Humboldt's Gift (27 page)

  “And where’s the dough for this?” said Polly. “Has he got it?”

  “That I don’t know. But if he has no money why are they peeling his toes downtown? Without an anesthetic? I can put you onto a good thing, Charlie. Buy some contracts in commodity futures. I’ve cleaned up.”

  “On paper you have. If this fellow Stronson is straight,” Polly said.

  “What are you talking about—Stronson? A multimillionaire. Didn’t you see his big house in Kenilworth? The marketing degree from the Harvard Business School on his wall? Besides, he’s been trading for the Mafia and you know how those fellows resent being took. They alone would keep him in line. But he’s completely kosher. He has a seat on the Mid America Commodity Exchange. The twenty Gs I gave him five months ago he doubled for me. I’ll bring you his company’s literature. Anyway, Charlie only has to lift his hand to make a pile. Don’t forget he had a Broadway hit and a big box-office movie, once. Why not again? Look at all this paper lying around. These scripts and shit could be worth plenty. There’s probably a gold mine right here, you want to bet? For instance, I know that you and your pal Von Humboldt Fleisher once wrote a movie scenario together.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My researcher wife.”

  I laughed at this, quite loudly. A movie scenario!

  “You remember it?” said Cantabile.

  “Yes, I remember. How did your wife hear of it? From Kathleen. . . ?”

  “Mrs. Tigler in Nevada. Lucy is in Nevada now interviewing her. Has been for about a week, staying at this Mrs. Tigler’s dude ranch. She’s running it alone.”

  “Why, where’s Tigler, did he take off?”

  “For good, he took off. The guy is dead.”

  “Dead, is he? She’s a widow. Poor Kathleen. She’s got no luck, poor woman. I’m sorry about Kathleen.”

  “She’s sentimental about you, too. Lucy told her that I knew you, and she sent you regards. You got any message for her? Lucy and I talk on the telephone every day.”

  “How did Tigler die?”

  “Shot in a hunting accident.”

  “That figures. He was a sporting man. Used to be a cowboy.”

  “And a pain in the ass?” said Cantabile.

  “Could be.”

  “You knew him personally, then. Not much regret, hey? All you say is poor Kathleen. Now what about this movie that you and Fleisher wrote?”

  “Oh yes, tell us,” said Polly. “What was all that about? Two minds like yours, collaborating—wow!”

  “It was piffle. Nothing to it. At Princeton we diverted ourselves that way. Simply horseplay.”

  “Haven’t you got a copy of it? You might be the last to know, commercially, what there was in it,” said Cantabile.

  “Commercially? The Hollywood big-money days are over. No more of those fancy prices.”

  “That side of it you can leave to me,” said Cantabile. “If we have a real property, I’ll know how to promote it—director, star, financing, the whole ball of wax. You have a track record, don’t forget, and Fleisher’s name hasn’t been completely forgotten yet. We’ll get Lucy’s thesis published, and that’ll revive it.”

  “But what was the story?” said Polly, bent-nosed, fragrant, idling her legs.

  “I have to shave. I need my lunch. I have to go to court. I’m expecting a friend from California.”

  “Who’s that?” said Cantabile.

  “His name is Pierre Thaxter, and we edit a journal together called
The Ark
. It’s really none of your business anyway. . . .”

  But of course it was his business, because he was a demon, an agent of distraction. His job was to make noise and to deflect and misdirect and send me foundering into bogs.

  “Well, tell us a little about the movie,” said Cantabile.

  “I’ll try. Just to see how good my memory is,” I said. “The thing started with Amundsen the polar explorer and Umberto Nobile. In Mussolini’s time Nobile was an Air Force officer, an engineer, a dirigible commander, a brave man. In the Twenties he and Amundsen headed an expedition over the North Pole, and flew from Norway to Seattle. But they were rivals and came to hate each other. On the next expedition, with Mussolini’s backing, Nobile went it alone. Only his lighter-than-air ship crashed in the Arctic and his crew were scattered over the ice floes. When Amundsen heard of this, he said, ‘My comrade Umberto Nobile’ —whom he detested, mind you—’is down at sea. I shall rescue him.’ So he chartered a French plane and filled it with equipment. The pilot warned him it was overloaded and wouldn’t fly. Like Sir Patrick Spens, I remember saying to Humboldt.”

  “What Spens?”

