The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow (59 page)

Meanwhile, if he wasn’t so powerful as he once had been (as if some dust had settled on his surface), he was powerful still. His color was fresh and his hair vigorous. Now and then for an instant he might look pinched, but when he sat with a drink in his hand, talking away, his voice was so strong and his opinions so confident that it was inconceivable that he should ever disappear. The way she sometimes put it to herself was he was more than her lover. He was also retraining her. She had been admitted to his master class. Nobody else was getting such instruction.

“I’ve got all the numbers now.”

“You’ll have to catch the eight o’clock flight.”

“I’ll park at the Orrington, because while I’m gone for the day I don’t want the car sitting in front of the house.”

“Okay. And you’ll find me in the VIP lounge. There should be time for a drink before we catch the one P. M. flight.”

“Just as long as I’m back by midafternoon. And I can bring the notes you dictated.”

“Well,” said Victor, “I
could have
_ told you they were indispensable.” i see.

“I ask you to meet me, and it sounds like an Oriental proposition, as if the Sultan were telling his concubine to come out beyond the city walls with the elephants and the musicians….”

“How nice that you should mention elephants,” said Katrina, alert at once.

“Whereas it’s just Chicago-Buffalo-Chicago.”

That he should refer by a single word to her elephant puzzle, her poor attempt to do something on an elephant theme, was an unusual concession. She had stopped mentioning it because it made Victor go crosseyed with good-humored boredom. But now he had dropped a hint that ordering her to fly to Buffalo was just as tedious, just as bad art, as her floundering attempt to be creative with an elephant.

Katrina pushed this no further. She said, “I wish I could attend your talk tomorrow. I’d love to hear what you’ll say to those executives.”

“Completely unnecessary,” Victor said. “You hear better things from me in bed than I’ll ever say to those guys.”

He did say remarkable things during their hours of high intimacy. God only knows how much intelligence he credited her with. But he was a talker, he
had
_ to talk, and during those wide-ranging bed conversations (monologues) when he let himself go, he didn’t stop to explain himself; it was blind trust, it was faute de mieux, that made him confide in her. As he went on, he was more salty, scandalous, he was murderous. Reputations were destroyed when he got going, and people torn to bits. So-and-so was a plagiarist who didn’t know what to steal; X who was a philosopher was a chorus boy at heart; Y had a mind like a lazy Susan—six spoiled appetizers and no main course. Abed, Victor and Katrina smoked, drank, touched each other (tenderness from complicity), laughed; they
thought
_—my God, they thought! Victor carried her into utterly foreign spheres of speculation. He lived for ideas. And he didn’t count on Katrina’s comprehension; he couldn’t. Incomprehension darkened his life sadly. But it was a fixed condition, a given. And when he was wicked she understood him well enough. He wasn’t wasting his wit on her, as when he said about Fonstine, a rival who tried to do him in, “He runs a Procrustean flophouse for bum ideas”; Katrina made notes later, and prayed that she was being accurate. So as usual Victor had it right—she did hear better things in bed than he could possibly say in public. When he took an entire afternoon off for such recreation, he gave himself over to it entirely—he was a daylong deep loller. When on the other hand he sat down to his papers, he was a daylong worker, and she didn’t exist for him. Nobody did.

Arrangements for tomorrow having been made, he was ready to hang up. “You’ll have to phone around to clear the decks,” he said. “The TV shows nasty weather around Chicago.”

“Yes, Krieggstein drove into a snowdrift.”

“Didn’t you say you were having him to dinner? Is he still there? Let him make himself useful.”

“Like what?”

“Like walking the dog. There’s a chore he can spare you.”

“Oh, he’ll volunteer to do that. Well, good night, then. And we’ll have a wingding when you get here.”

Hanging up, she wondered whether she hadn’t said “wingding” too loudly (Krieggstein) and also whether Victor might not be put off by such dated words, sorority sex slang going back to the sixties. Hints from the past wouldn’t faze him—what did he care about her college sex life? But he was unnervingly fastidious about language. As others were turned off by grossness, he was sensitive to bad style. She got into trouble in San Francisco when she insisted that he see _M*A
S
H.__ “I’ve been to it, Vic. You mustn’t miss this picture.” Afterward, he could hardly bear to talk to her, an unforgettable disgrace. Eventually she made it up with him, after long days of coolness. Her conclusion was, “I can’t afford to be like the rest.”

