Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [199]
“I understand you’re on your way to Europe with this lady. So Huggins told me.”
“True,” I said, “that’s right.” ‘
“To. . . ?”
“To what?” I said, “God knows.” I might have told her more. I might have confessed that I no longer took seriously questions taken seriously by many serious people, questions of metaphysics or of politics, wrongly formulated. Was there then any reason why I should have a precise or practical motive for flying to Italy with a beautiful creature? I was pursuing a special tenderness, I was pursuing love and gratification from motives that would have been appropriate thirty years ago. What would it be like to overtake in my sixties what I had longed for in my twenties? What would I do with it when I got it? I had half a mind to open my heart to this fine woman. I believed that I saw signs that she too was coming out of a state of spiritual sleep. We might have discussed lots of fascinating subjects—for instance, why slumber sealed people’s spirits, why waking was so convulsive, and whether she thought that the spirit could move independently of the body and if she felt that there might not be a kind of consciousness that needed no biological footing. I was tempted to tell her that I, personally, had some notion of doing something about the problem of death. I considered whether to discuss with her seriously the assignment set for writers by Walt Whitman, who was convinced that democracy would fail unless its poets gave it great poems of death. I felt that Kathleen was a woman to whom I could talk. But the position was an embarrassing one. An old chaser who had lost his head over a beautiful gold-digging palooka, a romancer who was going to fulfill the dreams of his youth, suddenly wanting to discuss supersensible consciousness and democracy’s great poem of death! Come, Charlie, let’s not make the world queerer than it already is. It was precisely because Kathleen was a woman to whom I could talk that I kept silent. Out of respect. I thought I would wait until I had considered all these questions more ripely, until I knew more.
She said, “I’ll be at the Metropol in Belgrade next week. Let’s stay in touch. I’m going to have a contract drawn, and I’ll sign it and send it to you.”
“No, no, let’s not bother.”
“Why, because I’m a widow you won’t accept your own money from me? But I don’t want your share. Think of it that way.”
She was a kind woman. And she recognized the truth—I was spending big money on Renata and I was quickly going broke.
thirty-one
My dear, why did you steal my shoe?”
“I couldn’t resist,” said great Renata. “How did you hobble upstairs on one shoe? What did your friend think? I bet it was a riot. Charlie, humor is a bond we have. That I know for a fact.”
Humor had an edge over love in this relationship. My character and my ways entertained Renata. This entertainment was so extensive that I thought it might merge by degrees with love. For I didn’t under any circumstances propose to do without love.
“You also took off my boot under the table in Paris.”
“Yes, that was the night that horrible fellow told you how worthless your Legion ribbon was and put you in a class with garbage collectors and pig breeders. It was like revenge, consolation, kicks, all at the same time,” said Renata. “Do you remember what I said afterward, that I thought was so funny?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“What did I say, Charlie?”
“You said, to air it is human.”
“To air it is human, to bare it divine.” All made up, dark-haired and dressed in a crimson traveling costume, she laughed. “Oh, Charlie, give up this dumb trip to Texas. I need you in Milan. It isn’t going to be easy for me with Biferno. Your brother doesn’t want your visit and you don’t owe him anything. You love him but he bullies you, and you have no defenses against bullies. You go to them with an aching heart and they always kick you in the ass. You know and I know what he’s going to think. He’s going to think that you’re flying down at a tender moment to con him into putting you in one of his profitable deals.