Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [166]
Before leaving Chicago I had had a long talk about Renata with George Swiebel. We were exactly of an age, and approximately in the same physical condition. George was wonderfully kind. He said, “You’ve got to blow now. Get out of town. I’ll take care of the details for you. You just sit on that plane, pull off your shoes, order a drink, and take the fuck off. You’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” He sold the Mercedes for four thousand dollars. He took charge of the Persian carpets and made me an advance of another four. They must have been worth fifteen because they had been appraised by the insurance company at ten. But although George was in the building-repairs racket, he was utterly honorable. You couldn’t find a single cheating fiber in his heart.
We drank a bottle of whisky together and he made me a parting speech about Renata. It was full of his own kind of Nature-wisdom. He said, “All right, friend, you’re going away with this gorgeous chick. She belongs to the new swinging generation and in spite of the fact that she’s so developed she just isn’t a grownup woman. Charlie, she doesn’t know a prick from a popsicle. Her mother is a gloomy sinister old character, a real angler. That mother is not my kind of people at all. She figures you for a cunt-crazy old man. You were once a winner with a big reputation. Now you’re staggering a bit and here’s a chance to marry you, grab off a piece of you before Denise gets it all. Maybe even rebuild you as a name and a money-maker. You’re a bit mysterious to those types because there aren’t many of you around. Now Renata is her mother’s big, big, big prize apple from the Washington State Fair, a perfect Wenatchee, raised under scientific conditions, and she’s hell-bent on cashing in while she’s in her prime.”
Working himself up, George got to his feet, a broad healthy figure of a man, rosy and vigorous, his nose bent like an Indian’s, and his thin hair centered like a scalp lock. As always when he expounded his Nature-philosophy he started to shout. “This is no ordinary cunt. She’s worth taking a chance on. All right, you might be humiliated, you might have to take a lot of shit, you might be robbed and plundered, you might lie sick with nobody looking after you or have a coronary or lose a leg. Okay, but you’re alive, a flesh and blood brave instinct person. You’ve got guts. And I’ll be standing by you. Cable me from anywhere and I’ll arrive. I liked you all right when you were younger, but not the way I love you now. When you were younger you were on the make. You may not realize it but you were damn clever and canny about your career. But now, thank God, you’re in a real dream and a fever over this young woman. You don’t know what you’re doing. And that’s just what’s great about it.”
“You make it sound much too romantic, George.”
“Never mind,” he said. “Now Renata’s ‘real father’ bit is baloney. Let’s figure this out together. What does a broad like that need with a real father? She’s already got this old pimp mother. Renata wouldn’t know what to do with a father. She’s got just the daddy she needs, a sex daddy. No, the whole thing was hoked up to get these trips to Europe. But that’s just the finest part of it. Go on and blow all your money. Go broke, and the hell with the whole courthouse gang. Now you told me before about April in Paris with Renata but brief me again.”
“Here it is,” I said. “Until Renata was twelve she thought her father was a certain Signor Biferno, a fancy leather-goods dealer from the Via Monte Napoleone, in Milan. That’s the big luxury-goods street. But when she was thirteen or so the old girl told her that Biferno might not be the man. The Señora and Biferno had been skiing in Cortina, she broke her ankle, her foot was in a cast, she quarreled with Biferno and he went home to his wife and kids. She revenged herself on him with a young Frenchman. Now when Renata was ten her mother had taken her to Milan to confront Biferno. They got all dressed up and made a scene on the Via Monte Napoleone.”
“That old broad is one of the big-time troublemakers.