Saul Bellow's Heart Page 18

  A few years earlier, when James Atlas had approached Saul about becoming his biographer, my father agreed to cooperate. Atlas had written a biography of Delmore Schwartz and Saul liked it. After several conversations, no doubt thinking he could control Atlas, Saul granted him access to the archive at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, where, for decades and with his usual absence of forethought, he had deposited boxes full of highly revealing documents. The biographer took his task seriously, and Saul became alarmed when friends and relatives began to complain about his pointed questions. It became clear that Mr. Atlas was going to put in details Saul did not want included, and they quarreled. By then my father could not withdraw the consent that ceded full control. All Saul could do was feign a lack of interest when the biography was published.

  I refused to speak with Atlas about my father, but I wanted to protect my deceased mother from a dismissive portrait like that in the literary memoir that Ruth Miller, Saul’s former student, had published in 1991. I wrote a summary of her life for Atlas, and was pleased by the respect he showed for Anita. But the publication of Bellow in 2000 caused a stir in the family and among friends who complained that their statements were taken out of context and placed in too negative a light. My father, angered and hurt, sought someone to blame, and made the biography into yet another measure of family loyalty. In his acknowledgments Atlas overstated a friendship with Adam and Dan but made no mention of me. I became a momentary hero with Saul for limiting my participation to a simple sketch of his first wife.

  Bellow affected me in ways I had not anticipated. As I read about events in a life I knew well, I began to seriously reconsider my public silence. Atlas’s apparent idealization of my father as a great writer likely prompted him to become Saul’s biographer. But speaking with detractors, ex-friends, and the few members of our family willing to cooperate seemed to have infected his once high opinion of my father with anger and disappointment that had crept into his biography. I began to wonder if my negative feelings about “old Saul” might infect the memoir I was considering.

  I do not believe Saul understood that he was losing his short-term memory, but he knew something was wrong as he complained to my cousin Lesha about his kopf, Yiddish for head. My father also revealed a concern for his mental state in a 2000 letter to Philip Roth where, likely referring to the repetitions and gaps in his letters about the origins of his early novels, he thanked Roth for covering up for what he termed a breakdown.

  By 2002 Saul’s mental deterioration, which was akin to islands of clarity in a dark sea of silence, was beginning to accelerate. I decided it was time for one more real conversation that I feared might be our last. Irritated for decades that Saul took only a passing interest in my adult life, I decided to tell my father something about who I was in a way he’d understand. When asked about writing, he often employed a quote from Stendhal about developing literary characters by giving them what they lack—that is, creating them out of essential bits and pieces. I decided the best way to describe myself was to adopt a parallel explanation and said, “I took from my family what I needed.”

  I began with Beebee’s observation that I created a family for myself everywhere I went by remaining loyal to people I cared about. I elaborated that with a kaleidoscopic childhood like mine, I had fashioned my identity out of the bits and pieces I found in my family. I ended with a tribute to how Saul’s warmth and vulnerability was central to my ability to love, to be a good person and father, and was the glue that kept the pieces of my personality in place.

  When I finished, Saul praised me and the identity I had forged. But he touched me most deeply by referring to the times I called him in despair over the deaths of those I loved—Anita, Beebee, and George Sarant. “When you call me in that state,” he said, “I can see the goodness in your soul.” Who could ask more of an aging father? Had those been his last words to me, we would have been spared the greatest pain that ever came between us.

  When my daughter Juliet and Charlie Schulman announced their engagement and set a wedding date in New York, Saul was genuinely excited. He continually referred to the date as if trying to make sure it was fixed in his mind. I took his insistence on “moving heaven and earth to get there” as a reflection of his desire to attend. Arrangements seemed to be on track, when Saul called Juliet a few weeks before the wedding. Offering no explanation, he said, “You must forgive me, but I cannot come to your wedding.” Juliet and I had a heart-wrenching conversation about how Saul could inflict so much pain by making commitments and failing to fulfill them. For the first time, Juliet understood why I had erected the self-protective barriers between my father and myself that she had often observed and pointed out to me.

  Saul did not call me until Adam warned him that not speaking directly to me would make matters worse. Saul called and simply announced he would not be at the wedding, again offering no explanation. I told Saul he was hurting me and my child, that this was unforgivable from a father and grandfather. When he pleaded innocence, I said, “Damn your soul,” which was about the worst thing I could say to a man I knew to be preoccupied with its long-term fate.

  A few days later Saul called back and laid the responsibility on his doctor, who forbade travel. But in his belated medical excuse, I recognized a familiar pattern of hiding behind someone else when he had done something hurtful. Adam tried to intercede, but by then Saul had his back up and refused to discuss it. Both brothers offered to go to Boston to help Saul, Janis, and Rosie come to New York. Adam even called Will, Saul’s assistant, asking if there was any constructive way for him to intervene. Will said no, confirming my impression that Saul had dug in his heels and would not budge.

