by Saul Bellow
From day to day he changed his plan. First he wanted to do the historical section and assigned me to read Max Weber, Tawney, and Marx. Next I had to drop all this to start research on a pamphlet on philanthropy. He hated all philanthropist millionaires and wanted to hit all the puritanical rich who looked so bad and felt so unhappy. He named some of his cousins among them, so I could see it was all a family affair. Even the big brazen Wall Street louse with his suckers full of blood did more good in the form of a devil than these rich men who were worried, he said, like everybody else. Simply worried. And he’d rave against them by the hour.
I was used to enthusiastic projects that would never leave the inventor’s hangar. Like Einhorn’s indexed Shakespeare back in the old days. And I really understood that Robey wanted from me what Einhorn had wanted, the very same thing, namely, a listener. He was on the telephone continually or sending the car for me or hunting for me in the library or waiting outside classrooms for me all the time.
The first few months he heaped readings on me. I never could have gotten through all those Greeks and Fathers and histories of Rome and the Eastern Empire and whatnot in years. I don’t even know that anybody should want to wade through so much stuff. But it suited me fine to sit in the library amid a heap of books.
Twice a week we had official conferences. I’d come with my notebooks ready to answer his questions with quotations and paraphrases. It was all right when he was businesslike, but he had peculiar moods, when his voice straggled, he was in woe, his hair in spikes and his color bloodshot, tears or anger in his voice, and much too vexed and bothered to talk to me about Aristotle and theories of happiness and so forth. He sometimes gave me some real jolts and astonishments. As when, looking for him through the mansion one day, I found him standing on a kitchen chair, wrapped in his bathrobe, pumping Flit into a cupboard while hundreds of roaches rushed out practically clutching their heads and falling from the walls. What a moment that was! He wildly raised hell as he worked the spray gun, full of lust, and breathed as loudly as the spray itself while the animals landed as thick as beans or beat it, crazy, like an Oklahoma land rush, in every direction.
Caught by me like this, Robey tried to swallow down his emotions and to act as though he didn’t hate the cockroaches or kill them with thrilling satisfaction. It was kind of too bad he couldn’t admit it. Moreover, I knew I had barged in at the wrong moment and that he’d hold it against me. He wouldn’t be able to help it.
He gave a bad twitch, as if I had touched him in the small of the back, and came down from the chair. “It’s just too much. They’re r-r-running away with the hou-hou—the house. I put a slice of bread in the toaster and a roach po-popped up toasted with the bread, so I couldn’t t-take it any more.”
All his rage, like an ember eating a hole through straw, suddenly was out, and he led me to the salon where in the sunlight was seen much busted-out stuffing and tears in buttonless royal green velvet and dust. He wiped the oily killer juice off on his gown, saying, “Did you work up that Italian Renaissance stuff for me about the p-princes and the h-humanists? How they suffered without God!” he said, looking off. “But they were godlike themse-selves. What courage! And terrible, t-t-too. But it had to happen, that m-man would dare.”
In the autumn he lost his grip on himself. He went on giving me assignments and I collected my thirty bucks with a free conscience, but he didn’t do any work.
I had often wondered what sort of women he went around with when unmarried, whether spiffy whores or ladies of his own set, or Back-of-the-Yards pickups, or nice little university girls, or what. I was surprised. He went for ordinary strippers from the Near North Side, from Clark Street, Broadway, Rush, and those parts, who were rough on him in their dealings. And as if it were a just punishment he took it from them and even smiled. He tried to sell me on these girls, but I had taken up once more with Sophie Geratis. He mostly seemed to want me to come with him. Which I did a few times to North Side joints. One stripper insulted him about the beard; he bowed to this. Only his red eyes, which he didn’t take off her—she was dressed now, wearing a gray tailored suit—were something scandalous. But he merely said pedantically, “In the old days of Elizabeth the barbers had lutes and guitars in the shop so the gentlemen waiting could sing and play. It was because the beards and the lovelocks took so long to fix.”
