Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [226]
“Oh, what a horrible thing.”
“Yes,” I said. I had prepared myself fully, consulting the Spanish dictionary. I added with great fluency, “My poor wife— her chest was crushed, her face was destroyed, her lungs were punctured. She died in agony.”
Leukemia, I felt, was much too good for Renata.
thirty-four
In the pensión were any number of sociable people. Some spoke English, some French, and communication was possible. An Army captain and his wife lived there, and also some ladies from the Danish Embassy. One of these, the most outstanding, was a gimpy blond of about fifty. Occasionally, a sharp face and protruding teeth can be pleasant, and she was a rather agreeable-looking person, although the skin of her temples had gone a little silky (the veins), and she was even slightly hunchbacked. But hers was one of those commanding personalities that takes over a dining room or a drawing room not because they say much but because they know the secret of proclaiming their pre-eminence. As for the staff, the chambermaids who doubled as waitresses, they were extremely kind. Black means much less in the Protestant north. In Spain mourning still carries a lot of weight. Rogelio’s little black suit was even more effective than my bordered handkerchief and my armband. When I fed him his lunch we brought the house down. It was not unusual for me to cut up the kid’s meat. I did this normally in Chicago. But somehow, in the small, windowless dining room of the pensión, it was an eye opener—this unexpected disclosure of the mothering habits of American men got to people. My fussing over Roger must have been unbearably sad. Women began to help me. I put the empleadas del hogar on my payroll. In a few days’ time he was speaking Spanish. Mornings, he attended a nursery school. Late every afternoon, one of the maids took him to the park. I was free to walk about Madrid or to lie on my bed and meditate. My life was quieter. Full quietude was something I couldn’t expect, under the circumstances.
This was not the life I had pictured in the little plush seat of the 747, rushing over the deep Atlantic stream. Then, as I had put it to myself, the little bubble in the carpenter’s level might be coaxed back into the center. Now I wasn’t sure that I had a bubble at all. Then there was Europe, too. For knowledgeable Americans, Europe was not much good these days. It led the world in nothing. You had to be a backward sort of person (a vulgar broad, a Renata—not to beat about the bush) to come here with serious cultural expectations. The sort of thing propagated by ladies’ fashion magazines. I am obligated to confess, however, that I too had come this time with pious ideals, or the remnants of such ideals. People had once done great things here, inspired by the spirit. There were still relics of holiness and of art here. You wouldn’t find Saint Ignatius, Saint Teresa, John of the Cross, El Greco, the Escorial on Twenty-sixth and California or at the Playboy Club in Chicago. But then there was no little Citrine family group in Segovia with the Daddy trying to achieve the separation of consciousness from its biological foundation, while the sexual, rousing Mommy busied herself with the antiques trade. No, Renata had given me my lumps and she had done it in such a way that my personal dignity was badly damaged. The mourning I wore helped me to recover, somewhat. Black garments put me on polite and courteous terms with the Spanish. A suffering widower and a pale foreign orphan touched the shop assistants, especially the women. At the pensión, the secretary from the Danish Embassy took a particular interest in us. She was very pale, and her pallor had origins very different from Roger’s. She had a dry, hectic look and she was so white that the lipstick raged on her mouth. She applied it after dinner with a violent effect. Yet her intentions weren’t bad. She took me for a walk one Sunday afternoon, when I was not at my best. She put on a cloche or bucket hat and we walked slowly, for she had a hip ailment. As we followed