Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [44]
In a situation like this I can always switch out and think about the human condition over-all. Of course he wanted to humiliate me. Because I was a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur? Not that he actually knew of this. But he was aware that I was as they would say in Chicago a Brain, a man of culture or intellectual attainments. Was this why I had to listen to him rumbling and slopping and smell his stink? Perhaps fantasies of savagery and monstrosity, of beating my brains out, had loosened his bowels. Humankind is full of nervous invention of this type, and I started to think (to distract myself) of all the volumes of ape behavior I had read in my time, of Kohler and Yerkes and Zuckerman, of Marais on baboons and Schaller on gorillas, and of the rich repertory of visceral-emotional sensitivities in the anthropoid branch. It was even possible that I was a more limited person than a fellow like Cantabile in spite of my concentration on intellectual achievement. For it would never have occurred to me to inflict anger on anyone by such means. This might have been a sign that his vital endowment or natural imagination was more prodigal and fertile than mine. In this way, thinking improving thoughts, I waited with good poise while he crouched there with his hardened dagger brows. He was a handsome slender man whose hair had a natural curl. It was cropped so close that you could see the roots of his curls and I observed the strong contraction of his scalp in this moment of stress. He wanted to inflict a punishment on me but the result was only to make us more intimate.
As he stood and then wiped, and then pulled his shirttails straight, belting his pants with the large oval buckle and sticking back the gun (I hoped the safety catch was on), as I say, when he pulled his shirttails straight and buckled his stylish belt on the hip-huggers, thrusting the gun in, flushing the toilet with his pointed soft boot, too fastidious to touch the lever with his hand—he said, “Christ, if I catch the crabs here . , . !” As if that would be my fault. He was evidently a violent reckless blâmer. He said, “You don’t know how I hated to sit here. These old guys must piss on the seats.” This too he entered on the debit side against me. Then he said, “Who owns this joint?”
Now this was a fascinating question. It had never occurred to me, you know. The Bath was so ancient, it was like the Pyramids of Egypt, the Gardens of Ashurbanipal. It was like water seeking its level, or like gravitational force. But who in fact was its proprietor? “I’ve never heard of an owner,” I said. “For all I know it’s some old party out in British Columbia.”
“Don’t get smart. You’re too fucking smart. I only asked for information. I’ll find out.”
To turn the faucet he used a piece of toilet paper. He washed his hands without soap, none was provided by the management. At this moment I offered him the nine fifty-dollar bills again. He refused to look at them. He said, “My hands are wet.” He wouldn’t use the roller towel. It was, I must admit, repulsively caked, filthy, with a certain originality in the way of filth. I held out my pocket handkerchief, but he ignored it. He didn’t want his anger to diminish. Spreading his fingers wide he shook them dry. Full of the nastiness of the place he said, “Is this what they call a Bath?”
“Well,” I said, “the bathing is all downstairs.”
They had two long rows of showers, below, which led to the heavy wooden doors of the steam room. There also was a small cistern,