Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [185]
“Yes, the strangeness of life on this earth is very oppressive.”
“You’re always saying ‘on this earth.’ It gives me a creepy feeling. This old Professor Scheldt, the father of your pussycat Doris, has filled you up with his esoteric higher worlds and when you talk to me about this I feel we’re both going bonkers: knowledge that doesn’t need a brain, hearing without real ears, sight without eyes, the dead are with us, the soul leaves the body when we sleep. Do you believe all this stuff?”
“I take it seriously enough to examine it. As to the soul leaving the body when we sleep, my mother absolutely believed that. She told me so when I was a kid. I find nothing strange in that. Only my head-culture opposes it. My hunch is that Mother was right. This can’t lead me into oddity, I already am in oddity. People as ingenious, as fertile in wishes as I am, and also my wonderful betters, have gone to their death. And what is this death? Again, nessuno sa. But ignorance of death is destroying us. And this is the field of ridicule in which Humboldt sees me still laboring. No honorable person can refuse to lend his mind, to give his time, to devote his soul to this problem of problems. Death now has no serious challenge from science or from philosophy or religion or art....”
“So you think crank theories are the best bet?”
I muttered something to myself, for she had heard this quotation from Samuel Daniel before, and her mandolin-playing figure prevented me from repeating it aloud. It was, “While timorous knowledge stands considering, audacious ignorance hath done the deed.” My thought was that life on this earth was actually everything else as well, provided that we learned how to apprehend it. But, not knowing, we were oppressed to the point of heartbreak. My heart was breaking all the time, and I was sick and tired of it.
Renata said, “Really, what do I care—worship as you please is American and fundamental. It’s just that when you open your eyes there’s a sort of gloony gleam in them. That’s a made-up word, gloony. I loved it, by the way, when Humboldt said you were a promissory nut. I just loved that.”
For my part, I loved Renata’s cheerfulness. Her roughness and frankness were infinitely better than her loving-pious bit. I had never bought that—never. But her cheerfulness as she laid caviar, chopped egg, and onion on Melba toast for me gave me wonderful extravagant comfort. “Only,” she went on, “you’ve got to stop twittering like a ten-year-old girl. And now let’s take this Humboldt thing straight on. He thought he was leaving you a valuable property. Poor character. What a gas! Who’d buy such a story? What’s it got? You’d have to do everything twice, first with the girl and then with the wife. It would drive an audience nuts. Producers are looking to go beyond Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Godfather. Murder on an El train. Naked lovers who bounce up and down when machine-gun slugs tear into their bodies. Dudes on massage tables who get bullets straight through their eyeglasses.” Ruthless, perfectly good-natured Renata laughed, sipping Pouilly-Fuissé, aware of how I admired her throat and the feminine subtlety of its white rings (here the veil of Maya was as vivid as ever). “Well, isn’t that it, Charles? And how does Humboldt compete? He dreamed about having magic with his public. But you didn’t have it either. Without your director, Trenck could never have made a big box office. You told me so yourself. What did you get for those Trenck movie rights?”
“The price was three hundred thousand. The producer took half, the agent took ten percent, the government took sixty percent of the rest, I put fifty into the house in Kenwood which now belongs to Denise. . . .” Renata’s face, when I recited figures and percentages, was wonderfully at peace. “That’s how my commercial success breaks down,” I said. “And I would