Now back to Krieggstein: how different a corner within the human edifice Krieggstein occupied. “So you have to go out of town,” he said. At the fireside, somber and solid, he was giving his fullest attention to her problem. She often suspected that he might be an out-and-out kook. If he
was
_ a kook, how had he become her great friend? Well, there was a position to fill and nobody else to fill it with. And he was, remember, a true war hero. It was no easy matter to figure out who or what Sammy Krieggstein really was. Short, broad, bald, rugged, he apparently belonged to the police force. Sometimes he said he was on the vice squad, and sometimes homicide or narcotics; and now and then he wouldn’t say at all, as if his work were top-secret, superclassified. “This much I’ll tell you, dear—there are times on the street when I could use the good old flamethrower. ” He had boxed in the Golden Gloves tournament, way back before the Pacific war, and had scar tissue on his face to prove it. Still earlier he had been a street fighter. He made himself out to be very tough—a terrifying person who was also a gentleman and a tender friend. The first time she invited him for a drink he asked for a cup of tea, but he laid out all his guns on the tea table. Under his arm he carried a Magnum, in his belt was stuck a flat small gun, and he had another pistol strapped to his leg. He had entertained the little girls with these weapons. Perfectly safe, he said. “Why should we give the whole weapon monopoly to the wild element on the streets?” He told Katrina when he took her to Le Perroquet about stabbings and disembowelments, car chases and shoot-outs. When a bruiser in a bar recently took him for a poor schnook, he showed him one of the guns and said, “All right, pal, how would you like a second asshole right between your eyes. ” Drawing a theoretical conclusion from this anecdote, Krieggstein said to Katrina, “You people”—his interpretations were directed mainly at Victor—“ought to have a better idea than you do of how savage it is out there. When Mr. Wulpy wrote about
The House of the Dead,
_ he referred to absolute criminals. ‘ In America we are now far out on a worse track. A hundred years ago Russia was still a religious country. We haven’t got the saints that are supposed to go with the sinners… . ” The Lieutenant valued his acquaintance with the famous man. He himself, in his sixties, was working on a Ph. D. in criminology. On any topic of general interest Krieggstein was prepared to take a position immediately.

Victor called him the Santa Claus of threats. He was amused by him. He also said, “Krieggstein belongs to the Golden Age of American Platitudes.”

“What do you mean by that, Victor?”

“I’m thinking first of all about the ladies he takes out, the divorcщes he’s so attentive to. He sends them candy and flowers, Gucci scarves, Jewish New Year’s cards. He keeps track of their birthdays.”

“I see. Yes, he does that.”

“He’s part Whitehat, part Heavy. He tries to be like one of those Balzac characters, like what’s-his-name—Vautrin.”

“Only, what is he
really?’
_ said Katrina. For Victor, what a Krieggstein was really wasn’t worth thinking about. Yet when she returned to the dining room, the flapping of the double-hinged door at her back was also the sound of her dependency. She
needed
_ somebody, and here was Krieggstein who offered himself. At least he gave the appearance of offering. Not many went as far as
that.
_ Didn’t even make the gesture. Here she was thinking of her sister Dorothea.

“Bad moment, eh?” said Krieggstein gravely. “You have to go. Is he sick again?”

“He didn’t say that.”

“He wouldn’t.” Krieggstein, contracted with seriousness, had a look of new paint over old—rust painted over in red.

“I have to go.”

“You certainly must, if it’s like that. But it’s not so bad, is it? You’re lucky to have that old Negro lady taking care of the little girls the way she took care of you and your sister.”

“That sounds better than it really is. By now Ysole ought to be completely trustworthy. You would think…”

“Isn’t she?”

“The old woman is very complex, and as she grows older she’s even harder to interpret. She always was satirical and sharp.”

“She’s taking sides; you’ve told me so before. She disapproves of the divorce. She keeps an eye on you. You suspect she takes money from Alfred and gives him information. But she had no children of her own.”

“She was fond of us when we were kids….”

“But transferred her loyalty to your children? I haven’t got what it takes to track her motives with.”

