Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“I was with the Rojax Corporation for almost ten years,” he said. “We parted ways because they wanted me to share my territory. They took a son-in-law into the business—a new fellow. It was his idea.”

To himself, Wilhelm said, Now God alone can tell why I have to lay my whole life bare to this blasted red herring here. I’m sure nobody else does it. Other people keep their business to themselves. Not me.

He continued, “But the rationalization was that it was too big a territory for one man. I had a monopoly. That wasn’t so. The real reason was that they had gotten to the place where they would have to make me an officer of the corporation. Vice presidency. I was in line for it, but instead this son-in-law got in, and—”

Dr. Adler thought Wilhelm was discussing his grievances much too openly and said, “My son’s income was up in the five figures.”

As soon as money was mentioned Mr. Perl’s voice grew eagerly sharper. “Yes? What, the thirty-two-per-cent bracket? Higher even, I guess?” He asked for a hint, and he named the figures not idly but with a sort of hugging relish. Uch! How they love money, thought Wilhelm. They adore money! Holy money! Beautiful money! It was getting so that people were feeble-minded about everything except money. While if you didn’t have it you were a dummy, a dummy! You had to excuse yourself from the face of the earth. Chicken! that’s what it was. The world’s business. If only he could find a way out of it.

Such thinking brought on the usual congestion. It would grow into a fit of passion if he allowed it to continue. Therefore he stopped talking and began to eat.

Before he struck the egg with his spoon he dried the moisture with his napkin. Then he battered it (in his father’s opinion) more than was necessary. A faint grime was left by his fingers on the white of the egg after he had picked away the shell. Dr. Adler saw it with silent repugnance. What a Wilky he had given to the world! Why, he didn’t even wash his hands in the morning. He used an electric razor so that he didn’t have to touch water. The doctor couldn’t bear Wilky’s dirty habits. Only once—and never again, he swore—had he visited his room. Wilhelm, in pajamas and stocking had sat on his bed, drinking gin from a coffee mug and rooting for the Dodgers on television. “That’s two and two on you, Duke. Come on—hit it, now.” He came down on the mattress—bam! The bed looked kicked to pieces. Then he drank the gin as though it were tea, and urged his team on with his fist. The smell of dirty clothes was outrageous. By the bedside lay a quart bottle and foolish magazines and mystery stories for the hours of insomnia. Wilhelm lived in worse filth than a savage. When the doctor spoke to him about this he answered, “Well, I have no wife to look after my things.” And who— who! —had done the leaving? Not Margaret. The doctor was certain that she wanted him back.

Wilhelm drank his coffee with a trembling hand. In his full face his abused bloodshot gray eyes moved back and forth. Jerkily he set his cup back and put half the length of a cigarette into his mouth; he seemed to hold it with his teeth, as though it were a cigar.

“I can’t let them get away with it,” he said. “It’s also a question of morale.”

His father corrected him. “Don’t you mean a moral question, Wilky?”

“I mean that, too. I have to do something to protect myself. I was promised executive standing.” Correction before a stranger mortified him, and his dark blond face changed color, more pale, and then more dark. He went on talking to Perls but his eyes spied on his father. “I was the one who opened the territory for them. I could go back for one of their competitors and take away their customers. My customers. Morale enters into it because they’ve tried to take away my confidence.”

“Would you offer a different line to the same people?” Mr. Perls wondered.

“Why not? I know what’s wrong with the Rojax product.”

“Nonsense,” said his father. “Just nonsense and kid’s talk, Wilky. You’re only looking for trouble and embarrassment that way. What would you gain by such a silly feud? You have to think about making a living and meeting your obligations.”

Hot and bitter, Wilhelm said with pride, while his feet moved angrily under the table, “I don’t have to be told about my obligations. I’ve been meeting them for years. In more than twenty years I’ve never had a penny of help from anybody. I preferred to dig a ditch on the WPA but never asked anyone to meet my obligations for me.”

“Wilky has had all kinds of experiences,” said Dr. Adler.

The old doctor’s face had a wholesome reddish and almost translucent color, like a ripe apricot. The wrinkles beside his ears were deep because the skin conformed so tightly to his bones. With all his might, he was a healthy and fine small old man. He wore a light vest of a light check pattern. His hearing-aid doodad was in the pocket. An unusual shirt of red and black stripes covered his chest. He bought his clothes in a college shop farther uptown. Wilhelm thought he had no business to get himself up like a jockey, out of respect for his profession.

“Well,” said Mr. Perls. “I can understand how you feel. You want to fight it out. By a certain time of life, to have to start all over again can’t be a pleasure, though a good man can always do it. But anyway you want to keep on with a business you know already, and not have to meet a whole lot of new contacts.”

Wilhelm again thought, Why does it have to be me and my life that’s discussed, and not him and his life? He would never allow it. But I am an idiot. I have no reserve. To me it can be done. I talk. I must ask for it. Everybody wants to have intimate conversations, but the smart fellows don’t give out, only the fools. The smart fellows talk intimately about the fools, and examine them all over and give them advice. Why do I allow it? The hint about his age had hurt him. No, you can’t admit it’s as good as ever, he conceded. Things do give out.

“In the meanwhile,” Dr. Adler said, “Wilky is taking it easy and considering various propositions. Isn’t that so?”

“More or less,” said Wilhelm. He suffered his father to increase Mr. Perl’s respect for him. The WPA ditch had brought the family into contempt. He was a little tired. The spirit, the peculiar burden of his existence lay on him like an accretion, a load, a lump. In any moment of quiet, when sheer fatigue prevented him from struggling, he was apt to feel this mysterious weight, this growth or collection of nameless things which it was the business of his life to carry about. That must be what a man was for. This large, odd, excited, fleshy, blond, abrupt personality named Wilhem, or Tommy, was here, present, in the present—Dr. Tamkin had been putting into his mind many suggestions about the present moment, the here and now—this Wilky, or Tommy Wilhelm, forty-four years old, father of two sons, at present living in the Hotel Gloriana, was assigned to be the carrier of a load which was his own self, his characteristic self. There was no figure or estimate for the value of this load. But it is probably exaggerated by the subject, T. W., who is a visionary sort of animal. Who has to believe that he can know why he exists. Though he has never seriously tried to find out why.

Mr. Perls said, “If he wants time to think things over and have a rest, why doesn’t he run down to Florida for a while? Off season it’s cheap and quiet. Fairyland. The mangoes are just coming in. I got two acres down there. You’d think you were in India.”

Mr. Perls utterly astonished Wilhelm when he spoke of fairyland with a foreign accent. Mangoes—India? What did he mean, India?

“Once upon a time,” said Wilhelm, “I did some public relations work for a big hotel down in Cuba. If I could get them a notice in Leonard Lyons or one of the other columns it might be good for another holiday there, gratis. I haven’t had a vacation for a long time, and I could stand a rest after going so hard. You know that’s true, Father.” He meant that his father knew how deep the crisis was becoming; how badly he was strapped for money; and the he could not rest but would be crushed if he stumbled; and that his obligations would destroy him. He couldn’t falter. He thought, The money! When I had it, I flowed money. They bled it away from me. I hemorrhaged money. But now it’s almost all gone, and where am I supposed to turn for more?