Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [179]
“Deer Shoveleer,” wrote Humboldt. “I am in a bad position, getting more sane as I become weaker. By a damn peculiar arrangement, lunatics always have energy to burn. And if old William James was right, and happiness is living at the energetic top and we are here to pursue happiness, then madness is pure bliss and also has supreme political sanction.” This was the sort of thing that Renata objected to. I agree that it was not a restful habit of mind. “I am living in a bad place,” he went on. “And eating bad meals. I’ve now eaten sixty or seventy delicatessen dinners in a row. You can’t get sublime art on a diet like this. On the other hand pastrami and peppery potato salad seem to nourish calm judgment. I don’t go out to dinner. I stay in my room. There is a colossal interval between supper and bedtime and I sit beside a drawn window shade (who can look out eighteen hours a day?) correcting certain old mistakes. It occurs to me sometimes that I may be petitioning death to lay off because I am deep in good works. Would I be trying, also, to keep the upper hand in dying as in the sexual act?—Do this, do that, hold still, wriggle now, kiss my ear, graze my back with your nails, but don’t touch my testicles. However, death is the passionate party in this case.”
“Poor fellow, I can see him now. I understand his type,” said Renata.
“So, Charlie, as these weaker saner days come and go I think often about you, and think with end-of-the-line lucidity. That I wronged you is very true. I knew even when I loused you up so elaborately and fiercely that you were in Chicago trying to do me good, consulting people behind my back to get me jobs. I called you a sell-out, Judas, fink, suck-ass, climber, hypocrite. I had first a deep black rage against you, and then a red hot rage. Both were very luxurious. The fact is that I was remorseful about the blood-brother check. I knew you were mourning the death of Demmie Vonghel. I was panting with cunning and I put one over on you. You were a Success. And if that weren’t enough and you wanted to be a big moral figure as well, then the hell with you, it was going to cost you a few thousand bucks. It was entrapment. I was going to give you a chance to forgive me. In forgiving you would be lying your head off. This fool kindliness would damage your sense of reality, and with your sense of reality damaged you’d be suffering what I suffered. All this crazy intricacy was unnecessary, of course. You were going to suffer anyway because you were stricken with the glory and the gold. Your giddy flight through the florid heavens of success, and so on! Your innate sense of truth, if nothing else, would make you sick. But my ‘reasoning,’ in endless formulae like chemistry formulae on a college blackboard, put me into swoons of rapture. I was manic. I was chattering from the dusty top of my crazy head. Afterward I was depressed and silent for long, long days. I lay in the cage. Grim gorilla days.
“I ask myself why you figured so prominently in my obsessions and fixations. You may be one of those people who arouse family emotions, you’re a son-and-brother type. Mind, you want to arouse feeling but not necessarily to return it. The idea is that the current should flow your way. You stimulated the blood-brother oath. I was certainly wild, but I acted on a suggestion emanating from you. Nevertheless, in the words of the crooner, ‘With all your faults, I love you still.’ You are a promissory nut, that’s all.
“Let me say a word about money. When I used your blood-brother check, I didn’t expect it to clear the bank. I put it through, outraged because you didn’t come to see me at Bellevue. I was suffering; you didn’t draw near, as a loving friend should I decided to punish hurt and fine you. You accepted the penalty, and therefore the sin, too. You borrowed my spirit to put into Trenck. My ghost was a Broadway star. All this daylight delusion, cracked, spoiled, and dirty! I don’t know how else to put it. Your girl