Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [74]
“I can’t believe that,” I said. “Longstaff is certainly mischievous, but he isn’t mean.”
The Princeton people behaved well and offered to do the gentlemanly thing. Ricketts said, “You’re one of us now, Hum, you know? Don’t worry, we’ll find the dough for your chair somehow.” But Humboldt sent in his resignation. Then in March, on a back road in New Jersey, he tried to run Kathleen down in the Buick. She jumped into a ditch to save herself.
sixteen
At this moment I must say, almost in the form of deposition, without argument, that I do not believe my birth began my first existence. Nor Humboldt’s. Nor anyone’s. On esthetic grounds, if on no others, I cannot accept the view of death taken by most of us, and taken by me during most of my life—on esthetic grounds therefore I am obliged to deny that so extraordinary a thing as a human soul can be wiped out forever. No, the dead are about us, shut out by our metaphysical denial of them. As we lie nightly in our hemispheres asleep by the billions, our dead approach us. Our ideas should be their nourishment. We are their grainfields. But we are barren and we starve them. Don’t kid yourself, though, we are watched by the dead, watched on this earth, which is our school of freedom. In the next realm, where things are clearer, clarity eats into freedom. We are free on earth because of cloudiness, because of error, because of marvelous limitation, and as much because of beauty as of blindness and evil. These always go with the blessing of freedom. But this is all I have to say about the matter now, because I’m in a hurry, under pressure—all this unfinished business!
As I was meditating on Humboldt, the hall-buzzer went off. I have a dark little hall where I press the button and get muffled shouts on the intercom from below. It was Roland Stiles, the doorman. My ways, the arrangements of my life, diverted Stiles a lot. He was a skinny witty old Negro. He was, so to speak, in the semifinals of life. In his opinion, so was I. But I didn’t seem to see it that way, for some strange white man’s reason, and I continued to carry on as if it weren’t yet time to think of death. “Plug in your telephone, Mr. Citrine. Do you read me? Your number-one lady friend is trying to reach you.” Yesterday my car was bashed. Today my beautiful mistress couldn’t get in touch. To him I was as good as a circus. At night Stiles’s missus liked stories about me better than television. He told me so himself.
I dialed Renata and said, “What is it?”
“What is it! For Christ’s sake! I’ve called ten times. You have to see Judge Urbanovich at half past one. Your lawyer’s been trying to get you, too. And he finally phoned Szathmar, and Szathmar phoned me.”
“Half past one! They changed the time on me! For months they ignore me, then they give me two hours’ notice, curse them.” My spirit began to jump up and down. “Oh hell, I hate them, those crap artists.”
“Maybe you can wind the whole thing up now. Today.”
“How? I’ve surrendered five times. Each time I surrender Denise and her guy up their demands.”
“In just a few days thank God I’m getting you out of here. You’ve been dragging your feet, because you don’t want to go, but believe me, Charlie, you’ll bless me for it when we’re in Europe again.”
“Forrest Tomchek doesn’t even have time to discuss the case with me. Some lawyer Szathmar recommended.”
“Now Charlie, how will you get downtown without your car? I’m surprised that Denise hasn’t tried to hitch a ride to court with you.”
“I’ll get a cab.”
“I have to take Fannie Sunderland to the Mart, anyway, for her tenth look at upholstery material for one fucking sofa.” Renata laughed, but she was unusually patient with her clients. “I must take care of this before we pull out for Europe. We’ll pick you up at one o’clock sharp. Be ready, Charlie.”
Long ago I read a book called Ils Ne M’auront Pas (They Aren’t Going to Get Me) and at certain moments