The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow Part 24

At first it was little more than the fooling of a visiting fireman, an elderly, somewhat spoiled celebrity. But Wulpy was too big a man for crotchets. He was a disciplined intellectual. He stood for something. At the age of seventy, he had arranged his ideas in well-nigh final order: none of the weakness, none of the drift that made supposedly educated people contemptible. How can you call yourself a modern thinker if you lack the realism to identify a weak marriage quickly, if you don't know what hypocrisy is, if you haven't come to terms with lying-if, in certain connections, people can still say about you, "He's a sweetheart!"? n.o.body would dream of calling Victor "a sweetheart." Wickedness? No, well-seasoned judgment. But whatever his first intentions might have been, the affair became permanent. And how do you a.s.sess a woman who knows how to bind such a wizard to her? She's got to be more than a dumpy suburbanite s.e.x-pot with clumsy ankles. And this is something more than the cruel absurdity, the decline and erotic enslavement, of a distinguished man grown (how suddenly!) old.

The divorce was ugly. Goliger was angry, vengeful. When he moved, he stripped the house, taking away his Oriental treasures, the jade collection, the crystal, the hangings, the painted gilded elephants, the bone china, even some of the valuable jewelry he had given her and which she hadn't had the foresight to put in the bank. He was determined to evict her from the house, too, a fine old house. He could do that if he obtained custody of the kids. The kids took little notice of the disappearance of the Indian and Venetian objects, although Trina's lawyer argued in court that they were disoriented. Dorothea said about her nieces, "I'll be interested to find out what gives with those two mysterious characters. As for Alfred, this is all-out war." She thought that Katrina was too absentminded to be a warrior. "Are you taking notice, or not?"

"Of course I'm taking notice. He was always flying to an auction. Never at home. What did he_ do, away in India?"

Katrina was still at the dinner table when Victor's call came. Her guest was Lieutenant Krieggstein, a member of the police force. He arrived late, because of the fierce weather, and told a story about skidding into a snowdrift and waiting for a tow truck. He had almost lost his voice and said it would take him an hour to thaw. A friend of the family, he needed no permission to bring up wood from the cellar and build a fire. The house had been built in the best age of Chicago architecture (made like a Stradivarius, said Krieggstein), and the curved tiles of the fireplace ("the old craftsmanship!") were kingfisher blue.

"I've seen rough weather before, but this beats everything," he said, and he asked for Red Devil sauce to sprinkle on his curry and drank vodka from a beer mug. His face still burned with the frost, and his eyes went on watering at the table. He said, "Oh, what a luxury that fire is on my back."

"I hope it doesn't set off your ammunition."

The Lieutenant carried at least three guns. Were all plainclothes ("soft-clothes") men armed to the teeth, or did he have more weapons because he was a little guy? He set himself up as gracious but formidable. Just challenge him and you'd see fatal action. Victor said about him that he was just this side of sanity but was always crossing the line. "A lone cowhand on both sides of the Rio Grande simultaneously." On the whole, he took an indulgent view of Krieggstein.

It was nearly midnight in Buffalo. Katrina hadn't expected Victor to call just yet. Thoroughly familiar with his ways, Katrina knew that her old giant must have had a disappointing evening, had probably thrown himself disgusted on the bed in the Hilton, more than half his clothing on the floor and a pint of Black Label nearby to "keep the auxiliary engines going." The trip was harder than he was willing to admit. Beila, his wife, had advised him not to take it, but her opinions didn't count. A subordinate plant manager didn't tell the chairman of the board what to do. He was off to see Katrina. Lecturing, of course, was his pretext. "I promised those guys," he said. Not entirely a pretext, however. Greatly in demand, he got high fees. Tonight he had spoken at the state university, and tomorrow he was speaking to a group of executives in Chicago. Buffalo was a combined operation. The Wulpys' youngest daughter, Vanessa, who was an undergraduate there, was having problems. For Victor, family problems could never be what they were for other people-he wouldn't have_ them. Vanessa was being provocative and he was irritated.

