The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow Part 29

"All the better, under pressure."

"In these boots?"

"Just pull down your things."

Victor lowered himself toward her. To all that was exposed he applied his cheeks, warmth to warmth, to her thighs, on her belly with its faint trail of hairs below the navel. The telephone was silent. It didn't ring. They were winning, winning, winning, winning. They won!

That was what Victor said to her. "We got some of our own back."

"We were due for one_ break," said Katrina. "Dizzy luck. I'm spinning around."

"Let's stay put awhile. Don't get up. There's a Russian proverb: If late for an appointment, walk slower. We're best off just as we are. Kinglake would have rung us if the plane weren't on its way."

"Do you think it's after sundown, Victor?"

"How would we know from here? We're on the inside of the inside of the inside. Why worry? You'll be only a little late. They have to get me there. No Wulpy, no festival. It's a test for them,_ a challenge they've accepted."

They rested on the edge of the bed, legs hanging. He took Katrina's hand, kissed her fingers. He was a masterful, cynical man, but with her at times like these he put aside his cynicism. She took it as a sign-how much he cared for her. He enjoyed talking when they lay together like this. She could recall many memorable things he had said on such occasions: "You could write better than Fonstine"-one of his enemies-"if you took off your shoes and pounded the keyboard with your rosy heels. Or just by lifting your skirts and sitting on the machine with your beautiful bottom. The results would be more inspiring."

Victor now mentioned Wrangel. "He wanted to establish a relations.h.i.+p."

"He has great respect-admiration for you," said Katrina. "He said that to him when he came to the Village in the fifties-just a kid-you were in a cla.s.s with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Meant to be a great man."

"I was sure he would do lots of talking while I was on the telephone. Well, not to be modest about it, Katrina..." (And what was there to be modest about? They lay together at the foot of the bed, bare between the waist and the knees. His arm was still under her shoulders.) "In some respects I can see... I thought what I would do with power. It gave me an edge over intellectuals who never tried to imagine power. This was why they couldn't think._ I have more iron in me. My ideas had more authority because I conceived what I would do in authority. It's my nature...." He paused. "It was_ my nature. I'm going to have to part with my nature presently. All the more reason to increase the dispa.s.sionate view I always preferred."

"Talking like this, just after s.e.x?" said Katrina.

"I would have done well in a commanding situation. I have the temperamental qualifications. Don't flinch from being a reprobate. Naturally political, and I have a natural contempt for people in private life who have no power-stir. Let it be in thought, let it be in painting. It has to be a powerful reading of the truth of existence. Metaphysical pa.s.sion. You get as much truth as you have the courage to approach."

Having n.o.body but me to tell this to. This was one of Katrina's frequent thoughts-she was disappointed for his sake. If there had been a pad to the right of her she might have taken notes. She did have some_ idea what he was saying.

"Some of the sharpest pains we feel come from the silence imposed on the deepest inward mining that we do. The most unlikely-looking people may be the most deep miners. I've often thought, 'He, or she, is intensely at work, digging in a different gallery, but the galleries are far apart, in parallels which never meet, and the diggers are deaf to one another's work.' It must be one of the wickedest forms of human suffering. And it could explain the horrible shapes often taken by what we call originality.' "

"Was there nothing Wrangel said that had any value?"

"I might have been interested by his guru. I had a sense of secondhand views. I don't think Wrangel had any hot news for me. If this is something like the end of time-for this civilization-everything already is quite clear and intelligible to alert minds. In our real_ thoughts, and I don't mean what we say-what's said is largely hok.u.m-in the real thoughts, alert persons recognize what is happening. There may have been something in what Wrangel said-still echoing his guru-about the connections made by real thoughts: a true thought may have a true image corresponding to it. Do you know why communication broke down with Wrangel? It was uncomfortable to hear a California parody of things that I had been thinking myself. I've been very troubled, Katrina. And the ideas I've developed over sixty years don't seem to help me to cope with the trouble. I made an extreme commitment to lucidity...."

"But aren't you lucid?"

"That's my mental_ lucidity. I've been having lucid impressions-like dreams, visions-instead of lucid ideas."

