Herzog

by Saul Bellow

  I must write to Aunt Zelda, he suddenly decided. They mustn't think they can get away with it-make such a fool of me, put me on. He folded the thick paper and hurried into the train. The bitch-eyed girl was on the other track, and good riddance. He went into a New Haven car, and the russet door closed behind him on pneumatic hinges, stiff and hissing. The air inside was chill, air-conditioned. He was the first passenger and had his choice of seats.

  He sat in a cramped position, pressing the valise to his chest, his traveling-desk, and writing rapidly in the spiral notebook.

  Dear Zelda, Of course you have to be loyal to your niece. I am just an outsider. You and Herman said I was one of the family. If I was patsy enough to be affected (at my age) by this sort of "heart-felt" family garbage, why I deserve what I got.

  I was flattered by Herman's affection, because of his former underworld acquaintances.

  I was overcome with happy pride at being found "regular." It meant my muddled intellectual life, as a poor soldier of culture, hadn't ruined my human sympathies. What if I had written a book on the Romantics? A politician in the Cook County Democratic organization who knew the Syndicate, the Juice men, the Policy kings, Cosa Nostra, and all the hoods, still found me good company, heimisch, and took me along to the races, the hockey games.

  But Herman is even more marginal to the Syndicate than poor Herzog to the practical world and both are at home in a pleasant heimisch environment and love the Russian bath and tea and smoked fish and herrings afterward. With restless women conspiring at home.

  As long as I was Mady's good husband, I was a delightful person. Suddenly, because Madeleine decided that she wanted out - suddenly, I was a mad dog. The police were warned about me and there was talk of committing me to an institution. I know that my friend and Mady's lawyer, Sandor Himmelstein, called Dr. Edvig to ask whether I was crazy enough to be put in Manteno or Elgin. You took Madeleine's word as to my mental condition and so did others.

  But you knew what she was up to - knew why she left Ludeyville for Chicago, why I had to find a job there for Valentine Gersbach, knew that I went house-hunting for the Gersbachs and arranged the private school for little Ephraim Gersbach. It must be very deep and primitive, the feeling people - women - have against a deceived husband, and I know now that you helped your niece by having Herman take me away to the hockey game.

  Herzog was not angry at Herman-he didn't believe he was part of the conspiracy.

  The Blackhawks against the Maple-Leafs.

  Uncle Herman, mild, decent, clever, neat, in black loafers and belt-less slacks, his high fedora standing up at the front like a fire helmet, his shirt with a tiny gargoyle on the breast pocket. In the rink the players mixed like hornets- swift, padded, yellow, black, red, rushing, slashing, whirling over the ice. Above the rink the tobacco smoke lay like a cloud of flash powder, explosive. Over the p. a. system the management begged the spectators not to throw pennies to catch the blades of the skates. Herzog with circled eyes tried to relax in Herman's company. He even won a bet and took him to Fritzel's for cheesecake. All the big names of Chicago were there. And what must Uncle Herman have been thinking?

  Suppose that he also knew that Madeleine and Gersbach were together? In spite of the air-conditioned chill of the New Haven car, Herzog felt the sweat break out on his face.

  Last March when I came back from Europe, a case of nerves, and arrived in Chicago to see what could be done, if anything, to restore a little order, I was really in a goofy state. Partly it may have been the weather, and the time changes. It was spring in Italy. Palm trees in Turkey. In Galilee, the red anemones among stones. But in Chicago I ran into a blizzard in March. I was met by Gersbach, still my dearest friend as recently as that, looking at me with compassion. He wore a storm coat, black galoshes, a Kelly-green scarf, and had Junie in his arms. He hugged me. June kissed me on the face. We went to the waiting room and I unpacked the toys and little dresses I had bought, and a Florentine wallet for Valentine and Polish amber beads for Phoebe Gersbach. As it was past Junie's bedtime and the snowfall was getting heavy, Gersbach took me to the Surf Motel.

  He said he couldn't book me at the Windermere, closer to the house, a ten-minute walk. By morning a ten-inch snow had fallen. The lake was heaving and lit by white snow to a near horizon of storming gray. I phoned Madeleine but she hung up on me; Gersbach, but he was out of his office; Dr. Edvig, but he couldn't give me an appointment till next day. His own family, his sister, his stepmother, Herzog avoided. He went to see Aunt Zelda.