Well, when the phone rang, Katrina said, "There's Victor. A little early. This may take a while." With Krieggstein you needn't stand on ceremony. Dinner had ended, and if she was too long on the phone he could let himself out. A large heavy beauty, shapely (only just within the limits), Katrina left the dining room as rapidly as her style of movement allowed. She released the catch of the swinging kitchen door. Of course Krieggstein meant to stay and to eavesdrop. Her affair was no secret and he considered himself her confidant. He had every qualification for this: he was a cop, and cops saw it all; he was a Pacific-war hero; and he was her scout's-honor friend. Listening, he turned his thick parboiled face to the fire, made his plump legs comfortable, crossed his short arms over his cardigan.

"How has it been, Victor?" said Katrina. How tired winter travel had made him was what she had to determine from the pitch of his voice and his choice of words. This must have been an exceptionally hard trip. It was strenuous labor for a man of his size, and with a surgically fused knee, to pole his way upon a walking stick against the human tides of airports. Wearing his Greek sea captain's cap, he was all the more conspicuous. He made his way everywhere with a look of willing acceptance and wit. He was on good terms with his handicaps (a lifelong, daily familiarity with pain) and did not complain about going it alone. Other famous old men had helpers. She had heard that Henry Moore kept no fewer than six a.s.sistants. Victor had n.o.body. His life had a.s.sumed a crazy intensity that could not be shared. Secrecy was necessary, obviously. At the heart of so much that was obvious was an unyielding mystery: Why did_ he? Katrina's answer was Love. Victor wouldn't say, declined to give an answer. Perhaps he hadn't yet found the core of the question.

Katrina thought him mysterious-looking, too. Beneath the bill of the Greek or Lenin-style cap there was a sort of millipede tangle about the eyes. His eyes were long, extending curiously into the temples. His cheeks were as red in sickness as in health; he was almost never pale. He carried himself with admirable, nonposturing, tilted grace, big but without heaviness. Not a bulky figure. He had style. You could, if you liked, call him an old bohemian, but such cla.s.sifications did not take you far. No category could hold Victor.

The traveling-celebrity bit was very tiring. You flew in and you were met at the airport by people you didn't know and who put you under a strain because they wanted to be memorable individually, catch your attention, ingratiate themselves, provoke, flatter-it all came to the same thing. Driving from the airport, you were locked in a car with them for nearly an hour. Then there were drinks-a c.o.c.ktail hubbub. After four or five martinis you went in to dinner and were seated between two women, not always attractive. You had to remember their names, make conversation, give them equal time. You might as well be running for office, you had to shake so many hands. You ate your prime rib and drank wine, and before you had unfolded your speech on the lectern, you were already tuckered out. You shouldn't fight all this, said Victor; to fight it only tired you more. But normally Victor thrived on noise, drink, and the conversation of strangers. He had so much to say that he overwhelmed everybody who approached him. In the full blast of a c.o.c.ktail party he was able to hear everything and to make himself heard; his tenor voice was positively fifelike when he made an important point, and he was superarticulate.

If after his lecture a good discussion developed, he'd be up half the night drinking and talking. That was what he loved, and to be abed before midnight was a defeat. So he was either uncharacteristically fatigued or the evening had been a drag. Stupid things must have been said to him. And here he was, a man who had a.s.sociated with Andr Breton, Duchamp, the stars of his generation, weary to the bone, in frozen Buffalo (you could picture Niagara Falls more than half iced over), checking in with a girlfriend in Evanston, Illinois. Add to the list of bad circ.u.mstances his detestation of empty hours in hotel rooms. Add also that he had probably taken off his pants, as she had seen him do in this mood, and thrown them at the wall, plus his big shoes, and his shirt made into a ball. He had his dudgeons, especially when there hadn't been a single sign of intelligence or entertainment. Now for comfort (or was it out of irritation) he telephoned Katrina. Most likely he had had a couple of drinks, lying naked, pa.s.sing his hand over the hair of his chest, which sometimes seemed to soothe him. Except for his socks, he would then resemble the old men that Pica.s.so had put into his late erotic engravings. Victor himself had written about the painter-and-model series done at Mougins in 1968, ferocious scribbles of satyr artists and wide-open odalisques. Through peepholes aged wrinkled kings spied on gigantic copulations. (Victor was by turns the painter-partner and the aged king.) Katrina's pretty lopsidedness might have suited Pica.s.so's taste. (Victor, by the way, was no great admirer of Pica.s.so.) "So Buffalo wasn't a success?"

