The washstand in the small lavatory off the den was dark onyx, the fittings gold, the faucets dolphins, the soap dish a scallop, the towel thick as mink. Mirrors on four walls showed Mr. Sammler to himself in more aspects than he wanted. The soap was spermy sandalwood. The blade was dull and had to be honed on the porcelain. Very likely ladies occasionally slipped in to trim their legs with this razor. Sammler did not want to look for another blade upstairs. The master bedroom was seriously water-damaged. The ladies had pulled the twin mattresses from the beds to a dry corner. Dr. Lal had slept in the guest room. Wallace? Perhaps he had spent the night on his head, like a yogi.

Suddenly Sammler stopped shaving, paused and stared at himself, his dry, small, "cured" face undergoing in the mirror a strong inrush of color. Even the left, the swelled, the opaque guppy eye, took up some light from this. Where were they all? Opening the door, he listened. There was no sound. He went into the garden. Dr. Lal's car was gone. He looked in the garage, and that was empty. Gone, fled!

He found Shula in the kitchen. "Everyone has left?" he said. "Now how do I get to New York?"

She was pouring coffee through the filter cane, having first boiled the grounds, French style.

"Took off," she said. "Dr. Lal wasn't able to wait. There was no room for me. He rented a two-seater. A gorgeous little Austin Healy, did you see it?"

"And Emil, where is he?"

"He had to take Wallace to the airport. Wallace has to fly—to test-fly. For his business, you know what I mean. They're going to take pictures and so on."

"And I am stuck. Is there a timetable? I've got to be in New York."

"Well, it's nearly ten o'clock now and there aren't so many trains. I’ll phone. And then Emil should be back soon, and he can drive you. You were sleeping. Dr. Lal didn't want to disturb you."

"Extremely inconsiderate. You knew and Margotte knew that I had to get back."

"The little car was very pretty. Margotte didn't look right in it."

"I am annoyed."

"Margotte has thick legs, Father. You've probably never even noticed. Well, they won't show in the car. Dr. Lal will call later in the day. You'll see him all right."

"Whom, Lal? Why? The document is there, isn't it?"

"There?"

"Don't irritate me by repeating questions. I am already irritated. Why didn't you wake me? The document is in the locker, isn't it?"

"I locked it up myself, with the quarter, and took out the key. No, youll see him because Margotte is out for him. Maybe you didn't notice that either. I really need to talk to you about this, Father."

"Yes, I'm sure you do. I did notice, yes, to tell the truth. Well, she's a widow, and she's had enough of mourning, and she needs somebody like that. We aren't much comfort to her. I don't know what she sees in that bushy black little fellow. It's just loneliness, I suppose."

"I can see what she sees. Dr. Lal is very distinguished. You know it. Don't pretend, after the way you talked in the kitchen. It was beautiful."

"Well, well. What will I do? This thing of Elya's is very bad, you know."

"Very?"

"The worst. And I should have realized that returning might present problems."

"Father, just leave it to me. And you haven't finished shaving. No, go on, and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee."

He went, thinking how he had been feinted out of position. Outgeneraled. Like Pompey or Labienus by Caesar. He should not have left the city. He was cut off from his base. And now how was he to reach Elya, who needed him today? Picking up the phone in the den to call the hospital, he heard the busy signal Shula was getting from the Penn Central. Patience, waiting, now were necessary—things Mr. Sammler had no talent for. But he had studied, he had trained himself. One began with external composure. So he sat down on the hassock, looking at the sofa, and at the silken green luxurious wool of Elya's own afghan he had slept under. It was a lovely morning, too. The sun came in as he sipped the coffee Shula brought him. Glass tables on legs and semicircular struts of brass spattered the Oriental rug with light, brought out the colors and the figures.

"Busy signal," she said.

"Yes, I know."

"There's a telephone crisis, anyway, all over New York. The experts are working on it."

