Humboldt's Gift (20 page)

  My control wasn’t much better than his. My own arm seemed full of nerves and it jerked as I was signing. Then Humboldt, big delicate and stained, heaved himself up from his revolving chair and gave me the Corn Exchange check. “No, don’t just stick it in your pocket,” he said. “I want to see you put it away. It’s dangerous. I mean it’s valuable.”

  We now shook hands—all four hands. Humboldt said, “This makes us blood-brothers. We’ve entered into a covenant. This is a covenant.”

  A year later I had a Broadway hit and he filled in my blank check and cashed it. He said that I had betrayed him, that I, his blood-brother, had broken a sacred covenant, that I was conspiring with Kathleen, that I had set the cops on him, and that I had cheated him. They had lashed him in a strait jacket and locked him in Bellevue, and that was my doing, too. For this I had to be punished. He imposed a fine. He drew six thousand seven hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty-eight cents from my account at Chase Manhattan.

  As for the check he had given me, I put it in a drawer under some shirts. In a few weeks it disappeared and was never seen again.

  fourteen

  Here meditation began to get really tough. Why? Because of Humboldt’s invectives and denunciations which now came back to me, together with fierce distractions and pelting anxieties, as dense as flak. Why was I lying here? I had to get ready to fly to Milan. I was supposed to go with Renata to Italy. Christmas in Milan! And I had to attend a hearing in Judge Urbanovich’s chambers, conferring first with Forrest Tomchek, the lawyer who represented me in the action brought by Denise for every penny I owned. I needed also to discuss with Murra the CPA the government’s tax case against me. Also Pierre Thaxter was due from California to talk to me about
The Ark
—really, to show why he had been right to default on that loan for which I had put up collateral—and to bare his soul and in so doing bare my soul, too, for who was I to have a covered soul? There was even a question about the Mercedes, whether to sell it or pay for repairs. I was almost ready to abandon it for junk. As for Ronald Cantabile, claiming to represent the new spirit, I knew that I could expect to hear from him any minute.

  Still, I was able to hold out against this nagging rush of distractions. I fought off the impulse to rise as if it were a wicked temptation. I stayed where I was on the sofa sinking into the down for which geese had been ravished, and held on to Humboldt. The will-strengthening exercises I had been doing were no waste of time. As a rule I took plants as my theme: either a particular rosebush summoned from the past, or plant anatomy. I obtained a large botany book by a woman named Esau and sank myself into morphology, into protoplasts and ergastic substances, so that my exercises might have real content. I didn’t want to be one of your idle hit-or-miss visionaries.

  Sewell an anti-Semite? Nonsense. It suited Humboldt to hoke that up. As for blood-brotherhood and covenants, they were somewhat more genuine. Blood-brotherhood dramatized a real desire. But not genuine enough. And now I tried to remember our endless consultations and briefings before I called on Rick-etts. I said, at last, to Humboldt, “Enough. I know how to do this. Not another word.” Demmie Vonghel coached me too. She thought Humboldt very funny. On the morning of the interview she made sure that I was correctly dressed and took me to Penn Station in a cab.

  This morning in Chicago I found that I could recall Ricketts without the slightest difficulty. He was youthful but white-haired. His crew cut sat low on his forehead. He was thick, strong, and red-necked, a handsome furniture-mover sort of man. Years after the war, he still clung to GI slang, this burly winsome person. A bit heavy for frolic, in his charcoal-gray flannels, he tried to take a light manner with me. “I hear you guys are going great in Sewell’s program, that’s the scuttlebutt.”

  “Ah, you should have heard Humboldt speak on
Sailing to Byzantium
.”

  “People have said that. I couldn’t make it. Administration. Tough titty for me. Now what about you, Charlie?”

  “Enjoying every minute here.”

  “Terrific. Keeping up your own work, I hope? Humboldt tells me you’re going to have a Broadway production next year.”

  “He’s a little ahead of himself.”

  “Ah, he’s a great guy. Wonderful thing for us all. Wonderful for me, my first year as chairman.”

  “Is it, now?”

  “Why yes, it’s my shakedown cruise, too. Glad to have both of you. You look very cheerful, by the way.”

  “I feel cheerful, generally. People find fault with it. A drunken lady last week asked me what the hell my problem was. She said I was a compulsive-
heimischer
type.”

  “Really? I don’t think I ever heard that expression.”

