Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [14]
took a trip to Danbury to visit a school chum, but didn't find her way to this girl's house. Instead, as she wandered through the back streets of Danbury she passed a parked car and heard the cries of a newborn infant in the back seat of this old Buick. It was in a shoebox. The day was terribly cold; therefore she brought the foundling back with her and hid it in the clothes closet of her room. On the twenty-first of December, at lunch, I was saying, "Children, this is the winter solstice," and then the infant's cry came out by way of the heating ducts from the register under the buffet. I pulled down the thick, woolly bill of my hunting cap, which, it so happens, I was wearing at the lunch table, and to suppress my surprise I began to talk about something else. For Lily was laughing toward me significantly with the upper lip drawn down over her front teeth, and her white color very warm. Looking at Ricey, I saw that silent happiness had come up into her eyes. At fifteen this girl is something of a beauty, though usually in a listless way. But she was not listless now; she was absorbed in the baby. As I did not know then who the kid was or how it had got into the house, I was startled, thrown, and I said to the twins, "So, there is a little pussy cat upstairs, eh?" They weren't fooled. Try and fool them! Ricey and Lily had baby bottles on the kitchen stove to sterilize. I took note of this caldron full of bottles as I was returning to the basement to practice, but made no comment. All afternoon, by way of the air ducts, I heard the infant squalling, and I went for a walk but couldn't bear the December ruins of my frozen estate and one-time pig kingdom. There were a few prize animals whom I hadn't sold. I wasn't ready to part with them yet. I had arranged to play "The First No� on Xmas Eve, and so I was rehearsing it when Lily came downstairs to talk to me. "I don't want to hear anything," I said. "But, Gene," said Lily. "You're in charge," I shouted, "you are in charge and it's your show." "Gene, when you suffer you suffer harder than any person I ever saw." She had to smile, and not at my suffering, of course, but at the way I went about suffering. "Nobody expects it. Least of all God," she said. "As you're in a position to speak for God," I said, "what does He think of your leaving this house every day to go and have your picture painted?" "Oh, I don't think you need to be ashamed of me," said Lily. Upstairs was the child, its every breath a cry, but it was no longer the topic. Lily thought I had a prejudice about her social origins, which are German and lace-curtain Irish. But damn it, I had no such prejudice. It was something else that bothered me. Nobody truly occupies a station in life any more. There are mostly people who feel that they occupy the place that belongs to another by rights. There are displaced persons everywhere. "For who shall abide the day of His (the rightful one's) coming?" "And who shall stand when He (the rightful one) appeareth?" When the rightful one appeareth we shall all stand and file out, glad at heart and greatly relieved, and saying, "Welcome back, Bud. It's all yours. Barns and houses are yours. Autumn beauty is yours. Take it, take it, take it!" Maybe Lily was fighting along this line and the picture was going to be her proof that she and I were the rightful ones. But there is already a painting of me among the others. They have hard collars and whiskers, while I am at the end of a line in my National Guard uniform and hold a bayonet. And what good has this picture ever done me? So I couldn't be serious about Lily's proposed solution to our problem. Now listen, I loved my older brother, Dick. He was the sanest of us, with a splendid record in the First World War, a regular lion. But for one moment he resembled me, his kid brother, and that was the end of him. He was on vacation, sitting at the counter of a Greek diner, the Acropolis Diner, near Plattsburg, New York, having a cup of coffee with a buddy and writing a post card home. But his fountain pen was balky, and he cursed it, and