"It's a pity to have such trouble now, to have a double difficulty."
"I'm afraid Daddy has found out about this."
In Angela's expression as in Wallace's there was something soft, a hint of infancy or of baby reverie. The parents must have longed overmuch for babies and so inhibited something in their children's cycle of development. Angela's last glance, before she began to sob, astonished Sammler. Open lips, wrinkled forehead, the skin expressing utter surrender, traits of the original person. An infant! But the eyes did not give up their look of erotic experience.
"Found out about what?"
"A thing that happened at Acapulco. I didn't think it was so very serious. Neither did Wharton. At the time, it was just a kick. I mean it was funny. We had a party with another couple."
"What sort of party was it?"
Well, it was a sex thing for the four of us."
"With other people? Who were they?"
"They were perfectly all right. We met them on the beach. The wife suggested it."
"An exchange?"
"Well, yes. Oh, it is done now, Uncle."
"I hear it is."
"You are disgusted with me, Uncle."
"I? Not really. I knew all this long ago. I regret it when things become so stupid, that's true. It seems to me that things poor professionals once had to do for a living, performing for bachelor parties, or tourist sex-circuses on the Place Pigalle, ordinary people, housewives, filing-clerks, students, now do just to be sociable. And I can't really say what it's all about. Is it maybe some united effort to conquer disgust? Or to show that all the repulsive things in history are not so repulsive? I don't know. Is it an effort to liberalize' human existence and show that nothing that happens between people is really loathsome? Affirming the Brotherhood of Man? Ah, well--" Sammler steadied and restrained himself. He did not want to know the details of this incident in Acapulco, didn't want to hear that the man in the case was a municipal judge from Chicago, or a chiropractor or CPA or a dope-pusher or that he made perfume or formaldehyde.
"Wharton went along, he did his share, but afterward he turned sullen. Then on the plane, flying back, he told me how angry he was about it."
"Well, he's a fastidious young man. You can see from his shirts. I assume he was well brought up."
"He acted no better than the rest of us."
"If you expected to marry Wharton, it was certainly poor judgment to do this."
Sammler badly wanted to get this conversation over. Elya had told him not to worry about the future, a hint that he was provided for; but there were also practical considerations to bear in mind. What if he and Shula had to depend on Angela? Angela had always been generous--she spent easily. When they went to a gallery or to lunch, she, naturally, paid for cabs, paid the check, left the tip, everything. But it would not do to go too deeply with Angela into this life of hers. The facts were too bad, too bald, abominable, pitiful. To a degree such behavior was based on theory, on generational ideology, part of a liberal education, and was therefore to an extent impersonal. But Angela would later regret these confessions--regret, and resent his disapproval. On the whole he received her confidences in a disinterested way. He was not unsympathetic, unfeeling; he was (she had said it herself) objective, nonjudging. As they faced Elya's death, he decided that under no circumstances and on no account would he become involved in a perverse relationship with Angela in which he had to listen for his supper. His disinterestedness would never become one of her comforts, part of the furniture of her life. Not even his anxiety over Shula's future could force him into such a position. A receiver of sordid goods? His whole heart rose against this.
"Daddy is asking very pointed questions about Wharton."
"He has heard about this episode?"
"That's right, Uncle."
"Who would tell him such things? It seems unusually cruel."
"I don't know whether you understand about that fat Widick, the lawyer. He and Wharton are related somewhere along the line. He's a bastard."
"That's not my impression at all. Normally fraudulent, perhaps, but that is simply business."
"He's a shit. Daddy thinks the world of Widick. He won the big case for him against the insurance company. I told you they talk four or five times a day on the phone. And Widick hates me."
"How do you know that?"
"I feel it. I get the spoiled-daughter look from him. There have always been people around who thought that Daddy had a bad thing about me, made me financially too independent. You know--pampered me and let me hang too loose."
"Hasn't he been exceptionally indulgent?"
"Not just for my sake, Uncle Sammler. You don't just act for yourself, and he's also lived through me. You can believe it."
Men, thought Sammler, often sin alone; women are seldom companionless in sin. But although Angela might be trying to force this interpretation on her father's kindness, it was possible that Elya too had his own lustful tendencies. Who was Sammler to say no? Things in general were desperate. The arterial bulge in Elya's brain must have cast its shadow earlier--spatters before the cloudburst. Sammler believed in premonitions, and death was a powerful instigator of erotic ideas. Sammler's own sex impulses (perhaps even now not altogether gone) had been very different. But he knew how to respect differences. He didn't measure others by himself. Now Shula had no volupté. She had something else. Of course she was not a rich man's daughter, and money, the dollar, was certainly a terrific sexual additive. But even Shula, though a scavenger or magpie, had never actually stolen before. Then suddenly she too was like the Negro pickpocket. From the black side, strong currents were sweeping over everyone. Child, black, redskin--the unspoiled Seminole against the horrible Whiteman. Millions of civilized people wanted oceanic, boundless, primitive, neckfree nobility, experienced a strange release of galloping impulses, and acquired the peculiar aim of sexual niggerhood for everyone. Humankind had lost its old patience. It demanded accelerated exaltation, accepted no instant without pregnant meanings as in epic, tragedy, comedy, or films. He had an idea even that the very special development of the significance of prisons since the eighteenth century had some relation to this shrinking ability to endure restraint. Punishment must be fitted, closely tailored to the state of the spirit, adapted to the need of the soul. Where liberty had been promised most, they had the biggest, worst prisons. Then another question: Had Elya performed abortions to oblige old Mafia friends? As to that, Sammler had no opinion. He simply couldn't say. Elya had never wanted to be a physician. He disliked the practice of medicine. But he had done his duty. And even doctors nowadays made sexual gestures to their patients. Put women's hands on their parts. Sammler had heard of this. Physicians who rejected the Oath, who joined the Age. Also Shula, Shula stealing, was contemporary--lawless. She was experiencing the Age. In so doing, she drew her father along with her. And possibly Elya, with the screw in his throat, had not wished to be left behind either, and had delegated Angela to experience the Age for him.
Be all that as it might--life once had nearly ended. Someone ahead, carrying the light, stumbled, faltered, and Mr. Sammler had thought it was over. However, he was still alive. He had not come through, for the connotation of coming through was that of an accomplishment and little had been accomplished. He had been steered from Cracow to London, from London to the Zamosht Forest, and eventually into New York City. One result of such a history was that he had formed a habit of condensation. He was a specialist in short views. And in the short view, Angela had offended her dying father. He was angry, and she wanted Sammler to intercede for her. Maybe Elya would cut her out of his will, give his money to charity. He had made large contributions to the Weizmann Institute. That Think-tank, they called it, at Rehovoth. Or perhaps she was afraid that he himself, Sammler, who was so close to Elya, would become his heir.