by Saul Bellow
“Hide, hide!” he said, laughing.
“You crazy fool,” cried Charlotte. She ran away on her high heels to bring her mother a coat and came back laughing also. They were downright proud, I guess.
Simon wrote out a check and gave it to Mrs. Magnus. “Here,” he said, “buy yourself something and don’t come here looking like the scrubwoman.” He went and kissed her on the braids, and she took his head and gave his kisses back two for one and with tremendous humor.
I went to see Einhorn, who was kind of white and peaky. Things were not too good with him. He had gone to the hospital and had a prostate operation while I was away. All the same he still had a fine presence, much as in the insurance literature and in the clippings and photos all over the place. In the midst of all these hung the portrait of the Commissioner—there was a man! What a fine, great head—with the famous obituary under it! Tillie was away on a holiday with the grandchild, and Mildred who was more than ever Einhorn’s friend was in charge. In her stout orthopedic shoes she stood up at the office barrier, which was cut down from the old office across the way. She had a way about the eyes of making you go to war with her. Not me, thanks. Her hair was beginning to be gray. Einhorn’s was snowy, which made his eyes blacker. He saw the double-breasted suit Simon had given me and said, “You certainly are doing fine, Augie.” The house stunk. The books were falling off the shelves. The busts of great men were lost up near the ceiling. The black leather chairs on casters were aging well, but aging.
Einhorn made a powerful complaint against Mimi Villars, who was ruining his son.
Mimi was even more unkind when she spoke of him and what he had done to Arthur. “I’ll tell you about that old man,” she said. “He’s a damned impresario for himself. Every time he goes to the toilet he wants to publish an article about it. I know everybody is vain, and that that’s what makes the world go round. Maybe it isn’t even vanity. Maybe it’s like, with a bullet in your brain, you go on thinking of your nice hat. You go on thinking about the party you were invited to on Saturday, and so forth. But there ought to be a limit somewhere. If you can’t help it, at least you should know that it isn’t a good thing. All that old man wants is that Arthur should be a credit to him and bring him glory, but as for helping him worth a damn, no, he won’t come across with a nickel. And parents who have money and won’t give any to their children ought to have it all taken away. They ought to go and beg. I’d take and put the old man on the corner of State and Lake with a tin cup, that’s what I’d do. And you know the grandfather left it all to Arthur. He knew better than to trust his son. Arthur has been trying to finish a book, which is a great book. I believe in it. You know he can’t be expected to work while doing that.”
Einhorn did have some money though she exaggerated his wealth. However, I didn’t argue with her. I was down on Einhorn myself. Since the time when I came back from Buffalo and found the family wiped out, when he urged me to be hard on Simon, I didn’t feel the old friendliness toward him. And, if you want to know, because he and Tillie had warned me in the old days not to expect anything, repeating how Arthur would come into all, I couldn’t help feeling no one had been good enough for them and now they were not good enough for one another. Now maybe was my chance to pass them by.
“Of course,” Mimi said with some of her old-time bitterness, “I have a pretty good job now, but last winter I was down with the flu and couldn’t work. Not only that but Owens kicked us out because I couldn’t pay the rent and a friend of ours on Dorchester took us in. But all Arthur and I had to sleep on was the sofa. Both of us on the sofa, and I had the flu. By morning he was so tired that when my friend went to work he got into her bed. So,” she said with her universal-comedy laugh, “finally I said he should try to get a job. He said he’d try, and he got up one morning at eight and was back at ten. He said he had a job in the toy department at Wieboldt’s and he was going to learn the details the next day. He left at nine that morning and was back at eleven. They had showed him, but before he started he wanted to clean up an important chapter about Kierkegaard—what do I know about it?
“So then he went away next day at half-past eight and was back at noon, fired, because the floorwalker told him to pick up a piece of paper and he said, Tick it up yourself, you dog. Your back isn’t broken.’