  “It was new to me too. Then she told me I was existentially out of step. And the last thing she said was, ‘You’re apparently having a hell of a good time, but life will crush you like an empty beer can.’ “

  Under the crew-cut crown Rickett’s eyes were shame-troubled. Perhaps he too was oppressed by my good spirits. In reality I was only trying to make the interview easier. But I began to realize that Ricketts was suffering. He sensed that I had come to do mischief. For why was I here, what sort of call was this? That I was Humboldt’s emissary was obvious. I brought a message, and a message from Humboldt meant nothing but trouble.

  Sorry for Ricketts, I made my pitch as quickly as possible. Humboldt and I were pals, great privilege for me to be able to spend so much time with him down here. Oh, Humboldt! Wise warm gifted Humboldt! Poet, critic, scholar, teacher, editor, original. . . .

  Eager to help me through this, Ricketts said, “He’s just a man of genius.”

  “Thanks. That’s what it amounts to. Well, this is what I want to say to you. Humboldt wouldn’t say it himself. It’s my idea entirely, I’m only passing through, but it would be a mistake not to keep Humboldt here. You shouldn’t let him get away.”

  “That’s a thought.”

  “There are things that only poets can tell you about poetry.”

  “Yes, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe. But why should Humboldt tie himself down to an academic position?”

  “That’s not the way Humboldt sees things. I think he needs an intellectual community. You can imagine how overpowering the great social structure of the country would be to inspired men of his type. Where to turn, is the question. Now the trend in the universities is to appoint poets, and you’ll do it, too, sooner or later. Here’s your chance to get the best.”

  Making my meditation as detailed as possible, no fact too small to be remembered, I could see how Humboldt had looked when he coached me on the way to handle Ricketts. Humboldt’s face, with a persuasive pumpkin smile, came so close to mine that I felt the warmth or fever of his cheeks. Humboldt said, “You have a talent for this kind of errand. I know it.” Did he mean I was a born meddler? He said, “A man like Ricketts didn’t make it big in the Protestant establishment. Not fit for the important roles—corporation president, board chairman, big banks, Republican National Committee, Joint Chiefs, Budget Bureau, Federal Reserve. To be a prof, of his kind means to be the weak kid brother. Or maybe even sister. They get taken care of. He’s probably a member of the Century Club. Okay to teach
The Ancient Mariner
to young Firestones or Fords. Humanist, scholar, scoutmaster, nice but a numbskull.”

  Maybe Humboldt was right. I could see that Ricketts was unable to cope with me. His sincere brown eyes seemed to ache. He waited for me to get on with this, to finish the interview. I didn’t like backing him into a corner, but behind me I had Humboldt. Because Humboldt didn’t sleep on the night Ike was elected, because he was drugged with pills and booze or toxic with metabolic wastes, because his psyche didn’t refresh itself by dreaming, because he renounced his gifts, because he lacked spiritual strength, or was too frail to stand up to the unpoetic power of the USA, I had to come here and torment Ricketts. I felt pity for Ricketts. And I couldn’t see that Princeton was such a big deal as Humboldt made out. Between noisy Newark and squalid Trenton it was a sanctuary, a zoo, a spa, with its own choochoo and elms and lovely green cages. It resembled another place I was later to visit as a tourist—a Serbian watering place called Vrnatchka Banja. But maybe what Princeton was not counted for more. It was not the factory or department store, not the great corporation office or bureaucratic civil service, it was not the routine job-world. If you could arrange to avoid that routine job-world, you were an intellectual or an artist. Too restless, tremorous, agitated, too mad to sit at a desk eight hours a day, you needed an institution—a higher institution.

  “A chair in poetry for Humboldt,” I said.

  “A chair in poetry! A chair! Oh!—What a grand idea!” said Ricketts. “We’d love it. I speak for everyone. We’d all vote for it. The only thing is the dough! If only we had enough dough! Charlie, we’re real poor. Besides, this outfit, like any outfit, has its table of organization.”

  “Table of organization? Translate, please.”

  “A chair like that would have to be created. It’s a big deal.”

  “How would a chair be set up?”

  “Special endowment, as a rule. Fifteen or twenty grand a year, for about twenty years. Half a million bucks, with the retirement fund. We just ain’t got it, Charlie. Christ, how we’d love to get Humboldt. It breaks my heart, you know that.” Ricketts was now wonderfully cheerful. Minutely observant, my memory brought back, without my especially asking for it, the white frieze of his vigorous short hair, his brownish oxheart cherry eyes, the freshness of his face, his happy full cheeks.

  I figured that was that, when we shook hands. Ricketts, having gotten rid of us, was rapturously friendly. “If only we had the money!” he kept saying.