She went into the garden, and Sammler again tried dialing the hospital. All lines were busy in that dreary place, and he hung up the repetitious croaking instrument. Thinking of the colossal number of conversations, all those communings. Utilizing the invisible powers of the universe. Out in the garden, Shula was also engaged in conversation. It was warm. Tulips, daffodils, jonquils, and a paradise of gusts. Evidently she asked the flowers how they were today. No answers required. Brilliant instances sufficed. She herself was a brilliant instance of something organically strange. His glimpse of the entire Shula last night now made him feel her specific weight, as she trod the grass. The entire female body was evoked, white skin everywhere, the thighs, the trunk, the actual feet, the belly with its organs, together with the kinky hair straggling from the scarf. All visible and almost palpable. And even about plants, who knew the whole truth? On educational TV one night he and Margotte watched a singular botanist who had attached a polygraph machine—a lie-detector—to flowers and recorded the reactions of roses to gentle and violent stimuli. Stridency made them shrink, he said. A dead dog cast before them caused aversion. A soprano singing lullabies had the opposite effect. Sammler would have guessed that the investigator himself, his pale leer, his wild stern police nose would distress roses, African violets. Even without nerves these organisms were discerning. We with our oversupply of receptors were in a state of nervous chaos. Amid the tree shadows, pliant, and the window-frame shadows, rigid, and the brass and glass reflections, semi- steady, Mr. Sammler wiped his shoes with the paper towel Shula had placed under the coffee cup. The shoes were damp, still. They were soggy, unpleasantly so. Margotte also had her plants, and Wallace was about to found a plant business. It would be too bad if the first contacts of plants were entirely with the demented. Maybe I’d better have a word with them myself. Mr. Sammler was heavyhearted and tried to divert himself. The heaviness was brutally persistent, however.

He came to the point. First, how apt it was that Wallace should flood the attic. Why, it was a metaphor for Elya's condition. In connection with that condition there arose other images—a blistering of the brain, a froth or rusty scum of blood over that other plant which lay in one's head. Something like convolvulus. No, like fatty cauliflower. The screw on the artery could not reduce the pressure, and where the vessel was varicose and weaker than cobweb it would open. A terrible flood! One might try to think of mitigating things—That, oh well! Life! Everyone who had it was bound to lose it. Or that this was Elya's moment of honor and that he called upon his best qualities. That was all very well, until death turned its full gaze on the individual. Then all such ideas were nothing. The point was that he, Sammler, should be at the hospital, now; to do what could be done; to say what might be said, and what should be said. Exactly what should or might be said Sammler did not know. He could not find the precise thing. Living as he did, in this inward style, working out his condensations or contractions, one became uncommunicative . To explain or expand his thoughts tired and vexed him, as he had learned last night. But he did not feel uncommunicative toward Elya. On the contrary, he wanted to say everything possible. He wanted to go to the hospital and say something! He loved his nephew, and he had something that Elya needed. All concerned ought to have had it. The first place at Elya's bedside belonged to Wallace or to Angela, but they were not about to take it.

Elya was a physician and a businessman. With his own family, to his credit, he had not been businesslike. Nevertheless , he had the business outlook. And business, in business America, was also a training system for souls. The fear of being unbusinesslike was very great. As he was dying Elya might conceivably draw strength from doing business. He had in fact done that. He kept talking to Widick. And Sammler had nothing with a business flavor to offer him. But at the very end business would not do for Elya. Some, many, would go on with business to the last breath, but Elya was not like that, not so limited. Elya was not finally ruled by business considerations. He was not in that insect and mechanical state—such a surrender, such an insect disaster for human beings. Even now (now perhaps more than ever) Elya was accessible. In fact Sammler had not seen this in time. Yesterday, when Elya began to speak of Wallace, when he denounced Angela, he, Sammler, ought to have stayed with him. Any degree of frankness might have been possible. In the going phrase, a moment of truth. Meaning that most conversation was a compilation of lies, of course. But Elya's was not one of those sealed completed impenetrable systems, he was not one of your monstrous crystals or icicles. Feeling, or stroking the long green fibers of the afghan, Sammler put it to himself that because he and Antonina had been designated, part of a demonstration of the meaninglessness of this vivid shuffle with its pangs of higher intuition from the one side and the continual muddy suck of the grave underfoot—that because of this he himself, Artur Sammler, had put up obstinate resistance. And Elya, too, was devoted to ideas of conduct which seemed discredited, which few people explicitly defended. It was not the behavior that was gone. What was gone was the old words. Forms and signs were absent. Not honor but the word honor. Not virtuous impulse, but the terms beaten into flat nonsense. Not compassion; but what was a compassionate utterance? And compassionate utterance was a mortal necessity. Utterance, sounds of hope and desire, exclamations of grief. Such things were suppressed, as if illicit. Sometimes coming through in ciphers, ... buildings (the empty tailor shop facing the hospital). At this stage of things there was a terrible dumbness. About essentials, almost nothing could be said. Still, signs could be made, should be made, must be made. One should declare something like this: "However actual I may seem to you and you to me, we are not as actual as all that. We will die. Nevertheless there is a bond. There is a bond." Mr. Sammler believed that if this was not said in so many words it should be said tacitly. In fact it was continually asserted, in many guises. And anyway, we know what is what. But Elya at this moment had a most particular need for a sign and he, Sammler, should be there to meet that need.