“Then Arthur came down with the flu and I had to get up and give him the sofa. But,” she said, “I love him. It’s never dull with him. The worse our life gets, the more good I feel in love. And you?” she said, looking closely at me, how I had been browned by Mexico, aged by hard going and experience, finally thrown on those rocks by Bizcocho and eating cinders and ashes over Thea. Why, the way I came back I must have had something in common with a survivor of Crassus’s army in the eastern desert, barely making it back from the massacre in tattered armor scales.
Well, people had warned me in the first place. Padilla, for instance, said, “Holy Christ, March, what did you have to go there for, with a broad like that and this bird! A girl who catches snakes, and God knows what else! What do you expect? No wonder you look like this. I hate like hell to be rubbing it in, but it seems to me you had it coming.”
“Manny, what was I supposed to do? I fell in love with her.”
“Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn’t destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love—or what good is it?”
“That’s right, but I didn’t love her as I ought to have. You see, I missed out. I should have been more pure, and stayed with it. There was something wrong with me.”
“Old pal, let me tell you something,” said Padilla. “You take too much blame on yourself, and the real reason is not such a good one. It’s because you’re too ambitious. You want too much, and therefore if you miss out you blame yourself too hard. But this is all a dream. The big investigation today is into how bad a guy can be, not how good he can be. You don’t keep up with the times. You’re going against history. Or at least you should admit how bad things are, which you don’t do either. You should cut out this junketing around and go back to the university.”
“I think I might do that. Only I’m still collecting my thoughts.”
“Collect them meanwhile, in the evening. Can’t you do two things at a time?”
And then Clem Tambow told me practically the same thing. He was getting his degree soon, and he looked very mature now with his heavy mustache and the cigar. He dressed like a poor man’s press agent and his clothes smelled of cleaning fluid and the masculine odor. “Well, big boy, I see you’re the same as when you left,” he said. Now Clem and I liked each other very much, a splendid and goodhearted fellow, salt of the earth, ready with sympathy and appreciative of the general human plight. But I went on a toot with a rich woman, as he saw it, and if I was roughed up I had it coming to me. That was what he meant, for I wasn’t at all the same as when I left.
“How is your campaign after a worth-while fate, Augie?” asked Clem, for he knew a lot about me, you see. Alas, why should he kid me so! I was only trying to do right, and I had broken my dome, lost teeth, got burned in my progress, a mighty slipshod campaigner. Lord, what a runner after good things, servant of love, embarker on schemes, recruit of sublime ideas, and good-time Charlie! Why, it was a crying matter, no fooling, to anyone who might know which side was up, that here was I trying to refuse to lead a disappointed life. A hell of a cause of sympathetic tears but also, as Clem saw, of haw-haws, as great jokes often are. So I looked desolated, and Clem laughed like anything. I couldn’t feel sore at him.
You know why I struck people funny? I think it was because of the division of labor. Specialization was leaving the likes of me behind. I didn’t know spot-welding, I didn’t know traffic management, I couldn’t remove an appendix, or anything like that. I discussed it with Clem, who was of like opinion. Clem was no slouch. He now said he was pushing ahead in the field of psychology and a lot was clear to him that was a mystery before. Oh, he still knocked himself. He said, “I bought al
l my fine notions at a fire sale,” but he was growing more confident of his point of view. He made a big thing of my coming back, declaring that we were among the few true friends around. That was no lie. I had the warmest feelings toward him. Well, then, he came around and said we must go to the Oriental Theatre and have supper. Till his last penny, Clem had to treat, and then he didn’t mind if you stood him to something. He liked to look well, though his face was often raging, wrinkled, or his laugh was enormous while his teeth were snaggly, his head huge, and the suit he wore was prosperous, solid, middle-aged, a banker’s suit, but his shanks were long, his shoes were wrecked, his socks old Argyles, he wore a turtleneck sweater and stunk of cigars.
