these tons of water poured. Bands of kids prowled with handguns and knives. And—dear-dear—this tender-minded mourning Mr. Charlie Citrine had seen his old buddy, a dead man eating a pretzel in New York, so he abandoned Life and the Coast Guard and helicopters and two Senators and rushed home to be comforted. For this purpose his wife had taken off everything and was brushing her exceedingly dense hair. Her enormous violet and gray eyes were impatient, her tenderness was mixed with glowering. She was asking tacitly how long I was going to sit on the chaise longue in my socks, heart-wounded and full of obsolete sensibility. A nervous and critical person, she thought I suffered from morbid aberrations about grief, that I was pre-modern or baroque about death. She often declared that I had come back to Chicago because my parents were buried here. Sometimes she said with sudden alertness, “Ah, here comes the cemetery bit!” What’s more she was often right. Soon I myself could hear the chain-dragging monotony of my low voice. Love was the remedy for these death moods. And here was Denise, impatient but dutiful, sitting stripped on the bed, and I didn’t even take off my necktie. I know this sorrow can be maddening. And it tired Denise to support me emotionally. She didn’t take much stock in these emotions of mine. “Oh, you’re on that kick again. You must quit all this operatic bullshit. Talk to a psychiatrist. Why are you hung up on the past and always lamenting some dead party or other?” Denise pointed out with a bright flash of the face, a sign that she had had an insight, that while I shed tears for my dead I was also patting down their graves with my shovel. For I did write biographies, and the deceased were my bread and butter. The deceased had earned my French decoration and got me into the White House. (The loss of our White House connections after the death of JFK was one of Denise’s bitterest vexations.) Don’t get me wrong, I know that love and scolding often go together. Durnwald did this to me, too. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. The whole thing was mixed with affection. When I came home in a state over Humboldt, she was ready to comfort me. But she had a sharp tongue, Denise did. (I sometimes called her Rebukah.) Of course my lying there so sad, so heart-injured, was provoking. Besides, she suspected that I would never finish the Life article. There she was right again.
If I was going to feel so much about death, why didn’t I do something about it. This endless sensibility was awful. Such was Denise’s opinion. I agreed with that, too.
“So you feel bad about your pal Humboldt!” she said. “But how come you haven’t looked him up? You had years to do it in. And why didn’t you speak to him today?”
These were hard questions, very intelligent. She didn’t let me get away with a thing.
“I suppose I could have said, ‘Humboldt, it’s me, Charlie. What about some real lunch? The Blue Ribbon is just around the corner.’ But I think he might have thrown a fit. A couple of years ago he tried to hit some dean’s secretary with a hammer. He accused her of covering his bed with girlie magazines. Some kind of erotic plot against him. They had to put him away again. The poor man is crazy. And it’s no use going back to Saint Julien or hugging lepers.”
“Who said anything about lepers? You’re always thinking what nobody else has remotely in mind.”
“Well okay, then, but he looked gruesome and I was all dressed up. And I’ll tell you a curious coincidence. In the helicopter this morning I was sitting next to Dr. Longstaff. So naturally I thought of Humboldt. It was Longstaff who promised Humboldt a huge grant from the Belisha Foundation. This was when we were still at Princeton. Haven’t I ever told you about that disaster?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The whole thing came back to me.”
“Is Longstaffi still so handsome and distinguished? He must be an old man. And I’ll bet you pestered him about those old times.”
“Yes, I reminded him.”
“You would. And I suppose it was disagreeable.”
“The past isn’t disagreeable to the fully justified.”