Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“Marta Elvia,” she said, “has anybody been here today? Did anybody come to leave an article for me?” Fifteen years in the U. S. and the woman still spoke incomplete English. “Listen,” said Clara. “Did Gina come here today? Did you or anybody let Gina into the apartment?… No? Somebody did come in, and Gina gave up her house keys when she left…. Sure she could have made a duplicate—she or her boyfriend…. Of course I should have changed the lock…. No, nothing was taken. On the contrary, the person gave back something. I’m glad I didn’t change the lock.”

Now Marta Elvia was upset that an outside somebody had got in. Security in this building was one hundred percent. She was sending her husband up to make sure the door hadn’t been jimmied open.

“No, no!” said Clara. “There hasn’t been illegal entry. What a wild idea!”

Her own ideas at this moment were not less wild. She rang Gina’s number in East Harlem. What she got was an answering machine, from which came Frederic’s voice, whose Frenchy slickness was offensive. (Clara disliked those telephone devices anyway, and her prejudice extended to the sound of the signal—in this instance a pig squeal.) “This is Mrs. Wilder Velde calling Miss Wegman.” Inasmuch as Gina might have prevailed by reasonable means over him, Clara was ready to revise her opinion of Frederic too. (On her scale often, she could upgrade him from less than zero to one.)

Next Clara phoned Gottschalk and entered on his tape her request that he call back. She then tried Laura Wong, and finally Wilder in New Hampshire. It was primary time up there; his candidate lagged far behind the field, and you couldn’t expect Wilder to be in his hotel room. Ithiel was in Central America. There was no one to share the recovery of the ring with. The strongest lights in the house were in the bathroom, and she turned them on, pressing against the sink to examine the stone and the setting, making sure that the small diamonds were all there. Since Mrs. Peralta had been in that day, she tried her number—she had a crying need to talk with somebody—and this time actually succeeded. “Did anybody come into the house today?”

“Only deliveries, by the service elevator.”

During this unsatisfactory conversation Clara had a view of herself in the hall mirror—a bony woman, not young, blond but not fair, gaunt, a long face, a hollow cheek, not rejoicing, and pressing the ringed hand under the arm that held the phone. The big eyes ached, and looked it. Feeling so high, why did she appear so low? But did she think that recovering the ring would make her young?

What she believed—and it was more than a belief; there was triumph in it—was that Gina Wegman had come into the bedroom and placed the ring on the nightstand.

And how had Gina obtained the ring, what had she had to promise, or sacrifice, or pay? Maybe her parents had wired money from Vienna. Suppose that her only purpose during four months had been nothing but restitution, and that the girl had done her time in East Harlem for no other reason? It struck Clara that if Gina had stolen the emerald back from Frederic and run away, then leaving a message on his machine had been a bad mistake. He might put it all together and come after Gina with a gun. There was even a private eye in this quickly fermenting plot. Except that Gottschalk was no Philip Marlowe in a Raymond Chandler story. Nevertheless he was a detective of some kind. He must be licensed to carry a gun. And everybody’s mind ran in these psychopathic-melodrama channels streaming with blood, or children’s fingerpaints, or blood that naяve people took for fingerpaint. The fancy (or hope) that Gottschalk would kill Frederic in a shoot-out was so preposterous that it helped Clara to calm herself.

When she received Gottschalk in her office next day, she was wearing the ring and showed it to him. He said, “That’s a high-value object. I hope you don’t take public transportation to work.” She looked disdainful. There was a livery service. He didn’t seem to realize how high her executive bracket was. But he said, “There are people in top positions who insist on using the subway. I could name you a Wall Street woman who goes to work disguised as a bag lady so it isn’t worthwhile to hassle her.”

“I believe Gina Wegman entered my apartment yesterday and left the emerald by my bed.”

“Must’ve been her.”

Gottschalk’s personal observation was that Mrs. Velde hadn’t slept last night.

“It couldn’t have been the man,” she said. “What’s your professional conclusion about him?”

“Casual criminal. Not enough muscle for street crime.”

“She didn’t marry him, did she?”

“I could run a check on that. My guess is no.”

“What you can find out for me is whether she’s still on One hundred twenty-eighth Street. If she grabbed the ring and brought it back, he may do her some harm.”

“Well, ma’am, he’s been in the slammer a few times for petty stuff. He wouldn’t do anything major.” Frederic had been one of those boat people lucky enough to reach Florida a few years back. So much Clara knew.

“After stealing your ring, he didn’t even know how to fence it.”

Clara said, “I have to find out where she’s living. I have to see the girl. Get hold of her. I’ll pay a bonus—within reason.”

“Send her to your house?”

“That might embarrass her—the girls, Mrs. Peralta, my husband. Say I want to have lunch with her. Ask her whether she received my note.”

“Let me look into it.”

“Quickly. I don’t want this dragging on.”

“Top priority,” said Gottschalk.

She counted on the suite of offices to impress him, and she was glad now that she had paid his bills promptly. Keeping on his good side, taking care from every standpoint to be a desirable client. As for Gottschalk, he was exactly what she had ordered from Ithiel—minimum sleaze. Not much more.

“I’d like a progress report by Friday,” she said.

That afternoon she met with Ms. Wong. Moved to talk. And with the gesture of a woman newly engaged, she held out her hand, saying, “Here’s the ring. I thought it had gone into the muck for good. It’s getting to be a fairy-tale object. With me it’s had the funny effect of those trick films they used to show kids—first a building demolished by dynamite. They show it coming down. Then they reverse it in slow motion, and it’s put together again.”

“Done by means of a magic ring?” said Ms. Wong.

It occurred to Clara that Laura was a mysterious lady too. She was exotic in externals, but in what she said she was perfectly conventional. While your heart was moved, she would still murmur along. If you came and told her you were going to kill yourself, what would she do? Probably nothing. Yet one must talk.

“I can’t say what state I’m in,” said Clara, “whether I’m pre-dynamite or post-dynamite. I don’t suppose I look demolished.

“Certainly not.”

“Yet I feel as if something had come down. There are changes. Gina, for instance, was a girl I took into the house to help with the kids. Little was ever said. I didn’t think well of her Caribbean romance, or sex experiment. Just another case of being at sea among collapsing cultures—I sound like Ithiel now, and I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing-culture bit: I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul. Essential parts of people getting mislaid or crowded out—don’t ask me for specifics; I can’t give them. They’re always flitting by me. But what I started to say was how I’ve come to love that girl. Just as she immediately understood Lucy, how needy Lucy was, in one minute she also got the whole meaning of this ring. And on the decision to get it back for me she left the house. Moving to East Harlem, yet.”