Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [126]
I had plenty of troubles of my own, but the double solitude of Kathleen’s life—first in New Jersey, then in the West—moved me strongly. I leaned against the partition of the biffy in the county building trying to get light from above on her letter, typed with a faded ribbon. “I know you liked Tigler, Charlie. You had such a good time trout fishing with him and playing poker. It took your mind off your troubles.”
That was so, although he was furious when I caught the first trout. We were trawling from his boat and I was using his lure, so he said it was his trout. He made a scene and I tossed the fish into his lap. The surroundings were unearthly. It was not a fish setting—only bare rock, no trees, pungent sagebrush, and marl dust floating when a truck passed.
However, it was not to discuss Tigler that Kathleen wrote to me. She wrote because Orlando Huggins was asking for me. Humboldt had left me something. Huggins was his executor. Huggins, that old left-wing playboy, was a decent man, at bottom an honorable person. He too cherished Humboldt. After I was denounced as a false blood-brother Huggins was called in to sort out Humboldt’s business affairs. He eagerly rushed into the act. Then Humboldt accused him of cheating and threatened to sue him, too. But Humboldt’s mind had evidently cleared toward the last. He had identified his true friends, naming Huggins as administrator of his estate. Kathleen and I were remembered in the will. What she got from him she didn’t say, but he couldn’t have had much to give. Kathleen mentioned, however, that Hug-gins had turned over to her a posthumous letter from Humboldt. “He talked about love, and the human opportunities he missed,” she wrote. “He mentioned old friends, Demmie and you, and the good old days in the Village and out in the country.”
I can’t think what made those old days so good. I doubt that Humboldt had had a single good day in all his life. Between fluctuations and the dark qualms of mania and depression, he had had good spells. Perhaps not so many as two consecutive hours of composure. But Humboldt would have appealed to Kathleen in ways in which I was too immature twenty-five years ago to understand. She was a big substantial woman whose deep feelings were invisible because her manner was so quiet. As for Humboldt he had some nobility even when he was crazy. Even then he was constant to some very big things indeed. I remember the shine of his eyes when he dropped his voice to pronounce the word “relume” spoken by a fellow about to commit a murder, or when he spoke Cleopatra’s words “I have immortal longings in me.” The man loved art deeply. We loved him for it. Even when the decay was raging there were incorruptible places in Humboldt that were not rotted out. But I think he wanted Kathleen to protect him when he entered the states a poet needed to be in. These high dreaming states, always being punctured and torn by American flak, were what he wanted Kathleen to preserve for him. Enchantment. She did her best to help him with the enchantment. But he could never come up with enough enchantment or dream material to sheathe himself in. It would not cover. However, I saw what Kathleen had tried to do and admired her for it.
The letter went on. She reminded me of our long talks under the trees at Rancho Tigler. I suppose I had been telling her about Denise, busy with self-justification. I can recall the trees she referred to, a few box elders and cottonwoods. Tigler advertised the gaiety of his resort, but the bleached boards were sprung and falling from the bunkhouses,