"What's this about?"

"Well, there's shared knowledge that we don't talk about. That deaf deep mining."

"Like what?"

"Cryptic persistent suggestions: the dead are not really dead._ Or, we don't create thoughts, as that movie drip suggested. A thought is_ real, already created, and a real thought can pay you a visit. I think I understand why this happens to me. After so many years in the arts, you begin to a.s.sume that the value of life is bound up with the value of art. And there is no rational basis for this. Then you begin to suspect that it's the 'rational' that lacks real meaning. Rationality would argue back that it's the weakening of the organism that suggests this. A stupid argument." Victor refrained from speaking of the erotic side of this-magical, aesthetic, erotic-or of what this final flare-up of eroticism might mean. It might mean that he was paying out from his last fibers for lucidity of impression and for s.e.xual confirmation of the fact that he still existed. But full strength, strong fibers, only made you more capable of lying to yourself, of maintaining the mauvaise foi,_ the false description of your personal reality. He didn't mention to Katrina the underground music which signified (had signified to Mark Antony) that the G.o.d Hercules was going away.

He changed the subject. He said to Katrina, "It's a real laugh that Wrangel should mix me up in his mind with FDR."

Roosevelt, too, was dying at a moment when to have strength was more necessary than ever. And hadn't there been a woman with him at Warm Springs when he had his brain hemorrhage?

"Didn't it ever occur to you?" said Katrina.

"It occurred, but I didn't encourage the thought. Stalin made a complete fool of the man. Those trips to Teheran and Yalta must have been the death of him. They were ruinous physically. I'm certain that Stalin meant to hasten his death. Terrible journeys. Roosevelt felt challenged to demonstrate his vigor. Stalin didn't budge. Roosevelt let himself be destroyed, proving his strength as chief of a great power, and also his 'n.o.bility.' "

Katrina, who had moved her round face closer-a girl posing for a "sweetheart snapshot," cheek to cheek-said, "Aren't you cold? Wouldn't you like me to pull the covers over you? No? At least slide your fingers under me to warm up."

To encourage him she turned on her side. A gambit she could always count on-the smooth shape of her b.u.t.tocks, their crme de Chantilly whiteness. He always laughed when she offered herself this way, and put out his big, delicate hands. Something of a tough guy he really was, and particularly with age distortions-the wrecked Pica.s.so Silenus reaching toward the nude beauty. She felt a sort of aristocratic delicacy from him even when he was manipulating these round forms of hers. It was really a bit crazy, the pride she took in her bottom. He matched up the freckles on each cheek-she had two prominent birthmarks-as if they were eyes. "Now you're squinting. Now you're crosseyed. Now you're planning a conspiracy." Victor paused and said, "This is what little Wrangel was saying about cartoons and abstractions, isn't it? Making these faces?" Then he smoothed her gently and said, "It's no figure of speech to say that your figure leaves me speechless."

It was at this moment that the telephone began to ring, again and again-merciless. It was the desk. Their plane was just now landing. The limousine had started out. They were to be downstairs in five minutes.

They waited in the cold, under the bright lights. Victor had his stick and the mariner's cap-the broad mustache, the wonderful face, the n.o.ble ease in all circ.u.mstances. The Thinker Prince. Never quite up to his great standard, she felt just a little clumsy beside him. She was in charge of the d.a.m.ned fiddle, too. To hold an instrument she couldn't play. It turned her into a native bearer. She should set it on her head. And there they were on the edges of Detroit, standing on one of its crusts of light. Just like the other blasted cities of the northern constellation-Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis-all those fields of ruin that looked so golden and beautiful by night.

"This_ is no limousine," said Victor, irritated, when the car stopped. "It's a G.o.dd.a.m.n compact Honda."

But he made no further fuss about it. Opening the door of the car and taking a grip on the edge of the roof, he began to install himself in the front seat. First there was the stiff leg to get in, over on the driver's end, by the brake, and then he eased in his head and his huge back so that, as he turned, the car was crammed to the top. Then he descended into the seat with patient, clever labor. It was like a difficult intromission. But as soon as he was in place, and while Katrina was settling herself in the back, he was already talking. Nerving himself for the approaching lecture, tuning up? "Did you ever get through the Cline book I gave you?"

