Humboldt's Gift (51 page)

  But I was serious about it. I meant to make a strange jump and plunge into the truth. I had had it with most contemporary ways of philosophizing. Once and for all I was going to find out whether there was anything behind the incessant hints of immortality that kept dropping on me. Besides, this was the biggest and most revolutionary thing one could undertake to do, and of the greatest value. Socially, psychologically, politically, the very essence of human institutions was an extract of what we assumed about death. Renata said I was furious and arrogant and vengeful toward intellectuals. I always said that they were wasting their time and ours, and that I wanted to trample and clobber them. Possibly so, though she exaggerated my violence. I had the strange hunch that nature itself was not
out there
, an object world eternally separated from subjects, but that everything external corresponded vividly with something internal, that the two realms were identical and interchangeable, and that nature was my own unconscious being. Which I could come to know through intellectual work, scientific study, and intimate contemplation. Each thing in nature was an emblem for something in my own soul. At this moment in the Plaza, I took a rapid reading on my position. I had a slightly outer-space feeling. The frame of reference was tenuous and shuddering all around me. So it was necessary to be firm and to put metaphysics and the conduct of life together in some practical way.

  Suppose, then, that after the greatest, most passionate vividness and tender glory, oblivion is all we have to expect, the big blank of death. What options present themselves? One option is to train yourself gradually into oblivion so that no great change has taken place when you have died. Another option is to increase the bitterness of life so that death is a desirable release. (In this the rest of mankind will fully collaborate.) There is a further option seldom chosen. That option is to let the deepest elements in you disclose their deepest information. If there is nothing but nonbeing and oblivion waiting for us, the prevailing beliefs have not misled us, and that’s that. This would astonish me, for the prevailing beliefs seldom satisfy my need for truth. Still the possibility must be allowed. Suppose, however, that oblivion is
not
the case? What, then, have I been doing for about six decades? I think that I never believed that oblivion
was
the case and by five and a half decades of distortion and absurdity I have challenged and disputed the alleged rationality and finality of the oblivion view.

  These were the thoughts whirling through my head in the top story of the Plaza Hotel. Renata was still criticizing the mansard room. I always gave her a grand time in New York, spent magnificently, blew my money like a Klondike miner. Urbanovich had grounds for his opinion that I was a wild old guy, that I was jettisoning the capital to keep it out of enemy hands, and he was restraining me. But it wasn’t his money, was it? However, the matter was very odd, for all kinds of people with whom I was scarcely acquainted had claims on it. There was, for instance, Pinsker, Denise’s lawyer, the hairy man with the cheese-omelette cravat. I didn’t even know the man, we had never exchanged a single personal word. How did he get his hand into my pocket?

  “What arrangements are we going to make?” said Renata.

  “For you, in Italy? Will a thousand dollars hold you for a week?”

  “The most awful things are said about you back in Chicago, Charlie. You should hear what a reputation you have. Of course Denise sees to that. She even works on the kids and they spread her view, too. You’re supposed to be unbearable. Mother hears that everywhere. But when a person gets to know you, you turn out to be sweet—as sweet a guy as I ever knew. What do you say we make love? We don’t have to take off all our clothes. I know you sometimes like it half-and-half.” She removed her bottom garments, unhooking her bra for easy access, and settled herself on a corner of the bed in all the fullness, smoothness, and beauty of her nether half, her face white and her brows going up with piety. I faced her in my shirttails. She said, “Let’s store up a little comfort for our separation.”

  Then, behind us on the night table, the small light of the telephone began to beat silently, to pulsate. Someone was trying to reach me. Whose pulsations came first, was the question.

  Renata began to laugh. “You know the most talented nuisances,” she said. “They always know when to bother you. Well? Answer it. The occasion is ruined anyway. You look anxious. You probably are thinking about the kids.”

  The caller was Thaxter. He said, “I’m downstairs. Are you busy? Can you come to the Palm Court? I have important news.”

  “To be continued,” said Renata, cheerful enough. We put our clothing on and went downstairs to find Thaxter. I didn’t recognize him at first, for he was wearing a new outfit, a Western hat and his velvet trousers were tucked into cowboy boots.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “The good news is that I’ve just signed a contract for that book on the temperamental dictators,” he said. “Qaddafi, Amin, and those other types. What’s more, Charlie, we can get another contract. Today. Tonight, if you like. And I think we should. It would be a really good deal for you. And oh, by the way, on the house phone next to me there was a lady also asking for you. She’s the widow of the poet Fleisher, I believe, or his divorced wife.”

