Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

Sorella said, “That may be a little more like it. But if you want my basic view, here it is: The Jews could survive everything that Europe threw at them. I mean the lucky remnant. But now comes the next test—America. Can they hold their ground, or will the U. S. A. be too much for them?”

This was our final meeting. I never saw Harry and Sorella again. In the sixties, Harry telephoned once to discuss Cal Tech with me. Sorella didn’t want Gilbert to study so far from home. An only child, and all ofthat. Harry was full of the boys perfect test scores. My heart doesn’t warm to the parents of prodigies. I react badly. They’re riding for a fall. I don’t like parental boasting. So I was unable to be cordial toward Fonstein. My time just then was unusually valuable. Horribly valuable, as I now judge it. Not one of the attractive periods in the development (gestation) of a success.

I can’t say that communication with the Fonsteins ceased. Except in Jerusalem, we hadn’t had any. I expected, for thirty years, to see them again. They were excellent people. I admired Harry. A solid man, Harry, and very brave. As for Sorella, she was a woman with great powers of intelligence, and in these democratic times, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are continually in quest of higher types. I don’t have to draw you maps and pictures. Everybody knows what standard products and interchangeable parts signify, understands the operation of the glaciers on the social landscape, planing off the hills, scrubbing away the irregularities. I’m not going to be tedious about this. Sorella was outstanding (or as one of my grandchildren says, “standing out”). So of course I meant to see more of her. But I saw nothing. She was in the warehouse of intentions. I was going to get around to the Fonsteins—write, telephone, have them for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. Perhaps for Passover. But that’s what the Passover phenomenon is now—it never comes to pass.

Maybe the power of memory was to blame. Remembering them so well, did I need actually to see them? To keep them in a mental suspension was enough. They were a part of the permanent cast of characters, in absentia permanently. There wasn’t a thing for them to do.

The next in this series of events occurred last March, when winter, with a grunt, gave up its grip on Philadelphia and began to go out in trickles of grimy slush. Then it was the turn of spring to thrive on the dirt of the city. The season at least produced crocuses, snowdrops, and new buds in my millionaire’s private back garden. I pushed around my library ladder and brought down the poems of George Herbert, looking for the one that runs “…how clean, how pure are Thy returns,” or words to that effect; and on my desk, fit for a Wasp of great wealth, the phone started to ring as I was climbing down. The following Jewish conversation began: “This is Rabbi X [or Y]. My ministry”—what a Protestant term: he must be Reform, or Conservative at best; no Orthodox rabbi would say “ministry”—“is in Jerusalem. I have been approached by a party whose name is Fonstein….”

“Not Harry,” I said.

“No. I was calling to ask you about locating Harry. The Jerusalem Fonstein says that he is Harry’s uncle. This man is Polish by birth, and he is in a mental institution. He is a very difficult eccentric and lives in a world of fantasy. Much of the time he hallucinates. His habits are dirty—filthy, even. He’s totally without resources and well known as a beggar and local character who makes prophetic speeches on the sidewalk.”

“I get the picture. Like one of our own homeless,” I said.

“Precisely,” said Rabbi X or Y, in that humane tone of voice one has to put up with.

“Can we come to the point?” I asked.

“Our Jerusalem Fonstein swears he is related to Harry, who is very rich….”

“I’ve never seen Harry’s financial statement.”

“But in a position to help.”

I went on, “That’s just an opinion. At a hazard…” One does get pompous. A solitary, occupying a mansion, living up to his surroundings. I changed my tune; I dropped the “hazard” and said, “It’s been years since Harry and I were in touch. You can’t locate him?”

“I’ve tried. I’m on a two-week visit. Right now I’m in New York. But L. A. is my destination. Addressing…” (He gave an unfamiliar acronym.) Then he went on to say that the Jerusalem Fonstein needed help. Poor man, absolutely bananas, but under all the tatters, physical and mental (I paraphrase), humanly so worthy. Abused out of his head by persecution, loss, death, and brutal history; beside himself, crying out for aid—human and supernatural, no matter in what mixture. There may have been something phony about the rabbi, but the case, the man he was describing, was a familiar type, was real enough.

“And you, too, are a relative?” he said.

“Indirectly. My father’s second wife was Harry’s aunt.”

I never loved Aunt Mildred, nor even esteemed her. But, you understand, she had a place in my memory, and there must have been a good reason for that.

“May I ask you to find him for me and give him my number in L. A.? I’m carrying a list of family names and Harry Fonstein will recognize, will identify him. Or will not, if the man is not his uncle. It would be a mitzvah.”

Christ, spare me these mitzvahs.

I said, “Okay, Rabbi, I’ll trace Harry, for the sake of this pitiable lunatic.”

The Jerusalem Fonstein gave me a pretext for getting in touch with the Fonsteins. (Or at least an incentive.) I entered the rabbi’s number in my book, under the last address I had for Fonstein. At the moment, there were other needs and duties requiring my attention; besides, I wasn’t yet ready to speak to Sorella and Harry. There were preparations to make. This, as it appears under my ballpoint, reminds me of the title of Stanislavski’s famous book, An Actor Prepares —again, a datum relating to my memory, a resource, a vocation, to which a lifetime of cultivation has been devoted, and which in old age also oppresses me.

For just then (meaning now: “Now, now, very now”) I was, I am, having difficulties with it. I had had a failure of memory the other morning, and it had driven me almost mad (not to hold back on an occurrence of such importance). I had had a dental appointment downtown. I drove, because I was already late and couldn’t rely on the radio cab to come on time. I parked in a lot blocks away, the best I could do on a busy morning, when closer lots were full. Then, walking back from the dentist’s office, I found (under the influence of my walking rhythm, I presume) that I had a tune in my head. The words came to me: Way down upon the…

Way down upon the…

… upon the River …

But what was the river called! A song I’d sung from childhood, upwards of seventy years, part of the foundation of one’s mind. A classic song, known to all Americans. Of my generation anyway.

I stopped at the window of a sports shop, specializing, as it happened, in horsemen’s boots, shining boots, both men’s and women’s, plaid saddle blankets, crimson coats, fox-hunting stuff—even brass horns. All objects on display were ultrasignificantly distinct. The colors of the plaid were especially bright and orderly—enviably orderly to a man whose mind was at that instant shattered.

What was that river’s name!

I could easily recall the rest of the words: There’s where my heart is yearning ever,

That’s where the old folks stay.

All the world is [am?] sad and dreary

Everywhere I roam.

O darkies, how my heart grows weary…

And the rest.

All the world was dark and dreary. Fucking-A right! A chip, a plug, had gone dead in the mental apparatus. A forerunning omen? Beginning of the end? There are psychic causes of forgetfulness, of course. I’ve lectured on those myself. Not everyone, needless to say, would take such a lapsus so to heart. A bridge was broken: I could not cross the River. I had an impulse to hammer the window of the riding shop with the handle of my umbrella, and when people ran out, to cry to them, “Oh, God! You must tell me the words. I can’t get past ‘Way down upon the… upon the!’” They would—I saw it—throw that red saddle cloth, a brilliant red, threads of fire, over my shoulders and take me into the shop to wait for the ambulance.