Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [200]
I wanted to humor Renata. She deserved to have things her way. We were at Kennedy now and, in her incomparable hat and the suède maxi-coat, her Hermès scarves, her elegant boots, she was no more to be privately possessed than the Tower of Pisa. And yet she claimed her private rights, the right to an identity-problem, the right to a father, a husband. How silly, what a comedownl However, from the next hierarchical level, and to an invisible observer, I might appear to be making similar claims to order, rationality, prudence, and other middle-class things.
“Let’s have a drink in the VIP Lounge. I don’t want to drink where it’s so noisy and the glasses are sticky.”
“But I don’t belong any more.”
“Charles,” she said, “there is that guy Zitterbloom—the one who lost you twenty thousand dollars in oil wells a year ago when he was supposed to be buying you tax shelter. Get him on the phone and have him fix it. He suggested it himself last year. ‘Anytime at all, Charlie.’ “
“You make me feel like the fisherman in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the one whose wife sent him to the seashore to ask the magic fish for a palace.”
“Watch how you talk. I’m no nag,” she said. “We have a right to our last drink with a little class, not pushed around by a lousy crowd.”
So I telephoned Zitterbloom, whose secretary easily arranged the matter. It made me think how much a man might salvage from his defeats and losses if he wanted to put his mind to it. In a gloomy farewell spirit, I sipped my bloody mary, thinking what a risk I was running for my brother’s sake and how little he would appreciate it. Still, I must have confidence in Renata. Ideal manhood demanded it and practical judgment would have to live with the demand of ideal manhood. I did not, however, wish to be asked on the spot to predict how it would all come out, for if I had to predict, everything would disappear in a whirlwind. “What about a bottle of ‘Ma Griffe,’ duty-free?” she said. I bought her a large-sized bottle, saying, “They’ll deliver it on the plane and I won’t be there to smell it.”
“Don’t you worry, we’re going to save everything for the reunion. Don’t let your brother fix you up with women in Texas.”
“That would be about the last thing on his mind. But what about you, Renata, when was the last time you spoke with Flonzaley?”
“You can forget Flonzaley. We’ve made a clean break. He’s a nice man, but I can’t go along with the undertaking business.”
“He’s very rich,” I said.
“He’s worth his wreaths in wraiths,” she said, in the style I loved her for. “As president he doesn’t have to handle corpses any more but I can never help remembering his embalming background. Of course I don’t hold with this guy Fromm, when he says how necrophilia has crept up on civilization. To be perfectly serious, Charlie, with a build like mine if I don’t stay strictly normal where am I at?”
I was quite sad, nevertheless, wondering what part of the truth she was telling me and even whether we would see each other again. But despite the many pressures I was under I felt that I was making progress spiritually. At the best of times, separations and departures unnerve me and I experienced great anxiety now but felt I had something reliable within.
“So good-by, darling. I’ll phone you from Milan tomorrow in Texas,” said Renata, and we kissed many times. She seemed on the point of crying, but there were no tears.
I walked through the TWA tunnel, like an endless arched gullet or a corridor in an expressionistic film, and then I was searched for weapons and