"Buffalo! h.e.l.l, I can't see any reason why it exists."

"But you said you had to stop to see Vanessa."

"That's another ordeal I can do without. We're having breakfast at seven."

"And your lecture?"

"I read them my paper on Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire._ I thought, for a university crowd..."

"Well, tomorrow will be more important, more interesting," said Katrina.

Victor had been invited to address the Executives a.s.sociation, an organization of bankers, economists, former presidential advisers, National Security Council types. Victor a.s.sured her that this was a far more important outfit than the overpublicized Trilateral Commission, which, he said, was a front organization using ex-presidents and other exploded stars to divert attention from real operations. The guys who were bringing him to Chicago wanted him to talk about "Culture and Politics, East and West." Much they cared about art and culture, said Victor. But they sensed that it had to be dealt with; challenging powers were ascribed to it, nothing immediate or worrisome, but one ought to know what intellectuals were up to. "They've listened to professors and other pseudoexperts," said Victor, "and maybe they believe they should send for an old Jewish character. Pay him his price and he'll tell you without fakery what it's all about." The power of big-shot executives wouldn't overawe him. Those people, he said, were made of Styrofoam. He was gratified nevertheless. They had asked for the best, and that was himself-a realistic judgment, and virtually free from vanity. Katrina estimated that he would pick up a ten-thousand-dollar fee. "I don't expect the kind of dough that Kissinger gets, or Haig, although I'll give better value," he told her. He didn't mention a figure, though. Dotey, no bad observer, said that he'd talk freely about anything in the world but money-his_ money.

Dotey's observations, however, were commonplace. She spoke with what Katrina had learned to call ressentiment_-from behind a screen of grievances. What could a person like Dotey understand about a man like Victor, whom she called "that gimpy giant"? What if this giant should have been in his time one of the handsomest men ever made? What if he should still have exquisite toes and fingers; a silken s.c.r.o.t.u.m that he might even now (as he held the phone) be touching, leading out the longest hairs-his unconscious habit when he lay in bed? What, moreover, if he should be a mine of knowledge, a treasury of insights in all matters concerning the real needs and interests of modern human beings? Could a Dorothea evaluate the release_ offered to a woman by such an extraordinary person, the independence? Could she feel what it meant to be free from so much, junk?_ "By the way, Victor," said Katrina. "Do you remember the notes you dictated over the phone for use, maybe, tomorrow? I typed them up for you. If you need them, I'll have them with me when I meet you at O'Hare in the morning."

"I've had a different thought," said Victor. "How would it be if you were to fly here?"

"Me? Fly to Buffalo?"

'That's right. You join me, and we'll go on to Chicago together."

Immediately all of Katrina's warmest expectations were reversed, and up from the bottom there seeped instead every kind of dreariness imaginable. While Victor was in the air in the morning, she wouldn't be preparing, treating herself to a long bath, then putting on her pine-green knitted Vivanti suit and applying the Cabochard, his favorite perfume. She would be up until two A. M., improvising, trying to make arrangements, canceling her appointment downtown, setting her clock for five A. M. She hated to get up while it was still night.

There must be a sensible explanation for this, but Katrina couldn't bring herself to ask what it was-like "What's wrong? Are you sick?" She had unbearable questions to put to herself, too: Will I have to take him to the hospital?... Why me? His daughter is there. Does he need emergency surgery? Back to all the horrible stuff that had happened at Ma.s.s. General? A love that began with pa.s.sionate embraces ending with barium X rays, heavy drugs, bad smells? The grim wife coming back to take control?

Don't go so fast, Katrina checked herself. She regrouped and reentered her feelings at a different place. He was completely by himself and was afraid that he might start to crumble in his plane seat: a man like Victor, who was as close to being a prince as you could be (in what he described as "this bungled age"), such a man having to telephone a girl-and to Victor, when you came right down to it, she was a_ girl, one of many (although she was pretty sure she had beaten the rest of the field). He had to appeal to a girl ("I've had a different thought") and expose his weakness to her.

