Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [246]
Now the Scandinavian journalist came to town, doing research for a book on Amundsen and Nobile. He tracked down poor Caldofreddo and began to molest him. The old fellow said, “You’ve got the wrong party. That was never me.” “No, you’re the man all right,” said the journalist. He was one of those emancipated people from northern Europe who have expelled shame and darkness from the human breast, an excellent piece of casting. The two men had a conversation on a mountainside. Caldofreddo begged him to go away and leave him in peace. When the journalist refused, he fell into a fit similar to the one he had had on the Krassin. But this one, forty years later, was an old man’s frenzy. It contained more strength and wickedness of soul than of body. In this seizure of pleading and rage, weakness and demonic despair, Otway was simply extraordinary.
“Was this the way you had it in your scenario?” said Cantabile.
“More or less.”
“Give me that claim check,” he said. He thrust his hand into my pocket. I realized that he was inspired by Caldofreddo’s fit. He was so stirred that he had lost his head. More to defend myself than to keep the disc, I clutched his arm. “Get your hand out of my pocket, Cantabile.”
“I have to take care of it. You’re not responsible. A man who’s been pussy-whipped. Not in your right mind.”
We were openly fighting. I couldn’t see what the maniac on the screen was doing because this other maniac was all over me. As one of my authorities said, the difference between the words “command” and “convince” is the difference between democracy and dictatorship. Here was a man who was crazy because he never had to persuade himself of anything! Suddenly it gave me as much despair to have thought this as to fight Cantabile off. This thinking would make a nitwit of me. As when Cantabile threatened me with baseball bats and I thought of Loren/’s wolves or of sticklebacks, or when he forced me into a toilet stall, I thought . . . All occasions were translated into thoughts and then the thoughts informed against me. I would die of these intellectual quirks. People began to cry out behind us, “Dispute! Bagarre! Emmerdeurs!” They roared, “Dehors . . .!” or “Flanquez les à la porte!”
“They’re calling for the bouncer, you fool!” I said. Cantabile took his hand out of my pocket and we turned our attention to the screen again in time to see a boulder pried loose by Caldo-freddo hurtling down the mountainside toward the journalist in his Volvo while the old man, appalled at himself, cried warnings and then fell on his knees and thanked the Virgin when the Scandinavian was spared. After this attempted murder Caldo-freddo made a public confession in the village square. Finally he was given a hearing by a jury of townspeople in the ruins of the Greek theater on a Sicilian hillside. This ended with a choric scene of forgiveness and reconciliation—just as Humboldt, with Oedipus at Colonus in mind, would have wanted it.
When the lights came on and Cantabile turned toward the near aisle I made my exit by the far one. He caught up with me on the Champs-Elysées, saying, “Don’t be sore, Charlie. That’s just the breed of dog I am, to protect things like that claim check. What if you’re mugged and rolled? Then who even knows what box the envelope is in? And five people are coming tomorrow morning to inspect the evidence. All right, I’m a high-strung fellow. I just want everything to go right. And you’ve been so hurt by that broad you’re a hundred times more out of it than