On the same evening as he made this mild observation he went on a rampage and tore the meter off in a taxi. I was supposed to get out at Fifty-fifth Street but I worried lest the driver sock him for this and so took him home first.
But he gave me a rough time just the same. He was very sensitive and wanted my good opinion; however, he was extremely variable, humble one minute and making sure of his money’s worth the next, and yelling or being sullen, sticking out his big red mouth in unhappiness or anger. I remember one day in particular. There were snow and sunshine all around, and it was fresh and beautiful, but he was in a nasty mood, prodding his hands knuckle to knuckle in the pigskin gloves. He bitched at me and kept on and on. So I said, “You don’t want me to work for you. You want somebody who’ll take this lousy nervousness from you.” And I wrapped my old coat around me, which was a camel’s hair going bald in places, and set off across the yard. He came after me to take it all back. In the thick powder of snow I had on overshoes, but he came on in his fine tan shoes which were slipper-like, saying, “Augie, let’s not have a fight. For the love of God. Listen, I’m sorry.” But I went on, good and mad. And that evening he phoned me and asked me to come and get him downtown. I could hear that things weren’t right. He said he’d be at the Pump Room, than which few places were considered niftier in the city. When I got there and asked for him, two knickered footmen brought him out. He was drunk, mute, numb, and could scarcely budge a feature of his face or work his tongue.
Little by little he had come to depend on me. Somewhat like Einhorn in the old days, he had found I wouldn’t take advantage of him and that I was dependable. And with his peculiarity and confusion, downright Guiana jungle manifestations or freaks that the power of life will squeeze into sometimes, there nevertheless was something in him that drew me. Just that power, no doubt, tormenting his humanity and tormented in return. And while he was a bachelor and shared that mansion with his sister Caroline—well, she didn’t do him much good. She was screwy. And when she found I had been in Mexico she took a shine to me, believing herself Spanish. She wrote me notes, such as, “Eres muy Guapo.” And now and then a telegram arrived, like, “Amigo, que te vaya con toda suerte, Carolina.” She was terribly scrambled, poor woman.
After all, I had taken care of my brother George. That ability or quality was with me yet, and sometimes people sensed it.
Sometimes I wished I could become a shoemaker too.
Chapter 22
IN MY OLD ROOM up at Owens’ which I finally got back I went along with the changes of the times, industrial, military, scientific. Personally I experienced steep variations myself, bad news, wasted expenditures, wicked dreams, wizard happenings like the appearance of animals in the heat of evenings to desert Fathers, still I am thankful to say that as I view it I was not harmed. The police couldn’t have had any complaint against me, regardless of what the moralists might have had. The worse offenses were in my imagination, where such belong, while like a big and busy enterprise that tries to cover all it can, I also brooded in my higher mind over my course of life. I came to certain conclusions too, which were sometimes fragmentary—such as, The reason for solitude can only be reunion; or, Oh, it’s very tiring to have your own opinions on everything—but other times were very full indeed, as will be shown in due course. I rambled around Chicago, my sociable self as always. But I was reverberating still from the plucks and pulls of Mexico. Thea didn’t write, having disappeared for good to some blue shores of the ancient seas, probably on the trail of flamingos, with some new lover who would understand her no better than I did, and camping on a parapet with her guns and nooses, cameras, long-distance glasses. She’d
pass into old age like this and never be any different.
I wasn’t getting any younger myself, and my friends would make pleasantries about my appearance, which wasn’t at all prosperous. I smiled minus a couple of teeth of the lower line and was somewhat smeared, or knocked, kissed by the rocky face of clasping experience. My hair grew upward, copious, covering my old mountain hunter’s scars. Undeniably I had a touch of the green of cousin Five Properties’ eyes in my own, and I went along whiffing a cigar and lacking any air of steady application to tasks, forgetful, elliptical, gleeful sometimes, but ah, more larky formerly than now. While I mused I often picked up objects off the street because they looked to me like coins; slugs, metals from bottletops, and tinfoil scraps buried, thus obviously hoping for a lucky break. Also I wished somebody would die and leave me everything. This was bad, for who could benefit me by dying that I shouldn’t love and want to keep on earth? And what good did finding coins do, even if each was a quarter, in the consummation and final form of my life? Why, no good, friends, not the least bit.