  Saul’s absence cast a shadow over an otherwise joyous day for Juliet. But when there was not even a phone call to the bride and groom wishing them well, I knew that Saul was angry at being challenged by all three sons. Three weeks later, Saul traveled to Cincinnati, assisted by Dan, to see his sister Jane, and at Christmas he went to Toronto with Janis and Rosie. Clearly he was able to travel. I concluded he did not attend because, surrounded by those who knew him well, he could not hide memory losses and did not want to be embarrassed in public. Tragically, he had begun to ask after his brothers, only to be pained by the news of their deaths once again. Several times Saul decided to call his old friend Sam Freifeld, whose ex-wife had to repeat the news that Sam had passed away. My father grieved anew and complained that he hadn’t been informed that his old friend had died, when of course he had.

  But Saul did not level with me, or with Juliet, about why he did not attend, though it is likely that he was unable to face his own deterioration. After the wedding. I did not speak with Saul for eighteen months. I did not wish to see him, talk to him, or hear about him. My anger was so great and my suspicions were so high after he went to Cincinnati that I occasionally wondered if not coming to my daughter’s wedding was his way of getting even for my absence from celebratory events in his honor. After some months, Saul asked Adam why he had not heard from me. My brother answered that it was because he had not attended Juliet’s wedding. Saul began to repeat his medical rationale, but Adam said that he was just answering his question and did not want to discuss Saul’s reasons.

  Two letters I wrote during that 2003 rupture that were never answered convey the depth of my anger and despair, but they also reveal my awareness of the chronic sad state of affairs between us that had existed for decades.

  (January 2003)

  Dear Pop,

  Your inability to move beyond your own needs, no matter what the obstacles to attending Juliet’s wedding, has rent the fragile fabric that holds this family together.

  The damage is to my family feeling and thus takes the form of my loss of interest in your welfare and in softening the burdens of your old age. I find within myself no desire for contact—to visit, to speak to you, or to hear family reports.

  I cannot alter that perception or undo the damage it has caused. If this is
something you wish to alter, the initiative rests with you.

  If I do not hear from you, and I mean you—not surrogates—it means to me that either you did not receive this letter, you are incapable of remedying the situation, or the absence of a relationship going into the future is your desire.

  In any case I remain your son—even in absentia.

  G.

  (May 2003)

  Dear Pop,

  I thought I’d write as I did not want a repeat of our last phone conversation [which occurred when he said he was not attending]. Unfortunately, this puts me in a position of continually circumscribing our relationship. There is not much left to talk about when you don’t agree about politics, money, educational philosophy, or the nature of family obligations.

  This is not my choice and it is not my desire. However, as we both get older changes have occurred. You have become less tolerant of differences between yourself and others. I have come to have faith in myself and the correctness of my own ideas.

  I do not believe either of us will change because neither of us really wishes to abandon what we experience as positions which are correct for ourselves. I do not think it wise that we do. I do not believe that our relationship could withstand a truly candid discussion of our views. I wish this were not so but in my heart I believe it to be so.

  Frankly I do not see a lot of positive options. But a relationship built on false confession would be worse than what we have. So here we are. As a child you are my pop and I love you. This will never change. As a man I will not abandon myself and you should not ask me to do so. I never mean to hurt you, but when it comes to a choice between my values and hurting someone—even you—my values will prevail. This is the man my parents brought me up to be and this is the man I am.

  G.

  Saul may have wanted to mend fences, but he was unable to bring himself to apologize to me or to his granddaughter. Instead he reverted to custom by enlisting a messenger. Though I had not been in touch with Monroe Engel, Saul’s former editor at the Viking Press, for fifty years, I received an e-mail from him, gently trying to encourage me to visit my ailing father. As he showed no interest in my side of the story, I took him to be just another messenger on an errand from Saul.

  About eighteen months later, there was a large party in Boston given by my wife JoAnn’s sister. I called Will about visiting Saul. Though I particularly disliked talking to Saul on the phone when there was unresolved business between us, but the good-hearted Will insisted on putting him on the line. I told my father I’d be in Boston in a few weeks and would like to talk to him in person.

  Saul had suffered a stroke, was bedridden, and was not expected to survive. When I arrived, Janis and Rosie were out. An attendant led me up to his room, where he drifted in and out of a sleeplike state. Saul recognized me and spoke coherently though softly. The family cat was also dozing on the bed, prompting me to call my father’s present state a feline existence. “Exactly,” he said, and a spark of life shone through as he quipped that it “made him want to scratch.”

  I needed to clear the air as we always had, particularly if this was to be our last conversation. With great trepidation, I said he had hurt me deeply by not attending Juliet’s wedding. He answered, “I did not mean to hurt you, but the disease takes over.” “But you did hurt me and my child!” I exclaimed. Just then his attendant came in, ostensibly to check on him, though she immediately insisted that Saul was a very sick man who could not tolerate any emotional upset. Alone again, I asked if there was anything more he wanted to say. He said no. I ended with “We always had an honest relationship, and I don’t see any reason to change it now.” He nodded in agreement. As I left to have lunch, the attendant was giving Janis, who had returned, a report. I concluded that she had been instructed to listen at the door and interrupt if I brought up the problems between us.

