"Is that certain?"
"Did she tell you what happened in Mexico?"
"Not in detail."
"That's just as well, if you don't know the details. The joke you made was right on the head, about the billiard table in hell, about something green where it's hot."
"It wasn't aimed at Angela."
"Of course I knew my daughter with twenty-five thousand tax-free dollars must be having herself a tine. I expected that, and as long as she was handling herself maturely and sensibly I had no objections. All that, theoretically, is fine. You use the words 'mature' and 'sensible,' and they satisfy you. But then you take a close look, and when you take a close look, you see something else. You see a woman who has done it in too many ways with too many men. By now she probably doesn't know the name of the man between her legs. And she looks... Her eyes--she has fucked-out eyes."
"I'm sorry."
Something very odd in Elya's expression. There were tears about, somewhere, but dignity would not permit them. Perhaps it was self-severity, not dignity. But they did not come out. They were rerouted, absorbed into the system. They were subdued, converted into tones. They were present in the voice, in the color of the skin, in the lights of the eye.
"I must go, Elya. I'll take Wallace with me. I'll be back tomorrow."
V
Emil in the Rolls Royce may have had an enviable life. The silver limousine was his faucet. He had all that power to turn on. Also, he was outside the wretched, anxious rivalry, rancor, hatred, and warfare of ordinary drivers of cars. Double-parked, he was not molested by cops. As he stood beside the grand machine, his buttocks, given a rectilinear projection by the formal breeches, were nearer to the ground than most people's. He seemed also to have a calm, serious spirit; heavy creases in the face; lips that turned inward and never showed the teeth; midparted hair like a cowl descending to the ears; a heavy Savonarola nose. The Rolls still carried MD on the license plates.
"Emil drove for Costello, for Lucky Luciano," said Wallace, smiling.
In the light of the padded gray interior, Wallace was beard-stippled. The large dark eyes in the big orbits wished to offer courteous entertainment. When you considered how profoundly Wallace was absorbed and preoccupied by business, by problems of character, by death, you recognized how generous and how difficult this was--how much trying, shaking, rousing, what an effort was required. Arranging a kindly smile for the old uncle.
"Luciano? Elya's friend? Yes. Eminent Mafia. Angela mentioned him."
"Connections from way back."
They drove out on the West Side Highway, along the Hudson. There was the water--how beautiful, unclean, insidious! and there the bushes and the trees, cover for sexual violence, knifepoint robberies, sluggings, and murders. On the water bridgelight and moonlight lay smooth, enjoyably brilliant. And when we took off from all this and carried human life outward? Mr. Sammler was ready to think it might have a sobering effect on the species, at this moment exceptionally troubled. Violence might subside, exalted ideas might recover importance. Once we were emancipated from telluric conditions.
In the Rolls was a handsome bar; it had a small light, within the mirror-lined cabinet. Wallace offered the old man liquor or Seven-Up, but he wanted nothing. Enclosing the umbrella between high knees, he was reviewing some of the facts. Outer-space voyages were made possible by specialist-collaboration. While on earth sensitive ignorance still dreamed of being separate and "whole."
"Whole"? What "whole"? A childish notion. It led to all this madness, mad religions, LSD, suicide, to crime.
He shut his eyes. Breathed out of his soul some bad, and breathed in some good. No, thank you, Wallace, no whisky. Wallace poured some for himself.
How could the ignorant nonspecialist be strong with strength adequate to confront these technical miracles which made him a sort of uncomprehending Congo savage? By vision, by archaic inner-preliterate purity, by natural force, nobly whole? The children were setting fire to libraries. And putting on Persian trousers, letting their sideburns grow. This was their symbolic wholeness. An oligarchy of technicians, engineers, the men who ran the grand machines, infinitely more sophisticated than this automobile, would come to govern vast slums filled with bohemian adolescents, narcotized, beflowered, and "whole." He himself was a fragment, Mr. Sammler understood. And lucky to be that. Totality was as much beyond his powers as to make a Rolls Royce, part by part, with his own hands. So perhaps, perhaps! colonies on the moon would reduce the fever and swelling here, and the passion for boundlessness and wholeness might find more material appeasement. Humankind, drunk with terror, calm itself, sober up.
Drunk with terror? Yes, and fragments (a fragment like Mr. Sammler) understood: this earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, "Enough!" The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement. Timor mortis conturbat me. Dies irae. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus.
The moon was so big tonight that it caught the eye of Wallace, drinking in the back seat, in the unlimited luxury of upholstery and carpets. Legs crossed, leaning back, he pointed moonward past Emil, above the smooth parkway north of the George Washington Bridge.
"Isn't the moon great? They're buzzing away, around it," he said.
"Who?"
"Spacecraft are. Modules."
"Oh, yes. It's in the papers. Would you go there?"
"Would I ever! In a minute," said Wallace. "Out--out? You bet I'd go. I'd fly. In fact, I'm already signed up with Pan Am."
"With whom?"
"With the airlines. I believe I was the five-hundred-twelfth person to phone for a reservation."
"Are they already taking reservations for moon excursions?"
"They most certainly are. Hundreds of thousands of people want to go. Also to Mars and Venus, jumping off from the moon."
"How very odd."
"What's odd about it? To go? It isn't odd at all. I tell you, the airlines get bales of applications. What about you, would you take the trip, Uncle?"
"No."
"Because of your age, maybe?"
"Possibly age. No, my travels are over."
"But the moon, Uncle! Of course you wouldn't physically be able to do it; but a man like you? I can't believe such a person wouldn't be raring to go."
"To the moon? But I don't even want to go to Europe," Mr. Sammler said. "Besides, if I had my choice, I'd prefer the ocean bottom. In Dr. Piccard's bathysphere. I seem to be a depth man rather than a height man. I do not personally care for the illimitable. The ocean, however deep, has a top and bottom, whereas there is no sky ceiling. I think I am an Oriental, Wallace. Jews, after all, are Orientals. I am content to sit here on the West Side, and watch, and admire these gorgeous Faustian departures for the other worlds. Personally, I require a ceiling, although a high one. Yes, I like ceilings, and the high better than the low. In literature I think there are low-ceiling masterpieces--Crime and Punishment, for instance--and high-ceiling masterpieces, Remembrance of Things Past."
Claustrophobia? Death is confinement.
Wallace, continuing to smile, softly but definitely differed; yet took a subtle interest in Uncle Sammler's views. "Of course," he said, "the world looks different to you. Literally. Because of the eyes. How well do you see?"
"Partially only. You are right."
"And yet you described that Negro man and his thing."
"Ah, Feffer told you that. Your partner. I should have known he'd rush to tell. I hope he's not serious about snapping photographs on the bus."