The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow (70 page)

The door of the cockpit was open. Beyond the shoulders of the pilots were the lights of the instrument panel. The copilot occasionally glanced back at the passengers. Then he said, “It’s getting a little bumpy. Better fasten those belts.” A patch of rough air? It was far worse than that. The plane was knocked, thumped like a speeding speedboat by the waves. Victor, who had been savagely silent, finally took notice. He reached for Katrina’s hand. The pilots now closed the door to the cockpit. Underfoot, plastic cups, liquor bottles, doughnuts were sliding leftward.

“You realize how tilted we are, Victor?”

“They must be trying to climb out of this turbulence. In a big plane you wouldn’t notice. We’ve both flown through worse weather.”

“I don’t believe that.”

The overhead light became dimmer and dimmer. Various shades of darkness were what you saw in Katrina’s face. On Victor’s cheekbones the red color seemed laid on with a brush. “They couldn’t be having a power failure—what do you think, Victor?”

“I don’t believe that.” As was his custom, he sketched out a summary. It included Katrina and took the widest possible overview. They were in a Cessna because he had accepted a lecture invitation, a trip not strictly necessary and which (for himself he took it calmly) might be fatal. For Katrina it was even less than necessary. For her he was sorry. She was here because of him. But then it came home to him that he didn’t understand a life so different from his own. Why did anybody want to live such a life as she lived? I know why I did mine. Why does she do hers? It was a wicked question, even put comically, for it had its tinge of comedy. But when he had put the question he felt exposed, without any notice at all, to a kind of painful judgment. Supposedly, his life had had real scale, it produced genuine ideas, and these had caused significant intellectual and artistic innovations. All of that was serious. Katrina? Not serious. Divorcing, and then pursuing a prominent figure—the pursuit of passion, high pleasure? Such old stuff—
not
_ serious! Nevertheless, they were together now, both leaning far over in the banking plane; same destiny for them both. He was her reason for being here, and she was (indirectly) his. Vanessa, for female reasons, put Katrina in a rage, but her knees (sexual even now) gripped the violin protectively. He had often said, conceded, that the obscurest and most powerful question, deeper than politics, was that of an understanding between man and woman. And he knew very well that Katrina had formed absurd visions of what she would do with him—take him away from Beila, then serve him for the rest of his life, then achieve unbelievable social elevation, preside over a salon, then become known after his death as a legendary woman of wide knowledge and great subtlety. This mixed Katrina, a flutter of images, both commonplace and magical. Before her this man of words
was,
_ at times, speechless. He doted on her
because! Because she
_ was just within the line separating grace from clumsiness,
because
_ of the sensual effect, on him, of her fingers,
because
_ of the pathos of her knees holding the violin. She held him better than any fiddle. And now will you tell me what
any
_ of this has to do with the
ideas
_ of Victor Wulpy! What had made him really angry with Wrangel was that he had said most ideas were trivial—meaning, principally, that Victor’s own ideas were trivial. And if Victor could not explain Katrina’s sexual drawing power, the Eros that (only just) kept him from disintegrating, Wrangel did have a point, didn’t he? Katrina, as a subject for thought, was the least trivial of all. Of all that might be omitted in thinking, the worst was to omit your own being. You had lost, then. You heard the underground music of your ancestor Hercules growing fainter as he abandoned you. All you were left with was lucidity, final superlucidity, which was delayed until you reached the border of death. Any minute now he might discover what the other side of the border was like.

He had heard planes making stress noises before, but nothing like the crackling of metal about him now, as if the rivets were going to pop like old-time collar buttons. Wings after all were very slight. Even in calm blue daylight, when they quivered, you thought: A pair of ironing boards, that’s all.

“Victor, we’re banking the other way…. I’ve never seen it so bad.”

No comment. No denying the obvious. The plane tumbled like a playing card.

“If we go down…”

“It’ll be my fault, /got you into this.”

There was a moment of level flight. Victor wondered why his heart rate had not increased. He didn’t hold his breath, he was not sweating, when the plane dropped again.

“You don’t even mind too much,” said Katrina.

“Of course I mind.”

