Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [222]
“Oh, very good,” she said.
So we spent the evening with gypsies, and I splurged and behaved like a man with plenty of money. I discussed rings and wedding gifts with the crazy old woman at every interval in the guitar music and hand-clapping.
“What have you seen, going back and forth in Madrid, that might appeal to Renata?” I asked her.
“Oh, the most elegant leather and suède. Coats and gloves and bags and shoes,” she said. “But I found a street where they sell exquisite cloaks and I talked with the president of the International Cloak Society, Los Amigos de la Capa, and he showed me, with hoods and without hoods, the most stunning velvet dark-green items.”
“I’ll buy one for her first thing tomorrow,” I said.
If the Señora had given even the slightest hint of discouragement I might have known where I stood. But she gave me only a dry look. A blink crossed the table. It even seemed to come from the bottom of her eye upward, like a nictitating membrane. My impression was of a forest, and of a clearing from which a serpent departed just as I got to it on a dry and golden autumn afternoon fragrant with leaf mold. I mention this for what it may be worth. Nothing, probably. But I had been going around to the Prado, around the corner from the Ritz, looking at some strange pictures every free moment and especially the burlesque visions of Goya and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. My mind was prepared therefore for visiting images and even hallucinations.
“I congratulate you on finally making sense,” said the old woman. She didn’t say, mind you, that I had done this in time. She said, “I brought Renata up to make a perfect wife to a serious man.”
A born patsy, I concluded from this that I was the serious man she meant and that these women had not yet reached an irrevocable decision. I celebrated this possibility by drinking a large amount of Lepanto brandy. As a result I slept soundly and woke rested. In the morning I opened the high windows and enjoyed the traffic wheeling in the sun, the dignified plaza with the white Palace Hotel on the far side. Delicious rolls and coffee were brought with sculptured butter and Hero jam. For ten years I had lived in style, well tailored, with custom-made shirts and cashmere stockings and silk neckties, esthetically satisfying. Now this silly splendor was ending but I, with my experience of the great Depression, knew austerity perfectly well. I had spent most of my life in it. The hardship was not living in a rooming house but becoming just another old guy, no longer capable of inspiring the minds of pretty ladies with May-December calculations or visions of being mistress of a castle like Mrs. Charlie Chaplin, having ten children by an autumnal-to-wintry husband of great stature. Could I bear to live without having this effect on women? And then possibly, just possibly, Renata loved me well enough to accept conditions of austerity. On an income of fifteen thousand dollars, promised by Julius if I were to invest fifty thousand with him, something very nice could be arranged in Segovia. I could even put up with the Señora for the rest of her life. Which I hoped would not be long. No hard feelings, you understand, but it would be nice to lose