  “Just a poem,” Polly told Cantabile. “And Amundsen was the fellow who beat the Scott expedition to the South Pole.”

  Pleased to have an educated dolly to brief him, Cantabile took the patrician attitude that drudges and bookworms would give him what trifling historical information he needed.

  “The French pilot warned him, but Amundsen said, ‘Don’t teach me how to run a rescue expedition.’ So the plane rose from the runway but it fell into the sea. Everyone was killed.”

  “Is that the picture? But what about the guys on the ice?”

  “The men on the ice sent out radio messages and these were picked up by the Russians. An icebreaker named the
Krassin
was sent to find them. It cruised among the floes and rescued two men, an Italian and a Swede. There had been a third survivor— where was he? The explanations given were fishy and the Italian was suspected of cannibalism. The Russian doctor aboard the
Krassin
pumped his stomach and under the miscroscope he identified human tissue. Well, there was a frightful scandal. A jar containing the contents of this fellow’s stomach was put on display in Red Square with a huge sign: “This is how fascist imperialist capitalist dogs devour each other. Only the proletariat knows morality brotherhood and self-sacrifice!”

  “What the hell kind of movie would this make,” said Cantabile. “So far it’s a real dumdum idea.”

  “I told you.”

  “Yes, but now you’re sore at me, and you’re glaring. You think I’m a moron, in your department. I’m not artistic and I’m unfit to have an opinion.”

  “This is only background,” I said. “The picture, as Humboldt and I worked it out, opened in a Sicilian village. The cannibal, whom Humboldt and I called Signor Caldofreddo, is now a kindly old man and sells ice cream, the kids love him, he has an only daughter who’s a beauty and a darling. Here nobody remembers the Nobile expedition. But a Danish journalist turns up to interview the old guy. He’s writing a book about the
Krassin
rescue. The old man meets him in secret and says, ‘Leave me alone. I’ve been a vegetarian for fifty years. I churn ice cream. I am an old man. Don’t disgrace me now. Find a different subject. Life is full of hysterical situations. You don’t need mine. Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace.’ “

  “So the Amundsen and Nobile part of it is worked around this?” said Polly.

  “Humboldt admired Preston Sturges. He loved
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
and also
The Great McGinty
, with Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, and Humboldt’s idea was to work in Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and even the Pope.”

  “How the Pope?” said Cantabile.

  “The Pope gave Nobile a large cross to drop on the North Pole. And we saw the movie as a vaudeville and farce but with elements of
Oedipus at Colonus
in it. Violent spectacular sinners in old age acquire magical properties, and when they come to die they have the power to curse and to bless.”

  “If it’s supposed to be funny, leave the Pope out of it,” said Cantabile.

  “Backed into a corner, the old Caldofreddo flares up. He makes an attempt on the journalist’s life. He pries loose a boulder on a mountainside. But then he has a change of heart and throws himself on the rock and fights it till the man’s car passes in the road below. After this Caldofreddo blows his icecream vendor’s bugle in the village square, he summons everyone and makes a public confession to the townspeople. Weeping, he tells them that he’s a cannibal. . . .”

  “Which punctures his daughter’s romance, I suppose,” said Polly.

  “Just the reverse,” I said. “The villagers hold a public hearing. The daughter’s young man says, ‘Think of what our ancestors ate. As apes, as lower animals, as fishes. Think what animals have eaten since the beginning of time. And we owe our existence to them.’ “

  “No, it doesn’t sound like a winner to me,” said Cantabile.

  I said it was time to shave, and they both accompanied me to the bathroom.

  “No,” Cantabile said again. “I don’t think it’s any good. But have you got a copy of this thing?”

  I had started the electric shaver but Cantabile took it from me. He said to Polly, “Don’t sit down. Go fix that egg for Charlie’s lunch. Go on, now, go to the kitchen.” Then he said, “I’ll shave first. I don’t like to use the machine when it’s heated up. The temperature of the other guy upsets me.” He ran the buzzing shining machine up and down, pulling at his skin and twisting his face. “She’ll fix your lunch. Pretty, isn’t she! What do you make of her, Charlie?”

  “A stunning girl. Signs of intelligence, too. I see by the left hand that she’s married.”

