by Saul Bellow
A: “Just living off Iva.”
Again he smiled, but he was no longer sure of himself.
Q: “I heard you were studying, or something.”
A: “No, I just sit at home all day and do nothing.”
Q: “Nothing?”
A: “Absolutely nothing.”
Q: “Oh, well, I suppose well all be going soon, won’t we?” (Sam has three half-grown children).
A: “If the man power shortage becomes any more acute.”
It’s time I was uncivil to Sam. He has always, by his questions, exercised a social or family tyranny over me, checking on my suitability for Iva. No doubt he will report this to the Almstadts.
January 15
Look out for yourself, and the world will be best served.
Yesterday I had a talk with Mr. Fanzel, the tailor, an Alsatian gentleman. Last spring he bought some Lille thread, about two hundred spools, at a bargain. He paid twenty-five cents a spool; today the price is seventy-five cents. He does not intend to sell any of it. The increase goes into the garments he sews, and he is busier now than he was in his best year, 1928. One of his customers has just ordered six new suits and two sport jackets. “Pretty soon I maybe won’t have material. I got to look ahead. So I make higher the price,” says Mr. Fanzel. Which is his kind of wisdom, business wisdom. If everybody takes care of number one, the general welfare is assured. A year ago Mr. Fanzel sewed a button to my coat gratis; this year he charged fifteen cents. Perhaps he used precious Lille thread, or perhaps the value of his time has increased, now that he has so many customers. Mr. Franzel is frightened. He makes an outward show of confidence and of riding the wave but in many ways manifests his terror. The tenants of his building who were on relief four years ago now have become highly paid defense workers, and one of them, to his consternation, last week came down and ordered a suit costing eighty dollars. Heretofore Mr. Fanzel’s customers have been the rich of the Kenwood district. He could not stop talking about his tenant whom he was once on the verge of evicting, and who now earns a hundred and ten dollars a week. Mr. Fanzel is master only of his scissors and needles, not of the greater fate that makes such changes, and, in his fear, with wars and transformed tenants and, it may be, even the shadow of Jeff Forman’s falling plane crossing his security, he resolves to protect himself by charging eighty dollars for suits worth forty and fifteen cents for a button he formerly sewed out of kindness. Mr. Fanzel is innocent. I blame the spiritual climate. In it we enjoy our gobber of Jeff Forman without a thought for him, let alone a word of gratitude. Supply is supply, and demand is demand. They will be satisfied, be it with combs, fifes, rubber, whisky, tainted meat, canned peas, sex, or tobacco. For every need there is an entrepreneur, by a marvelous providence. You can find a man to bury your dog, rub your back, teach you Swahili, read your horoscope, murder your competitor. In the megapolis, all this is possible. There was a Parisian cripple in the days of John Law, the Scottish speculator, who stood in the streets renting out his hump for a writing desk to people who had no convenient place to take their transactions.
What can poor Mr. Fanzel do? He must make money while he can; he is one of the little people. He barely managed to hold on to his property during the crash. Though he knows I am not working, he must charge fifteen cents for sewing the button. Otherwise, through his very kindness, he may find himself among the hindmost, where the devil, who is so far among the foremost he has doubled his trail, can snatch him up. And then who, if he keeps down his prices and allows himself impulses of charity, will furnish Mr. Fanzel his roast, his cabbage, his roll and coffee, his bed, his roof, his morning Tribune, the price of his movie, and his Prince Albert tobacco?
He showed me an article by former President Hoover which advocated the abolition of all control over prices, thus encouraging manufacturing initiative in the interests of increased armament production.
“What do you think?” he said.
“What do you think of it, Mr. Fanzel?”
“Such a plan would save the country.”
“But should we pay them to save the country? Have they no other reason to manufacture these things?”
“They are in business.”
“Aren’t they making lots of money now?”
“More will be better for everybody. It’s business. Ah,” he laughed, waving his hand at me, “you don’t understand it. They will work harder and we will win the war faster.”
“But the prices will go up, and then more money will be like less money.”
“Oh, oh, you don’t understand it,” he said, snuffing with laughter through the ginger-colored hairs of his nose and mustache.
“Mr. Fanzel, when you sew a dress for your wife, do you charge her for it?”
“I make only men’s garments, not ladies’.”