Katrina thought: But whom am I having this conversation with? Krieggstein’s bare head, bare face, by firelight had the shapes you saw in Edward Lear’s books of nonsense verse—distorted eggs. He meant to wear an expression of Churchillian concern—the Hinge of Fate. He was saying it wouldn’t be a good idea to lose your head. The big artists, big minds, didn’t peter out like average guys. Think of Casals in his nineties, or Bertrand Russell, et cetera. Even Francisco Franco on his deathbed. When they told the old fellow that some General Garcia was there to say good-bye to him, he said, “Why, is Garcia going on a trip?”

Katrina wanted to smile at this but, in the crowding forward of anxious difficulties, smiling was ruled out.

The Lieutenant said, “You can be sure I’ll help all I can.
Anything
_ you need done.” Krieggstein, always tactfully and with respect, hinted that he would like to figure more personally in her life. The humblest of suitors, he was a suitor nonetheless. This, too, took skillful managing, and Trina didn’t always know what to do with him.

She said, “I have to call off a date with the court psychiatrist.”

“A second time?”

“Alfred has dragged Victor into it. He said our relationship was harming the kids. This headshrink was very rude to me. Parents are criminals to these people. He was so rude that Dorothea suspected he was fixed.”

“Sometimes the shrinkers prove their impartiality by being rough on both parties,” said the Lieutenant. “Still, it’s a realistic suspicion. Did you mention to your lawyer what your sister suggested?”

“He wouldn’t answer. Lawyers level only among themselves. If ever.”

“This doctor may be ethical. That’s still another cause of confusion. As a buddy used to say on Guadalcanal, the individual in the woodpile may be Honesty in person—I could take this appointment for you. I have all the right credentials.”

“Oh, please don’t do that!” said Katrina.

“Objectively, I could make a wonderful case for you.”

“If you’d only call his appointment secretary and set a time later in the week.”

Dorothea was forever warning Trina against Krieggstein, whom she had met at one of the gun-display tea parties. “I wouldn’t have him around. I think he’s bananas. Is he really a cop, or some imaginary Kojak?”

“Why shouldn’t he be real?” said Katrina.

“He could be a night watchman. No—if he worked nights he wouldn’t be dating so many lonely middle-aged women. Still taking them to the senior prom. Have you had him checked out? Does he have a permit for those three guns?”

“The guns are nothing.”

“Maybe he’s a transit cop. I’m sure he’s a nutcase.”

Krieggstein was asking Katrina, “Did you tell the psychiatrist that you were writing a book for children?”

“I didn’t. It never occurred to me.”

“You see? You don’t do yourself justice—put your best foot forward.”

“What would really help, Sam, would be to walk the dog. Poor old thing, she hasn’t been out.”

“Oh, of course,” said Krieggstein. “I should have thought ofthat.”

The snow creaked under his weight as he led big Sukie across the wooden porch. The new street lamps were graceful, beautiful, everybody agreed, golden and pure. In summer, however, their light confused the birds, who thought the sun had risen and wore themselves out twittering. In winter the lights seemed to have descended from outer space. Packed into his storm coat, Krieggstein followed the stout, slow dog. Victor called him a “fantast.” Who else would use such a word? “A fantast lacking in invention,” he said. But the Lieutenant was a safe escort. He took Trina to see Yul Brynner at McCormick Place.

The three guns in fact made her feel safe. She was protected. He was her loyal friend.

She found herself affirming this to Dorothea later, after he was gone. She and her sister often had a midnight chat on the telephone.

After her husband died, Dorothea sold the big house in Highland Park and moved into fashionable Oldtown, bringing with her the Chinese bridal bed she and Winslow had bought at Gump’s in San Francisco. The bedroom was small. A single window opened on the back alley. But she wouldn’t part with her Chinese bed, and now she lay with her telephone inside the carved frame. To Katrina all that carving was like the crown of thorns. No wonder Dotey complained of insomnia and migraines. And
she
_ was setting
Katrina
_ straight? “You’re locked into this futureless love affair, isolated, and the only man safe enough to see is this dumdum cop. Now you’re hopping off to Buffalo.”

“Krieggstein is a decent fellow.”

“He’s three-quarters off the screen.”

Poodle-haired, thin, restless, with what Daddy used to call “neurasthenic stick” arms and legs, and large black eyes ready to soar out of her face, Dorothea was a spiky person, a sharp complainer.