"The Journey?_ I did, finally."

"It's not agreeable, but it is important. It's one of those French things I've had on my mind."

"Like the Baudelaire?"

"Right." The driver had taken off swiftly by a dark side road, along fences. Victor made an effort to turn in the small seat; he wanted to look at her. Apparently he wished to make a statement not only in words but also with his face. "Didn't you think Cline was truly terrifying? He uses the language that people everywhere really use. He expresses the ideas and feelings they really share."

"Last time we spoke about it you said those were the ideas that made France collapse in 1940. And that the Germans also had those same ideas."

"I don't think that was exactly what I said. Talking about nihilism..."

Why had he asked her to read that book? Toward the end of it-a nightmare-a certain adventurer named Robinson refused to tell a woman that he loved her, and this "loving" woman, enraged, had shot him dead. Not even when she pointed the gun at him in the taxicab could she make him say the words "I love you." The "loving" woman was really a maniac, while the man, the "lover," although he was himself a crook, a deadbeat, a murderer, had one shred of honor left, and that, too, was in the terminal stage. Better dead than carried off for life by this loony ogress whom he would have to pretend to "love." It wasn't so much the book that had shocked Katrina-a book was only a book-but the fact that he, Victor, had told her to read it. Of course, he was always pus.h.i.+ng the widest possible perspective of historical reality. The whole universe was his field of operations. A cosmopolitan in the fullest sense, a giant of comprehension, he was located in the central command post of comprehension. "Face the destructive facts. No palliatives," was the kind ofthing he said.

"That book was next door to the murder camps," she said.

"I don't deny it."

"Well, back at the hotel you said that alert people everywhere were recognizing the same facts. But same isn't quite the way it was in the Cline book. Not even for you, Victor."

There was no time to answer. The car had stopped at the small private-aircraft building. When the driver ran from the front seat to open her door, she thought his face was distorted. Maybe it was only the cold that made him grimace. Extricating himself from the car, Victor again caught at the roof and hopped backward, drawing out the bad leg.

They entered the overilluminated shack. At the counter, where phones were jingling, Trina gave the name Wulpy to the dispatcher. The man said, "Yes, your Cessna is on the ground. It'll taxi up in a few minutes."

She pa.s.sed the news to Victor, who nodded but went on talking. "I'll grant you, the French had been had by their ideology. An ideology is a spell cast by the ruling cla.s.s, a net of binding falsehoods, and the discovery of this can throw people into a rage. That's why Cline is violent."

"People? Some_ people."

You have a love affair and then you ask your ladylove to read a book to discredit love, and it's the most extreme book you can select. That's some valentine.

Her ostrich boots gave her no sense of elegance as she preceded him into the Cessna. She felt clumsy and thick, every graceless thing that a woman can be, and she carried Vanessa's instrument across her chest. By the light of the lurid revolving bubble on the fuselage, she watched Victor being a.s.sisted into the plane. The two-man crew received Victor and Katrina with particular consideration. This was how the personnel were trained for these executive ferrying jobs.

Pa.s.sengers were guests. Would they care for coffee? And fresh doughnuts, or powdered bismarcks? Or would they prefer whiskey? The afternoon papers hadn't been available when they left Chicago. They did, however, have Barrons_ and the Wall Street Journal._ The seats were luxurious-as much legroom as you liked, excellent reading lights. Here was the panel with its many switches. Neither of the pa.s.sengers cared to read just now.

The pilot said, "We'll be landing at Midway, and you'll get a helicopter ride to Meigs."

"Well, this is more like it," said Victor. "You see?" She translated "You see?" as an a.s.sertion that he had not misled her. He had sent for her, and he was returning her to Chicago. He had the power to make good all a.s.surances. He raised his whiskey gla.s.s. We'll drink to you and me. Something like a smile pa.s.sed over his face, but he was also ruffled, moody. His eyes, those narrow ca.n.a.ls, were black with mortal injury. None of these powers-summoning special machines, commanding special privileges-really seemed to mean a thing. Doodads for a canary's cage. "Oh, yes, you're a pilot yourself," he remembered.

