Humboldt's Gift (50 page)

  “You are certainly right. My heart bleeds for all parties.”

  The wine waiter came and made the usual phony passes, showed the label, and ducked down with his corkscrew. He then poured some wine for me to taste, and harassed me with perfunctory courtesies that had to be acknowledged.

  “Still, coming to New York was right, I now agree,” she said. “Your mission here is accomplished, and that’s all to the good because it’s about time your life was set on a real basis and you cleared away a few tons of rubbish. Your sentiments and deep feelings may do you credit, but you’re like a mandolin-player. You tickle every note ten times. It’s cute, but a little goes a long way. Were you about to say something?”

  “Yes, the strangeness of life on this earth is very oppressive.”

  “You’re always saying ‘on this earth.’ It gives me a creepy feeling. This old Professor Scheldt, the father of your pussycat Doris, has filled you up with his esoteric higher worlds and when you talk to me about this I feel we’re both going bonkers: knowledge that doesn’t need a brain, hearing without real ears, sight without eyes, the dead are with us, the soul leaves the body when we sleep. Do you believe all this stuff?”

  “I take it seriously enough to examine it. As to the soul leaving the body when we sleep, my mother absolutely believed that. She told me so when I was a kid. I find nothing strange in that. Only my head-culture opposes it. My hunch is that Mother was right. This can’t lead me into oddity, I already am in oddity. People as ingenious, as fertile in wishes as I am, and also my wonderful betters, have gone to their death. And what is this death? Again,
nessuno sa
. But ignorance of death is destroying us. And this is the field of ridicule in which Humboldt sees me still laboring. No honorable person can refuse to lend his mind, to give his time, to devote his soul to this problem of problems. Death now has no serious challenge from science or from philosophy or religion or art....”

  “So you think crank theories are the best bet?”

  I muttered something to myself, for she had heard this quotation from Samuel Daniel before, and her mandolin-playing figure prevented me from repeating it aloud. It was, “While timorous knowledge stands considering, audacious ignorance hath done the deed.” My thought was that life on this earth was actually everything else as well, provided that we learned how to apprehend it. But, not knowing, we were oppressed to the point of heartbreak.
My
heart was breaking all the time, and I was sick and tired of it.

  Renata said, “Really, what do I care—worship as you please is American and fundamental. It’s just that when you open your eyes there’s a sort of gloony gleam in them. That’s a made-up word, gloony. I loved it, by the way, when Humboldt said you were a promissory nut. I just loved that.”

  For my part, I loved Renata’s cheerfulness. Her roughness and frankness were infinitely better than her loving-pious bit. I had never bought that—never. But her cheerfulness as she laid caviar, chopped egg, and onion on Melba toast for me gave me wonderful extravagant comfort. “Only,” she went on, “you’ve got to stop twittering like a ten-year-old girl. And now let’s take this Humboldt thing straight on. He thought he was leaving you a valuable property. Poor character. What a gas! Who’d buy such a story? What’s it got? You’d have to do everything twice, first with the girl and then with the wife. It would drive an audience nuts. Producers are looking to go beyond
Bonnie and Clyde
,
The French Connection
,
The Godfather
. Murder on an El train. Naked lovers who bounce up and down when machine-gun slugs tear into their bodies. Dudes on massage tables who get bullets straight through their eyeglasses.” Ruthless, perfectly good-natured Renata laughed, sipping Pouilly-Fuissé, aware of how I admired her throat and the feminine subtlety of its white rings (here the veil of Maya was as vivid as ever). “Well, isn’t that it, Charles? And how does Humboldt compete? He dreamed about having magic with his public. But you didn’t have it either. Without your director,
Trenck
could never have made a big box office. You told me so yourself. What did you get for those
Trenck
movie rights?”

  “The price was three hundred thousand. The producer took half, the agent took ten percent, the government took sixty percent of the rest, I put fifty into the house in Kenwood which now belongs to Denise. . . .” Renata’s face, when I recited figures and percentages, was wonderfully at peace. “That’s how my commercial success breaks down,” I said. “And I would never have been capable of doing it on my own, I agree. It was all Harold Lampton and Kermit Bloomgarden. As for Humboldt he was not the first man to go down trying to combine worldly success with poetic integrity, blasted with poetic fire, as Swift says, and consequently unfit for Church or Law or State. But he thought of me, Renata. His scenario gives his opinion of me—foolishness, intricacy, wasted subtlety, a loving heart, some kind of disorganized genius, a certain elegance of construction. His legacy is also his affectionate opinion of me. And he did his very best. It was an act of love—”

  “Charlie, look, they’re bringing you the telephone,” said Renata. “It’s terrific!”

