Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [123]
“Is there any evidence for this, your honor?” I said.
The lawyers began to discuss the matter and I wondered how Denise had come to know that I was going away. Renata of course told the Señora everything and the Señora, singing for her supper all over Chicago, needed bright items to sing about. If she couldn’t find something interesting to say at the dinner table, she might as well be dead. However, it was also possible that Denise’s spy network had a contact in Poliakoff’s Travel Bureau.
“These frequent flights to Europe are thought to have a purpose.” Judge Urbanovich had his hand on the valve now and increased the heat still more. His genial glance said brilliantly, “Look out!” And suddenly Chicago was not my town at all. It was totally unrecognizable. I merely imagined that I had grown up here, that I knew the place, that I was known by it. In Chicago my personal aims were bunk, my outlook a foreign ideology, and I made out what the judge was telling me. It was that I had avoided all the Cannibal Pinskers and freed myself from unpleasant realities. He, Urbanovich, as clever a man as myself, with as much sensibility and better looks, bald or not, had paid his social dues in full, had played golf with all the Pinskers, had lunched with them. He had had to put up with this as man and citizen while I was at liberty to sail up and down elevator shafts expecting that a lovely being—”My Fate!”—would be smiling at me the next time the door opened. They’d give me Fate.
“Plaintiff has asked for an order of ne exeat. I am considering whether a bond should not be posted,” said Urbanovich. “Two hundred thousand, say.”
Indignant, Tomchek said, “With no evidence that my client is running out?”
“He’s a very absent-minded fellow, your honor,” said Srole. “Not signing a lease is a normal oversight, for him.”
“If Mr. Citrine owned a little retail business, a little factory, if he had a professional practice or a position in an institution,” said Urbanovich, “there would be no question of sudden flight.” With round-eyed terrible lightness he was gazing at me, speculative.
Tomchek argued, “Citrine is a lifetime Chicagoan, a figure in this city.”
“I understand that a great deal of money has slipped away this year. I hesitate to use the word squandered—it’s his money.” Urbanovich consulted a memo. “Large losses in a publishing enterprise called The Ark. A colleague, Mr. Thaxter .. . bad debts.”
“Is it suggested these are not genuine losses and he’s been squirreling away money? These are Mrs. Citrine’s allegations and suspicions,” said Tomchek. “Does the court believe them to be facts?”
The judge said, “This is a private conversation in chambers and only that. I feel, however, in view of the one indisputable fact that so much money is suddenly taking wing, Mr. Citrine should give me a full and current financial statement so that I can determine a bond figure, should that be necessary. You won’t refuse me that, will you, Mr. Citrine?”
Oh bad! Very bad! What if Cantabilè had the right idea after all—run her down in a truck, kill the bitch.
“I’ll have to sit down with my accountant, your honor,” I said.
“Mr. Citrine, you have a slightly persecuted look. I hope you understand that I am impartial, that I shall be fair to both parties.” When the judge smiled certain muscles which unsubtle people never develop at all became visible. That was interesting. What did nature originally intend such muscles for? “I myself don’t think you intend to run away. Mrs. Citrine admits you’re a very affectionate father. Still, people do get desperate, and then they can be persuaded to do rash things.”
He wanted me to know that my relations with Renata were no secret.
“I hope that you and Mrs. Citrine and Mr. Pinsker will leave me a little something to live on, Judge.”
Then we, the defendant’s group, were in the light