Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

The chief supervisor, Mr. Ewing, couldn’t silence her and he stood with folded arms at the head of his staff, bald-bald-headed, saying to his subordinates like the ex—school principal he was, “Pretty soon she’ll be tired and go.”

“No she won’t,” said Raynor to Grebe. “She’ll get what she wants. She knows more about the relief even than Ewing. She’s been on the rolls for years, and she always gets what she wants because she puts on a noisy show. Ewing knows it. He’ll give in soon. He’s only saving face. If he gets bad publicity, the commissioner’ll have him on the carpet, downtown. She’s got him submerged; she’ll submerge everybody in time, and that includes nations and governments.”

Grebe replied with his characteristic smile, disagreeing completely. Who would take Staika’s orders, and what changes could her yelling ever bring about?

No, what Grebe saw in her, the power that made people listen, was that her cry expressed the war of flesh and blood, perhaps turned a little crazy and certainly ugly, on this place and this condition. And at first, when he went out, the spirit of Staika somehow presided over the whole district for him, and it took color from her; he saw her color, in the spotty curb fires, and the fires under the El, the straight alley of flamey gloom. Later, too, when he went into a tavern for a shot of rye, the sweat of beer, association with West Side Polish streets, made him think of her again.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with his muffler, his handkerchief being inconvenient to reach for, and went out again to get on with the delivery of his checks. The air bit cold and hard and a few flakes of snow formed near him. A train struck by and left a quiver in the frames and a bristling icy hiss over the rails.

Crossing the street, he descended a flight of board steps into a basement grocery, setting off a little bell. It was a dark, long store and it caught you with its stinks of smoked meat, soap, dried peaches, and fish. There was a fire wrinkling and flapping in the little stove, and the proprietor was waiting, an Italian with a long, hollow face and stubborn bristles. He kept his hands warm under his apron.

No, he didn’t know Green. You knew people but not names. The same man might not have the same name twice. The police didn’t know, either, and mostly didn’t care. When somebody was shot or knifed they took the body away and didn’t look for the murderer. In the first place, nobody would tell them anything. So they made up a name for the coroner and called it quits. And in the second place, they didn’t give a goddamn anyhow. But they couldn’t get to the bottom of a thing even if they wanted to. Nobody would get to know even a tenth of what went on among these people. They stabbed and stole, they did every crime and abomination you ever heard of, men and men, women and women, parents and children, worse than the animals. They carried on their own way, and the horrors passed off like a smoke. There was never anything like it in the history of the whole world.

It was a long speech, deepening with every word in its fantasy and passion and becoming increasingly senseless and terrible: a swarm amassed by suggestion and invention, a huge, hugging, despairing knot, a human wheel of heads, legs, bellies, arms, rolling through his shop.

Grebe felt that he must interrupt him. He said sharply, “What are you talking about! All I asked was whether you knew this man.”

“That isn’t even the half of it. I been here six years. You probably don’t want to believe this. But suppose it’s true?”

“All the same,” said Grebe, “there must be a way to find a person.”

The Italian’s close-spaced eyes had been queerly concentrated, as were his muscles, while he leaned across the counter trying to convince Grebe. Now he gave up the effort and sat down on his stool. “Oh—I suppose. Once in a while. But I been telling you, even the cops don’t get anywhere.”

“They’re always after somebody. It’s not the same thing.”

“Well, keep trying if you want. I can’t help you.”

But he didn’t keep trying. He had no more time to spend on Green. He slipped Green’s check to the back of the block. The next name on the list was F1KLD, WINSTON.

He found the backyard bungalow without the least trouble; it shared a lot with another house, a few feet of yard between. Grebe knew these two-shack arrangements. They had been built in vast numbers in the days before the swamps were filled and the streets raised, and they were all the same—a boardwalk along the fence, well under street level, three or four ball-headed posts for clotheslines, greening wood, dead shingles, and a long, long flight of stairs to the rear door.

A twelve-year-old boy let him into the kitchen, and there the old man was, sitting by the table in a wheelchair.

“Oh, it’s d’ Government man,” he said to the boy when Grebe drew out his checks. “Go bring me my box of papers.” He cleared a space on the table.

“Oh, you don’t have to go to all that trouble,” said Grebe. But Field laid out his papers: Social Security card, relief certification, letters from the state hospital in Manteno, and a naval discharge dated San Diego, 1920.

“That’s plenty,” Grebe said. “Just sign.”

“You got to know who I am,” the old man said. “You’re from the Government. It’s not your check, it’s a Government check and you got no business to hand it over till everything is proved.”

He loved the ceremony of it, and Grebe made no more objections. Field emptied his box and finished out the circle of cards and letters.

“There’s everything I done and been. Just the death certificate and they can close book on me.” He said this with a certain happy pride and magnificence. Still he did not sign; he merely held the little pen upright on the golden-green corduroy of his thigh. Grebe did not hurry him. He felt the old man’s hunger for conversation.

“I got to get better coal,” he said. “I send my little gran’son to the yard with my order and they fill his wagon with screening. The stove ain’t made for it. It fall through the grate. The order says Franklin County egg-size coal.”

“I’ll report it and see what can be done.”

“Nothing can be done, I expect. You know and I know. There ain’t no little ways to make things better, and the only big thing is money. That’s the only sunbeams, money. Nothing is black where it shines, and the only place you see black is where it ain’t shining. What we colored have to have is our own rich. There ain’t no other way.”

Grebe sat, his reddened forehead bridged levelly by his close-cut hair and his cheeks lowered in the wings of his collar—the caked fire shone hard within the isinglass-and-iron frames but the room was not comfortable—sat and listened while the old man unfolded his scheme. This was to create one Negro millionaire a month by subscription. One clever, good-hearted young fellow elected every month would sign a contract to use the money to start a business employing Negroes. This would be advertised by chain letters and word of mouth, and every Negro wage earner would contribute a dollar a month. Within five years there would be sixty millionaires.

‘That’ll fetch respect,” he said with a throat-stopped sound that came out like a foreign syllable. “You got to take and organize all the money that gets thrown away on the policy wheel and horse race. As long as they can take it away from you, they got no respect for you. Money, that’s d’ sun of humankind!” Field was a Negro of mixed blood, perhaps Cherokee, or Natchez; his skin was reddish. And he sounded, speaking about a golden sun in this dark room, and looked—shaggy and slab-headed—with the mingled blood of his face and broad lips, and with the little pen still upright in his hand, like one of the underground kings of mythology, old judge Minos himself.