Mr. Sammler Planet Read online

  Meantime too there was in Sammler's consciousness a red flush. Possibly due to Elya Gruner's condition. This assumed a curious form, that of a vast crimson envelope, a sky-filling silk fabric, the flap fastened by a black button. He asked himself whether this might not be what mystics meant by seeing a mandala, and believed the suggestion might have been implanted by association with Govinda, an Asiatic. But he himself, a Jew, no matter how Britannicized or Americanized, was also an Asian. The last time he was in Israel, and that was very recent, he had wondered how European, after all, Jews were. The crisis he witnessed there had brought out a certain deeper Orientalism. Even in German and Dutch Jewry, he thought. As for the black button, was it an after-image of the white moon?

  Through Fifteenth Street ran a warm spring current. Lilacs and sewage. There were as yet no lilacs, but an element of the savage gas was velvety and sweet, reminiscent of blooming lilac. All about was a softness of perhaps dissolved soot, or of air passed through many human breasts, or metabolized in multitudinous brains, or released from as many intestines, and it got to one-oh, deeply, too! Now and then there came an appreciative or fanciful pleasure, apparently inconsequent, suggested by the ruddy dun of sandstone, by cool corners of the warmth. Bliss from his surroundings! For a certain period Mr. Sammler had resisted such physical impressions-being wooed almost comically by momentary and fortuitous sweetness. For quite a long time he had felt that he was not necessarily human. Had no great use, during that time, for most creatures. Very little interest in himself. Cold even to the thought of recovery. What was there to recover? Little regard for earlier forms of himself. Disaffected. His judgment almost blank. But then, ten or twelve years after the war, he became aware that this too was changing. In the human setting, along with everyone else, among particulars of ordinary life he was human-and, in short, creatureliness crept in again. Its low tricks, its doggish hind- sniffing charm. So that now, really, Sammler didn't know how to take himself. He wanted, with God, to be free from the bondage of the ordinary and the finite. A soul released from Nature, from impressions, and from everyday life. For this to happen God Himself must be waiting, surely. And a man who has been killed and buried should have no other interest. He should be perfectly disinterested. Eckhardt said in so many words that God loved disinterested purity and unity. God Himself was drawn toward the disinterested soul. What besides the spirit should a man care for who has come back from the grave? However, and mysteriously enough, it happened, as Sammler observed, that one was always, and so powerfully, so persuasively, drawn back to human conditions. So that these flecks within one's substance would always stipple with their reflections all that a man turns toward, all that flows about him. The shadow of his nerves would always cast stripes, like trees on grass, like water over sand, the light-made network. It was a second encounter of the disinterested spirit with fated biological necessities, a return match with the persistent creature.

  Therefore, walking toward the BMT, Union Square Station, one hears Feffer explain why it is necessary to purchase a Diesel locomotive. A beautiful stroke of business. So apt! So congruent with spring, death, Oriental mandalas, sewer gas edged with opiate lilac sweetness. Bliss from bricks, from the sky! Bliss and mystic joy!

  Mr. Artur Sammler, confidant of New York eccentrics; curate of wild men and progenitor of a wild woman; registrar of madness. Once take a stand, once draw a baseline, and contraries will assail you. Declare for normalcy, and you will be stormed by aberrancies. All postures are mocked by their opposites. This is what happens when the individual begins to be drawn back from disinterestedness to creaturely conditions. Portions or aspects of his earlier self revive. The former character asserts itself, and sometimes disagreeably, weakly, disgracefully. It was the earlier Sammler, the Sammler of London and Cracow, who had gotten off the bus at Columbus Circle foolishly eager to catch sight of a black criminal. He now had to avoid the bus, dreading another encounter. He had been warned, positively instructed, to appear no more.

  "Just a minute, now," said Feffer. "I know you hate subways. Isn't there a switch here? I thought you were positively claustrophobic."

  Feffer was extremely intelligent. He had been admitted to Columbia without a high-school certificate by obtaining unheard-of marks in the entrance examinations. He was sly, shrewd, meddling, as well as fresh, charming and vigorous. In his eyes a strangely barbed look appeared, a kind of hooking intensity. Sammler, the earlier Sammler, had had little power to resist such looks.