"Not one of these planes," said Katrina. She held up her wrist.w.a.tch to the light. Ysole would have left the house by now.

Suddenly the silence of the cabin was torn by a furious roar. Nothing could be heard. The plane b.u.mped across the icy seams of the field. Then came the clean run and they were (thank G.o.d!) airborne. Their course would take them southwest across Lake Michigan. It was just as well in this weather that the water should be invisible. The parlorlike neatness of the cabin was meant to give a sense of safety. She tasted the coffee-it was freeze-dried, it was not hot. When she bit into the jelly doughnut, she liked the fragrance of the fried dough but not the cold jelly that gushed out.

He may have had no special intention in giving her the Cline book to read. If so, why did he bring it up now? And what of the dowager Beila, to whom Vanessa had recommended the book on h.o.m.os.e.xual foreplay? They were_ a bookish family, weren't they. But this was to misread Beila completely. You could no more think of her that way than you could think of Queen Victoria. And Victor did not encourage discussions of Beila. Sometimes he spoke of "wives of a certain kind."

"Perfect happiness for wives of a certain kind is to immobilize their husbands." The suggestion was that a man in his seventies who had barely survived Ma.s.s. General and had a bad leg was a candidate for immobilization. You could as easily immobilize Niagara Falls. A perfectly objective judgment of Beila, removing all rivalry and guilt, was that she behaved with dignity. When it looked as if Victor was not going to make it at Ma.s.s. General, Beila had asked him whether he wanted to see Katrina, who was hiding in one of the waiting rooms. Victor did want to see her, and Beila had sent for her, and had withdrawn from the room also, to let them take leave of each other. Then Katrina and Victor had gripped hands. He seemed unable to speak. She wept with heartbreak. She told him that she would always love him. He held her hand fast and said, "This is it, kid." His tongue was impeded, but he was earnest and clear, she remembered. And since then, she thought how important it was that her claim to access should be affirmed, and that his feeling for her should be acknowledged. It wasn't just another adultery. She wasn't one of his casual women. Before death, his emotions were open, and she came-when she rushed in she was bursting. Her suffering was conceded its rights. Their relations.h.i.+p was certified; it took a sort of formal imprint from the sickroom. Last farewells. He was dying. When he released her hand, meaning that it was time to go-too much for him, perhaps, too painful-and she went out sobbing, she saw the distant significant figure of Beila down the corridor, watching or studying her.

Well, what had Beila's generosity achieved, when Victor was on his feet again? It only made matters simpler for the lovers. Then this creepy, rabbinical, fiddling, meddling, and bratty daughter advised a mother in her late sixties to learn to tickle and to suck, use advanced techniques of lewdness. ("For two cents I'd throw her fiddle right into the lake! Little b.i.t.c.h!") Beila needed all the dignity she could muster. And especially with a husband whose description might be: "Others abide our judgment, thou art free!" Finally Victor himself bringing up the ultimate, h.e.l.lish judgment on "love"-that love was something _dgueula.s.se.__ Like spoiled meat; dogs would walk away from it, but "lovers" poured out some "tenderness sauce" and then it became a dainty dish to set before the king-handing Katrina such a book to read.

That wasn't what he had been like in Ma.s.s. General, with death on top of him.

It occurred to her that his aim was to desensitize her feelings so that when he died-and he felt it coming-she would suffer less.

