Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

And so she closed her eyes briefly, nodding, when Marta Elvia, who sometimes waited for her in the lobby, pressed close with her pregnant belly to say that Frederic had come in at one o’clock and left just before Mrs. Velde was expected.

(There were anomalies in Clara’s face when you saw it frontally. Viewing it in profile, you would find yourself trying to decide which of the Flemish masters would have painted her best.)

“Thanks, Marta Elvia,” she said. “I’ve got the situation under control.”

She shouldn’t have been so sure about it, for that very evening when she was dressing for dinner—a formal corporate once-a-year affair—she was standing before the long mirror in her room, when suddenly she knew that her ring had been stolen. She kept it in the top drawer of her dresser—unlocked, of course. Its place was a dish Jean-Claude had given her years ago. The young Frenchman, Ithiel’s temporary replacement recklessly chosen in anger, had called this gift a vide-poches. At bedtime you emptied your pockets into it. It was meant for men; women didn’t use that kind of object; but it was one of those mementos Clara couldn’t part with—she kept schoolday valentines in a box, too. She looked, of course, into the dish. The ring wasn’t there. She hadn’t expected it to be. She expected nothing. She said that the sudden knowledge that it was gone came over her like death and she felt as if the life had been vacuumed out of her.

Wilder, already in evening clothes, was reading one of his thrillers in a corner where the back end of the grand piano hid him. With her rapid, dry decision-maker’s look, Clara went to the kitchen, where the kids were at dinner. Under Gina’s influence they behaved so well at table. “May I see you for a moment?” said Clara, and Gina immediately got up and followed her to the master bedroom. There Clara shut both doors, and lowering her head so that she seemed to be examining Gina’s eyes, “Well, Gina, something has happened,” she said. “My ring is gone.”

“You mean the emerald that was lost and found again? Oh, Mrs. Velde, I am sorry. Is it gone? I’m sure you have looked. Did Mr. Velde help you?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“Then let’s look together.”

“Yes, let’s. But it’s always in the same place, in this room. In that top drawer under my stockings. Since I found it again, I’ve been extra careful. And of course I want to examine the shag rug. I want to crawl and hunt for it. But I’d have to take off this tight dress to get on my knees. And my hair is fixed for going out.”

Gina, stooping, combed through the carpet near the dresser. Clara, silent, let her look, staring down, her eyes superdilated, her mouth stern. She said, at last, “It’s no use.” She had let Gina go through the motions.

“Should you call the police to report it?”

“I’m not going to do that,” said Clara. She was not so foolish as to tell the young woman about the insurance. “Perhaps that makes you feel better, not having the police.”

“I think, Mrs. Velde, you should have locked up your valuable objects.”

“In my own home, I shouldn’t have to.”

“Yes, but there are other people also to consider.”

“I consider, Gina, that a woman has a right in her own bedroom… it’s for a woman herself to decide who comes in. I made it explicit what the household rules were. I would have vouched for you, and you must vouch for your friend.”

Gina was shaken. Both women trembled. After all, thought Clara, a human being can be sketched in three or four lines, but then when the sockets are empty, no amount of ingenuity can refill them. Not her brown, not my blue.

“I understand you,” said Gina with an air of being humiliated by a woman whose kindness she counted on. “Are you sure the ring isn’t misplaced again?”

“Are you sure…?” Clara answered. “And try to think of my side of it. That was an engagement ring from a man who loved me. It’s not just an object worth x dollars. It’s also a life support, my dear.” She was about to say that it was involved with her very grip on existence, but she didn’t want any kind of cry to come out or to betray a fear of total slippage. She said instead, “The ring was here yesterday. And a person I don’t know wandering around the house and—why not?—coming into my room…”

“Why don’t you say it?” said Gina.

“I’d have to be a fool not to. To be too nice for such things, I’d have to be a moron. Frederic was here all afternoon. Has he got a job somewhere?”

The girl had no answer to this.

“You can’t say. But you don’t believe he’s a thief. You don’t think he’d put you in this position. And don’t try to tell me he’s being accused because of his color.”

“I didn’t try. People are nasty about the Haitians.”

“You’d better go and talk to him. If he’s got the ring, tell him he has to return it. I want you to produce it tomorrow. Marta Elvia can sit with the girls if you have to go out tonight. Where does he live?”

“One hundred twenty-eighth Street.”

“And a telephone? You can’t go up there alone after dark. Not even by day. Not alone. And where does he hang out? I can ask Antonia’s husband to take you by cab…. Now Wilder’s coming down the corridor, and I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll wait here for the concierge.”

“For Marta Elvia. I’ll talk to her on the way out. You wouldn’t steal, Gina. And Mrs. Peralta has been here eight years without a coffee spoon missing.”

Later Clara took it out on herself: What did I do to that girl, like ordering her to go to Harlem, where she could be raped or killed, because of my goddamn ring, the rottenest part of town in the rotten middle of the night, frantic mad and (what it comes down to) over Ithiel, who balked at marrying me twenty years ago! A real person understands how to cut losses, not let her whole life be wound around to the end by a single desire, because under it all is the uglitude of this one hang-up. Four husbands and three kids haven’t cured me of Ithiel. And finally this love-toy emerald, personal sentimentality, makes me turn like a maniac on this Austrian kid. She may think I grudge her the excitement of her romance with that disgusting girl-fucker who used her as his cover to get into the house and now sticks her with this theft.

Nevertheless Clara had fixed convictions about domestic and maternal responsibilities. She had already gone too far in letting Gina bring Frederic into the apartment and infect the whole place, spraying it with sexual excitement. And, as it now turned out, even become involved in crime. A fling in the U. S. A. was all very well for a young lady from bourgeois Vienna—like the poor Russian hippie, that diplomat’s son who fell in love with Mick Jagger. “Tell Mick Jagger good-bye,” he said, boarding the plane. This city had become the center, the symbol of worldwide adolescent revolt.

In the middle of the corporate evening Clara was attacked by one of her fierce migraines, and a head as conspicuous as hers, dominating a dinner table, affected everybody when it began to ache, so that the whole party stood up when she rose and hurried out. The Veldes went straight home. Swallowing a handful of white pills from the medicine chest, Clara went immediately to Gina’s room. To her relief, the girl was there, in bed. The reading lamp was on, but she wasn’t reading, only sitting up, her hands thoughtfully folded.

“I’m glad you didn’t go to Harlem!” I reached Frederic on the phone. He was with some of our UN friends.”

“And you’ll see him tomorrow…?”

“I didn’t mention the ring. But I am prepared to move out. You told me I had to bring it back or leave.”