"Uncle?"
"Ah, yes, Wallace."
Some were eccentric, some were histrionic. Probably Wallace was genuinely loony. For him it required a powerful effort to become interested in common events. This was possibly why sporting statistics cast him into such a fever, why so often he seemed to be in outer space. Dans la lune. Well, at least he didn't treat Sammler as a symbol, and he apparently had no use for priests, judges, or confessors. Wallace said that what he appreciated in Uncle Sammler was his wit. Sammler, especially when greatly irritated or provoked, when he felt galled, said witty things. In the old European style. Often these witticisms signaled the approach of a nervous fit.
But Wallace, when he began a conversation with Sammler, was immediately smiling, and sometimes he repeated the punch lines of Sammler's witticisms.
"Not a well-rounded person, Uncle?"
Referring to himself, Sammler once had observed, "I am more stupid about some things than about others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person."
Or else, a recent favorite with Wallace: "The billiard table, Uncle. The billiard table."
This had to do with Angela's trip to Mexico. She and Horricker had had an unhappy Mexican holiday. In January she had had enough of New York and winter. She wanted to go to Mexico, to a hot place, she said, where she could see something green. Then abruptly, before he could check himself, Sammler had said, "Hot? Something green? A billiard table in hell would answer the description."
"Oh, wow! That really cracked me up," said Wallace.
Later he would ask Sammler if he had the exact words. Sammler smiled, his small cheeks began to flush, but he refused to repeat his sayings. Wallace was not witty. He had no such sayings. But he did have experiences, he invented curious projects. Several years ago he flew out to Tangiers with the purpose of buying a horse and visiting Morocco and Tunisia on horseback. Not taking his Honda, he said, because backward people should be seen from a horse. He had borrowed Jacob Burckhardt's Force and Freedom from Sammler, and it affected him strongly. He wanted to examine peoples in various stages of development. In Spanish Morocco he was robbed in his hotel. By a man with a gun, hidden in his closet. He then flew on to Turkey and tried again. Somehow he managed to enter Russia on his horse. In Soviet Armenia he was detained by the police. After Gruner had gone five or six times to see Senator Javits, Wallace was released from prison. Then, once again in New York, Wallace, taking a young lady to see the film The Birth of a Child, fainted away at the actual moment of birth, struck his head on the back of a seat, and was knocked unconscious. Reviving, he was on the floor. He found that his date had moved away from him in embarrassment, changed her seat. He had a row with her for abandoning him. Wallace, borrowing his father's Rolls, let it somehow get away from him; carelessly parked, it ended up at the bottom of a reservoir somewhere near Croton. He drove a city bus crosstown to pay off debts. The Mafia was after him. His bookie gave him two months to pay. The handicapping hadn't worked. He flew with a friend to Peru to climb in the Andes. Said to be quite a good pilot. He offered to take Sammler into the air ("No, I believe not. Thank you just the same, Wallace "). He volunteered for the domestic Peace Corps. He wanted to be of use to little black children, to be a basketball coach in playgrounds.
"What does this surgeon really think of Elya's chances, Wallace?"
"He's going to take new X rays of his head."
"Are they planning brain surgery now?"
"It depends on whether they can get to the place. They may not be able to reach it. Of course if they can't reach it, they can't reach it."
"To look at him you'd never think... He looks so well."
"Oh, yes," said Wallace. "Why not?"
Sammler sighed at this. He guessed how well pleased the late Mrs. Gruner must have been with her Wallace, his shapely head, long neck, crisp hair, and fine eyebrows, the short clean line of the nose, and the neat nakedness of his teeth, the work of skilled orthodontia.
"It's hereditary, having an aneurysm. You happen to be born with a thin wall in an artery. I may have it. Angela may, too, though I'd be surprised if she had a thin place anywhere. But people, young people, too, perfect in every other respect sometimes, drop dead of it. Walking along strong, beautiful, full of beans, when it explodes inside. They die. There's a bubble first. Such as lizards blow from the throat, maybe. Then death. You've lived so long, you've probably come across this before."
"Even for me, there's always something a little new."
"I had a lot of trouble with last week's crossword puzzle, the Sunday one. Did you work on it?"
"No."
"You sometimes do."
"Margotte didn't bring home the Times."
"Amazing how you know words."
For some months Wallace had actually practiced law. His father had rented the office; his mother had furnished it, calling in Croze the interior decorator. For six months Wallace rose punctually like any commuter and went to business. But at business it came out that he worked on nothing but crossword puzzles, locking the door, taking the phone off the hook, lying on the leather sofa. That was all. No, one thing more: he unbuttoned the stenographer's dress and examined her breasts. This information came from Angela, who had it from the girl, direct. Why did the girl permit it? Maybe she thought it would lead to marriage. Placing hopes in Wallace? No sane woman would. But his interest in the breasts had evidently been scientific. Something about nipples. Like Jean Jacques Rousseau, who became so engrossed in the breasts of a Venetian whore that she pushed him away and told him to go study mathematics. (More of Uncle Sammlers wide reading, his European culture.)
"I don't like the people who make up the puzzles. They have low-grade minds," said Wallace. "Why should people know so much trash? It's Eastern-Seaboardeducated trash. Smart-ass Columbia University quiz-kid miscellaneous information. I actually telephoned you about an old English dance. Jig, reel, and hornpipe were all I could come up with. But this one began with an m."
"An m? Might it have been morrice?"
"Oh, damn! Of course it was morrice. Jesus, your mind is in good order. How do you happen to remember?"
"Milton, Comus. A wavering morrice to the moon."
"Oh, that's pretty. Oh, that's really lovely, a wavering morrice."
"Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move. It's the fishes, by the billions, I believe, and the seas themselves, performing the dance."
"Why, that's splendid. You must be living right, to remember such pretty things. Your mind is not devoured by fool business. You're a good old guy, Uncle Artur. I don't like old people. I don't respect many individuals--a few physical scientists. But you--you're very austere in a way, but you have a good sense of humor. The only jokes I tell are the ones I hear from you. By the way, let me make sure I have the de Gaulle joke right. He said he didn't want to be buried under the Arc de Triomphe next to an unknown. À côté d'un inconnu. Right?"
"So far."
"My father has it in for de Gaulle because he woos the Arabs. I'm fond of de Gaulle because he's a monument. And he wouldn't go into the Invalides with Napoleon, who was only a lousy corporal."
"Yes."
"But the Israelis wanted to charge him a hundred thousand bucks for space in the Holy Sepulcher."
"That's the joke."
"And de Gaulle said, `For three days? It's too much money.' `Pour trois jours?' He was going to be resurrected, right? Now that, I think, is very funny." Wallace's grave judgment. "Poles love to tell jokes," he said. He had no sense of humor. Sometimes he had occasion to laugh.
"Conquered people tend to be witty."
"You don't like Poles very much, Uncle."