading on the next page was “Weariness of Life.” Exactly. Radix malorum est weariness of life. Then came the statement: “Nothing occasions this weariness more than the recurrence of the passion of love.” Deeply disappointed, I put the book down.
Nevertheless, I could not help seeing how differently this would have affected me a year ago, and how much I had altered. Then, I might have found it true but not especially noteworthy. I might have been amused by that Englishman but not moved. But his boredom threw that “passion of love” in the shadow and he instantly took his place for me beside that murderer Barnardine in Measure for Measure whose contempt for life equaled his contempt for death, so that he would not come out of his cell to be executed. To be so drawn to those two was proof that I had indeed changed.
And now the second incident.
My father-in-law, old Almstadt, came down with a bad cold, and Iva, knowing how inept her mother is, asked me to go there and help out.
The Almstadts live on the Northwest Side, a dreary hour’s ride on the El. I found the house in great disorder. Mrs. Almstadt was trying to make the beds, cook, attend her husband, and answer the telephone all at the same time. The telephone was never idle for more than five minutes. Her friends kept calling, and to each she repeated the full story of her troubles. I have always disliked my mother-in-law. She is a short, fair, rather maidenish woman. Her natural color, when visible, is healthy. Her eyes are large, and they wear a knowing look, but since there is nothing to be knowing about they only convey her foolishness. She powders herself thickly, and her lips are painted in the shape that has become the universal device of sensuality for all women, from the barely mature to the very old. Mrs. Almstadt, nearing fifty, is already quite wrinkled, much to her concern, and she is forever on the watch for new packs and face lotions.
When I came in, she was busy talking over the telephone to someone, and I went to my father-in-law’s room. He was lying with his knees drawn up and his shoulders raised, so that his head seemed joined without a neck directly to his body. Through an opening in his pajamas his flesh showed white and fatty under graying hair. He looked unfamiliar in the high-buttoned tunic with the crest on the pocket, and a little ludicrous. This was Mrs. Almstadt’s doing. She bought his clothes, and she had dressed him for bed like a mandarin or a Romanoff prince. His broad knuckles were joined on the silken quilt. He greeted me with a not wholly ungrudged smile, and also as though it might be considered unmanly or unfatherly to fall sick. At the same time, however, he tried to make it plain that he could afford to spend a few days in bed; he was far enough ahead of the game; the business (this he told me with conflicting nonchalance and defiance) was in good hands.
The phone rang again, and Mrs. Almstadt once more began to tell her story to one of her innumerable connections (who knows who they are?). Her husband had come down yesterday, and they had had the doctor in, and the doctor had said t
here was a regular epidemic of grippe this winter. She was worn out, just worn out, trying to keep house and take care of Mr. Almstadt. You couldn’t leave a sick person alone … and what could you do without a maid? Her words showered down upon us like little glass pellets. Old Almstadt gave no indication that he heard; at times he seemed automatically deaf to her. But, of course, it was impossible not to hear her; she has a high, atonal voice which penetrates everywhere. And what I now became curious to know was whether he was unaffected or whether she was a nuisance to him. In the five years that I had been his son-in-law I had heard neither criticism nor defense of her from him, save on two occasions when he said, “Katy’s still a child; she never grew up.”
Before I was aware of it I was saying, “How did you ever manage to stick it out so long, Mr. Almstadt?”
“Stick out? What?” he said.
“With her,” I plunged on. “It would get me, I know it would.”
“What are you talking about?” the old man asked, perplexed and angry. I suppose he thought it dishonorable to allow anyone to say such things to his face. But I could not help myself. It seemed, at the moment, not an error but a very natural inquiry. I was suddenly in a state of mind that required directness for its satisfaction. Nothing else would do. “I don’t know what you mean; what are you talking about?” he said again.
“Well, listen to her.”
“Oh,” he said, “you mean the telephone.”
“Yes, the telephone.”
He appeared somewhat relieved. “I don’t pay any attention to it. All women are talkers. Maybe Katy talks more than most, but you got to allow for that. She …”
“Never grew up?” I said.
I doubt that this was what he intended to say, but since the phrase was his he could not dissent. With lips tightly drawn together, he nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Some people just turn out different than others. Everybody isn’t alike.” He spoke stiffly; he was still angry. He had to make allowances for me, too, once in a while. My behavior was not always what it should be, he thus, indirectly, gave me to understand. His color had thickened furiously; it was slow to recede. Harsh and red his face shone under the branched brass fixture whose light had a singular hue, like tea. Was he deliberately covering up an opinion which, it must be conceded, he had every right to hold privately, or did he believe what he said? The latter was the more likely explanation. Babble, tedium, and all the rest were to be expected; they came with every marriage. There was still another possibility to consider, and that was that he was not resigned and that he did not ignore her as he pretended but—and there was every likelihood that he was unaware of this—heard and delighted in her, wanted her slovenly, garrulous, foolish, and coy, took pleasure in enduring her. His face, as we looked at each other, took on a doglike aspect. I was perturbed, and rebuked my imagination.
The doctor had left a prescription which the old man asked me to take to the drugstore. As I went out I heard Mrs. Almstadt saying, “My Iva’s husband Joseph is here to lend a hand. He isn’t working now, he’s waiting for the Army, so he has all the time in the world.” I started and turned, full of indignation, but she, pressing the black, kidney-shaped instrument to her cheek, smiled at me all oblivious. I wondered whether it was possible that she should not have said it intentionally, that she should be blameless; whether her thoughts were as smooth and contentless as counters or blank dominoes; whether she was half guile and half innocence; or whether there worked through her a malice she herself knew nothing about.