  "It isn't because of the crook you saw on the bus, is it?"

  "Who told you about him?"

  "Your niece, Mrs. Arkin, did. I mentioned that before the lecture."

  "So you did. And she told you, eh?"

  "Yes, about the fancy dress, the Dior accessories, and all of that. What a terrific gas! So you're afraid of him. Why? Has he spotted you?"

  "Something like that."

  "Did he speak?"

  "Not a word."

  "There's something going on, Mr. Sammler. I think you'd better tell me about it. You may not understand the New York idiom. You may be in danger. You should tell a younger person."

  "You confuse me, Feffer. There are moments when I am slightly not myself under your influence. I get muddled. You're very noisy, very turbulent."

  "The man has done something to you. I just know it What's he done? He may hurt you. You may be in trouble, and you shouldn't keep it to yourself. You're wise, but not hip, and this cat, Mr. Sammler, sounds like a real tiger. You've seen him in action?"

  "Yes."

  "And he's seen you looking?"

  "That, too."

  "That's serious. Now what has he done to scare you off the bus? You told the cops."

  "I tried to. Come, Feffer, you're involving me in things I don't like."

  "It's being driven from the bus that should bother you, interference with your customs, your habits, and so on. Are you afraid of him?"

  "Well, I was aroused. My heart did beat awfully hard. The mind is so odd. Objectively I have little use for such experiences, but there is such an absurd craving for actions that connect with other actions, for coherency, for forms, for mysteries or fables. I may have thought that I had no more ordinary human curiosity left, but I was surprisingly wrong. And I don't like it. I don't like any of it."

  "When he saw you, did he chase you?" said Feffer.

  "He came after me, yes. Now let's drop the matter."

  Feffer was unable to do that. His face was flaming. Within the old-fashioned frame of the beard, it prickled with wild modern passions. "He followed you but he didn't say anything? He must have gotten his message through, though. What did he do? He threatened you. Did he pull a switchblade on you?"

  "No."

  "A gun? Didn't he point a gun at you?"

  "No gun."

  Had Sammler been in good balance he would have been able to resist Feffer. But his balance was not good. Descending to the subway was a trial. The grave, Elya, Death, entombment, the Mezviuski vault.

  "But he found out where you live?" said Feffer.

  "Yes, Feffer, he tracked me. He must have had an eye on me for some time. He followed me into my lobby."

  "But what did he do, Mr. Sammler! For God's sake, why won't you say!"

  "What is there to say? It is ludicrous. It is not worth discussing. Simply nonsensical."

  "Nonsensical? Are you sure it's nonsense? You'd better let a younger person judge. A different generation. A different…"

  "Well, perhaps you have a natural claim to these bizarre nonsensical things. Such a hungry curiosity about them. I'll make it brief. The man exhibited himself to me."

  "He didn't! That's just wild! To you? That's far out! Did he corner you?"

  "Yes."

  "In your own lobby, he pulled his thing on you? He flashed it?"

  Sammler would say no more about it.

  "Stupendous!" said Feffer. "What the devil was it like?" He was also laughing. How marvelous, what a… a sudden glory. And If Samml
er was any interpreter of laughter, Feffer was dying to see this phenomenon. To protect Sammler, yes. To guide him through the dangers of New York, yes. But to see, to meddle, to intrude, that was Lionel all over. Had to have a piece of the action-Sammler believed that was the current expression. "He yanked out his cock? Didn't say a word? Just flashed? Wow, Mr. Sammler! What the hell did he mean? How big a thing was it? You didn't say. I can imagine. It could be straight out of Finnegans Wake. 'Everyone must bare his crotch!' And he operates between Columbus Circle and Seventy- second Street in the rush hours? Well, what does one do about this? New York is really a gas city. And all those guys running for mayor like a bunch of lunatics. And Lindsay, just imagine Lindsay campaigning on his record. His record, no less, when they can't even send a cop to arrest a bandit. And the other guys with their record! Mr. Sammler, I know a guy at NBC television who has a talk show. It's really Fanny's husband. We ought to put you on that to discuss all this."