It also gave amusement that I was after a teaching certificate for grade school, for I hardly looked to be the type, I suppose. Yet this I was persistent about. I loved the practice teaching. It moved me while I did it; it was no problem to be my natural self with the kids—as why, God help us, should it be with anyone? But let us not ask questions whose answers are among the world’s well-kept secrets. In the classroom, or outside in the playground holleration, smelling pee in the hall, hearing the piano trimbles from the music room, among the busts, maps, and chalk-dust sunbeams, I was happy. I felt at home. I wanted to give the kids my best and tell them all I knew.
At this same school, teaching Latin and algebra, was my onetime neighbor, Kayo Obermark. Bushy, sloppy, and fat, he used to lie on his bed at Owens’ when he had the room next to mine in his underpants, his thighs curl-haired and feet smelly, and stare at the wall with determined thought as he put out cigarettes behind him without looking in the grease of an old skillet in which he fried salami. He kept a milk bottle by the bed to do duty in, disliking trips to the bathroom.
Now the kids were springing like locusts around him while he walked in the schoolyard, sullen, like an emperor. His face was big, moody, white, unevenly scraped. Crumbled Kleenexes stuck to him; he smelled of a cold and sounded snotty. But he wasn’t really sullen, this was just his dignity, and I was pleased that he was a teacher here.
He said, “I saw you drive up here in your car.”
“It started this morning for a change.” I did in fact own a ten-year-old Buick on which a very pleasant guy had gypped me like fury. It wouldn’t start on cold mornings and was a trial to me. I put in two batteries on Padilla’s advice but there was a fundamental defect in that the rods were bent. However, with a push it would go, and as it had a rumble seat and a long hood it looked powerful.
“Are you married yet?” said Kayo.
“No, I’m sorry to say.”
“I have a son,” he said proudly. “You better get on the ball. Don’t you have anybody? Women are easy to get. It’s your duty to have sons. There was an old philosopher caught by his disciple behind the Stoa with a woman, and he said, ‘Mock not! I plant a man.’ But I’ve been hearing all kinds of things about you, that you went to Mexico with a circus or carnival and that you were nearly assassinated too.”
He was in quite a mood, and he walked me round the schoolyard several times, being extremely kind in his haughty way and quoting various poems in his tense tenor voice.
Perish strife, both from among gods and men,
And wrath which maketh even him that is considerate cruel,
Which getteth up in the heart of a man like smoke,
And the taste thereof is sweeter than drops of honey.
Les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-la seuls qui partent
Pour partir; cœurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s’écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!
This last was probably aimed at me and accused me of being too light of heart and ignorantly saying good-by. I seemed to have critics everywhere. However, for a cold day this had a very bright sun, the trains were passing in blackness over an embankment of yellow concrete, the kids were screaming and whirling over the whole vast play yard, around the flagpole and in and out of the portables, and I felt especially stirred.
“You should get married,” said Kayo.
“I’d like to. I think about it often. As a matter of fact I dreamed last night that I was, but it wasn’t so pleasant. I was very disturbed. It started out all right. I came home from work and there were gorgeous little birds by the window, and I smelled barbecue. My wife was very handsome, but her beautiful eyes were filled with tears and twice as big as normal. ‘Lu, what’s the matter?’ I said. She said, ‘The children were born unexpectedly this afternoon and I’m so ashamed I’ve hidden them.’ ‘But why? What’s there to be ashamed of?’ ‘One of them is a calf,’ she said, ‘and the other is a bug of some kind.’ ‘I can’t believe it. Where are they?’ ‘I didn’t want the neighbors to see, so I put them behind the piano.’ I felt terrible. But still they were our children and it wasn’t right that they should be behind the piano, so I went to look. But there on a chair behind the upright, who should be sitting but my mother—who, as you know, is blind. I said, ‘Mama, what are you sitting here for? Where are the children?’ And she looked at me with sort of pity and said, ‘Oh, my son, what are you doing? You must do right.’ Then I started to sob. I felt full of tragedy, and I said, ‘Isn’t that what I want to do?’”