He again telephoned the hospital. To his surprise, he found himself speaking with Gruner. He had asked for the private nurse. One could get through? Elya must be molested by calls. With the mortal bulge in his head he was still in the game, did business.

"How are you?"

"How are you, Uncle?"

The actual meaning of this might have been, "Where are you?"

"How are you feeling?"

"There's been no change. I thought we would be seeing each other."

"I’m coming in. I'm sorry. When there's something important there is always some delay. It never fails, Elya."

"When you left yesterday, it was like unfinished business between us. We got sidetracked by Angela and such hopeless questions. There was something I was meaning to ask. About Cracow. The old days. And by the way, I bragged about you to a Polish doctor here. He wanted very much to see the Polish articles you sent from the Six-Day War. Do you have copies?"

"Certainly, at home. I have plenty."

"Aren't you at home now?"

"Actually I'm not."

"I wonder if you'd mind bringing the clippings. Would you mind stopping off?"

"Of course not. But I don't want to lose the time."

"I may have to go down for tests. EIya's voice was filled with unidentifiable tones. Sammler's interpretive skill was insufficient. He was uneasy. "Why shouldn't there be time?" Elya said. There's time enough for everything." This had an odd ring, and the accents were strange.

"Yes?"

"Of course, yes. It was good you called. A while ago I tried to phone you. There was no answer. You went out early."

Uneasiness somewhat interfered with Sammler's breathing. Long and thin, he held the telephone, concentrating, aware of the anxious Intensity gathered in his face. He was silent. Elya said, "Angela is on her way over."

"I am coming too."

"Yes. Elya lingered somewhat on the shortest words. "Well, Uncle?"

"Good-by, for now."

"Good-by, Uncle Sammler."

Rapping at the pane, Sammler tried to get Shula’s attention . Among the wagging flowers she was conspicuously white. His Primavera. On her head she wore a dark-red scarf. Covering up, afflicted always by the meagerness of her hair. It was perhaps the natural abundance, growth power, exuberance that she admired in flowers. Seeing her among the blond openmouthed daffodils, which were being poured back and forth by the wind, her father believed that she was in love. From the hang of her shoulders, the turn of the orange lips, he saw that she was already prepared to accept unrequited longing. Dr. Lal was not for her; she would never clasp his head or hold his beard between her breasts. You could seldom get people to long for what was possible—that was the cruelty of it. He opened the French window.

"Where is the timetable?" he said.

"I can't find it. The Gruners don't use the train. Anyway, you'll get to New York quicker with Emil. He's going to the hospital."

"I don't suppose he'd wait at the airport for Wallace. Not today."

"Why did you say that about Lal, that he was just a bushy black little fellow?"

"I hope you're not personally interested in him."

"Why not?"

"He's not at all suitable, and I'd never give my consent."

"You wouldn't?"

"No, no. He wouldn't make any kind of husband for you."

"Because he's an Asiatic? You wouldn't be so prejudiced. Not you, Father."

"Not the slightest objection to an Asiatic. There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover it, in French. But scientists make bad husbands. Sixteen hours a day in the laboratory, absorbed in research. You'd be neglected. You'd be hurt. I wouldn't allow it."

"Not even if I loved him?"

"You also thought you loved Eisen."

"He didn't love me. Not enough to forgive my Catholic background. And I couldn't discuss anything with him. Besides, sexually, he was a very gross person. Things I wouldn't care to tell you about, Father. But he is extremely common and lousy. He's here in New York. If he comes near me, I’ll stab him."

"You amaze me, Shula. You would actually stab Eisen with a knife?"

