Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [64]
“We’ll have to mark time,” I said. “Maybe the next administration will let us into the White House.”
Humboldt would allow no light conversation this morning.
“But look,” I said. “You’re poetry editor of Arcturus, you’re on the staff of Hildebrand & Co. and a paid adviser to the Belisha Foundation, and teaching at Princeton. You have a contract to do a textbook in modern poetry. Kathleen told me that if you lived to be a hundred and fifty you’d never be able to make good on all the advances you’ve drawn from publishers.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous, Charlie, if you knew how hard my position is. I seem to have a lot going for me, but it’s all a bubble. I’m in danger. You, without any prospects at all, are in a much stronger position. And now there’s this political disaster.” I sensed that he was afraid of his back-country neighbors. In his nightmares they burned his house, he shot it out with them, they lynched him and carried off his wife. Humboldt said, “What do we do now? What’s our next move?”
These questions were asked only to introduce the scheme he had in mind.
“Our move?”
“Either we leave the US during this administration, or we dig in.”
“We could ask Harry Truman for asylum in Missouri.”
“Don’t joke with me, Charlie. I have an invitation from the Free University of Berlin to teach American literature.”
“That sounds grand.”
He quickly said, “No, no! Germany is dangerous. I wouldn’t take a chance on Germany.”
“That leaves digging in. Where are you going to dig?”
“I said ‘we.’ The situation is very unsafe. If you had any sense you’d feel the same. You think because you’re such a pretty-boy, and so bright and big-eyed, that nobody would hurt you.”
Humboldt now began to attack Sewell. “Sewell really is a rat,” he said.
“I thought you were old friends.”
“Long acquaintance isn’t friendship. Did you like him? He received you. He condescended, he was snotty, you were treated like dirt. He didn’t even talk to you, only to me. I resented it.”
“You didn’t say so.”
“I didn’t want to rouse you right away and make you angry, start you under a cloud. Do you think he’s a good critic?”
“Can the deaf tune pianos?”
“He’s subtle, though. He’s a subtle man, in a dirty way. Don’t underrate him. And he’s a rough infighter. But to become a professor without even a BA ... it speaks for itself. His father was just a lobsterman. His mother took in washing. She did Kit-tredge’s collars in Cambridge and she wangled library privileges for her son. He went down into the Harvard stacks a weakling and he came up a regular titan. Now he’s a Wasp gentleman and lords it over us. You and I have raised his status. He comes on with two Jews like a mogul and a prince.”
“Why do you want to make me sore at Sewell?”
“You’re too lordly yourself to take offense. You’re an even bigger snob than Sewell. I think you may be psychologically one of those Axel types that only cares about inner inspiration, no connection with the actual world. The actual world can kiss your ass,” said Humboldt wildly. “You leave it to poor bastards like me to think about matters like money and status and success and failure and social problems and politics. You don’t give a damn for such things.”
“If true, why is that so bad?”
“Because you stick me with all these unpoetic responsibilities. You lean back like a king, relaxed, and let all these human problems happen. There ain’t no flies on Jesus. Charlie, you’re not place bound, time bound, goy bound, Jew bound. What are you bound? Others abide our question. Thou art free! Sewell was stinking to you. He snubbed you and you’re sore at him, too, don’t deny it. But you can’t pay attention. You’re always mooning in your private mind about some kind of cosmic destiny. Tell me, what is this great thing you’re always working on?”
I was now still lying on my broccoli plush sofa engaged in a meditation on this haughty freezing blue December