Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow Read Free Book Online Page B

hours from Washington by train. He could shoot right in. He confided that Stevenson had already been in touch with him and that a meeting was being arranged. Humboldt asked me to help him prepare notes for this conversation, and until three in the morning we discussed this. Then I went to my room and left Humboldt pouring himself a last cup of gin.
      Next day he was still going strong. It made me giddy to hear so much subtle analysis and to have so much world history poured over my head at breakfast. He hadn’t slept at all.
      To calm himself he took a run. With slovenly shoes he pounded the gravel. Waist-high in dust, his arms bunched against his chest, he descended the road. He seemed to sink down into it under the sumacs and small oaks, between banks of brittle crab grass, thistle, milkweed, puffballs. Burrs were sticking to his pants when he returned. For running, too, he had a text. When Jonathan Swift was secretary to Sir Wm. Temple he ran miles every day to blow off steam. Thoughts too rich, emotions too dense, dark expressive needs? You could do some roadwork. That way, you sweated out the gin, too.
      He took me for a stroll and the cats accompanied us through the dead leaves and brush. They practiced pouncing. They attacked ground gossamers. With grenadier tails they bounded to sharpen their claws on trees. Humboldt was extremely fond of them. The morning air was infused with something very nice. Humboldt went in and shaved and then we drove in the fateful Buick to Princeton.
      My job was in the bag. We met Sewell for lunch—a muttering subtle drunken backward-leaning hollow-faced man. He had little to say to me. At the French restaurant he wanted to gossip with Humboldt about New York and Cambridge. Sewell, a cosmopolitan if there ever was one (in his own mind), had never gone abroad before. Humboldt didn’t know Europe either. “If you’d like to go, old friend,” said Sewell, “we could arrange that.”
      “I don’t feel quite ready,” said Humboldt. He was afraid that he would be kidnaped by former Nazis or by GPU agents.
      And as Humboldt walked me to the train, he said, “I told you it was just a formality, this interview. We’ve known each other for years, and we’ve written about each other, Sewell and I. But there are no hard feelings at all. Only I wonder why Damascus wants to know about Henry James. Well, Charlie, it should be a cheerful season for us. And if I should have to go to Washington, I know I can count on you to run things here.”
      “Damascus!” I said. “Among those Arabs he’ll be the Sheik of Apathy.”
      Pale Humboldt opened his mouth. Through small teeth he gave his near-silent laugh.
      At that time I was an apprentice and a bit player and Sewell had treated me like one. He had seen, I expect, a soft-fibered young man, handsome enough but slack, with large sleepy-looking eyes, a bit overweight, and with a certain reluctance (it showed in his glance) to become enthusiastic about other people’s enterprises. That he failed to appreciate me made me sore. But such vexatious lions always filled me with energy as well. And if I later became such a formidable mass of credentials it was because I put such slights to good use. I avenged myself by making progress. So I owed Sewell quite a lot and it was ungrateful of me, years later when I read in the Chicago paper that he was dead, to say, as I sipped my whisky, what I occasionally did say at such moments —death is good for some people. I remembered then the wisecrack I had made to Humboldt as we walked to the Princeton Dinkey connecting with the Junction. People die and the stinging things I said about them come winging back to attach themselves to me. What about this apathy? Paul of Tarsus woke up on the road to Damascus but Sewell of Princeton would sleep even deeper there. Such was my wicked meaning. I confess I am sorry now that I had said such a thing. I should add, about that interview, that it