Saul Bellow - Ravelstein

Kerrigan, the poet and translator who lived with his mother-in-law a floor above us, asked me one day why I had to dispose of my own junk and when I explained my relationship to the superintendent he said, "Everybody but you gets respected." My answer was that this might be true but that the super had to be spared and that the man tacitly indicated that he needed his dignity to be acknowledged. And that I would rather lug the flattened cartons be low than have to think about his demand for esteem.

Toward the last, without realizing how near the end-zone was, I was still trying to puzzle out Vela, to get a handle on her motives. She preferred deeds to words, conceding that she couldn't compete with me verbally, and one day when I was reading a book (my regular diet of words) she wandered into the room entirely nude, came to my bedside and rubbed her pubic hair on my cheekbone. When I responded as she must have known that I would, she turned and left me with an air of having made her point. She had won hands down without having to speak a word. Her body spoke for her, and very effectively too, saying that the end was near.

There was nothing in the book I had been reading in bed that was of the slightest use to me. Nor could I go in pursuit of Vela to ask, "What does this behavior mean?" The large apartment was di vided into zones-she had hers, I had mine. I'd have to go looking for her-and she would anyway refuse to discuss the message just delivered.

So I turned to Ravelstein. I phoned to say that I needed to talk to him right away and I drove across the city, a distance of twelve miles. I had worked this out-eight blocks to the mile as laid out by the original planners or founders.

Arriving, I for once accepted Ravelstein's offer of a cup of his coffee. I needed something strong to drink. I knew of course what a passion he had for the kind of incident I was about to describe. The freaky improvisations of creatures under stress-the more bumptious they were, the more he cherished them.

"In the nude, hey? She was making a statement, as they say. And what was your impression? What was she telling you in her untutored way?"

"It's my impression that she was saying she was no longer available."

"The kiss-off, eh? And you weren't expecting it-or were you, in your bones, aware it was coming?"

"Certainly I saw it coming. She and I could never make a go of it."

"But I wonder whether there are facts which might have escaped you, Chick. I don't blame you for demanding that she should behave as a wife ought, according to your lights. But they have lights, too, the women. She has a considerable reputation in her own field. She's a high-grade scientist, they tell me, and she may not feel like cooking your dinner-clocking in at five o'clock to peel the potatoes."

"She grew up in a starving country…"

"In the eyes of the world it's a big deal to be a chaos physicist-I don't know what it's about but it's considered highly prestigious. Only you give her no credit."

"She came to tell me that her body would no longer be available. To communicate any considerable matter she preferred actions to words. When she broke the news of our decision to marry to her mother, she waited until boarding time at the airport the day of Mama's return flight to Europe and at the last possible moment said, 'I've decided to marry Chick.' The old girl hated me. Vela let it be thought that she loved her mama, but in fact she crossed her in every way possible."

"But the opposite is true?" Ravelstein asked.

"I don't know the true answer, nor does anyone else know it. People go to the trouble of organizing a view of themselves and the view gives them the consistency or the appearance of consistency society seems to require. But Vela really has no organized view…."

"Okay, okay," said Ravelstein. "But your idea was that she would come to love you. She'd love you because you are lovable. But this Vela of yours reserves her intellect for physics. The idea of leading a warm family life is her number one antipremise. So from this we pass to the supermarket, where Vela buys a few hundred dollars' worth of chow and has it delivered in boxes by young criminals who have parole officers keeping an eye on them. You can cook this shit yourself, and eat it by your lonesome, and then scrub the pots. Just as your mother did after feeding her family a real meal, cooked with love. You thought that if you could get her to prepare your dinners with love she'd come to love you. So her comment on this is satirical; she sends you the groceries. Just as she belongs to a different universe altogether. And you belong to a third universe, the vanishing one of old-fashioned Jews. The soul of another is a dark forest, as the Russians say… you're fond of Russian sayings."

"Not just now, I'm not."

"Well, I grant you the Russians are not so humane as they want us to think. All those Eastern empires are police controlled."

"And the dark forest is the soul, but you can't expect to take refuge from the GPU there. I'm not in the mood for wit, though."

"I know," said Ravelstein. "She notified you that you have no more access to her body. Your lease has expired. But it was never meant to be permanent. People can't be expected to live without love or the simulacrum of love. A nice friendly sexual connection is what most have to settle for."

I didn't expect Vela to appear in court when the formalities were completed, but turn up she did in a high-buttoned jacket, more like heraldry than feminine dress, brass buttons from the throat to the knees, with the makeup and tight hair of a ballroom dancer. It is probably impossible to convey the messages she was emitting. I had had my chance, given with extraordinary queenly generosity, and it was obvious that I just didn't have what it took.

She had worked out an esoteric rationality which was utterly un knowable but based on eighteen-karat principles. All the same there was a lame side to her queenliness. If you thought you could say where she was coming from, you were mistaken. "It may have seemed that such a man (Chick) could be my husband, but that was an error-Q. E. D." She walked away in her curious stride, each step forward a dig-only the toes were involved. The heels were on their own. This was not in the slightest grotesque. It was curiously expressive, but no one would ever be able to say what it meant.

Rosamund had not been one of Ravelstein's stars but very good in her way. "She does the work as well as anybody. Her Greek is more than adequate, and she doesn't miss a thing, understands the texts perfectly well. Very nervous and unsure about herself. And she's very attractive, isn't she. Not a voluptuary type but genuinely pretty."

He didn't know it, but I had been, for once, ahead of him. wasn't going to have Ravelstein vet Rosamund for me. I couldn't let him arrange my marriage as he did for his students. If he lacked all feeling for you, he didn't give a damn what you did. But if you were one of his friends it was a bad idea, he thought, for you to take things into your own hands. It troubled him greatly to be kept in the dark on any matter by his friends-especially by those he saw daily.

The ambulance bringing Ravelstein home from the hospital came softly to the curb, and Rosamund and I stood up. I closed the book I had been reading on the letter Keynes had written to his mother about his duties as Deputy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. In silence the wheeled stretcher came by quickly and I saw the smooth naked melon of Ravelstein's head preceding us through the Alhambra arches of the arcade and beyond the shade plants and the water trickling in the mossy basin. Nikki came hurrying after the stretcher through the brass-and-glass doors.

Rosamund and I took the passenger elevator to the top of the building. Mischievous kids pressed all the buttons so that often you stopped at every floor. The continual opening and closing of doors made a fifteen-minute trip of it, and when we reached the top Ravelstein was already in bed-but not in his four-poster. A hospital bed had been ordered, and above it a mechanic was installing a large triangle, equilateral, of tubular stainless steel. Ravelstein could use it to shift his weight. When he had to move to a chair for physical therapy, the base of the triangle was slipped under his thighs. As he weakly gripped the steel tubing the bosun's rig was raised very gradually by the small whirring machine at the foot of the bed. Suddenly you saw his wasted legs being drawn up, out of the sheets. And because he couldn't fully open his eyelids, the look of alarm was only half formed.