Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [92]
Polly did not seem bothered by this. I thought her far too good for Cantabile. But then in every couple there is a contrast-gainer. I could see that he amused Polly, with her white skin, red hair, fine legs. That was why she was with him. He really amused her. For his part he pushed me to admire her. He also boasted about his wife’s education—what an achiever she was— and he showed me off to Polly. He was proud of us all. “Watch Charlie’s mouth,” he told Polly. “You’ll notice that it moves even when he isn’t talking. That’s because he’s thinking. He thinks all the time. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” He grabbed up a book, the biggest on the table. “Take this monster —The Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics—Jesus Christ, what the hell is that! Now Charlie tell us, what were you reading here?”
“I was checking something about Origen of Alexandria. Ori-gen’s opinion was that the Bible could not be a collection of mere stories. Did Adam and Eve really hide under a tree while God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day? Did angels really climb up and down ladders? Did Satan bring Jesus to the top of a high mountain and tempt him? Obviously these tales must have a deeper meaning. What does it mean to say ‘God walked’? Does God have feet? This was where the thinkers began to take over, and—”
“Enough, that’s enough. Now what’s this book say, The Triumph of the Therapeutic?”
For reasons of my own I wasn’t unwilling to be tested in this way. I actually did read a great deal. Did I know what I was reading? We would see. I shut my eyes, reciting, “It says that psychotherapists may become the new spiritual leaders of mankind. A disaster. Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell. The same point in Knock by Jules Romains. Is hypochondria a creation of the medical profession? According to this author, when culture fails to deal with the feeling of emptiness and the panic to which man is disposed (and he does say ‘disposed’) other agents come forward to put us together with therapy, with glue, or slogans, or spit, or as that fellow Gumbein the art critic says, poor wretches are recycled on the couch. This view is even more pessimistic than the one held by Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority. A natural disposition to feelings of emptiness and panic is worse than that. Much worse. What it really means is that we human beings are insane. The last institution which controlled such insanity (on this view) was the Church—”
He stopped me again. “Polly, you see what I mean. Now what’s this, Between Death and Rebirth?”
“Steiner? A fascinating book about the soul’s journey past the gates of death. Different from Plato’s myth—”
“Whoa, hold it,” said Cantabile, and he pointed out to Polly: “All you have to do is ask him a question and he turns on. Can you see this as an act in a night club? We could book him into Mr. Kelly’s.”
Polly glanced past him at me with full and reddish-brown eyes and said, “He wouldn’t go for that.”
“It depends how they sock it to him downtown today. Charlie, I had another idea on the way out here. We could tape you reading some of your essays and articles and rent the tapes to colleges and universities. You’d get a pretty nice little income out of that. Like