Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [98]
I was lying. She had told me exactly that herself. Really, to be having a conversation like this served me right. I had brought it on myself. I had rooted and sorted my way through mankind experiencing disappointment upon disappointment. What was my disappointment? I had, or assumed that I had, needs and perceptions of a Shakespearian order. But they were only too sporadically of that high order. And so I found myself now looking into the moony eyes of a Cantabile. Ah my higher life! When I was young I believed that being an intellectual assured me of a higher life. In this Humboldt and I were exactly alike. He too would have respected and adored the learning, the rationality, the analytical power of a man like Richard Durnwald. For Durnwald the only brave, the only passionate, the only manly life was a life of thought. I had agreed, but I no longer thought in the same way. I had decided to listen to the voice of my own mind speaking from within, from my own depths, and this voice said that there was my body, in nature, and that there was also me. I was related to nature through my body, but all of me was not contained in it.
Because of this kind of idea I now found myself under Cantabile’s gaze. He examined me. He also looked tender concerned threatening punitive and even lethal.
I said to him, “Years ago there was a little kid in the funnies called Desperate Ambrose. Before your time. Now don’t you play Desperate Ambrose with me. Let me out of here.”
“Just a minute. What about Lucy’s thesis?”
“Curse her thesis.”
“She’s coming back from Nevada in a few days.”
I made no answer. In a few days’ time I’d be safely abroad— away from this lunatic, though probably mixed up with others.
“One more thing,” he said. “You can make it with Polly through me. Only. Don’t try on your own.”
“Rest easy,” I said.
He remained in the bathroom. I suppose he was getting his bullets out of the wastepaper basket.
Polly had the yoghurt and the egg ready for me.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, “don’t get mixed up in the commodity market. He’s losing his shirt.”
“Does he know that?”
“What do you think,” she said.
“Then he’s bringing in new investors perhaps to make a deal to recover some of his losses?”
“I couldn’t say. That’s beyond me,” said Polly. “He’s a very intricate person. What is that beautiful medal on the wall?”
“It’s my French decoration, framed by my lady friend. She’s an interior decorator. Actually, the medal is a kind of phony. Major decorations are red, not green. They gave me the sort of thing they give to pig-breeders and to people who improve the garbage cans. A Frenchman told me last year that my green ribbon must be the lowest rank of the Legion of Honor. In fact he had never actually seen a green ribbon before. He thought it might be the Mérite Agricole.”
“I don’t think it was very nice of him to tell you that,” said Polly.
nineteen
Renata was punctual, and she had the engine of the old yellow Pontiac idling, waiting to be off. I shook hands with Polly and told Cantabile, “I’ll be seeing you.” I didn’t introduce them to Renata. They tried hard to get a look at her but I got in, slammed the door, and said, “Go!” She went. The crown of Renata’s large hat touched the roof of the car. It was amethyst felt and of the seventeenth-century cut you see in portraits by Frans Hals. She was wearing her long hair down. I preferred it in a bun, showing the shape of her neck.
“Who are your pals, and what’s the big hurry?”
“That was Cantabile, who did in my car.”
“Him? I wish I’d known. Was that his wife?”
“No, his wife is out of town.”
“I watched you coming through the lobby. She’s quite a number. And he’s a good-looking man.”
“He was dying to meet you—trying to get a load of you through the window.”
“Why should you be so flustered by that?”
“Just now he offered to have Denise rubbed out for me.”
Renata, laughing, shouted, “What?”
“A hit man, a mechanic, he suggested a contract. Everybody knows the lingo now.”
“It must have been a put-on.”
“I’m sure it was. On the other hand there’s my 280-SL in the shop.