So we went to the Oriental. The stars crept in the blue heavens there, like Arabian nights. We heard Milton Berle singing “River, Stay Away from My Door,” then floppy dancers, as couch-dolls in velvet, followed by an act of little dogs zipping across the stage in automobiles, and then a troupe of girls playing bagpipes. First they performed “Annie Laurie” and then went into classical numbers. They did the “Liebestod” and “Valse Triste,” and then came the feature, which was so lousy we walked out and went to a restaurant.
Dignified again after his windy haw-haws in the wild gallery, Clem ordered a big Chinese dinner—sweet and sour pork, bamboo shoots, chicken chow mein with pineapple, egg foo yung, and tea, rice, sherbet, almond cakes. We cleaned up on this and meanwhile had a conversation.
“Now just suppose,” he said, “we were on our way up the Nile to the first cataract, sailing in a dahabiyeh. The green fields and boys shying rocks at the heavy birds, and the splashing flowers, while we eat dates with aphrodisiacs in them and beautiful Coptic girls come rowing up to the music of the lateen sails and so on. Going to Karnak to copy inscriptions. How would that be?”
“Well, I just came back from one exotic place.”
“Yes, but you jumped the gun. You weren’t ready to go yet. You won’t take things step by step. That’s why your trip wasn’t a success. Now if you were an Egyptologist you could go on this trip up the Nile.”
“Good, then I’ll become one. All I need is about ten years’ preparation.”
“Look at you, you look so bright and happy after supper and your face is so pleasant, why, you might be the owner of this building. Haw, haw! Oh, brother, you’re swell!”
“The only thing is,” said I, flattered and smiling, “why the Nile?”
“For you? Something exceptional,” said Clem. “When I think of you I have to think in terms of something exceptional. On the level of achievement.” He had picked up this vocabulary at the university. One of his favorite words was “reinforced,” which meant to give food to a rat who has solved a problem, to encourage him. Meantime, with big red lips, scowling laughter, and territorial face, the great nose with its passages, he looked like a king. “Are you like one of the lousy crowd cheering the Coptics who row out to the boat? You are not. You are a distinguished personality. You are a man of feeling. Among us poor drips at the human masquerade you come like an angel.”
I tried to tut-tut him, but he said, “Oh, keep your shirt on, I’m not finished yet. You may not like it so much before I finish.”
“Well, don’t build me up so, and you won’t have to tear me down.”
“We aren’t in the same universe of discourse. This is not yet what St. Thomas calls my level of first intention. I didn’t say I thought you were an angel; only us common-clay, step-by-step, unfortunate ordinary personnel see you arrive as for a ball, smiling and beaming. You have ambitions. But you’re ambitious in general. You’re not concrete enough. You have to be concrete. Now Napoleon was. Goethe was. You take this Professor Sayce who actually had this Nile deal. He knew everything along the banks for a thousand miles. Specific! Names and addresses. Dates. The whole mystery of life is in the specific data.”
“What makes you so keen about Egypt suddenly?” I said. “And besides I know there’s plenty that’s wrong with me. Don’t you worry.”
“Why, of course, even though you’re beaming you’re full of anxiety. Don’t I know it! I can see you pissing against the wind. What you need is some of Dr. Freud’s medicine. It could do you a whole lot of good.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, now somewhat disturbed, “I’ve been having plenty of peculiar dreams lately. Just listen. Last night I dreamed that I was in my own house, somewhere—it was enough of a surprise to have a house of my own, much less dream what I dreamed. I was standing in my beautiful front room, entertaining a guest. And what do you think? I had two pianos. There were two grand pianos, as if ready for a concert. Then my guest, who had wonderful manners—and me too, regular society—he said, ‘Isn’t it unusual for somebody to own three grand pianos?’ Three! I turned around, and God! if there wasn’t another piano. And I had been trying to figure out how come I had two in my house, as I can’t play any more than a bull can sew cushions. This seemed downright sinister. But even though I was thrown by it I didn’t let on or show anything. I told this guy, ‘Sure, of course there are three of them’; as if who could do with less? So I felt like a terrible faker.”