I laid three nickels on the counter and picked up the coat.
“You think it over,” he called to me. “They don’t make a man the president for nothing.”
I walked away, fingering the button which had been threatening for weeks to drop off, weighing the value of its stability against that of the fifteen cents, representing three cups of coffee, or three cigars, or a glass-and-a-half of beer, or five morning papers, or something less than a package of cigarettes, or three telephone calls, or one breakfast Iva’s check at the library having been held up, I went without breakfast. Money has been scarce this week. But it does not disturb me to miss a meal now and then. I do not use as many calories as an active man and I have fat to spare. Mr. Fanzel, I am sure, would have been appalled to learn that he had deprived me of my toast and coffee, despite the fact that he has every theoretical right to a clear conscience. I should be taking care of myself. He can’t be responsible for me. I recall the words of the suitor Luzhin in Crime and Punishment. He has been reading the English economists, or claims he has. “If I were to tear my coat in half,” he says, “in order to share it with some wretch, no one would be benefited. Both of us would shiver in the cold.” And why should both shiver? Is it not better that one should be warm? An unimpeachable conclusion. If I were to tell this to Mr. Fanzel (without mentioning breakfast), he would certainly agree. Life is hard. Vae victis! The wretched must suffer.
January 16
Fairly quiet day.
January 18
I sat watching Marie this morning as she changed the sheets and dusted and washed the windows. To see her at the windows fascinated me especially. It was merely her work, but even she seemed to derive a sober pleasure from it, following the rag over the glitter with her eyes, pulling the frames back and forth on their resonant cords, moving the curved water line further and further across the spotted glass.
To make a dirty surface clean—a very simple, very human matter. I, while shining shoes, grew partly aware of it. In those moments at the window, how different Marie was, how purely human as she rubbed the glass. I sometimes wonder if it can be entirely a source of pleasure to clean. There is too much urgency in it; sometimes it be comes a preoccupation of body and heart. “Ah, in anxiety I lie, thinking, what surface tomorrow?” But it has its importance as a notion of center, of balance, of order. A woman learns it in the kitchens of her childhood, and it branches out from sinks, windows, table tops, to the faces and hands of children, and then it may become, as it does for some women, part of the nature of God.
January 19
Susie Fabson came over in tears to ask Iva what to do about her husband. I withdrew and left them to talk. Susie and her husband wage an endless fight. He, Walter, is a ruddy, big-jawed, blond Dakota boy of the kind city girls are often attracted to. Susie, who was a schoolmate of Iva’s, is six years older than he. He resents this difference in their ages, he resents having been trapped into marriage, and, most of all, he resents the baby, Barbara. Recently Iva indignantly wanted me to punch his head for gagging the child with a handkerchief because she disturbed his sleep. Last week he pressed her jaws together for the same reason, almost suffocating her. This week he bruised
Susie’s face. Iva advised Susie to leave him, and Susie says she intends to.
January 20
Iva and I met downtown at six. The occasion was our sixth wedding anniversary. She had decided that we deserved a celebration. We had had none New Year’s Eve. It had been a bad year—all the more reason for a good dinner and a bottle of French wine. She was determined that this was not to be just another evening.
I came down on the El, getting off at the Randolph and Wabash station. There were crooked streaks of red at one end of the street and, at the other, a band of black, soft as a stroke of charcoal; into it were hooked the tiny lights of the lake front. On the platform the rush-hour crowds were melting under the beams of oncoming trains. Each train was followed by an interval of darkness, when the twin colored lamps of the rear car hobbled around the curve. Sparks from the street below were caught and blanked in the heavy, flat ladder of ties. The pigeons under the sooty, sheet-iron eaves were already asleep; their wadded shadows fell on the billboards and, with every train, fluttered as though a prowler had sprung from the roof into their roost.
I walked along East Randolph Street, stopping to look at the rich cakes and the tropical fruits. When I came to the smoky alley alongside the library where the southbound cars emerge, I saw a man sprawl out in front of me, and at once I was in the center of a large crowd and, from a distance that could not have been as great as it seemed, a mounted policeman standing before a Cottage Grove car was gazing down.
