Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“I can take care ofthat.”

Wonderful, what powers women will claim.

“And Vanessa, this morning—what was she like?”

“Well,” he said, “what these kids really want is to make you obey the same powers that they have to serve. The older generation, it happens, cooperates with them. The Cuban mother was puzzled. I could read it in her eyes—‘What in hell are you people up to?’”

“Oh, you met her.”

“You bet I did. This morning I was sitting in her kitchen, and the boy was our interpreter. The kid’s IQ must be out of sight. The woman says she has nothing against Vanessa. Nessa has made herself part of the family. She’s moved in on them. She peels potatoes and washes pots. She and the boy don’t go to restaurants and movies because he has no money and won’t let her pay. So they study day and night, and they’re both on the dean’s list. But my daughter is just meddling. She abducted the genius of the family who was supposed to be the salvation of his siblings and his mama.”

“But she says she loves him, and looks at you with those long eyes she inherited from you.”

“She’s a little bitch. I found out that she was giving her mother sex advice. How a modern wife can please a husband better. And you have to find new ways to humor an old man. She told Beila all about some homosexual encyclopedia. She said not to buy it, but gave her the address of a shop where she could read some passages on foreplay.”

Katrina saw nothing funny in this. She was stabbed with anger. “Were you approached? That way?”

“By Beila? Everybody would have to go mad altogether.”

No, not Beila. You had only to think about it to see how impossible it would be. Beila carried herself with the pride of the presiding woman, the wife. Her rights were maintained with Native American dignity. She was a gloomy person. (Victor had made her gloomy—one could understand that.) She was like the wife of a Cherokee chieftain, or again Catherine of Aragon. There was something of each type of woman in the gaudy-gloomy costumes she designed for herself. Tremendous, her silent air of self-respect. For such a proud person to experiment along lines suggested by a gay handbook was out of the question, totally. Still, Katrina felt the hurt of it. Disrespect. Ill will. It was disrespectful also of Beila. Beila was long-suffering. At heart, Beila was a generous woman. Katrina really did know the score.

“So there’s the new generation,” said Victor. “When you consider the facts, they seem sometimes to add up to an argument for abortion. My youngest child! The wildest of all three. Now she’s abandoned her plan to be a rabbi and she looks more Jewish than ever, with those twists of hair beside her ears.”

Curious how impersonal Victor could be. Categories like wife, parent, child never could affect his judgment. He could discuss a daughter like any other subject submitted to his concentrated, radiant consideration—with the same generalizing detachment. It wasn’t unkindness. It wasn’t ordinary egotism. Katrina didn’t have the word for it.

Anyway, they were together in the lounge, and to have him to herself was one of her best pleasures. He was always being identified on New York streets, buttonholed by readers, bugged by painters (and there were millions of people who painted), but here in this sequestered corner Katrina did not expect to be molested. She was wrong. A man appeared; he entered obviously looking for someone. That someone could only be Victor. She gave a warning signal—lift of the head—and Victor cautiously turned and then said in a low voice, somewhat morose, “It’s him—I mean the character who wrote me the note.”

“Oh-oh.”

“He’s a determined little guy…. That’s quite a fur coat he’s wearing. It must have been designed by F. A. O. Schwarz.” It seemed to sweeten his temper to have said this. He smiled a little.

“That is an expensive garment,” said Katrina.

It was a showy thing, beautifully made but worn carelessly. In circles of fur, something like the Michelin tire circles, it reached almost to the floor. Larry Wrangel was slight, slender, his bald head was unusually long. The grizzled side hair, unbrushed, looked as if he had slept on it when it was damp. A long soiled white scarf, heavy silk, drooped over the fur. Under the scarf a Woolworth’s red bandanna was knotted. The white fur must have been his travel coat. For it wouldn’t have been of any use in Southern California. His tanned face was lean, the skin stretched—perhaps a face-lift? Katrina speculated. His scalp was spotted with California freckles. The dark eyebrows were nicely arched. His mouth was thin, shy and also astute.

Victor said as they were shaking hands, “I couldn’t get back to you last night.”

“I didn’t really expect it.”

Wrangel pulled over one of the Swedish-modern chairs and sat forward in his rolls of white fur. Not removing the coat was perhaps his way of dealing with the difference in their sizes—bulk against height.

He said, “I guessed you would be surrounded, and also bushed by late evening. Considering the weather, you had a good crowd.”

Wrangel did not ignore women. As he spoke he inspected Katrina. He might have been trying to determine why Victor should have taken up with this one. Whole graduating classes of girls on the make used to pursue Victor.

Katrina quickly reconciled herself to Wrangel—a little, smart man, not snooty with her, no enemy. He was eager only to have a talk, long anticipated, a serious first-class talk. Victor, unwell, feeling damaged, was certainly thinking how to get rid of the man.

Wrangel was chatting rapidly, wanting to strike the right offering while avoiding loss of time. His next move was to try the Cedar Bar and the Artists’ Club on Eighth Street. He spoke of Baziotes and of Arshile Gorky, of Gorky’s loft on Union Square. He recalled that Gorky couldn’t get Walt Whitman’s name straight and that he spoke of him as “Vooterman.” He mentioned Parker Tyler, and Tyler’s book on Pavel Tchelitchew, naming also Edith Sitwell, who had been in love with Tchelitchew (Wulpy grimaced at Edith Sitwell and said, “Tinkle poems, like harness bells”). Wrangel laughed, betraying much tension in his laughter. Shyness and shrewdness made him seem to squint and even to jeer. He wished to become expansive, to make himself agreeable. But he didn’t have the knack for this. An expert in pleasing Victor, Katrina could have told him where he was going wrong. Victor’s attitude was one of angry restraint and thinly dissimulated impatience. Trina felt that he was being too severe. This Wrangel fellow should be given half a chance. He was being put down too hard because he was a celebrity.

On closer inspection, the white furs which should have been immaculate were spotted by food and drink; nor was there any reason (he was so rich!) why the silk scarf should be so soiled. She took a liking to Wrangel, though, because he made a point of including her in the conversation. If he mentioned a name like Chiaromonte or Barrett, he would say, aside, “A top intellectual in that circle,” or, “The fellow who introduced Americans to German phenomenology.”

But Victor wouldn’t have any of this nostalgia, and he said, “What are you doing in Buffalo anyway? This is a hell of a season to leave California.”

“I have a screwy kind of motive,” said Wrangel. “Clinical psychologists, you see, often send me suggestions for films, inspired by the fantasies of crazy patients. So once a year I make a swing of selected funny farms. And here in Buffalo I saw some young fellows who were computer bugs—now institutionalized.”

“That’s a new wrinkle,” said Victor. “I would have thought that you didn’t need to leave California, then.”