“Ah, you poor guy,” said Kayo, sorry for me. “You’re no worse than anybody else, don’t you know that?”
“I really should simplify my existence. How much trouble is a person required to have? I mean, is it an assignment I have to carry out? It can’t be, because the only good I ever knew of was done by people when they were happy. But to tell you the truth, Kayo, since you are the kind of guy who will understand it, my pride has always been hurt by my not being able to give an account of myself and always being manipulated. Reality comes from giving an account of yourself, and that’s the worst of being helpless. Oh, I don’t mean like the swimmer on the sea or the child on the grass, which is the innocent being in the great hand of Creation, but you can’t lie down so innocent on objects made by man,” I said to him. “In the world of nature you can trust, but in the world of artifacts you must beware. There you must know, and you can’t keep so many things on your mind and be happy. ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair!’ Well, never mind about Ozymandias now being just trunkless legs; in his day the humble had to live in his shadow, and so do we live under shadow, with acts of faith in functioning of inventions, as up in the stratosphere, down in the subway, crossing bridges, going through tunnels, rising and falling in elevators where our safety is given in keeping. Things done by man which overshadow us. And this is true also of meat on the table, heat in the pipes, print on the paper, sounds in the air, so that all matters are alike, of the same weight, of the same rank, the caldron of God’s wrath on page one and Wieboldt’s sale on page two. It is all external and the same. Well, then what makes your existence necessary, as it should be? These technical achievements which try to make you exist in their way?”
Kayo said, not much surprised by this, “What you are talking about is moha—a Navajo word, and also Sanskrit, meaning opposition of the finite. It is the Bronx cheer of the conditioning forces. Love is the only answer to moha, being infinite. I mean all the forms of love, eros, agape, libido, philia, and ecstasy. They are always the same but sometimes one quality dominates and sometimes another. Look, I’m glad we’ve had this chance to meet again. You seem to have become a much more serious fellow. Why don’t you come and meet my wife? My mother-in-law lives with us and she’s kind of a dull old woman who fusses about everything, but we can ignore her. She’s a big help with the kid incidentally. But she’s always
giving me an earful about how my brother-in-law is doing so well for himself. He’s a radio-repair man and a real fool. But come to dinner and we can have some conversation. I want to show you my kid too.”
So I did go home with him; that was kind of Kayo. But his wife was unfriendly, highly suspicious. The child was very nice, for his age, of course, which was young. While I was there the brother-in-law came over; he was interested in the Buick, which fortunately was running well that night. He asked me questions, attracted by the rumble seat, and then drove it around and offered to buy it. I set a moderate price, taking some loss but never mentioning the bent rods, I am ashamed to say.
Well, he wanted to buy it right off, so we went to his house where he gave me a check for one hundred and eighty dollars on the Continental Illinois. But then he wouldn’t let me get out of the house. Jokingly he said I should let him win back some of his money at poker. His wife played too. Obviously they were going to try to strip me. Kayo had to sit in on the game as well, so it would look friendly. It was really an attempted swindle. We sat at the circular table by the stove with a pot of coffee and condensed milk and played far into the night. The workbench with its busted radios was right there in the large kitchen. The husband got angry at the wife because she lost. If she had won they’d have won double, but since she lost he swore at her and she screamed at him. Kayo lost too. I was the only winner and would rather not have been. In fact I refunded Kayo’s money on the way home. But then the brother-in-law stopped the check two days later, and I had to come and fetch the car, for it wouldn’t run. There was an angry scene. And Kayo was very put out and wouldn’t talk much to me at school for a time, though he eventually thawed out. I guess I really shouldn’t have sold the car without telling of the bent rods.