  “You’re Mr. Citrine?” said the waiter.

  “Yes.”

  He plugged in the instrument and I spoke to Chicago. The call was from Alec Szathmar. “Charlie, you’re in the Oak Room?” he said.

  “I am.”

  He laughed with excitement. We two who had sparred in the alley with boxing gloves as children hitting each other in the face until we were winded and dazed were now men, and had risen in the world. I was lunching elegantly in New York; he was phoning me from a paneled office on La Salle Street. Unfortunately, the messages he gave me did not suit the plush occasion. Or did it? “Urbanovich is going along with Denise and Pinsker. The court says you must post a bond. The figure is two hundred thousand dollars. This is what happens when you ignore my advice. I told you to hide some money in Switzerland. No, you had to be aboveboard. You weren’t going to do anything gross. That’s the kind of snobbery that does you in. You want austerity? Well, you’re two hundred grand closer to it than you were yesterday.”

  A slight echo told me that he was using an amplifier. My replies were heard on the squawk box in his office. This meant that his secretary, Tulip, was listening. Because of the affectionate interest this woman took in my doings, Szathmar, always the showman, sometimes invited her to listen in on our conversations. She was a fine woman, somewhat pale and heavy, and carried herself in the sad high-hearted style of the old West Side. She was devoted to Szathmar, whose weaknesses she knew and forgave. Only Szathmar himself was conscious of no weaknesses. “What will you do for dough, Charlie?” he said.

  The first thing to do was to conceal the facts from Renata.

  “There’s no immediate problem. I’ve got a small balance with you, still, haven’t I?”

  “We agreed that I would repay the condominium loan in five annual installments, and you’ve already gotten this year’s payment. I suppose the decades of free legal advice I gave you don’t count for a thing.”

  “You also put me on to Tomchek and Srole.”

  “The finest domestic-relations people in Chicago. They couldn’t work with you. No one could.”

  Renata passed me another bit of Melba toast with caviar, grated egg, onion, and sour cream.

  “Now I’ve given you message number one,” said Szathmar. “Message number two is to call your brother in Texas. His wife has been trying to reach you. Nothing has happened. Don’t lose your head. Julius is going to have open-heart surgery. Your sister-in-law says they’re going to transplant a few arteries for the angina. She thought his only brother should know. They’re going up to Houston for the operation.”

  “Your face is completely changed, what is it?” said Renata as I put down the telephone.

  “My brother is going to have open-heart surgery.”

  “Oh-oh!” she said.

  “Quite right. I must go there.”

  “You’re not asking me to postpone this trip again?”

  “We can easily fly from Texas.”

  “You’ve got to go?”

  “Of course, I must.”

  “I’ve never met your brother, but I know he’s a rough man. He wouldn’t cancel his plans for you.”

  “Now Renata he’s my only brother, and these are frightful operations. As I understand it, they break into your chest, remove the heart, lay it on a towel or something, while they circulate the blood by machine. It’s one of those demonic modern technological things. Poor humankind, we’re all hurled down into the object world now. . . .”

  “Ugh,” said Renata, “I hope they never make such a jigsaw puzzle of me.”

  “Darling Renata, in your case the very thought is blasphemous.” Renata’s breasts, when the support of clothing was removed, fell slightly to the right and to the left, owing to a certain enchanting fullness at the base of each and perhaps because of their connection with the magnetic poles of the earth. You did not think of Renata as having a chest in the usual human way—certainly not my brother’s human way, gray-haired and stout.

  “You want me to go to Texas with you, don’t you,” she said.

  “It would mean a great deal to me.”

  “And to me, too, if we were husband and wife. I’d go there twice a week if you needed support. But don’t expect to take me in tow and show me off to a dirty old man as your floozy. Don’t go by my behavior as a single woman.”

  This last was a reference to the night she locked me out and lay beside Flonzaley the mortuary king. She had been weeping, to hear her tell it, while I telephoned frantically. “Marry me,” she said to me now. “Change my status. That’s what I need. I’ll make you a wonderful wife.”

  “I should do it. You’re a glorious woman. Why should I bandy arguments with you?”

