Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [112]
“Left for Crawley.”
“I got no Crawley.”
“Crawley must be there. Look again, if you don’t mind.”
He rattled through his envelopes again. Each contained a room key.
“What’s your first name, buddy? Give me another clue.”
Tormented, I said in a low voice, “Charles.”
“That’s better. Could this be you—C-I-T-R-I-N-E?”
“I know how to spell it, for Christ’s sake,” I said, faint but furious. I muttered, “Stupid fucking baboon Szathmar. Never did anything right in all his life. And me!—still depending on him to make my arrangements.” Then I became aware that someone was trying to get my attention from behind, and I turned. I saw a middle-aged person smiling. She obviously knew me and was bursting with gladness. This lady was stout and gentle, snub-nosed, high in the bust. She appealed for recognition but at the same time tacitly confessed that the years had changed her. But was she as changed as all that? I said, “Yes?”
“You don’t know me, I see. But you’re still the same old Charlie.”
“I can never understand why bars have to be dark as all this,” I said.
“But Charlie, it’s Naomi—your school-days’ sweetheart.”
“Naomi Lutz!”
“How wonderful to run into you, Charlie.”
“How do you happen to be at the bar of this hotel?”
A woman alone at a bar is, as a rule, a hooker. Naomi was too old for that trade. Besides, it was inconceivable that Naomi who had been my girl at fifteen should have turned into a bar broad.
“Oh, no,” she said. “My Dad is here. He’ll be right back. I bring him downtown from the nursing home at least once a week for a drink. You remember how he always adored to be in the Loop.”
“Old Doc Lutz—just think!”
“Yes, alive. Very old. And he and I’ve been watching you with that lovely thing in the booth. Forgive me Charlie, but how you men keep going is unfair to females. How marvelous for you. Daddy was saying that he shouldn’t have interfered with us, child sweethearts.”
“I was more than your childhood sweetheart,” I said. “I loved you with my soul, Naomi.” Saying this I was aware that I had brought one woman to the bar and was making a passionate declaration to another. However, this was the truth, involuntary spontaneous truth. “I’ve often thought, Naomi, that I lost my character altogether because I couldn’t spend my life with you. It distorted me all over, it made me ambitious cunning complex stupid vengeful. If I had been able to hold you in my arms nightly since the age of fifteen I would never have feared the grave.”
“Oh Charlie, tell it to the Marines. It always was wonderful the way you talked. But off-putting too. You’ve had lots and lots of women. I can see by your behavior in that booth.”
“Ah, yes—to the Marines!” I was grateful for this antique slang. First of all it checked my effusion, which would have led to nothing. Secondly it relieved me of the weight of another impression that had been gathering in the dark bar. I traced this to the idea that soon after death, when the lifeless body fell into decay and became a lot of minerals again, the soul awoke to its new existence, and an instant after death I expected to find myself in a dark place similar to this bar. Where all who had ever loved each other might meet again, etcetera. And this was my impression here in the bar. With the “Conference Room” key in my hand, the links clinking, I knew I must get back to Renata. If she was still drinking her martini she would be too bombed to rise to her feet and get out of the booth. But I had to wait now for Dr. Lutz. And here he came from the men’s room, very weak and bald, and snub-nosed like his daughter. His Twenties Babbittry had faded into old-fashioned courtliness. He had demanded a strange courtesy from us, for though he had never been a real doctor, only a foot-doctor (he had kept offices downtown and at home too), he insisted on being called Doctor and flew into a rage if anyone said Mr. Lutz. Fascinated by being a doctor he treated diseases of many kinds, up to the knee. If feet, why not