  “Yes, to a drip who makes TV commercials. He’s a hard worker. Never at home. I see a lot of Polly. Every morning when Lucy leaves for her job at Mundelein, Polly arrives and gets in bed with me. I see this makes a bad impression on you. But don’t put on with me, you lit up when you saw her, and you’ve been trying to make a hit with her, showing off. That extra little try. You don’t have it when you’re among men.”

  “I admit I like to shine when there are ladies.”

  He lifted his chin to get at his neck with the razor. The bulb of his pale nose was darkly lined. “Would you like to make it with Polly?” he said.

  “I? Is that an abstract question?”

  “Nothing abstract. You do things for me, I do things for you. Yesterday I bashed your car, I ran you around town. Now we’re on a different basis. I know you’re supposed to have a pretty lady friend. But I don’t care who she is and what she knows, compared to Polly she’s a bush leaguer. Polly makes other girls look sick.”

  “In that case, I ought to thank you.”

  “That means you don’t want to. You’re refusing. Take your razor, I’m finished.” He put the warm small machine into my hand with a slap. Then he stood away from the basin and leaned against the bathroom wall with his arms crossed and one foot posed on its toe. He said, “You’d better not reject me.”

  “Why not?”

  His face, the colorless-intense type, filled with pale heat. But he said, “There’s a thing the three of us can do together. You lie on your back. She gets on top of you and at the same time goes down on me.”

  “Let’s not have any more filth. Stop it. I can’t even visualize this.”

  “Don’t put on with me. Don’t be superior.” He explained again. “I’m at the head of the bed, standing. You lie down. Polly straddles you, leaning forward to me.”

  “Stop these disgusting propositions. I want no part of your sexual circuses.”

  He gave me a bloody-murder look but I couldn’t have cared less. There were lots of people ahead of him in the bloody-murder line—Denise and Pinsker, Tomchek and the court, the Internal Revenue Service. “You’re no puritan,” said Cantabile, sullen. But sensing my mood he changed the subject. “Your friend George Swiebel was talking at the game about a beryllium mine in East Africa—what is this beryllium stuff?”

  “It’s needed for hard alloys used in space ships. George claims he has friends in Kenya....”

  “Oh, he has an inside track with some jungle-bunnies. I bet they all love him. He’s so natural healthy and humane. I bet he’s a lousy businessman. You’d be better off with Stronson and the commodity futures. There’s a real smart guy. I know you can’t believe it but I’m trying to help you. They’re going to mangle you in court. Haven’t you stashed something away? You can’t be as dumb as all that. Haven’t you got a bagman somewhere?”

  “I never thought of one.”

  “You want me to believe you have nothing in your thoughts except angels on ladders and immortal spirits but I can see from the way you live that it can’t be true. First of all you’re a dude. I know your tailor. Secondly you’re an old sex-pot. . . .”

  “Did I talk to you that night about the immortal spirit?”

  “You sure as hell did. You said that after it gets through the gates of death—this is a quote—your soul spreads out and looks back at the world. Charlie, I had a thought this morning about you—shut the door. Go on, shut it. Now, listen, we could pretend to kidnap one of your kids. You pay the ransom, and I put the dough away in the Cayman Islands for you.”

  “Let me see that gun of yours now,” I said.

  He handed it to me and I pointed it at him. I said, “I’ll certainly use this on you if you try any such thing.”

  “Put that Magnum down. It’s only an idea. Don’t get all shook up.”

  I removed the bullets and threw them in the wastepaper basket, handing back the pistol. That he made such suggestions to me was, I recognized, my own fault. The arbitrary can become the pets of the rational. Cantabile seemed to recognize that he was my pet arbitrary. In some sense he played up to this. Maybe it was better to be a pet arbitrary than a mere nut. But
was
I so rational?

  “The kidnap idea is too gaudy. You’re right,” he said. “Well, how about getting to the judge? After all, a county judge has to be put on the ballot for re-election. Judges are in politics, too, and you’d better know it. There are little characters in the Organization who put ‘em on and take ‘em off the ballot. For thirty or forty Gs, the right guy will call on Judge Urbanovich.”

  I puffed, and blew the tiny clippings out of the shaver.

  “You don’t go for that either?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe the other side has already gotten to him. Why be such a gentleman? It’s like a kind of paralysis. Absolutely unreal. Behind the glass in the Field Museum, that’s where you belong. I believe you got stuck in your childhood. If I said to you, ‘Liquidate and go abroad,’ what would you answer?”