Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [197]
“Astonishing!” I said.
“What’s astonishing?”
“What Humboldt did. Sick as he was, dying, decaying, but still so ingenious.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Tell me, Kathleen, is this document, this film idea, about a writer? And does the writer have a domineering wife? And does he also have a beautiful young mistress? And do they take a journey? And does he then write a book he can’t publish?”
“Ah, yes. I see. Of course. That’s it, Charlie.”
“What a son of a bitch. How marvelous! He duplicated everything. The same journey with the wife. And the same document for us both.”
Silent, she studied me. Her mouth moved. She smiled. “Why do you suppose he gave the same gift to each of us?”
“Are you perfectly sure that we’re his only heirs? Ha-ha, well, let’s drink to his crazy memory. He was a dear man.”
“Yes, he was a dear man. And how I wish—you think it was all done according to plan?” said Kathleen.
“Who was it, Alexander Pope, who couldn’t drink a cup of tea without a stratagem? That was Humboldt, too. And he kept dreaming about miraculous money until the end. He was dying and still he wanted to make us both rich. Anyway, if he kept his sense of humor, or traces of it, to the last, that was astonishing. And crazy as he was he wrote two sane letters at least. I’m going to make an odd comparison—Humboldt had to break out of his case of hardened madness to do that. You might say that he had emigrated into this madness long ago. Became a settler there. For us, maybe, he managed a visit to the Old Country. To see his friends once more? And it may have been as hard for him to do it as it might be for someone—myself, for instance—to go from this world to the spirit world. Or, another odd comparison —he made a Houdini escape from the hardened projections of paranoia, or manic depression, or whatever it was. Sleepers do awaken. Exiles and emigrants do make it back, and dying genius can revive. ‘End-of-the-line lucidity,’ he wrote in my letter.”
“I don’t think at the end he had the strength for two separate gifts, one for each of us,” she said.
“Or look at it this way,” I said. “He showed us what he had most of—scheming, plotting, and paranoia. He did as much with it as any man could. Don’t you remember the famous Longstaff scheme?”
“Do you think he might have had anything else in mind?” said Kathleen.
“One single thing?” I said.
“A kind of posthumous character test,” she said.
“He was absolutely sure that my character was hopeless. Yours, too, maybe. Well, he’s given us a very lively moment. Here we are laughing and admiring, and how sad it is. I’m very touched. We both are.”
Quiet and large, Kathleen was mildly smiling, but the color of her large eyes suddenly changed. Tears came into them. Still she sat passive. That was Kathleen. It was not appropriate to mention this, but possibly Humboldt’s idea was to bring us together. Not to become man and wife necessarily, but perhaps to combine our feelings for him and create a sort of joint memorial. For after he died, we would continue (for a time) to be active in life in this deluded human scene, and perhaps it would be a satisfaction to him and ease the boredom of the grave to think that we were busy with his enterprises. For when a Plato or a Dante or Dostoevski argued for immortality, Humboldt, a deep admirer of these men couldn’t say, “They were geniuses, but we don’t have to take their ideas seriously.” But did he himself take immortality seriously? He didn’t say. What he said was that we were supernatural, not natural. I would have given anything to find out what he meant.
“These scenarios or treatments are very hard to copyright,” Kathleen explained. “And Humboldt must have gotten professional advice about legal protection. . . . He sealed a copy of his script in an envelope and went to the post office and registered it and had it delivered to himself by registered mail. So that it’s never