  There were no cabs that day. He rode the buses, freezing when he changed in his covert-cloth coat and thin-soled loafers. The Umschands lived in a new suburb, to hell and gone, beyond Palos Park, on the fringe of the Forest Preserves. The buzzard had stopped by the time he got there, but the wind was cutting, and lumps of snow fell from twigs. Frost sealed the shop windows. At the package store, Herzog, not much of a drinker, picked up a bottle of Guckenheimer's 86 proof. It was early in the day, but his blood was cold. Thus he spoke to Aunt Zelda with a whisky breath.

  "I'll heat the coffee up. You must be solid ice," she said.

  In the suburban kitchen of enamel and copper, the white molded female forms bulged from all sides.

  The refrigerator, as if it had a heart, and the range with gentian flames under the pot.

  Zelda had made up her face and wore gold slacks and plastic-heeled slippers-transparent.

  They sat down. Looking through the glass-topped table, Herzog could see that her hands were pressed between her knees. When he began to talk, she lowered her eyes. She had a blond complexion, but her eyelids were darker, warmer, more brown, discolored but with a thick blue line drawn on each by a cosmetic pencil. Her downcast look, Moses at first took as agreement or sympathy; but he realized how wrong he was when he observed her nose. It was full of mistrust. By the way it moved he realized that she rejected everything he was saying. But he knew he was immoderate-worse than that, temporarily deranged. He tried to get a grip on himself. Half buttoned, red-eyed, unshaved, he looked disgraceful. Indecent. He was telling Zelda his side of the case. "I know she's turned you against me-poisoned your mind, Zelda."

  "No, she respects you. She fell out of love with you, that's all. Women fall out of love."

  "Love? Madeleine loved me? You know that's just middle-class bunk."

  "She was crazy about you. I know she adored you once, Moses."

  "No, no! Don't work on me like that. You know it isn't true. She's sick. She's a diseased woman-I took care of her."

  "I'll admit you did," said Zelda. "What's true is true. But what disease..."

  "Ah!" said Herzog harshly. "So you love the truth!"

  He saw Madeleine's influence in this; she was forever talking about the truth. She could not bear lying. Nothing could throw Madeleine into a rage so quickly as a lie. And now she had Zelda on the same standard-Zelda, with dyed hair as dry as excelsior and the purplish lines on her lids, these caterpillar forms-Oh! thought Herzog in the train, the things women apply to their own flesh. And we must go along, must look, listen, heed, breathe in. And now Zelda, her face a little lined, her soft, powerful nostrils dilated with suspicion, and fascinated at his state (there was reality in Herzog now, not seen when he was affable), was giving him the business about truth.

  "Haven't I always leveled with you?" she said. "I am not just another suburban hausfrau."

  "You mean because Herman says he knows Luigi Boscolla, the hoodlum?"

  "Don't pretend you can't understand me...."

  Herzog did not want to offend her. It suddenly was plain what made her talk like this. Madeleine had convinced Zelda that she too was exceptional.

  Everyone close to Madeleine, everyone drawn into the drama of her life became exceptional, deeply gifted, brilliant. It had happened also to him.

  By his dismissal from Madeleine's life, sent back into the darkness, he became again a spectator.

  But he saw Aunt Zelda was inspired by a new sense of herself. He
rzog envied her even this closeness to Madeleine.

  "Well, I know you aren't like the other wives out here*"

  Your kitchen is different, your Italian lamps, your carpets, your French provincial furniture, your Westinghouse, your mink, your country club, your cerebral palsy canisters are all different.

  I am sure you were sincere. Not insincere. True insincerity is hard to find.

  "Madeleine and I have always been more like sisters," said Zelda. "I'd love her no matter how she acted. But I'm glad to say she's been terrific, a serious person."

  "Junk!"

  "Just as serious as you are."

  "Returning a husband like a cake dish or a bath towel to Field's."

  "It didn't work out. You have your faults too.

