Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“The ring looks wonderful on your hand. I’m glad to see it there.”

No longer the au pair girl waiting to be spoken to, she held herself like a different person—equal-equal, and more. It was a great thing she had done in America.

“How did you get it into the house?”

“Where did you find it?” asked Gina.

“What does that mean?” Clara wanted to know. In her surprise, she fell back on the country girl’s simpleminded flat tone of challenge and suspicion. “It was on my night table.”

“Yes. Okay then,” said Gina.

“One thing I feel terrible about is the hard assignment I gave you. Just about impossible,” said Clara. “The alternative was to turn the case over to the police. I suppose you know by now that Frederic has a criminal record—no serious crimes, but they had him on Rikers Island and in the Bronx jail. That would have made trouble, an investigation would have been hard on you, and I wouldn’t do that.” She lowered her hand to her legs and felt the startling prominence of the muscles at the knee.

Gina did not look embarrassed by this mention of Rikers Island. She must have taken a decision not to be.

Clara never would find out what the affair with Frederic was about. Gina went no further than to acknowledge that her boyfriend had taken the ring. “He said he was walking around the apartment…” Imagine, a man like that, lewd and klepto, at large in her home! “He saw the ring, so he put it in his pocket, not even thinking. I said it was given to you by someone you loved, who loved you”—so she definitely did understand about the love!—“and I felt responsible because it was me that brought Frederic into the house.”

“That made him look blank, I suppose.”

“He said that people on Park Avenue didn’t understand anything. They didn’t like trouble and relied on security to protect them. Once you got past the security arrangements in the lobby, why, they were just as helpless as chickens. Lucky if they weren’t killed. No idea of defense.”

Clara’s gaze was clear and sober. Her upturned nose added dryness to her look. She said, “I have to agree. In my own place I didn’t feel that I should lock away the valuables. But he may be right about Park Avenue. This is a class of people that won’t think and can’t admit. So it is lucky that somebody more vicious than Frederic didn’t get in. Maybe Haitians are more lighthearted than some others in Harlem or the Bronx.”

“Your class of Park Avenue people?”

“Yes,” said Clara. She looked great-eyed again, grimly thinking, My God, what will my kids be up against! “I should thank the man for only stealing, I suppose.”

“We have no time to talk about this side of it,” said Gina.

These minutes in the bar seemed to be going according to Gina’s deliberate plan. Frederic was not to be discussed. Suddenly Clara’s impulse was to come down hard on Gina. Why, she was like the carnal woman in the Book of Proverbs who eats and drinks and wipes away all signs of lust with her napkin. But she couldn’t sustain this critical impulse. Who could say how the girl got sucked in and how she managed, or what she had to do to recover the ring from such a fellow. I owe her. Also, with the kids she was trustworthy. Now then, what are we looking at here? There is some pride in this Gina. She stood up to the New York scene, a young upper-class Vienna girl. There is a certain vainglory playing through. It’s false to do the carnal woman number on her. Let’s not get so Old Testament. My regular Christmas card from Attica is still arriving. Before marrying this man from Daddy’s bank the girl owed herself some excitement, and Gogmagogsville is the ideal place for it. Dr. Gladstone might have pointed out that Clara’s thoughts were taking on a hostile color—envious of youth, perhaps. She didn’t think so. Nobody, but nobody, can withstand modern temptations. (Try and print your personal currency, and see what you can get for it.) She still felt that her affection for the girl was not misplaced. “Are you sure you want to go flying back—would you think of staying?”

“What should I stay for?”

“I only wondered. If you wanted a different experience of America, you might find it in Washington, D. C.”

“What would I be doing there?”

“Serious work. And don’t be put off by’serious’; it wouldn’t be dull. I did some of it myself in Cortina d’Ampezzo years ago and had one of the greatest summers of my life. This friend of mine in Washington, the one I did it for, may possibly be a dark horse in the history of the American mind. I think perhaps he’s the one with the gifts to put it all in perspective. Everything. If you met him, you’d agree that he was a fascinating man….” Here Clara stopped herself. Without warning, she had sped into a complex intersection, a cloverleaf without a single sign. A pause was imposed on her, and she considered in a silence of many levels where her enthusiasm for this Austrian girl—a pretty girl and a sound one, basically (maybe)—was leading. Did she want to give Ithiel to her? She wanted to reward Gina. All right. And she wanted to find a suitable woman for Ithiel. It was a scandal, the wives he chose. (Or my husbands; not much better.) Again, all right. But what about Frederic? What had she done that she had to veto all discussion of the Haitian connection? And why was this conversation with Clara cramped into twenty minutes? Why was she not invited to the farewell cocktail party? Who would be there?

Now came any number of skeptical scenarios: Gina’s parents had come to America to take her home. They had paid Frederic off, and an incidental part of the deal was that he should surrender the ring. Clara could readily imagine such a package. The girl had plenty of reasons to keep Clara away from her friends—possibly her parents. Brash Clara with her hick candor might have put the case point-blank to the rich parents with all their Mitteleuropa culture (bullshit culture, Ithiel might have said). Oh, let them have their party undisturbed. But she wasn’t about to send Gina to Washington all done up in gift wrapping—only the present with ribbons would have been Ithiel, handed over to this young woman. No way! Clara decided. Let me be as crude as she accused me of being. I am sure not going to make a marriage to rankle me for life. She stopped the matchmaking pitch she had begun, in her softheaded goodness. Yes, Gina was an unusual girl—that conviction was unchanged—but if Teddy Regler was the man in prospect, no.

“I haven’t met him, have I?” Gina said. “No.”

Nor will you ever.

“You’d like to do something for me, wouldn’t you?” Gina spoke in earnest. “Yes, if there were something feasible,” said Clara.

“You’re a generous woman—exceptionally so. I’m not in a position to go to Washington. Otherwise I might be glad to. And I have to leave you soon, I’m sorry to say. I really am sorry. There’s no time to talk about it, but you have meant a lot to me.”

That’s one thing, Clara was thinking. The people you mean a lot to just haven’t got the time to speak to you about it. “Let me tell you quickly,” said Clara, “since it has to be quick, what I’ve been thinking of the stages a woman like me has gone through in her life. Stage one: Everybody is kindly, basically good; you treat ‘em right, they’ll treat you right—that’s baby time. Stage two: Everybody is a brute, butcher, barbarian, rapist, crook, liar, killer, and monster. Stage three: Cynicism also is unacceptable, and you begin to put together an improved judgment based on minimal leads or certain selected instances. I don’t know what, if anything, you can make of that…. Now, before you leave you’re going to satisfy my curiosity at least on one point: how you got the ring back. If it cost you money, I want to pay every cent of it. I insist. Tell me how much, and to whom. And how did you get into the apartment? Nobody saw you. Not with a key?”