  I returned an hour later with a different concern, that I’d never see Saul alive again. I tried to find a way to say goodbye without using the word death. I was standing at his bedside and Saul put his hand on my heart. I told him that I loved him as I always had. I kissed him and walked out of his room. Saying “Goodbye, Pop” under my breath, I wished him a peaceful end.

  Saul’s statement that he wished me no harm went a long way toward healing my wound. For fifty years I had been protected from the kind of pain Saul could cause when he let people down: as a child by his love, and as an adult by physical distance and layers of emotional insulation. This time I had let my guard down out of my love for Juliet, and I had paid the price. Looking back, I realize that I had successfully avoided the full force of his coldness. The disappointment I had experienced was just a full dose of the selfishness everyone else had been enduring for years.

  Although his memory had been failing for several years, Saul had insisted on teaching a course on Joseph Conrad at Boston University, but his problems were severe enough that James Wood was enlisted to coteach. Will, who attended, told me that my father could still make magnificent observations about fiction, but could no longer follow the thread of the discussions. During my final visits to him in Boston, Saul reminded me of Beebee. Both walked aimlessly around homes that appeared both familiar and unfamiliar. But I did not realize how bad Saul’s memory was until he forgot about a dinner guest I’d invited after clearing it with him and Janis the day before. When the young man arrived, Saul raked me over the coals for inviting a stranger into the house. He backed off after a head shake from Janis, which indicated he was relying on her when his memory failed.

  The extent of Janis’s control over his literary affairs became clear after I mentioned a growing desire to gain access to Saul’s archive in the Regenstein Library. “So,” Saul said with pleasure, “you’re getting interested in your past.” His signature was necessary for me to gain access, and Will began to make the necessary arrangements. After an unduly long delay, Will called to tell me that my access to the archive had been denied. Diplomatically, he added that matters were out of his hands and in those of the Wylie Agency. Though I made it clear to Saul’s new literary agent that Saul approved of my request, I received a curt refusal from the same young man who had sweetly quoted romantic poetry to Saul in Vermont. By then I saw that my father did not even have the power to give me access to his own archive.

  The final blow was determining Saul’s final resting place. By the late 1980s, my aunt Jane and Saul were the only survivors from the generation of Bellows that had lived in Lachine. Though Morrie was buried in Georgia and Sam in Israel, Saul retained a deep faith that he’d see members of his family after his death. For a decade that faith took on a very concrete form: a preoccupation with being buried next to his parents. But Jane’s husband, Charlie, and their sons Larry and Bob were in a plot next to my grandparents. The one remaining spot was reserved for her. Saul was irritated that his sister, once again, took precedence, but a solution became available.

  An adjacent gravesite, sufficient to hold Saul, Lesha, and her husband, was for sale. Lesha made the initial arrangements but needed her uncle’s go-ahead. Burial next to his parents would confirm the sentimental connection between Saul and his family of origin in perpetuity. But when Lesha pressed Saul for a decision, she was met with obfuscation and delay. Finally, with my father present but silent, it was Janis who told Lesha that the two of them would be buried together in Vermont. With one sentence, Janis finally eliminated any possibility of interference by Saul’s family during the rest of his life and even in death.

  During his final year, Saul was very weak and rarely left his bed. Every time I asked about his welfare on the phone, his answer, “Hunky-dory,” made me realize my father was too far gone to realize how frail he was. I tracked Saul’s health through Will’s phone reports. Eventually, it turned so dire that I took a red-eye from San Francisco to Boston, arriving at 6:00 A.M. The winter temperature was 2 degrees. I snoozed at the airport until the temperature went up to 4 and got a chuckle out of Saul when I reported that a 100 percent impr
ovement was sufficient for me to leave the comfort of the terminal.

  Apparently it had been a long time since Saul had ventured downstairs, but that day he pulled himself together and met me on the first floor. Janis, who was in and out of the house all day, was delighted to see him dressed and sitting upright. Maria, the kind woman now charged with his physical care, reported that Saul called me his “little boy” and spoke of me often. My father’s mental state had indeed worsened. The seas of silence had expanded and the islands of clarity were smaller. He often became lost midthought but seemed to understand when I brought him up to speed about my family, and even inquired whether I was close to retirement.

  My hair had been as white as Saul’s for decades, and on that visit I sported a large beard, also white. As the afternoon drew to a close and my departure grew near, Saul said he was glad to see “sonny boy.” By mimicking Al Jolson’s intonation, Saul was bringing to mind the times I sat on his lap as a boy and he made believe my stomach was a cello, drawing his arm back and forth as he sang, “Climb upon my knee, sonny boy.”

  “Yes, Pop,” I answered, “even under all this snow [Bellowese for my white hair and beard], I’ll always be your sonny boy.” After decades of being nearly buried, “young Saul” and little Herschele reemerged in our last moment together. I left as Janis prepared a beautiful Sabbath table to celebrate Saul’s coming downstairs on a Friday night. I believe it was the last time he did so under his own power.