Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [97]
“I never thought of one.”
“You want me to believe you have nothing in your thoughts except angels on ladders and immortal spirits but I can see from the way you live that it can’t be true. First of all you’re a dude. I know your tailor. Secondly you’re an old sex-pot. . . .”
“Did I talk to you that night about the immortal spirit?”
“You sure as hell did. You said that after it gets through the gates of death—this is a quote—your soul spreads out and looks back at the world. Charlie, I had a thought this morning about you—shut the door. Go on, shut it. Now, listen, we could pretend to kidnap one of your kids. You pay the ransom, and I put the dough away in the Cayman Islands for you.”
“Let me see that gun of yours now,” I said.
He handed it to me and I pointed it at him. I said, “I’ll certainly use this on you if you try any such thing.”
“Put that Magnum down. It’s only an idea. Don’t get all shook up.”
I removed the bullets and threw them in the wastepaper basket, handing back the pistol. That he made such suggestions to me was, I recognized, my own fault. The arbitrary can become the pets of the rational. Cantabile seemed to recognize that he was my pet arbitrary. In some sense he played up to this. Maybe it was better to be a pet arbitrary than a mere nut. But was I so rational?
“The kidnap idea is too gaudy. You’re right,” he said. “Well, how about getting to the judge? After all, a county judge has to be put on the ballot for re-election. Judges are in politics, too, and you’d better know it. There are little characters in the Organization who put ‘em on and take ‘em off the ballot. For thirty or forty Gs, the right guy will call on Judge Urbanovich.”
I puffed, and blew the tiny clippings out of the shaver.
“You don’t go for that either?”
“No.”
“Maybe the other side has already gotten to him. Why be such a gentleman? It’s like a kind of paralysis. Absolutely unreal. Behind the glass in the Field Museum, that’s where you belong. I believe you got stuck in your childhood. If I said to you, ‘Liquidate and go abroad,’ what would you answer?”
“I’d say that I wouldn’t leave the USA just because of money.”
“That’s right. You’re no Vesco. You love your country. Well, you’re not fit to have this money. Maybe the other guys should get it from you. People like the President pretended to be fine clean Americans from The Saturday Evening Post. They were boy scouts, they delivered the newspaper at dawn. But they were fakes. The real American is a freak like you, a highbrow Jew from the West Side of Chicago. You ought to be in the White House.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
“You’d love the Secret Service protection.” Cantabile opened the bathroom door to check on Polly. She was not eavesdropping. He shut it again and said, low-voiced, “We could put a contract on your wife. Does she wanna fight? Let her have it. There could be a car accident. She could die in the street. She could be pushed in front of a train, dragged into an alley and stabbed. Crazy buffaloes are doing women in left and right, so who’s to know. She’s bugging you to death—well, how would it be if she died? I know you’ll say no, and treat it as a joke—Wildass Cantabile, a joker.”
“You’d better be joking.”
“I’m only reminding you this is Chicago, after all/’
“Ninety-eight-percent nightmare, so you think I should total it? I’ll just assume that you’re kidding. I’m sorry Polly wasn’t listening to this. Okay, I appreciate your great interest in my welfare. Don’t offer any more suggestions. And don’t make me a horrible Christmas present, Cantabile. You’re casting about to make a dynamic impression. Don’t make any more criminal offers, you understand? If I hear another whisper of this I’ll tell the homicide squad.”
“Relax. I wouldn’t lift a finger. I just thought I’d point out the whole range of options. It helps to see them from end to end. It clears your head. You know she’ll be damn glad when you’re dead, you rascal you.”
“I don’t know any such thing,” I said.