"Or with a fork. I often regret that I let him beat me in Haifa and didn't do anything back to him. He hit me really too hard, and I should have defended myself."

"All the more important that you should avoid future mistakes. I have to protect you from failures I can foresee. A father should."

"But what if I did love Dr. Lal? And I saw him first."

"Rivalry—a poor motive. Shula, we must take care of each other. As you look after me on the H. G. Wells side, I think about your happiness. Margotte is a much less sensitive person than you. If a man like Dr. Lal was mentally absent for weeks at a time, she'd never notice. Don't you remember how Ussher used to speak to her?" "He would tell her to shut up."

"That's right."

"If a husband treated me like that, I couldn't bear it."

"Exactly. Wells also thought that people in scientific research made poor husbands."

"He didn't!"

"I seem to remember his saying that. Does Wallace really know the first thing about aerial photography?"

"He knows so many things. What do you think of his business idea?"

"He doesn't have ideas—he has delusions, brainstorms. However, he wouldn't be the first maniac to make money. And his scheme has charm, dealing in plant names . . . well, some of the plants do have beautiful names. Take one like Gazania Pavonia."

"Gazania Pavonia is darling. Well, come out in the sun and enjoy the weather. I feel much better when you take an interest in me. I’m glad you understand that I took the moon thing for you. You aren't going to give up the project, are you? It would be a sin. You were made to write the Wells book, and it would be a masterpiece. Something terrible will happen if you don't. Bad luck. I feel it inside."

"I may try again."

"You must."

"To find a place for it among my preoccupations."

"You should have no other preoccupations. Only creative ones."

Mr. Sammler, smelling of sandalwood soap, decided to sit in the garden to wait for Emil. Perhaps the soap odor would evaporate in the sun. He didn't have it in him to rinse again in the onyx bathroom. Too close in there.

"Bring your coffee out."

"I’d like that, Shula." He handed her the cup and stepped onto the lawn. "And my shoes are wet from last night."

Black fluid, white light, green ground, the soil heated and soft, penetrated by new growth. In the grass, a massed shine of particles, a turf-buried whiteness, and from this dew, wherever the sun could reach it, the spectrum flashed like night cities seen from the jet, or the galactic sperm of worlds.

"Here. Sit. Take those things off. You'll catch cold. I can dry them in the oven." Kneeling, she removed the wet shoes. "How can you wear them? Do you want to catch pneumonia?"

"Is Emil coming straight back or waiting for that lunatic?"

"I don't know. Why do you keep calling him a lunatic? Why is Wallace a lunatic?"

To a lunatic, how would you define a lunatic? And was he himself a perfect example of sanity? He was certainly not. They were his people—he was their Sammler. They shared the same fundamentals.

"Because he flooded the house?" said Shula.

"Because he flooded it. Because now he's flying around with his cameras."

"He was looking for money. That's not crazy, is it?"

"How do you know about this money?"

"He told me. He thinks there's a fortune here. What do you think?"

"I wouldn't know. But Wallace would have such fantasies—Ali Baba, Captain Kidd, or Tom Sawyer treasure fantasies."

"But he says—no joking—there's a fortune of money in the house. He won't rest until he finds it. Wouldn't it be a little mean of Cousin Elya . . ."

"To die without saying where it is?"

"Yes." Shula seemed slightly ashamed, now that her meaning was explicit.

"It's up to him. Elya will do as he likes. I assume Wallace has asked you to help find this secret hoard."

"Yes."

"What did he do, promise a reward?"

"Yes, he did."

"I don't want you to meddle, Shula. Keep out of it."

"Shall I bring you a slice of toast, Father?"

He didn't answer. She went away, taking his wet shoes.

Above New Rochelle, several small planes snored and buzzed. Probably Wallace was piloting one of them. Unto himself a roaring center. To us, a sultry beetle, a gnat propelling itself through blue acres. Sammler set back his chair into the shade. What had been in the sun a mass of pine foliage now resolved itself into separate needles and trees. Then the silver-gray Rolls turned the corner of the high hedges. The geometrical, dignified, monogrammed radiator flashed its rods. Emil stepped out, looking upward. A yellow plane flew over the house.

"That must be Wallace for sure. He said he was going to fly a Cessna."

"I suppose it is Wallace."

"He wanted to try the equipment on a place he knows."