  “Kathleen? \\Vhere has she gone? Where is she?” I said.

  “I told her we had urgent business and she said she had some shopping to do anyway. She said you could meet in the Palm Court in about an hour.”

  “You sent her away?”

  “Before you get sore, remember that I’m giving a cocktail party on the
France
. I’m a little pressed for time.”

  “What’s the Western get-up about?” said Renata.

  “Well, I thought it would be a good idea to look more American, like a guy from the heartland. I felt I should show that I had nothing to do with the liberal media and the Eastern Establishment.”

  “You’ll pretend to take those fellows from the Third World seriously,” I said, “and then you’ll write them up as vulgarians, imbeciles, blackmailers, and killers.”

  “No, there’s a serious side to it,” said Thaxter. “I plan to avoid out-and-out satire. This question has its serious side. I want to examine them not just as soldier-demagogues and bad-boy buffoons but also as leaders defying the West. I want to say something about their resentment over the failure of civilization to lead the world beyond technology and banking. I intend to analyze the crisis of values—”

  “Don’t tamper with that stuff. Stay away from the values, Thaxter. I’d better give you a few words of advice. First of all, don’t push forward, don’t intrude yourself into these interviews, and don’t ask long questions. Secondly, don’t fool around with these dictators and stay away from competitive games. If you play backgammon or ping-pong or bridge with them you’ll get carried away—you’ll be sunk. You don’t know Thaxter,” I said to Renata, “until you’ve seen him with a cue in his hand or a paddle or a racquet or golf club. He’s vicious, he leaps, he cheats, he gets fiery in the face, and he’ll trounce everybody without pity, man woman or child—are you getting a big advance?”

  He was prepared, of course, for such a question.

  “Not bad, considering. But there are so many liens against me in California that my lawyers have advised me to take monthly installments, not a lump sum, so I’m drawing five hundred a month.”

  The Palm Court was silent, the musicians were taking their break. Renata, reaching under the table, began to rub my leg. She took my foot into her lap and slipped off the loafer, stroking my sole and caressing the instep. Presently she applied the foot to herself, unremittingly sensual, secretly making love to me— or to herself with me. This had happened before, at dinner parties where the company annoyed or bored her. She was wearing the beautiful velour hat copied from the
Syndics of Amsterdam
, under it the dreaming white face, full toward the bottom, expressed its amusement, it affection, its comment upon my relations with Thaxter, its enjoyment of secrecy. How easy and natural she made everything seem—goodness, badness, lustful-ness. I envied her this. At the same time I didn’t really believe that it was all so very natural or easy. I suspected—no, I actually
knew
better.

  “So if you’re thinking about payment, I haven’t got anything to give you on account,” said Thaxter. “Instead I’m going to do better by you. I’m here to make a practical proposal. You and I should do that cultural Baedeker of Europe. There’s an idea that really turns my editor on. Stewart really went for it. Frankly, your name is important in a deal like this. But I’d organize the whole project. You know I have a talent for that. And you wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. I’d definitely be the junior partner and you’d get fifty thousand bucks on signing. All you have to do is put down your name.”

  Renata didn’t seem to hear our conversation. She entirely missed the mention of the fifty thousand dollars. She had now left us, as it were, and was pressing me closer and closer. Her need was strong. She was gross, brilliant, endearing, and if she had to suffer fools she knew what measures to take to compensate herself. I loved her for this. The conversation meantime continued. I was glad to hear that I could still command big advances.

  Thaxter was not an especially observant man. He entirely missed what Renata was doing, the dilation of her eyes and the biological seriousness in which her fine joke ended. She went from fun to mirth to happiness and finally to a climax, her body straightening in the French provincial Palm Court chair. She nearly passed out with a fine long quiver. This was almost fish-like in its delicacy. Then her eyes shone at me as she smoothed my foot, gentle and calm.

  Thaxter meantime was saying, “Of course you worry about working with me. Of course you’re afraid I’ll run off with my end of the advance, and you’ll either have to refund your end or do the book alone. That would be a nightmare to a man with an anxious character like yours.”