  "Oh, come, Feffer."

  "It would do everyone a hell of a lot of good to hear you. I know, I know, it's as the man said, it's not the mind of the viewer you'll reach but his backsides. You'll tickle his backsides with beautiful feathers of deep thought."

  "Absolutely."

  "And yet, Mr. Sammler, to have influence and power. Or just confronting the phony with the real thing. You should denounce New York. You should speak like a prophet, like from another world. TV should be used. Used by us-and you might like coming out of isolation."

  "We did that at Columbia yesterday, Feffer. I came out of isolation. You've already turned me into a performer."

  "I'm thinking only of the good you could do."

  "You're thinking of the arrangements you could promote, how you could get a finder's fee from Fanny's husband, and how close you could bring together the TV and that person's genitalia." Mr. Sammler was intensely smiling. Another moment, and he would actually have been laughing, drawn out of his preoccupations.

  "Very well," said Feffer. "I don't have the same ideals of privacy as you. I'm willing to drop it."

  "By all means."

  "I'll ride uptown on the bus with you."

  "No, thanks."

  "To make sure no one bothers you."

  "What you want is to have me point him out."

  "Really, I know how you dislike, you hate, subways."

  "It's quite all right."

  "Of course you've stirred up my curiosity, why should I deny it? I know you finally told me about him to get rid of me, and here I am pestering you still. You say he wears a camel's-hair coat?"

  "I thought it was that."

  "A homburg? Dior shades?"

  "Homburg I'm certain of. The Dior is a guess."

  "You're a good observer, I take your word for it. A mustache, also, fancy shirts and psychedelic neckties. He's a prince of some kind, or thinks he is."

  "Yes," said Sammler. "A certain majesty is assumed."

  "I have an idea about him."

  "Let him be. Leave him alone, I advise you."

  "I wouldn't actually tangle with him. I'd never do that. He wouldn't even suspect I was there. But cameras can be introduced anywhere. They even have photos of the child in the womb. Somehow they got a camera in. I just acquired a new Minox which is as small as a cigarette lighter."

  "Don't be stupid, Lionel."

  "He'd never know. I assure you. Wouldn't be aware. Pictures could be valuable. Catch a criminal, sell the story to Look. Do a job on the police at the same time, and on Lindsay, who has no business being mayor while running for president. A triple killing."

  The low wall of Union Square, the raised green platform of lawn parted by dry gray pathways, and the fast traffic circling-the foul, reckless, stinking automobiles. Sammmler did not need Feffer's hand on his elbow. He drew away.

  "I go down here."

  "This time of day you can't get a taxi. The shift is changing. I'll ride uptown with you."

  Sammler, still holding hat and notebook by his side, the umbrella hooked on his wrist, pursued his way in the half- light of the corridors, in the smoke of grilled sausages. The quick turnstiles metered the tokens with a noise of ratchets. The bison-rumble of trains. Sammler wanted to ride alone. Feffer could not let him go. Feffer could not be quiet. His need was to be perpetually arresting, radiant with fresh interest. And, of course, because he respected Sammler so much he had to make tests or insert small notes or hints of disrespect, a little here, a bit there, liberties, familiarities, insinuations, exploring for spoilage. My dear fellow, why look k so hard? There is corruption in many places. I could show you.

  "This Fanny-the girl who guided you-she's very willing," said Feffer.

  He ran on. "Nowadays girls are. Still somewhat shy. Not really so marvelous in the sack. In spite of big tits. Married of course. The husband works at night. He bosses the talk show I referred to…" And on: "I like companionship. We spend a lot of time together. Then when the insurance adjuster came…"

  "What adjuster was that?" said Sammler.

  "I put in a claim on a piece of luggage damaged at the airport. The fellow came over when Fanny was visiting me, and he fell in love with her-bang! Like that. He was a swinger, too, with chimpanzee teeth. Said he was a dropout from the Harvard School of Business. A real yellow face, and sweating. Awful. He looked like an oil filter that should have been changed five thousand miles ago."

