Saul Bellow - Ravelstein

"You're never wrong in a matter of taste. Nikki thinks so, too."

"That's nice, but I never thought he was noticing."

"The clothes you wear may not be the latest, but you did have the makings of a dude, Chick-in a former phase, and in a limited way. I remember your Chicago tailor, the one who did a suit for me."

"You hardly wore it."

"I wore it home."

"But then it disappeared."

"Nikki and I laughed ourselves silly over the cut of it. Perfect for Las Vegas or on a politician for the annual Democratic machine gathering at the Bismarck Hotel-don't be hurt, Chick."

"I'm not. I don't invest much sensitivity in my suits."

"Nikki always says your taste in shirts and neckties is perfect. Kisser Asser."

"Of course, Kisser Asser."

"Yes!" said Ravelstein, and closed his eyes with satisfaction.

"I don't want to tire you," I said.

"No, no." Abe's eyes were still shut. "I'm still alive to bandy wise cracks. You do me more good than a dozen intravenous drips."

Yes, and he could rely on me. I was present, too, at the hospital window. _Ad sum__, as you would answer roll call at school-or _ab est__, as we said in unison when a seat was empty.

The city presented mile upon mile of late-autumn bareness-the cold hardening of the ground, the branching boulevards, the painted-desert look of the apartment houses, the paling green of the parks-the temperate zone and its seasons, cranking away. Winter coming.

When the telephone rang again I picked it up; I was going to screen him from callers. But the BMW woman was on the line and he wanted to talk to her. "Let's go through this checklist," he said to her. "You're sure we're going to get the stick-shift…? Automatic transmission won't do."

With extras, the car would cost eighty thousand bucks.

"Of course there'll be safety bags for the passenger's seat as well as the driver's?"

"… Now about the interior color-the kid-leather upholstery. The CD deck set in the trunk should be able to play six discs! Eight! Ten!

"And the door locking and unlocking with an electronic switch? We don't want to fuck around with keys. I can't give you a certified check, I'm in the hospital. I don't care if it is company policy. I have to have delivery no later than Thursday. Nikki-Mr. Tay Ling is arriving from Geneva Wednesday night. So all the paperwork has got to be done. No, as I thought I told you, I'm in my room at the hospital. Thee-ah thee-ah! one thing I can assure you is that it's not a mental hospital. You have my account number at Merrill Lynch. What? You certainly have done a fast credit check on me, Miss Sorabh-is it spelled _bh__ or _hb__?"

There may have been as many as a dozen consultations daily. "Nikki is such a stickler," he said. "And why shouldn't everything be perfect? I want him to be pleased one hundred percent-the engine, the body, all the electronic stuff. Everything in place. Stabilizers equilibrated. It used to be the Harmonious Blacksmith-now it's the harmonious computers. There won't be any baroque operas in the new car. Only Chinese jazz, or whatever."

Nikki, as I well knew, was exacting. This was evident even from his casual relations with people. And it must follow with objects as well.

"I don't want to look as if I were taken in by BMW owing to this illness. I must try to anticipate how Nikki will react. In his quiet way, he's extremely fussy," said Ravelstein. "It's only natural. He shares my prosperity, of course. But not long ago he said how much he'd like a sign from me-some big gesture. It's not just my prosperity, it's _our__ prosperity."

I didn't invite him to go into particulars. Since he and I were close friends, it was up to me to do my own thinking about Nikki's place in his life. I believed that I was alert enough to understand. Though maybe I wasn't. Ravelstein often made me doubt my abilities.

I said, "All the warranties you're getting, it would take a month to read them."

"You make it sound like the Stations of the Cross," Ravelstein said, smiling.

"You and Nikki are safe with this giant German corporation. It's like bourgeois royalty. I wonder, did they use slave labor during the war?"

Because his arms were wasted, Ravelstein's hands looked unnaturally big as he lit one of the cigarettes Rosamund had brought him. Then as he put it down in the ashtray and waved away the smoke, I was aware that someone had entered the room.

It was Dr. Schley-Ravelstein's cardiologist. He was my cardiologist too. Dr. Schley was short and slight, but his slightness was not a sign of weakness. He was stern. He was backed by his seniority in the hospital-its chief heart-man. He didn't say much. He didn't have to.

"Do you realize, Mr. Ravelstein, that you're just out of intensive care? Only hours ago you weren't even able to breathe. And now you're pulling smoke into your weak lungs. This is most serious," Schley said, with a cold side-glance at me. I should not have allowed Ravelstein to light up.

Dr. Schley, too, was entirely bald, white coated, and his stethoscope, sticking out of his pocket, was gripped like a slingshot by his angry hand.

Ravelstein didn't answer. He declined to be intimidated-but he wasn't yet strong enough to fight back. On the whole he cared little for doctors. Doctors were the allies of the death-dreading bourgeoisie. He was not about to change his habits for any doctor, not even for Schley, whom he respected. As Rosamund understood when she went to buy the cigarettes, Abe would do what he had al ways done. He'd never play the valetudinarian.

"I ask you, Mr. Ravelstein, to give up your cigarettes until your lungs are stronger."

Ravelstein answered nothing, he only nodded his head. But not in agreement. He wasn't even looking at Dr. Schley-he looked past him. Schley wasn't his primary physician. The primary was Dr. Abern. But of course Schley was part of the team; more than that, he was one of its leaders. As for me, Schley liked me well enough-in my place. You would never hear Dr. Schley say as much, but if you were any good at mental sonics you got the message soon enough. Ravelstein was a major figure in the highest intellectual circles. It wouldn't be too much to say that Ravelstein was genuinely important. By contrast I was good enough, of my sort. But it was a far from important sort.

Generally Schley talked to me about keeping up the quinine level in my system to control my heartbeat. I was subject to fibrillations and sometimes short of breath. The big doses of Quinaglute he prescribed deafened you, I was to discover down the line. Anyway my minor cardiac complaint was virtually all that connected me to Schley. Ravelstein, on the other hand, fascinated him. He saw Ravel-stein as a great fighter in the cultural and ideological wars. After Abe had given his sensational Harvard speech, telling the audience that they were elitists disguised as egalitarians-"Well!" Dr. Schley said to me. "Who else had the learning, the confidence, the authority to do this! And so easily, so naturally!"

As for Ravelstein, he would never simply have a doctor. He had to know what to think about everyone with whom he had to do. He had a relentless curiosity not only about the students he attracted but also tradespeople or high-fidelity engineers or dentists or investment counselors, barbers and, of course, physicians.

"Schley is the boss doctor here," he said. "The single most influential one. He's the one who makes policy. He polices all the departments and refers patients to his own people-just as he's done for me. But then there's his domestic life…"

"I never thought about his home life."

"Have you ever met his wife?"

"Never."

"Well, by all reports it's a women's kingdom over there. The wife and daughters are absolutely in control. His real life is here in the clinics and labs."