  I'm sure you won't deny that."

  "How could I?"

  "Overbearing, gloomy. You brood a lot."

  "That's true enough."

  "Very demanding. Have to have your own way. She says you wore her out, asking for help, support."

  "It's all correct. And more. I'm hasty, irascible, spoiled. And what else?"

  "You've been reckless about women."

  "Since Madeleine threw me out, maybe. Trying to get back my self-respect."

  "No, while you still were married." Zelda's mouth tightened.

  Herzog felt himself redden. A thick, hot, sick pressure filled his chest. His heart felt ill and his forehead instantly wet.

  He muttered, "She made it tough for me, too.

  Sexually."

  "Well, being older... But that's bygones," said Zelda. "Your big mistake was to bury yourself in the country so you could finish that project of yours- that study of whatchamajig. You never did wind it up, did you?"

  "No," Herzog said.

  "Then what was that all about."

  Herzog tried to explain what it was about-that his study was supposed to have ended with a new angle on the modern condition, showing how life could be lived by renewing universal connections; overturning the last of the Romantic errors about the uniqueness of the Self; revising the old Western, Faustian ideology; investigating the social meaning of Nothingness. And more.

  But he checked himself, for she did not understand, and this offended her, especially as she believed she was no common hausfrau. She said, "It sounds very grand.

  Of course it must be important. But that's not the point. You were a fool to bury yourself and her, a young woman, in the Berkshires, with nobody to talk to."

  "Except Valentine Gersbach, and Phoebe."

  "That's right. That was bad. Especially winters. You should have had more sense. That house made a prisoner of her. It must have been just dreary, washing and cooking, and to have to hush the baby, or you'd raise hell, she said. You couldn't think when June was crying, and you'd rush from your room hollering."

  "Yes, I was stupid-a blockhead. But that was one of the problems I was working on, you see, that people can be free now but the freedom doesn't have any content.

  It's like a howling emptiness. Madeleine shared my interests, I thought-she's a studious person."

  "She says you were a dictator, a regular tyrant. You bullied her."

  I do seem to be a broken-down monarch of some kind, he was thinking, like my old man, the princely immigrant and ineffectual bootlegger. And life was very bad in Ludeyville-terrible, I admit.

  But then didn't we buy the house because she wanted to, and move out when she wanted to? And didn't I make all the arrangements, even for the Gersbachs-so we could all leave the Berkshires together?

  "What else did she complain of?" said Herzog.

  Zelda considered him for a moment as though to see whether he was strong enough to take it, and said, "You were selfish."

  Ah, that! He understood. The ejaculatio praecox! His look became stormy, his heart began to pound, and he said, "There was some trouble for a while. But not in the last two years. And hardly ever with other women." These were humiliating explanations. Zelda did not have to believe them, and that made him the pleader, and put him at a frightful disadvantage. He couldn't invite her upstairs for a demonstration, or produce affidavits from Wanda or Zinka. (recalling, in the still standing train, the thwarted and angry eagerness of these attempted explanations, he had to laugh. Nothing but a wan smile passed over his face.) What crooks they were-Madeleine, Zelda... others. Some women didn't care how badly they damaged you. A girl, in Zelda's view, had a right to expect from her husband nightly erotic gratification, safety, money, insurance, furs, jewelry, cleaning women, drapes, dresses, hats, night clubs, country clubs, automobiles, theater!

  "No man can satisfy a woman who doesn't want him," said Herzog.

  "Well, isn't that your answer?"

  Moses started to speak but he felt that he was going to make another foolish outcry. His face paled again and he kept his mouth shut. He was in terrible pain. It was so bad that he was far past claiming credit for his power to suffer as he had at times done. He sat silent, and heard the clothes dryer below whirling.

  "Moses," said Zelda, "I want to make sure of one thing."

  "What-was "Our relationship." He was no longer looking at her darkened, painted lids but into her eyes, bright and brown. Her nostrils tensed softly. She showed him her sympathetic face. "We still are friends," she said.

  "Well..." said Moses. "I'm fond of Herman. Of you."

  "I am your friend. And I'm a truthful person."

  He saw himself in the train window, hearing his own words clearly. "I think you're on the level."

