Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“Going where…!” Clara was taken by surprise. Next she was aware of the girl’s brown gaze, the exceptional fixity of it. Unshed tears were killing her. “But if Frederic gives back the ring, you’ll stay.” While she was speaking, Clara with some shame recognized how dumb she sounded. It was the hereditary peasant in her saying this. The guy would deny the theft, and if eventually he admitted it, he still would not return the ring. This very moment he might be taking a thousand bucks for it. These people came up from the tropical slums to outsmart New York, and with all the rules crumbling here as elsewhere, so that nobody could any longer be clear in his mind about anything, they could do it.

Left standing were only property rights. With murder in second place. A stolen ring. A corpse to account for. Such were the only universals recognized, and very few others could be acknowledged. So where did love fit in? Love was down in the catacombs, those catacombs being the personal neuroses of women like herself.

She said to Gina, as one crypto lover to another, “What will you do?”

Gina said, but without resentment, not a hint of accusation in her voice, “That I can’t say. I’ve only had a couple of hours to think. There are places.”

She’d move in with her Haitian, Clara guessed, plausibly enough. But this was not sayable. Clara was learning to refrain. You didn’t say everything. “Discover silence,” she instructed herself.

Next day she rushed home from work in a cab and found Marta Elvia babysitting. Clara had already been in touch with an agency, and there was a new girl coming tomorrow. Best she could do on short notice. Lucy was upset, predictably, and Clara had to take her aside for special explanations. She said, “Gina suddenly had to go. It was an emergency. She didn’t want to. When she can, she’ll come back. It’s not your fault.” There was no guessing just how rattled Lucy was. She was silent, stoical.

Clara had rehearsed this on the telephone with the psychiatrist, Dr. Gladstone.

“With working parents,” she said to Lucy, “such problems do come up.”

“But Daddy isn’t working now.”

You’re telling me! thought Clara. He was doping out the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire.

As soon as possible, she went to see Dr. Gladstone. He was about to take one of his holidays and would be away three weeks. They had discussed this absence in the last session. In the waiting room, she studied the notes she had prepared: Where is Gina? How can I find out, keep track? Protect?

She acknowledged to Dr. Gladstone that she was in a near-hysterical state over the second disappearance, the theft. She was discovering that she had come to base her stability entirely on the ring. Such dependency was fearful. He asked how she saw this, and how Ithiel figured in it. She said, “The men I meet don’t seem to be real persons. Nobody really is anybody. There may be more somebodies than I’ve been able to see. I don’t want to write off about one half of our species. And concentrated desire for so many years may have affected my judgment. Anyway, for me, what a man is seems to be defined by Ithiel. Also, I am his truest friend, and he understands that and responds emotionally.”

Involuntarily Clara fell into Dr. Gladstone’s way of talking. To herself, she would never say “responds emotionally.” As the sessions were short, she adopted his lingo to save time, notwithstanding the danger of false statements. Hope brought her here, every effort must be made, but when she looked, looked with all her might at Dr. Gladstone, she could not justify the trust she was asked to place in that samurai beard, the bared teeth it framed, the big fashionable specs, his often baseless confidence in his science. However, it would take the better part of a year to acquaint a new doctor with the fundamentals of her case. She was stuck with this one.

“And I’m very worried about Gina. How do I find out what’s happening to her? Should I hire a private investigator? A girl like that survive in Spanish Harlem? No way.”

“An expensive proposition,” said Dr. Gladstone. “Any alternatives in mind?”

“Wilder does nothing. He could get on the case. Like shadow her, make practical use of the thrillers he’s read. But he’s negotiating with some hopeless wimp who wants to go for the White House.”

“Let’s get back to the theft, if it is a theft.”

“It has to be. I didn’t misplace it again.”

“However, it gave you daily anxiety. Why did it occupy so big a place in you?”

“What did I come up with last time we discussed it? I cheated the insurance company and had the ring and the money. You could call that white-collar crime. It all added to the importance of my emerald, but I would never have guessed that it would be so shattering to lose it.”

“I can suggest a coincidence,” said the doctor. “At this bad moment for you I am going on a holiday. My support is removed. And my name is Gladstone. Is that why you take the loss so hard?”

Astonished, she gave him a real stare, not a fitting or becoming one. She said, You may be a stone, but you’re not a gem.”

When she returned to her office she telephoned Ithiel, her only dependable adviser, to discuss matters.

‘I wish you were coming up to New York,” she said. “I used to call on Steinsalz when things were urgent.”

“He was a great loss to me too.”

“He took such interest in people. Short of lending them money. He’d treat you to dinner but never lend a cent. He did listen, though.”

“It so happens,” said Ithiel (when he was being methodical, a sort of broken flatness entered his voice), “that I have a lunch date next Tuesday with a man in New York.”

“Let’s say half past three, then?”

Their customary meeting place was St. Patrick’s cathedral, near Clara’s office, a central location and a shelter in bad weather. “Like a drop for secret agents,” Ithiel said. They left the cathedral and went directly to the Helmsley Palace. A quiet corner of the bar was still available at that early hour. “This is on my Gold Card,” said Clara. “Now let’s see how you look—somewhere between a Spanish grandee and a Mennonite.”

Then with executive rapidity she set forth the main facts.

“What’s your opinion of Frederic—an occasional stealer or a pro?”

“I think he improvises,” said Clara. “Dope? Probably.”

“You could find out about his police record, if any. Then ask the Austrian consulate about her. Not telephone her folks in Vienna.”

“I knew it would be a relief to talk to you. Now tell me… about the ring.”

“A loss, I’d guess. Write it off.”

“I suppose I’ll have to. I indulged myself about it, and look at the trouble it made. There’s nothing appropriate. For instance, this luxury bar that fits neither you nor me. In my true feelings you and I are as naked as Adam and Eve. I’m not being suggestive, either. It’s not an erotic suggestion, just a simile.”

Talk like this, the hint of wildness in it, had the effect of forcing him into earnestness. She could see him applying his good mind to her difficulties, like a person outside pressing his forehead on the windowpane to see what’s going on.

As she figured it, he counted on the executive Clara to gain on the subjective Clara. She did have the ability to put her house in order. Yet his sympathy for the subjective, personal Clara was very strong. Considering the greater tumult in her, she had done better than he. Even now her life was more coherent than his.

“For a few hundred bucks, I think you can find out where the girl is. Investigators are easy to hire.”