"Emil, I've been waiting to go to the station."

"Of course, Mr. Sammler. But right now there aren't many trains. How is Dr. Gruner, do you know?"

"I spoke to him," Sammler said. "No change."

"I'd be glad to take you to town."

"When?"

"Very soon."

"It would save time. I have to stop at home. You aren't going back to the airport for Wallace?"

"He was going to land at Newark and take the bus."

"Do you think he knows what he's doing, Emil?"

"Without a license they wouldn't let him fly."

"That's not what I mean."

"He's the type of kid who wants to put things together his own way."

"I'm not sure he’ll ever know . . ."

"He finds out as he goes along. He says that's what Action painters do."

"I could have more confidence in the process. I don't think he should be flying about today. His feelings, whatever they are—rivalry with his father, grief, or whatever—may carry him away."

"If it was my dad, I’d be at the hospital right now. It's different, now. We old guys have to go along."

Lifting his cap to extend the shade over his eyes, he gazed after the speeding Cessna. He revealed his long, full-bottomed Lombard nose. He had the wolfish North Italian look. His skin was tight. Perhaps he had been, as Wallace insisted, Emilio, a fierce little driver for the Mafia. But he was now at the stage of life at which the once-compact person begins to show an elderly frailty. This appeared in the shoulders and at the back of the neck, where the creases were deep. He was connected with the very finest, the supreme land vehicle. No competition with aircraft. He leaned against the fender, arms folded, making sure that no button scratched the finish. He held the hair-fragrant cap and tapped himself. He lightly struck the descending terraces, the large wrinkles of his forehead.

"I figure he wants shots from every altitude. He's flying low, all right."

"If he doesn't hit the house, I’ll be very pleased."

 

"He could rack up the perfect score, after flooding the joint. You wonder, will he want to top that?"

 

Mr. Sammler brought out the folded handkerchief to slip under the lenses before removing his glasses, covering his disfigurement from Emil. He was unable to stare up longer, his eyes were smarting.

 

"How can one guess?" said Sammler. "Yesterday he said that it was his unconscious self that opened the wrong pipe."

 

"Yes, he talks that way to me, too. But I've been eighteen years with the Gruners and know that character. He's very, very disturbed about the doctor."

 

"Yes, I think he is. I agree. But that little machine . . . Like an ironing board with an egg beater. Are you a family man, Em—do you have children?"

 

"Two. Grown up and graduated."

 

"Do they love you?"

 

"They act like it."

 

"That's already a great deal."

 

He was beginning to consider that he might not reach New York in time. Even Elya's request for clippings might delay him too long. But—one thing at a time. Then Wallace 's engine grew louder. The noise attacked one's skull. It gave Sammler a headache. The injured eye felt pressure. The air was parted. On one side nuisance, on the other a singular current, an insidious spring brightness.

 

Blasting, shining, clear yellow, the color of a bird's bill, the Cessna made another, lower pass at the house. The trees threshed under it.

 

"He's going to crash. He'll hit the roof next time."

 

"I don't think he can buzz it any closer while snapping pictures," Emil said.

 

"He must certainly be below the permissible point."

The plane, rising, banking, grew smaller; you could hardly hear it now.

"Wasn't he about to strike the chimney?"

"It looked close, but only from our angle," said Emil.

"They shouldn't let him fly."

"Well, he's gone. Maybe that's it."

"Shall we start?" said Sammler.

"I'm supposed to pick up the cleaning woman at eleven—I think the phone has been ringing."

"The cleaning woman? Shula's in the house. She will answer."

"She's not," said Emil. "When I drove up I saw her in the road, walking along with her purse."

"Going where?"

"I wouldn't know. To the store, maybe. I’ll get the phone."

The call was for Sammler. It was Margotte.

"Hello, Margotte. Well—?"

"We opened the lockers."

"What did you find, what she said?"

"Not exactly, Uncle. In the first locker was one of Shula's shopping bags, and in it there was only the usual stuff. Christian Science Monitors from way back, clippings, and some old copies of Life. Also a great deal of student-revolt literature. SDS. Dr. Lal was shocked. He was very upset."

"Come, what about the second locker?"

"Thank God! We found the manuscript there."

"Intact?"