  "You believe me, don't you?"

  "I want to, naturally."

  "You should. I've got your interests at heart, too. I keep an eye on little June."

  "I'm grateful for that."

  "But Madeleine is a good mother. And you don't have to worry. She doesn't run around with men. They phone her all the time, chasing after her. Well comshe is a beauty, and a very rare type, too, because she is so brilliant. Down there in Hyde Park-as soon as everybody knew about the divorce, you'd be surprised who all started to call her."

  "Good friends of mine, you mean."

  "If she was just a fly-by-night, she could have her choice of men. But you know how serious she is.

  Anyhow, people like Moses Herzog don't grow on bushes, either. With your brains and charm, you won't be easy to replace. Anyhow, she's always at home.

  She's rethinking everything-her whole life. And there is nobody else. You know you can believe me."

  Of course if you considered me dangerous it was your duty to lie.

  And I know I looked bad, my face swelled up, eyes red and wild.

  Female deceit, though, is a deep subject.

  Thrills of guile. Sexual complicity, conspiracy. Getting in on it. I watched you bully Herman to get a second car, and I know how you can bitch! You thought I might kill Mady and Valentine. But when I found out, why didn't I go to the pawnshop and buy a gun?

  Simpler yet, my father left a revolver in his desk. It's still there. But I'm no criminal, don't have it in me; frightful to myself, instead.

  Anyway, Zelda, I see you had tremendous pleasure, double excitement, lying from an overflowing heart, All at once the train left the platform and entered the tunnel. Temporarily in darkness, Herzog held his pen. Smoothly the trickling walls passed. In dusty niches bulbs burned. Without religion. Then came a long incline and the train rose from underground and rode in sudden light on the embankment above the slums, upper Park Avenue.

  In the east Nineties an open hydrant gushed and kids in clinging drawers leaped screaming. Now came Spanish Harlem, heavy, dark, and hot, and Queens far off to the right, a thick document of brick, veiled in atmospheric dirt.

  Herzog wrote, Will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.

  Over Long Island Sound the air grew clearer.

  It gradually became very pure. The water was level and easy, soft blue, the grass brilliant, spattered with wildflowers-plenty of myrtle among th
ese rocks, and wild strawberries blossoming.

  I now know the whole funny, nasty, perverted truth about Madeleine. Much to think about.

  He now had ended.

  But at the same high rate of speed, Herzog streaked off on another course, writing to an old friend in Chicago, Lucas Asphalter, a zoologist at the university.

  What's gotten into you? I often read "human-interest" paragraphs but I never expect them to be about my friends. You can imagine how it shook me to see your name in the Post.

  Have you gone crazy? I know you adored that monkey of yours, and I'm sorry he's dead. But you should have known better than to try to revive him by mouth-to-mouth respiration. Especially as Rocco died of TB and must have been jumping with bugs.

  Asphalter was queerly attached to his animals.

  Herzog suspected that he tended to humanize them.

  That macaque monkey of his, Rocco, was not an amusing creature, but obstinate and cranky, with a poor color, like a glum old Jewish uncle. But of course if he was slowly dying of consumption, he couldn't have looked very optimistic. Asphalter, so cheerful himself and indifferent to practical interests, something of a marginal academic type, without his Ph. d., taught comparative anatomy. With thick crepe-soled shoes, he wore a stained smock; he was bereaved of hair, of his youth, too, poor Luke. The sudden loss of his hair had left him with only one lock at the front, and made his handsome eyes, his arched brows prominent, his nostrils darker, hairier. I hope he hasn't swallowed Rocco's bacilli. There's a new, deadlier strain at large, they say, and tuberculosis is coming back. Asphalter was a bachelor at forty-five. His father had owned a flophouse on Madison Street. In his youth, Moses had been there often, visiting. And although for an interval of ten or fifteen years he and Asphalter had not been close friends, they had found, suddenly, a great deal in common. In fact it had been from Asphalter that Herzog learned what Madeleine was up to, and the part Gersbach had been playing in his life.

  "Hate to tell you this, Mose," said Asphalter, in his office, "but you're mixed up with some awful nuts."