Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

As soon as they left, Pop jumped up from the rocker and said in anger, “What’s this with the praying? She has to ask God to lend me fifty bucks?”

Woody said, “It’s not you, Pop, it’s the way these religious people do.”

“No,” said Pop. “She’ll come back and say that God wouldn’t let her.”

Woody didn’t like that; he thought Pop was being gross and he said, “No, she’s sincere. Pop, try to understand: she’s emotional, nervous, and sincere, and tries to do right by everybody.”

And Pop said, “That servant will talk her out of it. She’s a toughie. It’s all over her face that we’re a couple of chiselers.”

“What’s the use of us arguing,” said Woody. He drew the rocker closer to the stove. His shoes were wet through and would never dry. The blue flames fluttered like a school of fishes in the coal fire. But Pop went over to the Chinese-style cabinet or étagére and tried the handle, and then opened the blade of his penknife and in a second had forced the lock of the curved glass door. He took out a silver dish.

“Pop, what is this?” said Woody.

Pop, cool and level, knew exactly what this was. He relocked the étagére, crossed the carpet, listened. He stuffed the dish under his belt and pushed it down into his trousers. He put the side of his short thick finger to his mouth.

So Woody kept his voice down, but he was all shook up. He went to Pop and took him by the edge of his hand. As he looked into Pop’s face, he felt his eyes growing smaller and smaller, as if something were contracting all the skin on his head. They call it hyperventilation when everything feels tight and light and close and dizzy. Hardly breathing, he said, “Put it back, Pop.”

Pop said, “It’s solid silver; it’s worth dough.”

“Pop, you said you wouldn’t get me in Dutch.”

“It’s only insurance in case she comes back from praying and tells me no. If she says yes, I’ll put it back.”

“How?”

“It’ll get back. If I don’t put it back, you will.”

“You picked the lock. I couldn’t. I don’t know how.”

“There’s nothing to it.”

“We’re going to put it back now. Give it here.”

Woody, it’s under my fly, inside my underpants. Don’t make such a noise about nothing.”

‘Pop, I can’t believe this.”

For cry-ninety-nine, shut your mouth. If I didn’t trust you I wouldn’t have let you watch me do it. You don’t understand a thing. What’s with you?”

Before they come down, Pop, will you dig that dish out of your long Johns.”

Pop turned stiff on him. He became absolutely military. He said, “Look, I order you!”

Before he knew it, Woody had jumped his father and begun to wrestle with him. It was outrageous to clutch your own father, to put a heel behind him, to force him to the wall. Pop was taken by surprise and said loudly, “You want Halina killed? Kill her! Go on, you be responsible.” He began to resist, angry, and they turned about several times, when Woody, with a trick he had learned in a Western movie and used once on the playground, tripped him and they fell to the ground. Woody, who already outweighed the old man by twenty pounds, was on top. They landed on the floor beside the stove, which stood on a tray of decorated tin to protect the carpet. In this position, pressing Pop’s hard belly, Woody recognized that to have wrestled him to the floor counted for nothing. It was impossible to thrust his hand under Pop’s belt to recover the dish. And now Pop had turned furious, as a father has every right to be when his son is violent with him, and he freed his hand and hit Woody in the face. He hit him three or four times in midface. Then Woody dug his head into Pop’s shoulder and held tight only to keep from being struck and began to say in his ear, “Jesus, Pop, for Christ’s sake remember where you are. Those women will be back!” But Pop brought up his short knee and fought and butted him with his chin and rattled Woodys teeth. Woody thought the old man was about to bite him. And because he was a seminarian, he thought: Like an unclean spirit. And held tight. Gradually Pop stopped thrashing and struggling. His eyes stuck out and his mouth was open, sullen. Like a stout fish. Woody released him and gave him a hand up. He was then overcome with many many bad feelings of a sort he knew the old man never suffered. Never, never. Pop never had these groveling emotions. There was his whole superiority. Pop had no such feelings. He was like a horseman from Central Asia, a bandit from China. It was Mother, from Liverpool, who had the refinement, the English manners. It was the preaching Reverend Doctor in his black suit. You have refinements, and all they do is oppress you? The hell with that.

The long door opened and Mrs. Skoglund stepped in, saying, “Did I imagine, or did something shake the house?”

“I was lifting the scuttle to put coal on the fire and it fell out of my hand. I’m sorry I was so clumsy,” said Woody.

Pop was too huffy to speak. With his eyes big and sore and the thin hair down over his forehead, you could see by the tightness of his belly how angrily he was fetching his breath, though his mouth was shut.

“I prayed,” said Mrs. Skoglund.

“I hope it came out well,” said Woody.

“Well, I don’t do anything without guidance, but the answer was yes, and I feel right about it now. So if you’ll wait, I’ll go to my office and write a check. I asked Hjordis to bring you a cup of coffee. Coming in such a storm.”

And Pop, consistently a terrible little man, as soon as she shut the door, said, “A check? Hell with a check. Get me the greenbacks.”

“They don’t keep money in the house. You can cash it in her bank tomorrow. But if they miss that dish, Pop, they’ll stop the check, and then where are you?”

As Pop was reaching below the belt, Hjordis brought in the tray. She was very sharp with him. She said, “Is this a place to adjust clothing, Mister? A men’s washroom?”

“Well, which way is the toilet, then?” said Pop.

She had served the coffee in the seamiest mugs in the pantry, and she bumped down the tray and led Pop along the corridor, standing guard at the bathroom door so that he shouldn’t wander about the house.

Mrs. Skoglund called Woody to her office and after she had given him the folded check said that they should pray together for Morris. So once more he was on his knees, under rows and rows of musty marbled-cardboard files, by the glass lamp by the edge of the desk, the shade with flounced edges, like the candy dish. Mrs. Skoglund, in her Scandinavian accent—an emotional contralto—raising her voice to Jesus-uh Christ-uh, as the wind lashed the trees, kicked the side of the house, and drove the snow seething on the windowpanes, to send light-uh, give guidance-uh, put a new heart-uh in Pop’s bosom. Woody asked God only to make Pop put the dish back. He kept Mrs. Skoglund on her knees as long as possible. Then he thanked her, shining with candor (as much as he knew how), for her Christian generosity and he said, “I know that Hjordis has a cousin who works at the Evanston YMCA. Could she please phone him and try to get us a room tonight so that we don’t have to fight the blizzard all the way back? We’re almost as close to the Y as to the car line. Maybe the cars have even stopped running.”

Suspicious Hjordis, coming when Mrs. Skoglund called to her, was burning now. First they barged in, made themselves at home, asked for money, had to have coffee, probably left gonorrhea on the toilet seat. Hjordis, Woody remembered, was a woman who wiped the doorknobs with rubbing alcohol after guests had left. Nevertheless, she telephoned the Y and got them a room with two cots for six bits.

Pop had plenty of time, therefore, to reopen the étagére, lined with reflecting glass or German silver (something exquisitely delicate and tricky), and as soon as the two Selbsts had said thank you and good-bye and were in midstreet again up to the knees in snow, Woody said, “Well, I covered for you. Is that thing back?”