Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [213]
“Thank you, Ulick,” I said.
“Right. Bug off. Stay in Europe, what the hell do you want to come back for? Get me a seascape.”
He and Hortense went back to their development plans for the Cubans’ peninsula. He fiercely applied his genius to maps and blueprints while Hortense dialed bankers for him on the telephone. I kissed my brother and his wife and drove my Avis to the airport.
thirty-three
Although I was full of joy, I knew that things were not going well in Milan. Renata troubled my mind. I didn’t know what she was up to. From the motel last night I had talked with her on the telephone. I asked her what was happening. She said, “I’m not going into this on a transatlantic call, Charlie, it’s too expensive.” But then she wept for two solid minutes. Even Renata’s intercontinental sobs were fresher than other women’s close at hand. After this, still tearful, she laughed at herself and said, “Well, that was two-bits a tear, at least. Yes, I’ll meet you in Madrid, you bet I will.”
“Is Signor Biferno your father?” I said.
“You sound as if the suspense is killing you. Imagine what it’s doing to me. Yes, I think Biferno is my dad. I feel he is.”
“What does he feel? He must be a glorious-looking man. No punk could beget a woman like you, Renata.”
“He’s old and caved in. He looks like somebody they forgot to take off from Alcatraz. And he hasn’t talked to me. He won’t do it.”
“Why?”
“Before I left, Mother didn’t tell me that she was all set to sue him. Her papers were served on him the day before I arrived. It’s a paternity suit. Child support. Damages.”
“Child support? You’re almost thirty. And the Señora didn’t tell you that she was plotting this?” I said.
“When you sound incredulous, when you take that I-can’t-believe-it tone I know you’re really in a furious rage. You’re sore about the money this trip is costing.”
“Renata, why did the Señora have to sock Biferno with summonses just as you’re about to solve the riddle of your birth?— to which she should have the answer, by the way. You go on this errand for the sake of your heart, or your identity—you’ve spent weeks fretting about your identity crisis—and then your own mother pulls this. You can’t blame me for being baffled. It’s wild. What a plan for conquest the old girl has hatched. All this —fire-bombing, victory, unconditional surrender.”
“You can’t bear to hear of women suing men. You don’t know what I owe my mother. Bringing up a girl like me was a pretty rough project. As for what she pulled on me, remember what people pull on you. This Cantabile, may he rot in hell, or Szathmar or Thaxter. Watch out for Thaxter. Take the month at the Ritz but don’t sign any contract or anything. Thaxter will take his money and stick you with all the work.”
“No, Renata, he’s peculiar, but he is basically trustworthy.”
“Good-by, darling,” she said. “I’ve missed you like mad. Remember what you once said to me about the British lion standing up with his paw on the globe? You said that when you set your paw on my globe it was better than an empire. The sun never sets on Renata! I’ll be waiting in Madrid.”
“You seem to be washed up in Milan,” I said.
She answered by telling me, like Ulick, that I must begin to work again. “Only for God’s sake don’t write that pedantic stuff you’re unloading on me lately,” she said.
But now the whole Atlantic must have surged between us; or perhaps the communications satellite was peppered with glittering particles in the upper air. Anyway, the conversation crumpled and ended.
But when the plane took off I felt unusually free and light— trundled out