Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [137]
We now passed the towering upswept frames of the First National Bank, containing layer upon layer of golden lights. “What’s this beautiful structure?” asked Thaxter. No one answered. We charged up Madison Street. At this rate, and due west, we would have reached the Waldheim Cemetery on the outskirts of the city in about fifteen minutes. There my parents lay under snow-spattered grass and headstones; objects would still be faintly visible in the winter dusk, etcetera. But of course we were not bound for the cemetery. We turned into La Salle Street where we were held up by taxicabs and newspaper trucks and the Jaguars and Lincolns and Rolls-Royces of stockbrokers and corporation lawyers—of the deeper thieves and the loftier politicians and the spiritual elite of American business, the eagles in the heights far above the daily, hourly, and momentary destinies of men.
“Hell, we’re going to miss Stronson. That fat little son of a bitch is always tearing off in his Aston-Martin as soon as he can lock his office,” said Cantabile.
But Polly sat silent at the steering wheel. Traffic was jammed. Thaxter succeeded at last in getting Cantabile’s attention. And I sighed and, left to myself, tuned out. Just as I had done yesterday when forced, practically at gunpoint, into the stinking closet of the Russian Bath. This is what I thought: certainly the three other souls in the warm darkness of this glowing, pulsating and lacquered automobile had thoughts just as peculiar as my own. But they were apparently less aware of them than I. And what was it that I was so aware of? I was aware that I used to think that I knew where I stood (taking the universe as a frame of reference). But I was mistaken. However, I could at least say that I had been spiritually efficient enough not to be crushed by ignorance. However, it was now apparent to me that I was neither of Chicago nor sufficiently beyond it, and that Chicago’s material and daily interests and phenomena were neither actual and vivid enough nor symbolically clear enough to me. So that I had neither vivid actuality nor symbolic clarity and for the time being I was utterly nowhere. This was why I went to have long mysterious conversations with Professor Scheldt, Doris’s father, on esoteric subjects. He had given me books to read about the etheric and the astral bodies, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul, and the unseen Beings whose fire and wisdom and love created and guided this universe. I was far more thrilled by Dr. Scheldt’s talks than by my affair with his daughter. She was a good kid actually. She was attractive and lively, a fair, sharp-profiled, altogether excellent small young woman. True, she insisted on serving fancy dishes like Beef Wellington and the pastry crust was always underdone, and so was the meat, but those were minor matters. I had taken up with her only because Renata and her mother had expelled me and put Flonzaley in my place. Doris couldn’t hold a candle to Renata. Renata? Why, Renata didn’t need an ignition key to start a car. One of her kisses on the hood would turn it on. It would roar for her. Moreover, Miss Scheldt was ambitious socially. In Chicago, husbands with higher mental interests aren’t easy to find, and it was obvious that Doris wanted to be Madame Chevalier Citrine. Her father had been a physicist at the old Armour Institute, an executive of IBM, a NASA consultant who improved the metal used in space ships. But he was also an anthroposophist. He didn’t wish to call this mysticism. He insisted that Steiner had been a Scientist of the Invisible. But Doris, with reluctance, spoke of her father