  "Ah, did he?"

  "So I encouraged his interest in Fanny. That was good for my claim. Would I give him her phone number? I certainly did."

  "With her permission?"

  "I didn't think she'd mind. Then he phoned and said, 'This is Gus, honey. Meet me for a drink.' But her husband had picked up the phone. He works nights. And next time Gus came to see me I said, 'Boy, Gus, her husband is really sore. Stay away. He's tough, too.' Then Gus said…"

  Was there no Eighteenth Street station? There was Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth. At Forty-second you changed to the IRT.

  "Gus said, 'What am I afraid of? Look, I carry a gun.' He pulled out a pistol. I was flabbergasted. But it wasn't much of a gun either. I said, 'A thing like that? You couldn't shoot through a telephone book with it.' And before I knew it, he had the telephone book on a music stand and was aiming at it. That crazy sonofabitch. He was only five feet from it, and he fired. I never heard such a roar. The whole building heard. But I was right. The bullet went in only two inches. Couldn't pierce the Manhattan directory."

  "Yes, a poor weapon."

  "You know something about weapons?"

  "Something."

  "Well, you could just about wound a guy with that gun. Probably wouldn't kill unless you shot him in the head at short range. What a lot of lunatics around."

  "Quite so."

  "But I'm getting about two hundred bucks from insurance, which is more than the suitcase is worth, a piece of trash."

  "Yes, clever business."

  "Next day Gus came again and wanted me to write a recommendation for him."

  "To whom?"

  "To his superior in the adjuster's office."

  At Ninety-sixth Street they ascended together into the full blast of Broadway. Feffer accompanied Sammler to his door.

  "If you need assistance, Mr. Sammler…"

  "I won't invite you up, Lionel. The fact is I'm feeling tired."

  "It's spring. I mean it's the temperature change," said Feffer.

  "Even youth is susceptible to that."

  Mr. Sammler in the elevator, extracting the Yale key from his change purse. He pushed into the foyer. In honor of spring, Margotte had set forsythia in Mason jars. One jar was overturned at once. Sammler brought a roll of paper towels from the kitchen, ascertaining as he went through the house that his niece had gone out. Soaking up the spilt water, watching the absorbent paper darken, he then lifted the telephone onto the maple arm of the sofa, sat on the bandanna covers, and dialed Shula. No reply. Perhaps she had turned off her telephone. Sammler had not seen her for several days. Now a thief, she very
likely was in hiding. If Eisen was actually in New York, she had an added reason for locking herself away. Sammler could not imagine, however, that Eisen would actually want to molest her. He had other irons in the fire, he had other fish to fry (how fond old Sammler was of such expressions!).

  Carrying the paper towels, the sopping and the dry, back to the kitchen, Sammler cut himself several slices of salami with the large chef's knife (Margotte seemed to have no small knives, she pared onions, even, with these great blades). He made a sandwich. Colman's English Mustard, still a favorite. Margotte's low-calorie cranberry juice. Unable to find clean glasses, he sipped from a paper cup. The feel of wax was disagreeable but he was on his way out of the house and had no time for washing and drying. He went at once across Broadway to Shula's apartment. He rang, he rapped, he raised his voice and said, "Shula, it's Father. Open. Shula?" wrote a note and slipped it under the door. "Call me at once." Then, descending in the black elevator (how rusty and black it was!), he looked into her mailbox, which she never locked. It was full, and he sorted through the mail. Throwaway stuff. Personal letters, none. So she was evidently away, hadn't taken out her letters. Maybe she had caught a train to New Rochelle. She had a key to the Gruner house. Sammler had refused the offer of a key to her apartment. He didn't want to walk in when she was with a lover. Such a lover as she would have was surely to be dreaded. Undoubtedly she had one now and then. Perhaps for her complexion, when it was bad. He once had heard a woman say this. And Shula was proud of her clear skin. How could you know what people-individuals-were really doing!