“Now listen, Victor. If it’s death any minute, if we’re going to end in the water… I’m going to ask you to tell me something.”

“Don’t start that, Katrina.”

“It’s very simple. I just want you to say it….”

“Come off it, Katrina. With so much to think about, at a time like this, you ask me
that}
_ Love?” Temper made his voice fifelike again. His mouth expanded, the mustache widening also. He was about to speak even more violently.

She cut him off. “Don’t be awful with me now, Victor. If we’re going to crash, why shouldn’t you say it?…”

“You grab this opportunity to twist my arm.”

“If we don’t love each other, what are we doing? How did we get here?”

“We got here because you’re a woman and I’m a man, and that’s how we got here.”

An odd thought he had: Atheists accept extreme unction. The wife urges, and the dying man nods. Why not?

In the next interval they felt the controlled lift of the aircraft. They had found smoother air again and were sailing more calmly. Katrina, still in suspense, began to think about gathering her storm-scattered spirits.

“We may be okay,” said Victor.

She felt that she was less okay than she had ever been. My God! what a lot of ground I lost, she was thinking.

The cockpit door slid back, and the copilot said, “All right? That was a bad patch. But we’re coming up on South Chicago in a minute.” A spatter of words, an incomprehensible crackle, came from the control tower at Midway.

Victor was silent, but he looked good-humored. What a man he was for composure! And he didn’t hold ridiculous things against you. He was really very decent that way. _M*A
S
H,__ for instance. He couldn’t say, “I love you.” It would have been
mauvaise foi.
_ Death staring you in the face was no excuse. She was going back and forth over her words, his words, while the plane made its approach and its landing. She was mulling all of it over even when they whirled off in the helicopter, under the slapping blades. The way girls were indoctrinated: Don’t worry, dear, love will solve your problems. Make yourself deserving, and you’ll be loved. People are crazy, but they’re not
too crazy.
_ So you won’t actually be murdered. You’ll be okay. And with this explanation from a dopey mother (and Mother really was stupid), you went into action.

Victor said to her, “You see how these executives do things?”

“What is it, about six o’clock? I’ll be two hours late back to Evanston.”

“After they drop me, they can run you home. I’ll tell them to. Do me a favor and take the fiddle home with you.”

“All right, I will.” Tomorrow she’d have to bring it to Bein and Fushi.

She didn’t like the look of him at Meigs Field. Another time it might have excited her to land here. The blues of the ground lights were so bright, and the revolving reds so vivid and clear against the snow. But Victor was very slow getting out of the machine, which made her sore at heart. A fellow shook hands with him. That was Mr. Kinglake, who handed them into a big car. They came out between the aquarium and the museum and proceeded, all power and luxury like a funeral livery, to Randolph Street, and north on Michigan Boulevard to the 333 Building. Victor, keeping his own counsel all this while, squeezed her fingers before he got out.

“Tomorrow?” he said.

“Sure, tomorrow. And
merde
_ for luck. Don’t let those people throw you.”

“Not to worry. I’m on top of this,” said Victor.

So he was. He had gotten her back to Chicago, too.

In the cushioned warmth of the limousine, northward bound, Katrina, as she pictured Victor in the swift, rich-men’s gilded elevator rushing upward, upward, felt a clawing at her heart and innards—pity for the man, which he didn’t feel for himself. Really, he did not. Pressed for time. He had too much to think about. All that unfinished mental business to keep him busy forever and ever. He wouldn’t have liked it that she should feel clawed around the heart for his sake.

And then, had it been right to turn on a man of his stature and stick him with a clichщ? But one good thing about Victor was that he was very light on your venial sins, especially the feminine ones. Still, in that case, he might have obliged her, might have spoken the words she wanted to hear. He didn’t need to worry that she might make use of them later, against him.

The lake came very close to shore along the Outer Drive and made mad charges on the pilings and the beaches, rushing horribly white out of the hundreds of miles of darkness they had just crossed in the Cessna.

At Howard Street the white mausoleums and enormous Celtic crosses faced the water. It was a shame to spoil such fine real estate with graves. She disliked this stretch of the road and said to the driver, “This is a favorite speed trap for the cops.” He didn’t wish to answer. “Now please take me to the Orrington,” she said.

