Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

Philip’s bad world borrowed me for purposes of its own. I had, however, approached him in the expectation of benefits, Miss Rose. I wasn’t blameless. And if he and his people—accountants, managers, his wife—forced me to feel what they felt, colonized me with their realities, even with their daily moods, saw to it that I should suffer everything they had to suffer, it was after all my idea. I tried to make use of them.

I never again saw my brother’s wife, his children, nor the park they lived in, nor the pit bulldogs.

“That woman is a legal genius,” said Hansl.

Hansl said to me, “You’d better transfer what’s left, your trust account, to my bank, where I can look after it. I’m on good terms with the officers over there. The guys are efficient, and no monkey business. You’ll be taken care of.”

I had been taken care of before, Miss Rose. Walish was dead right about “the life of feeling” and the people who lead it. Feelings are dreamlike, and dreaming is usually done in bed. Evidently I was forever looking for a safe place to lie down. Hansl offered to make secure arrangements for me so that I wouldn’t have to wear myself out with finance and litigation, which were too stressful and labyrinthine and disruptive; so I accepted his proposal and we met with an officer of his bank. Actually the bank looked like a fine old institution, with Oriental rugs, heavy carved furniture, nineteenth-century paintings, and dozens of square acres of financial atmosphere above us. Hansl and the vice president who was going to take care of me began with small talk about the commodity market, the capers over at City Hall, the prospects for the Chicago Bears, intimacies with a couple of girls in a Rush Street bar. I saw that Hansl badly needed the points he was getting for bringing in my account. He wasn’t doing well. Though nobody was supposed to say so, I was soon aware of it. Many forms were put before me, which I signed. Then two final cards were laid down just as my signing momentum seemed irreversible. But I applied the brake. I asked the vice president what these were for and he said, “If you’re busy, or out of town, these will give Mr. Genauer the right to trade for you—buy or sell stocks for your account.”

I slipped the cards into my pocket, saying that I’d take them home with me and mail them in. We passed to the next item of business.

Hansl made a scene in the street, pulling me away from the great gates of the bank and down a narrow Loop alley. Behind the kitchen of a hamburger joint he let me have it. He said, “You humiliated me.”

I said, “We didn’t discuss a power of attorney beforehand. You took me by surprise, completely. Why did you spring it on me like that?”

“You’re accusing me of trying to pull a fast one? If you weren’t Gerdas husband I’d tell you to beat it. You undermined me with a business associate. You weren’t like this with your own brother, and I’m closer to you by affection than he was by blood, you nitwit. I wouldn’t have traded your securities without notifying you.”

He was tearful with rage.

“For God’s sake, let’s move away from this kitchen ventilator,” I said. “I’m disgusted with these fumes.”

He shouted, “You’re out of it! Out!”

“And you’re in it.”

“Where the hell else is there to be?”

Miss Rose, you have understood us, I am sure of it. We were talking about the vortex. A nicer word for it is the French one, le tourbillon, or whirlwind. I was not out of it, it was only my project to get out. It’s been a case of disorientation, my dear. I know that there’s a right state for each of us. And as long as I’m not in the right state, the state of vision I was meant or destined to be in, I must assume responsibility for the unhappiness others suffer because of my disorientation. Until this ends there can only be errors. To put it another way, my dreams of orientation or true vision taunt me by suggesting that the world in which I—together with others—live my life is a fabrication, an amusement park that, however, does not amuse. It resembles, if you are following, my brother’s private park, which was supposed to prove by external signs that he made his way into the very center of the real. Philip had prepared the setting, paid for by embezzlement, but he had nothing to set in it. He was forced to flee, pursued by bounty hunters who snatched him in Chapultepec, and so forth. At his weight, at that altitude, in the smog of Mexico City, to jog was suicidal.

Now Hansl explained himself, for when I said to him, “Those securities can’t be traded anyway. Don’t you see? The plaintiffs have legally taken a list of all my holdings,” he was ready for me. “Bonds, mostly,” he said. “That’s just where I can outfox them. They copied that list two weeks ago, and now it’s in their lawyers’ file and they won’t check it for months to come. They think they’ve got you, but here’s what we do: we sell those old bonds off and buy new ones to replace them. We change all the numbers. All it costs you is brokerage fees. Then, when the time comes, they find out that what they’ve got sewed up is bonds you no longer own. How are they going to trace the new numbers? And by then I’ll have you out of the country.”

Here the skin of my head became intolerably tight, which meant even deeper error, greater horror anticipated. And, at the same time, temptation. People had kicked the hell out of me with, as yet, no reprisals. My thought was: It’s time I made a bold move. We were in the narrow alley between two huge downtown institutions (the hamburger joint was crammed in tight). An armored Brink’s truck could hardly have squeezed between the close colossal black walls.

“You mean I substitute new bonds for the old, and I can sell from abroad if I want to?”

Seeing that I was beginning to appreciate the exquisite sweetness of his scheme, Hansl gave a terrific smile and said, “And you will. That’s the dough you’ll live on.”

“That’s a dizzy idea,” I said.

“Maybe it is, but do you want to spend the rest of your life battling in the courts? Why not leave the country and live abroad quietly on what’s left of your assets? Pick a place where the dollar is strong and spend the rest of your life in musical studies or what you goddamn well please. Gerda, God bless her, is gone. What’s to keep you?”

“Nobody but my old mother.”

“Ninety-four years old? And a vegetable? You can put your textbook copyright in her name and the income will take care of her. So our next step is to check out some international law. There’s a sensational chick in my office. She was on the Yale Law Journal. They don’t come any smarter. She’ll find you a country. I’ll have her do a report on Canada. What about British Columbia, where old Canadians retire?”

“Whom do I know there? Whom will I talk to? And what if the creditors keep after me?”

“You haven’t got so much dough left. There isn’t all that much in it for them. They’ll forget you.”

I told Hansl I’d consider his proposal. I had to go and visit Mother in the nursing home.

The home was decorated with the intention of making everything seem normal. Her room was much like any hospital room, with plastic ferns and fireproof drapes. The chairs, resembling wrought-iron garden furniture, were also synthetic and light. I had trouble with the ferns. I disliked having to touch them to see if they were real. It was a reflection on my relation to reality that I couldn t tell at a glance. But then Mother didn’t know me, either, which was a more complex matter than the ferns.

I preferred to come at mealtimes, for she had to be fed. To feed her was infinitely meaningful for me. I took over from the orderly. I had long given up telling her, “This is Harry.” Nor did I expect to establish rapport by feeding her.