  “I could use the money,” I said, “but don’t ask me to commit suicide. If I got stuck with a responsibility like that, if you were to beat it and I had to do work alone, my head would go off like a bomb.”

  “Well, you’d be fully covered. You could protect yourself contractually. It would be stipulated that your only obligation by contract would be to do the major essay on each of the countries. There’ll be six countries—England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Austria. The serial rights to those would be yours, completely. Those alone, if you handle them right, might be worth fifty thousand dollars. So my proposal is this, Charlie, we start with Spain, the simplest country, and see how it goes. Now listen to this, Stewart says he’ll stake you to a month at the Ritz in Madrid. On approval. You couldn’t ask anything fairer. You’d both love it. The Prado is right around the corner. The Michelin Guide lists quite a few first-class restaurants now, like the Escuadrôn. I’ll set up all the interviews. There’ll be a stream of painters, poets, critics, historians, sociologists, architects, musicians, and underground leaders coming to you at the Ritz. You could sit there all day conversing with excellent people and eating and drinking fantastically and making a fortune besides. In three weeks’ time you could write a piece called ‘Contemporary Spain, a Cultural Overview’ or something like that.”

  Renata, returning to consciousness, was now listening with interest to what Thaxter was saying. “Would this publisher really pick up the tab? Madrid sounds like a wonderful deal,” she said.

  “You know what these giant conglomerates are,” said Thaxter. “What would a few thousand bucks mean to Stewart?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “It generally means ‘No’ when Charlie says he’ll think about it.”

  Thaxter bent toward me in his Stetson hat. “I can follow your train of thought,” he said. “You’re thinking that I better do my book on the dictators first. Thaxter,
avec tout ce qu’il a sur son assiette
? Too many irons in the fire. But that’s just it. Other people would burn themselves but with me, the more irons the better I function. I can wrap up five dictators in three months,” Thaxter asserted.

  “Madrid sounds enchanting,” said Renata.

  “The old country for your mother, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Let me give you the rundown on the international Ritz Hotel situation,” said Thaxter. “The London Ritz is played out— soiled, run-down. The Paris Ritz belongs to the Arab oil billionaires, the Onassis types, and the Texas barons. No waiter will pay attention to you there. Right now, with those Portuguese upheavals, the Lisbon Ritz isn’t a restful place. But Spain is still stable and feudal enough to give the real old-fashioned Ritz treatment.”

  Thaxter and Renata had this in common: they fancied themselves to be Europeans, Renata because of the Señora, Thaxter because of his French governess, his international family connections, his BA in French at Olivet College, Michigan.

  Money apart, Renata saw in me the hope of an interesting life, Thaxter saw the hope of a higher one leading perhaps to a Major Statement. We were sipping tea and sherry and eating pastries iced in beautiful colors while I waited for Kathleen to arrive.

  “Trying to keep up with your interests,” said Thaxter, “I’ve been reading your man Rudolf Steiner, and he’s fascinating. I expected something like Madame Blavatsky, but he turns out to be a very rational kind of mystic. What’s his angle on Goethe?”

  “Don’t start that, Thaxter,” said Renata.

  But I needed a serious conversation. I longed for it. “It isn’t mysticism,” I said. “Goethe simply wouldn’t stop at the boundaries drawn by the inductive method. He let his imagination pass over into objects. An artist sometimes tries to see how close he can come to being a river or a star, playing at becoming one or the other—entering into the forms of the phenomena painted or described. Someone has even written of an astronomer keeping droves of stars, the cattle of his mind, in the meadows of space. The imaginative soul works in that way, and why should poetry refuse to be knowledge? For Shelley, Adonais in death became part of the loveliness he had made more lovely. So according to Goethe the blue of the sky
was
the theory. There was a thought in blue. The blue became blue when human vision received it. A wonderful man like my late friend Humboldt was overawed by rational orthodoxy, and because he was a poet this probably cost him his life. Isn’t it enough to be a poor naked forked creature without also being a poor naked forked spirit? Must the imagination be asked to give up its own full and free connection with the universe—the universe as Goethe spoke of it? As the living garment of God? And today I found out that Humboldt really believed that human beings were supernatural beings. He too!”