She drove her car home from the garage, and had to park in a rut some distance from the curb because her driveway hadn’t been cleared.

The house was dark. Nobody there. Her first fear was that Alfred had come and taken the girls away. She let herself into the warm hallway, pushing the handsome heavy white door against the resistance of a living creature: Sukie, of course, the poor old thing, not too deaf to hear the scratch of Katrina’s key.

Lighted, the living room showed that Soolie and Pearl had been cutting composition paper after school. Probably Ysole had ordered them to do it. Their habit was to force you to give them commands. But where had they gone? Katrina looked in the kitchen for a message. Nothing on the bulletin board. Nothing on the dining-room table. She rang Alfred’s number. If he was there, he didn’t answer. She telephoned Dorothea and after two rings there came Dotey’s little recording, which Katrina had never heard with such dislike—Dotey being playful: “When the vibrations of the gong subside, kindly leave your name and message.” The gong, to go with the bed, was also Chinese. Katrina said, “Dotey, where the hell are my kids?” Immediately she depressed the button, and when the dial tone resumed, she dialed Lieutenant Krieggstein. No one there. She considered next whether to try her lawyer. He sharply disliked being bothered at home. Just now this was not a consideration. What did matter was that she had nothing to tell him except that she feared her children had been abducted by their father while she was gone…. Gone where? Flying with her lover.

Sukie had followed her to the kitchen and pressed against her, needing to be taken out. Absentmindedly tender, Katrina stroked the animal’s black neck. The fur was thick, but it was flimsy to the touch. Might as well walk her while 1 think what to do, Katrina decided, and clipped the leash to Sukie’s collar. All the neighbors had been shoveled out; only the Goliger house was still under snow. The dog relieved herself at once. Obviously, no one had thought of her all day. Katrina went to the corner in her slow, hip-rich gait, the hat pushed back from her forehead—so very tired she hardly noticed the cold. Her face was aching with the strains of the day. Had Ysole taken the girls home with her? To the church bingo? That was the least likely conjecture of all.

Turning back from the corner, she saw a car parking in front of her house. Because its lights shone into her eyes, she couldn’t identify it. She began trotting in her ostrich-skin boots, pulling the dog by the leash, saying, “Come on, girl. Come on.”

The children were being lifted over the snow heaps and set down on the sidewalk. She recognized Krieggstein by his fedora. Also his storm coat, bulky and hampering, and his movements.

“Where did you go? Where have you been? There was no message.”

“I took the children to dinner.”

“Soolie. Pearl…. What kind of day did you have?” said Katrina.

They answered nothing at all, but Krieggstein said, “We had a great outing at Burger King. They don’t fry like the other fast-food joints, they grill their meat. Then we stopped at Baskin-Robbins and bought a quart of chocolate marshmallow mousse. Good stuff.”

“Did you just walk in and find them?”

“No, I took over from your Negro woman. You called her, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.”

“I arranged to come by,” said Krieggstein. “Didn’t she tell you that?”

“She let me think she was taking off at five o’clock.”

“Her idea of a joke,” said Krieggstein. “I asked her to tell you that I’d be here.”

“Oh, thank you, Sam.”

In the hallway he helped her off with her coat. They removed it from her weary body.

Katrina’s mind at that moment made an important connection. Why should Victor declare, “I love you”? For her sake, he went on the road. Would he have made such a journey for any other reason? If he was like FDR, whose death Stalin had hastened by forcing him to come to Yalta, to Teheran, why would a woman who claimed to love him impose such hardships on him?

“Whose violin is this?” said Krieggstein. “I never saw a fiddle here before.”

He was taking off his storm coat, pulling down his gun-bulging jacket, smoothing his parboiled face, rubbing his frost-red eyes.

She had been right when she had said in the Cessna, “You don’t even mind too much.” Victor had denied it. But he could do nothing else. Her guess was that he longed to be dying. Dying would illuminate. There were ideas closely associated with dying which only dying could reveal. He probably felt that he had postponed too long; although he loved her, he couldn’t postpone much longer.