What was necessary now was to speak as usual, so that when he said, "I had the travel desk make a reservation for you, if you want to use it-are you there?" she answered, "Let me find a pen that writes." A perfectly good pen hung on a string. What she needed was to collect herself while she thought of an alternative. She wasn't clever enough to come up with anything, so she began to print out the numbers he gave her. Heavyhearted? Of course she was. She was forced to consider her position from a "worst case" point of view. A North Sh.o.r.e mother of two, in a bad, a deteriorating marriage, had begun to be available s.e.xually to visitors. Selectively. It was true that a couple of wild mistakes had occurred. But then a G.o.dsend, Victor, turned up.

In long discussions with her a.n.a.lyst (whom she no longer needed), she had learned how central her father was in all this, in the formation or deformation of her character. Until she was ten years old she had known nothing but kindness from her daddy. Then, with the first hints of p.u.b.erty, her troubles began. Exasperated with her, he said she was putting on a guinea-pig look. He called her a con artist. She was doing the farmer's-daughter-traveling-salesman bit. "That puzzled expression, as if you can't remember whether a dozen is eleven or thirteen. And what do you suppose happens with the thirteenth egg, hey? Pretty soon you'll let a stranger lead you into the broom closet and take off your panties." Well! Thank you, Daddy, for all the suggestions you planted in a child's mind. Predictably she began to be sly and steal pleasure, and she did play the farmer's daughter, adapting and modifying until she became the mature Katrina. In the end (a blessed miracle) it worked out for the best, for the result was just what had attracted Victor-an avant-garde personality who happened to be crazy about just this erotic mixture. Petty bourgeois s.e.xuality, and retrograde petty bourgeois at that, happened to turn Victor on. So here was this suburban broad, the clich of her father's loaded forebodings: call her what you liked-voluptuary, luxurious beauty, confused s.e.xpot, carnal idiot with piano legs, her looks (mouth half open or half shut) meaning everything or nothing. Just this grace-in-clumsiness was the aphrodisiac of one of the intellectual captains of the modern world. She dismissed the suggestion (Dotey's suggestion) that it was his decline that had brought her into his life, that she appeared when he was old, failing, in a state of desperation or erotic bondage. And it was true that any day now the earth would open underfoot and he'd be gone.

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 cla.s.s. n.o.body 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 b.u.m 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. n.o.body 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 ch.o.r.e 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 s.e.x slang going back to the sixties. Hints from the past wouldn't faze him-what did he care about her college s.e.x 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*ASH.__ "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 n.o.body 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, supercla.s.sified. "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 a.s.shole 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 Plat.i.tudes."

"What do you mean by that, Victor?"

"I'm thinking first of all about the ladies he takes out, the divorces 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 Guadalca.n.a.l, 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 s.p.a.ce. 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.

"The children will go to school as usual with the older kid next door. Ysole comes at ten."

"You have to rush away and tumble through the clouds because the great man says you must. You claim you have no choice, but I think you like it. You remind me of that woman from Sunday school-'her foot abides not in her house.' A year's study in France was a wonderful privilege for you and me after graduation, but it was damaging, too, if you ask me. Dad was getting rid of some of the money he raked in through the tax a.s.sessor's office, and it was nicer to make Parisian demoiselles of us than to launder his dough in the usual ways. He was showing off. We were lost in Paris. n.o.body to pay us any attention. Today I could really use those dollars."

O Dotey! bragging and deploring in the same breath. Dotey's husband had owned a small plastics factory. It was already going under when he died. So now she had to hustle plastic products. Her son was working for an MBA but not at a first-rate school. A woman in her situation needed a good address, and the rent she paid in Oldtown was outrageous. "For this kind of dough they could exterminate the rats. But I signed a two-year lease, and the landlord laughs at me." Forced into the business world, she sounded more and more like Father. But she hated the hustling. It was death to Dorothea to have to go anywhere, to have to do anything. To get out of bed in the morning was more than she could bear. Filtering her coffee, she cursed blindly, the soaring eyes filled with rage when the kettle whistled. To drag the comb through her hair she had to muster all her strength. As she herself said, "Like the lady in Racine: _'Tout me nuit, et conspire me nuire.'"__ (Taking a Chicago dig at her French education, a French dig at Chicago.) "Only Phdre is you, baby, sick with love."