Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [167]
“The real Mrs. Biferno called the police. And much later, back in Chicago, her mother told Renata, ‘Biferno may not be your father after all.’ “
“So you went to Paris to see the young Frenchman, who is now an old Frenchman? That was a hell of a thing for a mother to tell a girl just as she enters adolescence.”
“I had to be in London anyway and we were at the Ritz. Then Renata said she must go to Paris to look over this man who was perhaps her father and she wanted to go alone. She planned to come back three days later. So I took her to Heathrow. She was carrying a large bag, which was open. Right at the top, like a large compact, was her diaphragm case.”
“Why was she taking her birth control?”
“You can never tell when the chance of a lifetime may present itself.”
“Tactics, Charlie, just stupid tactics. Keep the fellow guessing. She was putting you off balance. I think she’s really okay. She just does certain stupid things. One thing I want to say, Charlie. I don’t know what our habits are but don’t let her blow you. You’ll be dead in a year. Now tell me the rest about Paris.”
“Well, the man was homosexual, elderly, tedious, and garrulous. When she didn’t return to London on the fourth day I went to look for her at the Hotel Meurice. She said she hadn’t had the nerve to face him yet and she’d been shopping and going to the Louvre and seeing Swedish films—I Am Curious Yellow or something. The old guy remembered her mother and he was pleased to think that he might have a daughter but he was cagey and said that legal recognition was absolutely out of the question. His family would disinherit him. But he wasn’t the man anyway. Renata said there was no resemblance. I looked him over myself. She was right. Of course, there’s no way of knowing how nature does its stuff. An angry woman with a cast on her ankle gets a gay skier to make an exception for her, and they beget this beautiful daughter with the perfect skin and dark eyes and those eyebrows. Think of an El Greco beauty raising her eyes to heaven. Then substitute sex for heaven. That’s Renata’s pious look.”
“Well, I know you love her,” said George. “When she locked you out because she had another guy in there with her and you came to me crying—you remember what I said? A man your age sobbing over a girl is a man I respect. Furthermore, you’ve still got all your strength.”
“I should have, I never used any of it.”
“Well, okay, you saved it. Now you’re coming down the stretch and it’s time to pull ahead. Maybe you should marry Renata. Only don’t get faint on your way to the license bureau. Do the whole thing like a man. Otherwise she’ll never forgive you. Otherwise she’ll turn you into an old errand boy. Poor old Charlie with a watering eye going out to buy cigars for his missus.”
twenty-six
We made our approach over the steely patch of evening water and landed at La Guardia in the tawny sundown. We then rode to the Plaza Hotel imprisoned in the low seats in one of New York’s dog-catcher taxis. They make you feel that you have bitten someone and are being rushed to the pound, frothing with rabies, to be put down. I said this to Renata and she appeared to feel that I was using my imagination to spoil her pleasure, already somewhat damaged by the fact that we traveled, unlicensed, as a married pair. The doorman helped her out at the Plaza and, in her high boots, she strode under the heated marquee with its glowing orange rods. Over her mini-skirt she wore a long suède Polish coat lined with lambskin. I had bought it for her from Cepelia. Her beautifully pliant velvet hat inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch portrait painters was pushed off from her forehead. Her face, evenly and purely white, broadened toward the base. This gourdlike fullness was her only defect. Her throat was ever so slightly ringed or rippled by some enriching feminine deposit. This slight swell appears also on her hips and on the inside of her thighs. The first joint of her fingers revealed the same signs of sensual superabundance. Following her, admiring, thinking, I walked in the checked