Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [130]
“He’s really not.”
“What? Have a little self-respect, Charlie, about what you swallow. All that Social Register stuff of his?”
“Oh that! Yes, but people have to boast. They’re dead if they can’t say good things about themselves. Good things have to be said. Have a heart.”
“All right then, his special wardrobe. His special umbrella. The only umbrella with class is a natural-hook umbrella. You don’t buy an umbrella with a manufactured steam-bent hook. For Christ’s sake it’s got to grow that way. Then there’s his special wine cellar, and his special attaché case which you can buy only in one shop in London, and his special water bed with special satin sheets, where he was lying in Palo Alto with his special tootsie-roll and they were watching Davis Cup tennis on a special color TV. Not to mention a special putz named Charlie Citrine who pays for everything. Why the guy’s delirious.”
The above conversation had taken place when Thaxter telephoned to say that he was en route to New York to sail on the France and would stop in Chicago to discuss The Ark.
“What’s he going to Europe for?” said Renata.
“Well, he is a crack journalist, you know.”
“Why is a crack journalist sailing First Class on the France? That’s five days. Has he got all that time to kill?”
“He must have a little, yes.”
“And we’re flying Economy,” said Renata.
“Yes, but he has a cousin who’s a director of the French Line. His mother’s cousin. They never pay. The old woman knows all the plutocrats in the world. She brings out their debutante daughters.”
“I notice he doesn’t stick those plutocrats for fifty shares of anything. The rich know their deadbeats. How could you do such a dumb thing?”
“Really, the bank might have waited a few days more. His check was on the way from the Banco Ambrosiano of Milano.”
“How did the Italians get in the act? He told you his family funds were in Brussels.”
“No, in France. You see his share of his aunt’s estate was in the Crédit Lyonnais.”
“First he swindles you, then he fills you with garbage explanations which you go around repeating. All those high European connections are straight out of old Hitchcock movies. So now he’s coming to Chicago, and what does he do, he has his office girl get you on the phone. It’s beneath him to dial a number or answer a ring. But you answer in person and the chick says, ‘Hold the line, Mr. Thaxter is coming,’ so you stand waiting with the phone to your ear. And the whole thing, mind you, is charged to your bill. Then he tells you he’s arriving but later he’ll let you know when.”
As far as it went this was all true. By no means did I tell Renata everything about Thaxter. There were also blacklists and scandals at country clubs and gossip about larceny charges. My friend’s taste in trouble was old-fashioned. There were no more bounders unless, from pure love of antiquity, someone like Thaxter revived the type. But I also felt that something deep was at work and that Thaxter’s eccentricities would eventually reveal a special spiritual purpose. I knew it was risky to put up the collateral because I had seen him do other people in the eye. But not me, I thought. There has to be one exception. Thus I gambled on immunity and I lost. He was a dear friend. I loved Thaxter. I knew also that I was the last man in the world he would wish to harm. But it came to that, finally. He had run out of harmable men. As there was no one else left, it was friendship versus his life-principle. Besides, I could now call myself a patron of Thaxter’s form of art. Such things must be paid for.
He had just lost his house in the Bay Area with the swimming pool and the tennis court, the orange grove he had had put in, the formal garden, the MG, the station