Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [110]
I must tell you that I enjoyed Szathmar in this vein. As he was giving me the works like this his eyes kept turning to the left, where no one stood. If someone were standing there, some objective witness, he would support indignant Szathmar. Szathmar’s dear mother had this same trait. She too summoned justice from empty space in this outraged way, laying both hands on her bosom. In Szathmar’s breast there was a large true virile heart whereas I had no heart at all, only a sort of chicken giblet—that was how he saw things. He pictured himself as a person of heroic vitality, mature, wise, pagan, Tritonesque. But his real thoughts were all of getting on top, of intromission and all the dirty tricks that he called sexual freedom. But he also had to think how to make his monthly nut. His expenses were high. How to combine these different needs was the question. He told me once, “I was into the sexual revolution before anybody even heard of it.”
But I have another thing to tell you. I was ashamed of us both. I had no business to look down on Szathmar. All this reading of mine has taught me a thing or two, after all. I understand a little the middle-class endeavor of two centuries to come out looking well, to preserve a certain darling innocence— the innocence of Clarissa defending herself against the lewdness of Lovelace. Hopeless! Even worse is the discovery that one has been living out certain greeting-card sentiments, with ribbons of middle-class virtue tied in a bow around one’s heart. This sort of abominable American innocence is rightly detested by the world, which scented it in Woodrow Wilson in 1919. As schoolchildren we were taught boy-scout honor and goodness and courtesy; strange ghosts of Victorian gentility still haunt the hearts of Chicago’s children, now in their fifties and sixties. This appeared in Szathmar’s belief in his own generosity and greatness of heart, and also in my thanking God that I would never be as gross as Alec Szathmar. To atone I let him go on denouncing me. But when I thought that he had ranted long enough, I said to him, “How’s your health?”
He didn’t like this. He acknowledged no infirmities. “I’m fine,” he said. “Not that you ran from court to ask me that. I just have to lose some weight.”
“Shave your sideburns, too, while you’re making improvements. They make you look like the bad guy in an old Western— one of those fellows who sold guns and firewater to the redskins.”
“Okay, Charlie, I’m nothing but a would-be swinger. I’m a decaying squaw man, while you think only of higher things. You’re noble. I’m a creep. But did you or did you not come to ask about this broad!”
“That’s true, I did,” I said.
“Don’t knock yourself out for that. It’s at least a sign of life, and you haven’t got all that many. I just about gave up on you when you turned down that Felicia with the beautiful knockers. She’s a nice middle-aged woman and would have been grateful to you. Her husband plays around. She adored you. She would have blessed you to the end of her days for treating her right. This is a decent housewife and mother who would have taken care of you from top to bottom, and washed and cooked and baked and shopped, and even done your accounts, and nice in the sack. She would have kept her mouth shut because she’s married. Perfect. But to you it was only another of my vulgar ideas.” He stared angrily. Then he said, “Okay, I’ll fix it with this chick. Take her for a drink at the Palmer House tomorrow. I’ll arrange the details.”
If I was susceptible to the West Side sex malaria, Szathmar could not resist the arranging fever. His one aim now was get Renata and me into bed, where he would be present in spirit. Maybe he hoped it would eventually develop into a threesome. He, like Cantabile, occasionally suggested fantasy combinations. “Now, listen,” he said. “During