The fallen man was well dressed and above middle age. His hat lay crushed under his large bald head, his tongue had come forward between his lips, his lips seemed swollen. I stooped and tore at his collar. A button sprang away. By this time the policeman had pushed his way forward. I drew back, wiping my hands on a piece of paper. Together, we stared at the fallen man’s face. Then my attention was drawn to the policeman’s own face. It was long and as narrow as a boot. His features were sharp, red, wind-scarred, his jaws muscular, his sideburns whitish, intersected by the straps of his stiff blue cap. He blew his steel whistle. The signal was not necessary. Other uniformed men were already coming toward us. The first to arrive was elderly himself. He bent and reached into the fallen man’s pockets and produced an old-fashioned strap-fastened wallet like my father’s. He held up a card and spelled the name. The victim’s broad coat was hitched up behind, his chest and belly rose hugely together as he labored, snoring, for breath. A path was cleared for the approaching ambulance. Its bell beat rapidly; the on lookers moved away, reluctant to disengage themselves. Would the red face go gray, the dabbled hands stop their rowing, the jaw drop? Perhaps it was only an epileptic fit.
As I withdrew with the others, I touched my forehead; it had begun to smart. My finger tips searched for the scratch Aunt Dina had left on it the night of my mother’s death. The nurse had called us. From all parts of the house we came running. My mother may still have been alive, though her eyes were shut, for when Aunt Dina threw herself upon her, her lips seemed to move crookedly in a last effort to speak or kiss. Aunt Dina screamed. I tried to pull her from the body, and she lashed at me, clawing with enraged fingers. In the next blurred moment, my mother was dead. I was looking at her, my hand pressed to my face, hearing Aunt Dina cry, “She wanted to say something! She wanted to talk to me!”
To many in the fascinated crowd the figure of the man on the ground must have been what it was to me—a prevision. Without warning, down. A stone, a girder, a bullet flashes against the head, the bone gives like glass from a cheap kiln; or a subtler enemy escapes the bonds of years; the blackness comes down; we lie, a great weight on our faces, straining toward the last breath which comes like the gritting of gravel under a heavy tread.
I mounted the library stairs and from there saw the tall blue ambulance slip from the narrow passageway, the calm horse stepping away from the car.
I mentioned nothing of this to Iva; I wanted to spare her. But I could not spare myself, and several times during dinner the image of the fallen man came between me and my food, and I laid down my fork. We did not enjoy our celebration. She thought I was ill.
January 21
Susie Fabson came by in great excitement and said that she and her husband were going to Detroit. He has been offered a radio training course by the War Department. She hopes to be admitted to the same school. They are leaving the baby with Farson’s sister, who is a “twenty-six” girl in a downtown restaurant. “She’ll look after her; Janey adores the kid. I’ll write and tell you how we’re getting along. And, Iva, you’ll stop by once in a while and see how she’s getting along. I’ll give you Janey’s address.”
“Of course,” said Iva, but coldly. And after Susie had rushed away, she said, “That fool! What if something should happen to the baby?”
“She doesn’t want to lose her husband,” I said.
“Lose him? I would have shot him by now. Besides, she’s only making things worse. He’ll blame her if anything goes wrong. And she believes she’s doing it for love. Oh, be quiet, you!”
Mr. Vanaker was raking his throat, coughing, halting with a fleshy catch and coughing again. Any disturbance in our room sets him off. He did not stop until Iva, with a show of temper unusual for her, banged on the wall with her slipper.
January 22
I ate a large breakfast, intending to go without lunch. But at one o’clock, intensely hungry, I tossed aside Abt’s pamphlet and went out for lunch. On the way back I bought several oranges and a large bar of chocolate. By four o’clock I had eaten them. Later, at Fallon’s, I had a large dinner. And a few hours later, in the movies, I added to all this a whole package of caramels and most of a bag of mints. Now, at eleven, I am still hungry.
January 24
We had supper with the Almstadts yesterday. Cousin Sam has not reported me. I had prepared Iva by telling her of our conversation, but nothing was mentioned. Old Almstadt dominated the conversation, telling of the profits he could make if there were no shortage of supplies. My mother-in-law also is kept busy these days. Last week she baked a cake for the Russian Relief Bazaar. This week all the ladies of her club are contributing blood to the Red Cross. She knits a muffler a week. She tried gloves but had no success with them. She could not do the fingers. And the girls, Alma and Rose, complained that all the young men were disappearing into the Army and that only high-school boys were left. Mrs. Almstadt again mentioned that she would like to have Iva with her when I was drafted. I said there was time enough to decide. I love Iva too much to turn her over to them.
