"Neither Father nor I ever liked Wallace. We pushed him off on Mother, and that was like condemning him for life. Then it was one thing after another, his obese stage, his alcoholic stage. Well, now have you heard? He thinks there's money hidden in the house."
"Do you think so, too?"
"I'm not sure. There have been hints from Daddy about it. Mother too before she died. She seemed to believe that now and then Daddy would--he'd step out of line, as she used to say."
"To help out famous families from Dutchess County, as Wallace tells me?"
"Is that what he says? No, Uncle, what I heard was that Daddy did favors for the Mafia characters he grew up with. Top people in the Syndicate. very well. You probably never heard of Luciano."
"Just vaguely."
"Luciano came out to New Rochelle now and then. And if Daddy did those things and they paid him in cash, it must have been embarrassing. He probably didn't know what to do with that money. But that's not what's weighing on my mind."
"No. Speaking of New Rochelle, you haven't seen Shula, have you, Angela?"
"I haven't. What is she up to?"
"She brought me a very interesting book. However, it wasn't hers to bring."
"I assume she's hiding from Eisen. She thinks he's come to claim her."
"A flattering fear. If only he were capable of coming on such a mission. If he didn't beat her, it would answer many needs. It would be a mercy. No, I don't think he wants her at all. He doesn't like it that she poses as a Catholic. That was his pretext. Although he did say he got along well with Pope Pius at Castel Gandolfo. And now Eisen is not the friend of Popes, he is an artist. I don't think he has much genius, though he's crazy enough to want great glory." But Angela didn't want to hear this now. Apparently she thought Sammler was trying to turn the subject in a theoretical direction--to discuss the creative psychotic.
"Well, he's been here."
"You saw Eisen? He's been annoying Elya? Did he go in?"
"He wanted to make drawings--to sketch him, you know."
"I don't like it. I wish he wouldn't bother Elya. What the devil does he want? Keep him away."
"Well, maybe I shouldn't have let him in. I thought he might entertain Daddy."
Sammler was about to answer, but several beats of comprehension passed through his head and made him see matters differently. Of course. Ah, yes. Angela was having her own troubles with Dr. Gruner. Angela was not one of your great weepers, not like Margotte with her high annual tearfall. If Angela was looking so wan that even the frosted hair, usually so glossy and powerful, seemed to bristle dryly and Sammler thought he saw the dark follicular spots on her scalp, it was because she had been wrangling with her father. Under stress, Sammler believed, the whole faltered, and parts (follicles, for instance) became conspicuous. Such at least was his observation. Elya must be furious with her, and she was trying to divert his attention. Visitors. Obviously this was why she had taken Eisen straight in. But Eisen was not diverting. He was one of those smiling gloomy maniacs. Very gloomy, really. A depressing fellow. The smart silk suit he had worn ten years ago in Haifa when he and his father-in-law had gone out in the street, to a café, to discuss Shula, might have made a satisfactory coffin lining. Eisen certainly deserved to be cared for, and that was one of the uses of Israel, to gather in these cripples. But now Eisen had broken out, had heard the jolly frantic music of America and wanted to get into the act. He made a beeline for the rich cousin. The rich cousin was in the hospital with some kind of fiddle-peg in his neck. Odd what an instinct they all had for molesting a dying man.
"Did Edya find Eisen amusing? I doubt it."
Angela wore a playful cap, matching the black and white shoes. Now that her head was lowered Sammler saw the large button of kid leather set in the radial creases.
"A while he did, I think," she said. "Eisen made sketches of Daddy. But then he tried to sell them to him. Daddy would hardly glance at them."
"Not surprising. I wonder where Eisen got the money to come to America."
"I don't know, maybe he saved up. He's put out with you, Uncle."
"I'm sure of that."
"For not coming to see him in Israel. You were there for the war. He says you cut him."
"That doesn't concern me much. I wasn't there to pay my respects to a son-in-law or to make social visits."
"He complained to Daddy about you."
"Horrible!" said Sammler. "Everybody hitting away with these stupidities. At this time!"
"But Daddy takes an interest in all kinds of things. If everything suddenly stopped, it would be abnormal. Of course it's bad to aggravate him. For instance, he's angry with me."
"I suppose there is really no good way for Elya to do this thing."
"I'd say that he should stop talking to Widick. You know his fat lawyer, Widick?"
"Of course, I've met the man."
"Four or five times a day on the telephone. And Daddy asks me to leave the room. They're still buying and selling, trading on the stock market. Also I assume they discuss his will, or he wouldn't send me outside."
"Evidently, Angela, in spite of the case you make against Mr. Widick, you've crossed your father yourself, in some way. And you seem to want me to ask about it?"
"I think I should tell you."
"It doesn't sound good."
"It isn't. It was when Wharton Horricker and I went to Mexico."
"I believe Elya likes Horricker. He wouldn't have objected to that."
"No, he hoped that Wharton and I would get married."
"Won't you?"
Angela held a lighted cigarette in forked fingers before her face. Actions normally graceful, now distressingly heavy. She shook her head, her eyes filling, reddening. Ah, trouble with Horricker. Sammler had guessed something of the sort. It was a little hard for him to understand why she should always have so much trouble. Perhaps he put it to himself that she enjoyed so many privileges, what more did she want? She had the income from half a million to live on: tax-exempt Municipals, as Elya would repeat. She had this flesh, these sex attractions and talents--volupté she had. She brought back the French sex vocabulary Sammler had learned at the University of Cracow reading Emile Zola. That book about the fruit market. Le Ventre de Paris. Les Halles. And that appetizing woman there who was also something good to eat, a regular orchard. Volupté, seins, épaules, hanches. Sur un lit de feuilles. Cette tiédeur satinée de femme. Excellent, Emile! And--all right!--orchards suffering when there were earth tremors could drop all their pears; this too Sammler could sympathetically understand. But Angela was always unusually involved in difficulty and suffering, tripping on invisible obstructions, bringing forth complications of painful mischief which made him wonder whether this volupté was not one of the sorest strangest burdens that could be laid on a woman's soul. Saw the woman (by her own erotic account), as if in the actual bedroom. By invitation he was there, a perplexed bystander. Evidently she believed it necessary that he should know what went on in America. He did not need quite so much information. But better a surplus than ignorance. Both the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. were, for Sammler, utopian projects. There, in the East, the emphasis was on low-level goods, on shoes, caps, toilet-plungers, and tin basins for peasants and laborers. Here it fell upon certain privileges and joys. Here wading naked into the waters of paradise, et cetera. But always a certain despair underlining pleasure, death seated inside the health-capsule, steering it, and darkness winking at you from the golden utopian sun.
"So you've had a quarrel with Wharton Horricker?"
"He's angry with me."
"Aren't you angry with him?"
"Not exactly. I seem to be in the wrong."
"Where is he now?"
"He's supposed to be in Washington. He's doing something statistical on antiballistic missiles. For the Senate bloc against the ABM. I don't understand the thing."