But he did play rough. A few years ago he had suggested that Joe So-and-so, a nice young poet, very pretty, too, no ball of fire, though, was attentive to her. 'Do you think you might like him?" That may have been a test. Just as possibly it was an attempt to get rid of her, and his estimation of So-and-so's talent (no secret that there was_ no talent) also told Katrina how he ranked her on a realistic scale-a dumpy s.e.xpot, varicose veins, uneven gum line, crme de Chantilly inner thighs but otherwise no great shakes. Her oddities happened to suit him, Victor. But there were idiosyncrasies, and then there were real standards. Since his miraculous recovery he had made no offensive matchmaking suggestions. He even seemed to suspect, jealously, that she was looking around, in the glamour world to which he had introduced her. She wouldn't have been surprised if, by insulting Wrangel and trying to make her a party to the insult, Victor had tried to eliminate this celebrity producer as a rival. He was a very cunning man, Victor. This afternoon's s.e.x, for instance, had it been desire or had it been payola? No, no; even Dotey said, "You're his only turn-on." That was the truth. She brought Victor to life again. The caresse qui fait revivre les morts._ The man's s.e.xual resurrection.

The door of the c.o.c.kpit was open. Beyond the shoulders of the pilots were the lights of the instrument panel. The copilot occasionally glanced back at the pa.s.sengers. Then he said, "It's getting a little b.u.mpy. Better fasten those belts." A patch of rough air? It was far worse than that. The plane was knocked, thumped like a speeding speedboat by the waves. Victor, who had been savagely silent, finally took notice. He reached for Katrina's hand. The pilots now closed the door to the c.o.c.kpit. Underfoot, plastic cups, liquor bottles, doughnuts were sliding leftward.

"You realize how tilted we are, Victor?"

"They must be trying to climb out of this turbulence. In a big plane you wouldn't notice. We've both flown through worse weather."

"I don't believe that."

The overhead light became dimmer and dimmer. Various shades of darkness were what you saw in Katrina's face. On Victor's cheekbones the red color seemed laid on with a brush. "They couldn't be having a power failure-what do you think, Victor?"

"I don't believe that." As was his custom, he sketched out a summary. It included Katrina and took the widest possible overview. They were in a Cessna because he had accepted a lecture invitation, a trip not strictly necessary and which (for himself he took it calmly) might be fatal. For Katrina it was even less than necessary. For her he was sorry. She was here because of him. But then it came home to him that he didn't understand a life so different from his own. Why did anybody want to live such a life as she lived? I know why I did mine. Why does she do hers? It was a wicked question, even put comically, for it had its tinge of comedy. But when he had put the question he felt exposed, without any notice at all, to a kind of painful judgment. Supposedly, his life had had real scale, it produced genuine ideas, and these had caused significant intellectual and artistic innovations. All of that was serious. Katrina? Not serious. Divorcing, and then pursuing a prominent figure-the pursuit of pa.s.sion, high pleasure? Such old stuff-not_ serious! Nevertheless, they were together now, both leaning far over in the banking plane; same destiny for them both. He was her reason for being here, and she was (indirectly) his. Vanessa, for female reasons, put Katrina in a rage, but her knees (s.e.xual even now) gripped the violin protectively. He had often said, conceded, that the obscurest and most powerful question, deeper than politics, was that of an understanding between man and woman. And he knew very well that Katrina had formed absurd visions of what she would do with him-take him away from Beila, then serve him for the rest of his life, then achieve unbelievable social elevation, preside over a salon, then become known after his death as a legendary woman of wide knowledge and great subtlety. This mixed Katrina, a flutter of images, both commonplace and magical. Before her this man of words was,_ at times, speechless. He doted on her because! Because she_ was just within the line separating grace from clumsiness, because_ of the sensual effect, on him, of her fingers, because_ of the pathos of her knees holding the violin. She held him better than any fiddle. And now will you tell me what any_ of this has to do with the ideas_ of Victor Wulpy! What had made him really angry with Wrangel was that he had said most ideas were trivial-meaning, princ.i.p.ally, that Victor's own ideas were trivial. And if Victor could not explain Katrina's s.e.xual drawing power, the Eros that (only just) kept him from disintegrating, Wrangel did have a point, didn't he? Katrina, as a subject for thought, was the least trivial of all. Of all that might be omitted in thinking, the worst was to omit your own being. You had lost, then. You heard the underground music of your ancestor Hercules growing fainter as he abandoned you. All you were left with was lucidity, final superlucidity, which was delayed until you reached the border of death. Any minute now he might discover what the other side of the border was like.