"I think so. He's looking through it." She spoke away from the phone. "Are pages torn out? No, Uncle, he doesn't think so."

"Oh, I am very glad. For him, and for myself. Even for Shula. But where is the copy she made on Widick's machine? She must have misplaced or lost that. But Dr. Lal must be delighted."

"Oh, he is. He's just going to wait at the soda fountain. It's such a chaos in Grand Central."

"I wish you had knocked at my door. You knew I had to get to town."

"Dear Uncle Sammler, we thought of that, but there was no room in the car. Am I mistaken, or are you irritated? You sound annoyed. We could have dropped you at the station." What Sammler refrained from saying was that he and Lal might have dropped her, Margotte, at the station. Was he annoyed! But even now, with skull-pressure, eye-pangs, he did not want to be too hard on her. No. She had her own female vital aims. No sense of the vital aims of others. His tension now. "Govinda was so anxious to leave. He insisted. However, the trains are fast. Besides, I phoned the hospital and talked to Angela. Elya's condition is just the same."

"I know. I've spoken to him."

"Well, you see? And he has to have some tests, so you would only have to wait if you were here. Now I'm taking Dr. Lal home to lunch. There's so much he doesn't eat, and Grand Central is a madhouse. And it smells so of hot dogs. Because of him, I notice it now for the first time."

"Of course. Home is better. By all means."

"Angela talked to me in a very, mature way. She was sad, but she sounded so calm, and so aware." Margotte’s kind and considerate views of people were terribly trying to Sammler. "She said that Elya was asking for you. He very much wishes to see you."

"I might have been there now. . . ."

"Well, he's down below anyhow," she said. "So take your time. Have lunch with us."

"I need to stop at the house. But no lunch."

"You wouldn't be in the way. Govinda likes you so much. He admires you. Anyway, you are my family. We love you like a father. All of us. I know I am a pest to you. I was to Ussher, too. Still, we loved each other."

"Well, well, Margotte. All right. Now let's hang up."

"I know you want to get away. And you don't like long phone conversations. But Uncle, I'm insecure about my ability to interest a man like Dr. Lal on the mental level."

"Nonsense, Margotte, don't be a fool. Don't get on the mental level. You charm him. He finds you exotic. Don't have long discussions. Let him do the talking."

But Margotte went on talking. She was putting in more coins. There were bongs and chimes. He did not hang up. Neither did he listen.

Further tests for Elya he took to be a tactic of the doctors. They protected their prestige by appearing to make real moves. But Elya himself was a doctor. He had lived by such gestures and had to submit to them now and without complaint. That certainly he would do. Now what of Elya's unfinished business? Before the vessel wall gave out did he really want to go on about Cracow? To talk about Uncle Hessid, who ground cornmeal and wore a derby and fancy vest? Sammler could recall no such individual. No. Elya with strong family feelings he could not gratify, wanted Sammler there to represent the family. His thin, lean presence, his small ruddy face, wrinkled on the one side. It was even more than piety for kinship which the age, acting through his children ("high-IQ moron, fucked-out eyes"), had leveled with derision and knocked flat. And Gruner called upon Sammler as more than an old uncle, one-eyed, growling peculiarly in Polish-Oxonian. He must have believed that he had some unusual power, magical perhaps, to affirm the human bond. What had he done to generate this belief? How had he induced it? By coming back from the dead, probably.

Margotte had much to say. She did not notice his silence.

By coming back, by preoccupation with the subject, the dying, the mystery of dying, the state of death. Also, by having been inside death. By having been given the shovel and told to dig. By digging beside his digging wife. By this digging, not speaking, he tried to convey something to her and fortify her. But as it had turned out, he had prepared her for death without sharing it. She was killed, not he. She had passed the course, and he had not. The hole deepened, the sand clay and stones of Poland, their birthplace, opened up. He had just been blinded, he had a stunned face, and he was unaware that blood was coming from him till they stripped and he saw it on his clothes. When they were as naked as children from the womb, and the hole was supposedly deep enough, the guns began to blast, and then came a different sound of soil. The thick fall of soil. A ton, two tons, thrown in. A sound of shovel-metal, gritting. Strangely exceptional, Mr. Sammler had come through the top of this. It seldom occurred to him to consider it an achievement. Where was the achievement? He had clawed his way out. If he had been at the bottom, he would have suffoc............