Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

She passed 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 class, a net of binding falsehoods, and the discovery of this can throw people into a rage. That’s why Céline 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 assisted 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.

Passengers 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 passengers 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 assertion 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 assurances. He raised his whiskey glass. We’ll drink to you and me. Something like a smile passed over his face, but he was also ruffled, moody. His eyes, those narrow canals, 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 wristwatch 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 bumped across the icy seams of the field. Then came the clean run and they were (thank God!) 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 Céline 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 homosexual 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 Mass. 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 Mass. 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 relationship 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 bitch!”) 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, hellish judgment on “love”—that love was something dégueulasse. 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 Mass. 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 sexpot, varicose veins, uneven gum line, créme 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 sex, 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 sexual resurrection.

The door of the cockpit was open. Beyond the shoulders of the pilots were the lights of the instrument panel. The copilot occasionally glanced back at the passengers. Then he said, “It’s getting a little bumpy. 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 cockpit. Underfoot, plastic cups, liquor bottles, doughnuts were sliding leftward.