Read Online Herzog by Saul Bellow - Free Book Online Page B

poor color, like a glum old Jewish uncle. But of course if he was slowly dying of consumption, he couldn't have looked very optimistic. Asphalter, so cheerful himself and indifferent to practical interests, something of a marginal academic type, without his Ph. d., taught comparative anatomy. With thick crepe-soled shoes, he wore a stained smock; he was bereaved of hair, of his youth, too, poor Luke. The sudden loss of his hair had left him with only one lock at the front, and made his handsome eyes, his arched brows prominent, his nostrils darker, hairier. I hope he hasn't swallowed Rocco's bacilli. There's a new, deadlier strain at large, they say, and tuberculosis is coming back. Asphalter was a bachelor at forty-five. His father had owned a flophouse on Madison Street. In his youth, Moses had been there often, visiting. And although for an interval of ten or fifteen years he and Asphalter had not been close friends, they had found, suddenly, a great deal in common. In fact it had been from Asphalter that Herzog learned what Madeleine was up to, and the part Gersbach had been playing in his life.
        "Hate to tell you this, Mose," said Asphalter, in his office, "but you're mixed up with some awful nuts."
        This was two days after the March blizzard. You wouldn't have known it had been raging winter that same week. The casement window was open on the Quadrangle. All the grimy cottonwoods had sprung to life, released red catkins from their sheaths. These dangled everywhere, perfuming the gray courtyard with its shut-in light. Rocco with sick eyes sat on his own straw chair, his look lusterless, his coat the color of stewed onions.
        "I can't stand to see you knock yourself out,"
        Asphalter said. "I'd better tell you-we have a lab assistant here who sits with your little girl, and she's been telling me about your wife."
        "What about her?"
        "And Valentine Gersbach. He's always there, on Harper Avenue."
        "Sure. I know. He's the only reliable person on the scene. I trust him. He's been an awfully good friend."
        "Yes, I know-I know, I know," said Asphalter. His pale round face was freckled, and his eyes large, fluid, dark, and, for Moses' sake, bitter in their dreaminess. "I certainly know. Valentine's quite an addition to the social life of Hyde Park, what's left of it. How did we ever get along without him. He's so genial comhe's so noisy, with those Scotch and Japanese imitations, and that gravel voice. He drowns all conversation out. Full of life! Oh, yes, he's full of it! And because you brought him here, everybody thinks he's your special pal. He says so himself. Only..."
        "Only what?"
        Tense and quiet, Asphalter asked, "Don't you know?" He became very pale.
        "What should I know?"
        "I took it for granted because your intelligence is so high-way off the continuum-that you knew something or suspected."
        Something frightful was about to descend on him. Herzog nerved himself for it.
        "Madeleine, you mean? I understand, of course, that by and by, because she's still a young woman, she must'
        ' she will."
        "No, no," said Asphalter. "Not by and by." He blurted it out. "All the while."
        "Who!" said Herzog. All his blood rose, and just as quickly and massively left his brain. "You mean Gersbach?"
        "That's right." Asphalter now had no control whatever over the nerves of his face; it had gone soft with the pain he felt. His mouth looked chapped, with black lines.
        Herzog began to shout, "You can't talk like that! You can't say that!" He stared at Lucas, outraged.
        A dim, sick, faint feeling came over him. His body seemed to shrink, abruptly drained, hollow, numbed. He almost lost consciousness.
        "Open your collar," said Asphalter. "My God, you aren't fainting, are you?" He began to force Herzog's head down. "Between the knees," he said.
        "Let up," said Moses, but his