“Oh, what a case! You’d be a regular conservatory for a scientific mind. You’d be the greatest collection of unknowns ever to lie on a couch. What I guess about you is that you have a nobility syndrome. You can’t adjust to the reality situation. I can see it all over you. You want there should be Man, with capital M, with great stature. As we’ve been pals since boyhood, I know you and what you think. Remember how you used to come to the house every day? But I know what you want. O paidea! O King David! O Plutarch and Seneca! O chivalry, O Abbot Suger! O Strozzi Palace, O Weimar! O Don Giovanni, O lineaments of gratified desire! O godlike man! Tell me, pal, am I getting warm or not?”
“You are, yes you are,” said I. We were in this woodwork bower, you see, of the Chinese restaurant, and all seemed right, good-tempered, friendly. When important thought doesn’t have to be soliloquy, I know how valuable an occasion that is. Because to whom can you speak your full mind as to yourself?
“Go on, Clem, go on,” I told him.
“I went to the Mottley School in the fourth grade. Mrs. Minsick was the teacher. She’d call you up to the front of the class and hand you a piece of chalk. ‘Now, Dorabella, what flower are you going to smell?’ Haw, haw! It was a riot. This little Dorabella Feingold would smell up until her pants showed and turn her eyes with ecstasy. She’d say, ‘Sweetpea.’ It was a regular drill. Inhale and exhale. Stephanie Kriezcki, she’d say, ‘Violet, rose, nasturtium.’” He held the cigar by the stem and smelled with his inflated nose. “Just catch the picture of this lousy classroom, and all these poor punks full of sauerkraut and bread with pig’s-feet, with immigrant blood and washday smells and kielbasa and home-brew beer. Where did they get off with this flora elegance? Why, hell! And then old lady Minsick would give a gold star to reinforce the good ones. She, with that kisser of hers with sharp teeth and tits that hung down to her belly, she’d hawk into the waste-paper basket. Well, the wild kids would say, ‘Skunk cabbage, teach,’ or, ‘Wild schmooflowers,’ or ‘Dreck.’ For this she’d grab you by the neck and rush you down to the principal. But these tough kids were right. Whoever saw any sweetpeas? Why, I’d fish through the sewer lid with a diaper pin because my wiseguy brother told me I’d catch goldfish.”
“This is a sad story. But don’t you see both kinds of kids were right? Some stood up for what they knew and some longed for what they didn’t. What do you mean, that there are some kids or people for whom there can’t be flowers? That couldn’t be true.”
“I knew you’d go for this chalk-smelling. You have a strong superego. You want to accept. But how do you know what you’re accepting? You have to be nuts to take it come one come all. Nobody is going to thank you for trying. And you know you’re going to ruin yourself ignoring the reality principle and trying to cheer up the dirty scene. You should accept the data of experience. Why don’t you read some psychology? It did
me a lot of good.”
“Well, I’ll borrow some of your books, since you think it’s so important. Only you’ve got the whole thing wrong already. I’ll put it to you as I see it. It can never be right to offer to die, and if that’s what the data of experience tell you, then you must get along without them. I also understand what you’re driving at about my not being concrete. It’s as follows: In the world of today your individual man has to be willing to illustrate a more and more narrow and restricted point of existence. And I am not a specialist.”
“Well, you tell me you can train birds.”
Yes, so far that had been my only field of specialization.
And it’s perfectly true, you have to be one of these spirits that get as if jumped into and driven far and powerfully by a social purpose. If somebody is needed to go and lie under the street, you be it. Or in a mine. Or work out joyrides in the carnival. Or invent names of new candy. Or electroplate babies’ shoes. Or go around and put cardboard pictures of bims in barbershops or saloons. Or go die in one subdivided role or another, with one or two thoughts, these narrow, persistent ideas of your function.
I always believed that for what I wanted there wasn’t much hope if you had to be a specialist, like a doctor or other expert. If so, as an expert, you’d be dealing with other experts. You wouldn’t care for amateurs, for experts are like that about amateurs. And besides specialization means difficulty, or what’s there to be a specialist about? I had Padilla’s slogan of “Easy or not at all.”