Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [174]
At another time I might have been astonished by what happened next. But now that the world was being reconstituted and the old structure, death and all, was no more solid than a Japanese lantern, human matters came over me with the greatest vividness, naturalness, even with gaiety—I mustn’t leave out the gaiety. The saddest of sights might have it. Anyway, we were indeed expected. Leaning on a stick someone was watching for us between the door and the storm door of the nursing home and came out shouting, “Charlie, Charlie,” as soon as we reached the stairs.
I said to this man, “You’re not Waldemar Wald, are you?”
“No, Waldemar is here. But I’m not Waldemar, Charlie. Now look at me. Listen to my voice.” He began to sing something in an old raven tenor. He took me by the hand and sang “La donna è mobile” in the style of Caruso, but miserably, poor old boy. I took him in, I studied his hair, once kinky and red, the busted nose and eager nostrils, the dewlaps, the Adam’s apple, the skinny stoop of his figure. Then I said, “Ah yes, you’re Menashal Menasha Klinger! Chicago Illinois 1927.”
“That’s right.” For him this was sublime. “It’s me. You recognized me!”
“Holy mackerel! What a pleasure! I swear I don’t deserve such a surprise.” In putting off my search for Humboldt’s uncle it seems that I had been avoiding good luck, wonderful things, miracles almost. Immediately I met a person whom I loved way-back-when. “It’s dreamlike,” I said.
“No,” said Menasha. “For an ordinary guy, maybe it would be. But when you turn into a personage, Charlie, it’s much less of a coincidence than you think. There must be friends and acquaintances like me all over the place who used to know you but are too shy to approach and remind you. I would have been too shy myself if it wasn’t that you were coming to see my buddy Waldemar.” Menasha turned to Renata. “And this is Mrs. Citrine,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, looking her in the face. “This is Mrs. Citrine.”
“I knew your husband as a kid. I boarded with his family when I came down from Ypsilanti, Michigan, to work at Western Electric as a punch-press operator. What I really came for was to study singing. Charlie was a wonderful boy. Charlie was the best-hearted little kid on the whole Northwest Side. I could talk to him when he was only nine or ten, and he was my only friend. I’d take him downtown with me Saturdays for my music lesson.”
“Your teacher,” I said, “was Vsevelod Kolodny, room eight sixteen in the Fine Arts Building. Basso profundo with the Imperial Opera, Petersburg, bald, four-feet-ten, wore a corset and Cuban heels.”
“He recognized me, too,” said Menasha, infinitely pleased.
“You were a dramatic tenor,” I said. I had only to say this to see how he rose on his toes, clasping his punch-press-callused palms and singing “In questa tomba oscura,” tears of ardor filling up his eyes, and his voice so roosterish, with so much heart, so much cry and hackle and hope—tuneless. Even as a boy I knew he’d never make stardom. I did believe, however, that he might have become a singer but for the fact that on the Ypsilanti YMCA boxing team someone had hit him in the nose and this had ruined his chances in art. The songs that were sung through this disfigured nose would never be right.
“Tell me, my boy, what else do you remember?”
“I remember Tito Schipa, Titta Ruffo, Werrenrath, McCor-mack, Schumann-Heink, Amelita Galli-Curci, Verdi, and Boito. And when you heard Caruso sing Pagliacci, life was never the same again, right?”
“Oh, yes!”
Love made these things unforgettable. In Chicago fifty years ago, we had been passengers on the double-deck open-topped bus down to the Loop on Jackson Boulevard, Menasha explaining to me what bel canto was, telling me, radiant, about Aida, envisioning himself in brocade robes as a priest or warrior. After his singing lesson he took me to Kranz’s for a chocolate-fudge