Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [194]
“Lovely to see you,” I said, for so it was.
“And to see you, Charlie.”
She sat down but I remained standing. I said, “I took off a shoe to be more comfortable and now the thing is gone.”
“How odd. Maybe the busboy took it. Why don’t you try Lost and Found?” So for form’s sake I beckoned to the waiter. I made a distinguished inquiry but then I said, “I’ll have to go up and get another pair.”
Kathleen offered to come with me but as Renata’s underclothes were all over the floor and the bed was unmade at one corner in a way that I thought baldly telling, I said, “No, no, why don’t you wait for me. This lousy high-toned pimble-pamble music is driving me nuts. I’ll come right down and we’ll go out for a drink. I want to get my coat, anyway.”
So I went up again in the luxurious cage of the elevator thinking what a bold original Renata was and what a struggle she made continually against the threat of passivity, the universal threat. If I thought it, it had to be universal. I wasn’t fooling around these days. This universalizing was becoming a craze with me, I suspected, as I put on my other pair of shoes. These were light, weightless red shoes from Harrods, a little short in the toe, but admired by the black shoeshine man at the Downtown Club for their weightlessness and style. In these, a little cramped but fine, I went down again.
This day belonged to Humboldt, it was charged with his spirit. I realized how emotional I was becoming under this influence when, trying to adjust my hat, I felt uncontrollable tremors in my arms. As I approached Kathleen, one side of my face also twitched. I thought, Old Dr. Galvani has got me. I saw two men, husbands, in their graves, decomposing. This beautiful lady’s affections had not saved them from death. Next a vision of Humboldt’s shade went through my head in the form of a dark gray cloud. His cheeks were fat and the abundant hair was piled on his head. I walked toward Kathleen as the three-piece group played what Renata called “frill-paper cup-cake music.” They had dipped into Carmen now and I said, “Let’s go to a dark, quiet bar. Above all, quiet.” I signed the waiter’s staggering check and Kathleen and I walked up and down in the cold streets until we found an agreeable place on West Fifty-sixth, dark enough for any taste and not too Christmasy.
We had a lot of catching up to do. First of all we had to speak of poor Tigler. I couldn’t bring myself to say what a nice man he had been, for he hadn’t been nice at all. The old wrangler could stamp his foot like Rumpelstiltskin and flew into tantrums when he was crossed. It gave him keen satisfaction to stick and screw people. He despised them all the more if they were too timid to complain. His dudes, and I had been one of them, got no hot water. The lights went out and they sat in the dark. If they went to Kathleen to beef they came away pitying and forgiving, hating him and loving her. She was not, however, one of my contrast-gainers. Her own merits were clear, this large-limbed pale freckled quiet woman. Her quietness was most important. While Humboldt played the Furious Turk she was his Christian Captive, reading in the book-stuffed cottage parlor set in the barren chicken country while the ruddy sun persisted in trying to force color through the soiled small-framed windows. Then Humboldt ordered her to put on a sweater and come outside. They chased a football like two fair-haired rookies. Staggering backward on clumsy heels he threw passes over the clothesline and through the autumn maples. My recollection of this was complete—how as Kathleen ran to make the catch her voice trailed and she reached out her arms and brought the wagging ball to her bosom, and how she and Humboldt had sat together on the Castro sofa drinking beer. I recalled this so fully that I saw the cats, one with a Hitler mustache, at the window. I heard my own voice. Twice now she had been a sleeping maiden under the spell