Next week we are going to my father’s. We have been declining my stepmother’s invitations for weeks; she is becoming offended.
January 26
In bed with a cold. Marie made tea for me in the morning. Iva came home after lunch to nurse me. She brought a box of Louisiana strawberries and, as a treat, rolled them in powdered sugar. The coverlet was starred with the green stems. She was at her most ample and generous best. She read to me for an hour, and then we dozed off together. I awoke in the middle of the afternoon; she still slept. I gazed up at the comfortable room and heard the slight, mixed rhythm of her breathing and mine. This endeared her to me more than any favor could. The icicles and frost patterns on the window turned brilliant; the trees, like instruments, opened all their sounds into the wind, and the bold, icy colors of sky and snow and clouds burned strongly. A day for a world without deformity or threat of damage, and my pleasure in the weather was all the greater because it held its own beauty and was engaged with nothing but itself. The light gave an air of innocence to some of the common objects in the room, liberating them from ugliness. I lost the aversion I had hitherto felt for the red oblong of rug at the foot of the bed, the scrap of tapestry on the radiator seat, the bubbles of paint on the white lintel, the six knobs on the dresser I had formerly compared to the ugly noses of as many dwarf brothers. In the middle of the floor, like an accidental device of serenity, lay a piece of red string.
Great pressure is brought to bear to make us unde
rvalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves, are hard-boiled. We are schooled in quietness and, if one of us takes his measure occasionally, he does so coolly, as if he were examining his fingernails, not his soul, frowning at the imperfections he finds as one would at a chip or a bit of dirt. Because, of course, we are called upon to accept the imposition of all kinds of wrongs, to wait in ranks under a hot sun, to run up a clattering beach, to be sentries, scouts or workingmen, to be those in the train when it is blown up, or those at the gates when they are locked, to be of no significance, to die. The result is that we learn to be unfeeling toward ourselves and incurious. Who can be the earnest huntsman of himself when he knows he is in turn a quarry? Or nothing so distinctive as quarry, but one of a shoal, driven toward the weirs.
But I must know what I myself am.
It was good to lie in bed, awake, not dreaming. Hemmed in all day, inactive, I lie down at night in enervation and, as a result, I sleep badly. I have never known dreamless sleep. In the past, my dreams annoyed me by their prolixity. I went on foolish errands, and held even more foolish debates, and settled and arranged the most humdrum affairs. But now my dreams are more bare and ominous. Some of them are fearful. A few nights ago I found myself in a low chamber with rows of large cribs or wicker bassinets in which the dead of a massacre were lying. I am sure they were victims of a massacre, because my mission was to reclaim one for a particular family. My guide picked up a tag and said, “This one was found near. …” I do not remember the name; it ended in Tanza. It must have been Constanza. It was either there or in Bucharest that those slain by the Iron Guard were slung from hooks in a slaughterhouse. I have seen the pictures. I looked at the reclining face and murmured that I was not personally acquainted with the deceased. I had merely been asked, as an outsider. … I did not even know the family well. At which my guide turned, smiling, and I guessed that he meant—there was not enough light in the vault to make his meaning unambiguous, but I thought I understood—“It’s well to put oneself in the clear in something like this.” This was his warning to me. He approved of my neutrality. As long as I took the part of the humane emissary, no harm would come to me. But it offended me to have an understanding with this man and to receive a smile of complicity from his pointed face. Could I be such a hypocrite? “Do you think he can be found?” I said. “Would he be here?” I showed my distrust. We continued up the aisle; it was more like the path of a gray draught than anything so substantial as a floor. The bodies, as I have said, were lying in cribs, and looked remarkably infantile, their faces pinched and wounded. I do not remember much more. I can picture only the low-pitched, long room much like some of the rooms in the Industrial Museum in Jackson Park; the childlike bodies with pierced heads and limbs; my guide, brisk as a rat among his charges; an atmosphere of terror such as my father many years ago could conjure for me, describing Gehenna and the damned until I shrieked and begged him to stop; and the syllables Tanza.