He had heard planes making stress noises before, but nothing like the crackling of metal about him now, as if the rivets were going to pop like old-time collar b.u.t.tons. Wings after all were very slight. Even in calm blue daylight, when they quivered, you thought: A pair of ironing boards, that's all.

"Victor, we're banking the other way.... I've never seen it so bad."

No comment. No denying the obvious. The plane tumbled like a playing card.

"If we go down..."

"It'll be my fault, /got you into this."

There was a moment of level flight. Victor wondered why his heart rate had not increased. He didn't hold his breath, he was not sweating, when the plane dropped again.

"You don't even mind too much," said Katrina.

"Of course I mind."

"Now listen, Victor. If it's death any minute, if we're going to end in the water... I'm going to ask you to tell me something."

"Don't start that, Katrina."

"It's very simple. I just want you to say it...."

"Come off it, Katrina. With so much to think about, at a time like this, you ask me that}_ Love?" Temper made his voice fifelike again. His mouth expanded, the mustache widening also. He was about to speak even more violently.

She cut him off. "Don't be awful with me now, Victor. If we're going to crash, why shouldn't you say it?..."

"You grab this opportunity to twist my arm."

"If we don't love each other, what are we doing? How did we get here?"

"We got here because you're a woman and I'm a man, and that's how we got here."

An odd thought he had: Atheists accept extreme unction. The wife urges, and the dying man nods. Why not?

In the next interval they felt the controlled lift of the aircraft. They had found smoother air again and were sailing more calmly. Katrina, still in suspense, began to think about gathering her storm-scattered spirits.

"We may be okay," said Victor.

She felt that she was less okay than she had ever been. My G.o.d! what a lot of ground I lost, she was thinking.

The c.o.c.kpit door slid back, and the copilot said, "All right? That was a bad patch. But we're coming up on South Chicago in a minute." A spatter of words, an incomprehensible crackle, came from the control tower at Midway.

Victor was silent, but he looked good-humored. What a man he was for composure! And he didn't hold ridiculous things against you. He was really very decent that way. _M*ASH,__ for instance. He couldn't say, "I love you." It would have been mauvaise foi._ Death staring you in the face was no excuse. She was going back and forth over her words, his words, while the plane made its approach and its landing. She was mulling all of it over even when they whirled off in the helicopter, under the slapping blades. The way girls were indoctrinated: Don't worry, dear, love will solve your problems. Make yourself deserving, and you'll be loved. People are crazy, but they're not too crazy._ So you won't actually be murdered. You'll be okay. And with this explanation from a dopey mother (and Mother really was stupid), you went into action.

Victor said to her, "You see how these executives do things?"

"What is it, about six o'clock? I'll be two hours late back to Evanston."

"After they drop me, they can run you home. I'll tell them to. Do me a favor and take the fiddle home with you."

"All right, I will." Tomorrow she'd have to bring it to Bein and Fus.h.i.+.

She didn't like the look of him at Meigs Field. Another time it might have excited her to land here. The blues of the ground lights were so bright, and the revolving reds so vivid and clear against the snow. But Victor was very slow getting out of the machine, which made her sore at heart. A fellow shook hands with him. That was Mr. Kinglake, who handed them into a big car. They came out between the aquarium and the museum and proceeded, all power and luxury like a funeral livery, to Randolph Street, and north on Michigan Boulevard to the 333 Building. Victor, keeping his own counsel all this while, squeezed her fingers before he got out.

"Tomorrow?" he said.

"Sure, tomorrow. And merde_ for luck. Don't let those people throw you."

"Not to worry. I'm on top of this," said Victor.

So he was. He had gotten her back to Chicago, too.

In the cus.h.i.+oned warmth of the limousine, northward bound, Katrina, as she pictured Victor in the swift, rich-men's gilded elevator rus.h.i.+ng upward, upward, felt a clawing at her heart and innards-pity for the man, which he didn't feel for himself. Really, he did not. Pressed for time. He had too much to think about. All that unfinished mental business to keep him busy forever and ever. He wouldn't have liked it that she should feel clawed around the heart for his sake.