  And though Humboldt was waiting for me in a fever, I claimed a moment for myself in the fresh air. I stood under a brown-stone arch, on foot-hollowed stone, while panhandling squirrels came at me from all directions across the smooth quadrangles, the lovely walks. It was chilly and misty, the blond dim November sun binding the twigs in circles of light. Demmie Vonghel’s face had such a blond pallor. In her cloth coat with the marten collar, with her sublime sexual knees that touched, and the pointed feet of a princess, and her dilated nostrils presented almost as emotionally as her eyes, and breathing with a certain hunger, she had kissed me with her warm face, and pressed me with her tight-gloved hand, saying, “You’ll do great, Charlie. Just great.” We had parted at Penn Station that morning. Her cab had waited.

  I didn’t think that Humboldt would agree.

  But I was astonishingly wrong. When I showed up in the doorway he sent away his students. He had them all in a state of exaltation about literature. They were always hanging around, waiting in the corridor with their manuscripts. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “something has come up. Appointments are canceled—moved up one hour. Eleven is now twelve. Two-thirty is three-thirty.” I came in. He locked the door of the hot book-crammed smoky office. “Well?” he said.

  “He hasn’t got the money.”

  “He didn’t say no?”

  “You’re famous, he loves you, admires you, desires you, but he can’t create a chair without the dough.”

  “And that’s what he said?”

  “Exactly what he said.”

  “Then I think I’ve got him! Charlie, I’ve got him! We’ve clone it!”

  “How have you got him? How have we done it?”

  “Because—ho, ho! He hid behind the budget. He didn’t say, ‘no dice.’ Or ‘under no circumstances.’ Or ‘get the hell out of here.’ “ Humboldt was laughing that nearly silent, panting laugh of his, through tiny teeth, while a scarf of smoke flowed about him. He looked Mother-Goosey when he did this. The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such fun. Humboldt said, “Monopoly capitalism has treated creative men like rats. Well, that phase of history is ending. ...” I didn’t quite see how that was relevant, even if true. “We’re going places.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “I’ll tell you later. But you did great.” Humboldt had started to pack, to stuff his briefcase, as he did at all decisive moments. Unbuckling, he threw back the slack flap and began to pull out certain books and manuscripts and pill bottles. He made odd foot movements, as though his cats were clawing at his trouser cuffs. He restuffed the scraped leather case with other books and papers. He lifted his broad-brimmed hat from the coat tree. Like a silent-movie hero taking his invention to the big city, he was off for New York. “Put a note up for the kids. I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.

  I walked him to the train but he told me nothing more. He sprang into the antique Dinkey car. He wagged his fingers at me through the dirty window. And he left.

  I might have gone back to New York with him, because I had come down only for the interview with Ricketts. But he was Manic and it was best to let him be.

  fifteen

  So I, Citrine, comfortable, in the midst of life, extended on a sofa, in cashmere socks (considering how the feet of those interred shredded away like leaf tobacco—Humboldt’s feet), reconstructed the way in which my stout inspired pal declined and fell. His talent had gone bad. And now I had to think what to do about talent in this day, in this age. How to prevent the leprosy of souls. Somehow it appeared to be up to me.

  I meditated like anything. I followed Humboldt in my mind. He was smoking on the train. I saw him passing quick and manic through the colossal hall of Penn Station with its dusty dome of single-colored glass. And then I saw him get into a cab—the subway was good enough, as a rule. But today each move was unusual, without precedent. This was because he couldn’t count on reason. Reason was coming and going in shorter cycles, and one of these days it might go for good. And then what would he do? Should he lose it once and for all, he and Kathleen would need lots of money. Also, as he had said to me, you could be gaga in a tenured chair at Princeton, and would anybody notice? Ah, poor Humboldt! He might have been—no, he
was
so fine!

  He was soaring now. His present idea was to go straight to the top. When he got there, this blemished spirit, the top saw the point. Humboldt met with interest and consideration.

  Wilmoore Longstaff, the famous Longstaff, archduke of the higher learning in America, was the man Humboldt went to see. Longstaff had been appointed the first head of the new Belisha Foundation. The Belisha was richer than Carnegie and Rockefeller, and Longstaff had hundreds of millions to spend on science and scholarship, on the arts, and on social improvement. Humboldt already had a sinecure with the Foundation. His good friend Hildebrand had gotten it for him. Hildebrand the playboy publisher of avant-garde poets, himself a poet, was Humboldt’s patron. He had discovered Humboldt at CCNY, he admired his work, adored his conversation, protected him, kept him on the payroll at Hildebrand & Co. as an editor. This caused Humboldt to lower his voice when he slandered him. “He steals from the blind, Charlie. When the Blind Association mails in pencils, Hildebrand keeps those charity pencils. He never donates a penny.”

  I remembered saying, “Stingy-rich is just ordinary camp.”