  “There’s nothing to argue about. I’m going to Italy tomorrow, and you can meet me in Milan. But I’ll be walking into the Biferno leather shop in a weak position. As a divorced woman who floats around with a lover I can’t expect my father to be enthusiastic, and, practically speaking it’ll be harder for him to have an emotional catharsis over me than if I were an innocent girl. As for me, I still remember how Mother and I were put out on the street—right on the Via Monte Napoleone, and how I stood in front of his show window with all the beautiful leather and cried. To this day when I go into Gucci and see the luxury luggage and handbags I feel almost like fainting from rejection and heartbreak.”

  Some statements are meant to pass, some to echo. The words “my behavior as a single woman” continued to reverberate, as it was her tactical intention that they should. But it was impossible to marry her just to keep her honest for a few days in Milan.

  I went up to the mansard room and got the operator to connect me with my brother in Corpus Christi.

  “Ulick?” I said, using his family name.

  “Yes, Chuckie.”

  “I’m coming down to Texas tomorrow.”

  “Ah, they’ve told you,” he said. “They’re going to hack me open on Wednesday. Well, come along if you haven’t got anything else to do. I thought I heard that you were going to Europe.”

  “I can leave the country from Houston.”

  He was of course pleased that I wanted to come but he was distrustful, and he wondered whether I might not be angling for some advantage. Julius in fact loved me but affirmed and even believed that he didn’t. My brotherly intensity flattered him. But he was too clear-headed to deceive himself. He was not a lovable man and if he held an important place in my feelings, and those feelings were intricate and keen, the reason was either that I was queerly undeveloped, immature, or that possibly without knowing what I was doing I was involved in a con. Ulick saw rackets everywhere. A stout character, sharp-faced, handsome, his eyes were big alert and shrewd. A mustache in the style of the late Secretary Acheson mitigated the greediness of his mouth. He was a strutting heavy graceful rapacious man who wore checks, stripes, gaudy but elegantly fitted. Somewhere between business and politics he had once made a fortune in Chicago, connected with the underworld although without being a part of it. But he fell in love and left his wife for the other woman. In the divorce he was wiped out, losing his Chicago possessions. However, he made a second fortune in Texas and raised a second family. It was impossible to think of him without his wealth. It was necessary for him to be in the money, to have dozens of suits and hundreds of pairs of shoes, shirts beyond inventory, cuff links, pinkie rings, large houses, luxury automobiles, a grand-ducal establishment over which he ruled like a demon. Such was Julius, my big brother Ulick, whom I loved.

  “For the life of me,” said Renata, “I can’t figure why you’re so crazy about this brother of yours. The more he puts you down, the more you worship the ground. Let me recall a few of the things you told me about him. When you were a kid playing with toys on the floor he would step on your fingers. He rubbed your eyes with pepper. He hit you on the head with a bat. When you were an adolescent he burned your collection of Marx and Lenin pamphlets. He had fist fights with everyone, even a colored maid.”

  “Yes, that was Bama, she was six feet tall and she gave him a hard punch on the ear, which he had coming.”

  “He’s been in a hundred scandals and lawsuits. He fired shots ten years ago at a car that used his driveway to turn around.”

  “He only meant to shoot out a tire.”

  “Yes, but he hit the windows, and he was being sued for assault with a deadly weapon—didn’t you tell me? He sounds like one of those crazy brutes who get entangled in your life. Or was it the other way around?”

  “The odd thing is that he isn’t a brute, he’s charming, a gentleman. But mainly he’s my brother Ulick. Some people are so actual that they beat down my critical powers. Once they’re there—inarguable, incontestable—nothing can be done about them. Their reality matters more than my practical interests. Beyond a certain point of vividness I become passionately attached.”

  Obviously Renata herself belonged to this category. I was passionately attached to her because she was Renata. She had an additional value, too—she knew a lot about me. I had a vested interest in her because I had told her so much about myself. She was educated in the life and outlook of Citrine. You needed no such education in the life of Renata. All you had to do was look at her. And conditions were such that I had to purchase her consideration. The more facts I put into her the more I needed her, and the more I needed her the more her price increased. In the life to come there will be no such personal or erotic bondage. You won’t have to bribe another soul to listen while you explain what you’re about, and what you had meant to do, and what you had done, and what others had done, et cetera. (Although the question naturally arises, why should anyone listen gratis to such stuff?) Spiritual science says that in the life to come the moral laws have the priority, and they are as powerful there as the laws of nature are in the physical world. Of course I was just a beginner, in theosophical kindergarten.