Read Online Herzog by Saul Bellow - Free Book Online

his chest. His heart felt ill and his forehead instantly wet.
        He muttered, "She made it tough for me, too.
        Sexually."
        "Well, being older... But that's bygones," said Zelda. "Your big mistake was to bury yourself in the country so you could finish that project of yours- that study of whatchamajig. You never did wind it up, did you?"
        "No," Herzog said.
        "Then what was that all about."
        Herzog tried to explain what it was about-that his study was supposed to have ended with a new angle on the modern condition, showing how life could be lived by renewing universal connections; overturning the last of the Romantic errors about the uniqueness of the Self; revising the old Western, Faustian ideology; investigating the social meaning of Nothingness. And more.
        But he checked himself, for she did not understand, and this offended her, especially as she believed she was no common hausfrau. She said, "It sounds very grand.
        Of course it must be important. But that's not the point. You were a fool to bury yourself and her, a young woman, in the Berkshires, with nobody to talk to."
        "Except Valentine Gersbach, and Phoebe."
        "That's right. That was bad. Especially winters. You should have had more sense. That house made a prisoner of her. It must have been just dreary, washing and cooking, and to have to hush the baby, or you'd raise hell, she said. You couldn't think when June was crying, and you'd rush from your room hollering."
        "Yes, I was stupid-a blockhead. But that was one of the problems I was working on, you see, that people can be free now but the freedom doesn't have any content.
        It's like a howling emptiness. Madeleine shared my interests, I thought-she's a studious person."
        "She says you were a dictator, a regular tyrant. You bullied her."
        I do seem to be a broken-down monarch of some kind, he was thinking, like my old man, the princely immigrant and ineffectual bootlegger. And life was very bad in Ludeyville-terrible, I admit.
        But then didn't we buy the house because she wanted to, and move out when she wanted to? And didn't I make all the arrangements, even for the Gersbachs-so we could all leave the Berkshires together?
        "What else did she complain of?" said Herzog.
        Zelda considered him for a moment as though to see whether he was strong enough to take it, and said, "You were selfish."
        Ah, that! He understood. The ejaculatio praecox! His look became stormy, his heart began to pound, and he said, "There was some trouble for a while. But not in the last two years. And hardly ever with other women." These were humiliating explanations. Zelda did not have to believe them, and that made him the pleader, and put him at a frightful disadvantage. He couldn't invite her upstairs for a demonstration, or produce affidavits from Wanda or Zinka. (recalling, in the still standing train, the thwarted and angry eagerness of these attempted explanations, he had to laugh. Nothing but a wan smile passed over his face.) What crooks they were-Madeleine, Zelda... others. Some women didn't care how badly they damaged you. A girl, in Zelda's view, had a right to expect from her husband nightly erotic gratification, safety, money, insurance, furs, jewelry, cleaning women, drapes, dresses, hats, night clubs, country clubs, automobiles, theater!
        "No man can satisfy a woman who doesn't want him," said Herzog.
        "Well, isn't that your answer?"
        Moses started to speak but he felt that he was going to make another foolish outcry. His face paled again and he kept his mouth shut. He was in terrible pain. It was so bad that he was far past claiming credit for his power to suffer as he had at times done. He sat silent, and heard the clothes dryer below whirling.
        "Moses," said Zelda, "I want to make sure of one thing."
        "What-was "Our relationship." He was no longer