There was a sharp wind outside; the sun, low and raw in a field of coarse clouds, ruddied the bricks and windows. The street had been blown dry (it had rained the day before), and it presented itself in one of its winter aspects, creased and with thin sidelocks of snow, all but deserted. A block-long gap lay between me and the nearest walker—out on some unfathomable business—a man in a long, soldierly coat which the sun had converted to its own color. And then the pharmacy where I waited, sipping a cup of coffee under the crepe-paper lattice till my parcel, wrapped in green Christmas paper, was handed to me.
As I was going back, an exhibit in a barbershop attracted me: “Fancy articles from kitchen odds and ends by Mrs. J. Kowalski, 3538 Pierce Avenue.” And there were laid out mosaic pictures, bits of matchstick on mats of leaf from old cigar butts, ash trays cut from tin cans and shellacked grapefruit rind, a braided cellophane belt, a letter opener inlaid with bits of glass, and two hand-painted religious pictures. In its glass case the striped pole turned smoothly, the Lucky Tiger watched from a thicket of bottles, the barber read a magazine. Turning with my parcel, I went on and, through the gray pillars and the ungainly door which clanked on the mailboxes, entered the sad cavern of the hall.
Upstairs, I worked energetically on the old man. I had Mrs. Almstadt make a pitcher of orange juice, dosed him with the medicine, and rubbed him down with alcohol. He grunted with pleasure during the massage and said that I was stronger than I looked. We were on better terms by this time. But I would not be drawn into a conversation. If I kept silent, I could not make another mistake. If I began to talk I would soon find myself explaining my position and defending my idleness. Old Almstadt did not bring up the subject. My own father, I must say, treats me less considerately in that respect. He would have asked me, but Almstadt said nothing about it.
I rolled down my sleeves and was preparing to go when my mother-in-law reminded me that she had poured a glass of orange juice for me in the kitchen. That was not lunch, but it was better than nothing. I went to get it and found on the kitchen sink a half-cleaned chicken, its yellow claws rigid, its head bent as though to examine its entrails which raveled over the sopping draining board and splattered the enamel with blood. Beside it stood the orange juice, a brown feather floating in it. I poured it down the drain. Wearing my hat and scarf, I wandered to the living room, where I had left my coat. Mr. and Mrs. Almstadt were conversing in the bedroom. I looked out of the window.
The sun had been covered up; snow was beginning to fall. It was sprinkled over the black pores of the gravel and was lying in thin slips on the slanting roofs. I could see a long way from this third-floor height. Not far off there were chimneys, their smoke a lighter gray than the gray of the sky; and, straight before me, ranges of poor dwellings, warehouses, billboards, culverts, electric signs blankly burning, parked cars and moving cars, and the occasional bare plan of a tree. These I surveyed, pressing my forehead on the glass. It was my painful obligation to look and to submit to myself the invariable question: Where was there a particle of what, elsewhere, or in the past, had spoken in man’s favor? There could be no doubt that these billboards, streets, tracks, houses, ugly and blind, were related to interior life. And yet, I told myself, there had to be a doubt. There were human lives organized around these ways and houses, and that they, the houses, say, were the analogue, that what men created they also were, through some transcendent means, I could not bring myself to concede. There must be a difference, a quality that eluded me, somehow, a difference between things and persons and even between acts and persons. Otherwise the people who lived here were actually a reflection of the things they lived among. I had always striven to avoid blaming them. Was that not in effect behind my daily reading of the paper? In their businesses and politics, their taverns, movies, assaults, divorces, murders, I tried continually to find clear signs of their common humanity.
It was undeniably to my interest to do this. Because I was involved with them; because, whether I liked it or not, they were my generation, my society, my world. We were figures in the same plot, eternally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible. And if, as was often said, this part of the century was approaching the nether curve in a cycle, then I, too, would remain on the bottom and there, extinct, merely add my body, my life, to the base of a coming time. This would probably be a condemned age. But … it might be a mistake to think of it in that way. Mists faded and spread and faded on the pane as I breath
ed. Perhaps a mistake. And when I thought of the condemned ages and those unnamed, lying in their obscurity, I wondered. … How did we know how it was? In all principal ways the human spirit must have been the same. Good apparently left fewer traces. And we were coming to know that we had misjudged whole epochs. Besides, the giants of the last century had their Liverpools and Londons, their Lilies and Hamburgs to contend against, as we have our Chicagos and Detroits. And there might be a chance that I was misled, even with these ruins before my eyes, sodden, themselves the color of the fateful paper that I read daily. … The worlds we sought were never those we saw; the worlds we bargained for were never the worlds we got.
I have spoken of an “invariable question.” But the fact is that it had for many months been not in the least invariable. These were things I would have thought last winter, and now, in their troubled density, they served only to remind me of the sort of person I had been. For a long time “common humanity” and “bring myself to concede” had been completely absent from my mind. And all at once I saw how I had lapsed from that older self to whom they had been so natural.
December 18
For Legal purposes, I am that older self, and if a question of my identity were to arise I could do nothing but point to my attributes of yesterday. I have not tried to bring myself up to date, either from indifference or from fear. Very little about the Joseph of a year ago pleases me. I cannot help laughing at him, at some of his traits and sayings.
Joseph, aged twenty-seven, an employee of the Inter-American Travel Bureau, a tall, already slightly flabby but, nevertheless, handsome young man, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin—major, History—married five years, amiable, generally takes himself to be well-liked. But on close examination he proves to be somewhat peculiar.