Free Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

useless fellows look at this ruin,” I said. “And then send them up.”
      I gave him a dollar for his trouble. I usually did that. And now the flow of malevolence had to be reversed.
      Through my apartment door I heard the telephone. It was Cantabile.
      “All right, smart-ass.”
      “Insane!” I said. “Vandalism! Beating a machine. . . !”
      “You’ve seen your car—you saw what you made me do!” He yelled. He forced his voice. Nevertheless it shook.
      “What’s that? You’re blaming me?”
      “You were warned.”
      “ I made you hammer that beautiful automobile?”
      “You made me. Yes, you. You sure did. You think I don’t have feelings? You wouldn’t believe how I feel about a car like that. You’re stupid. This is nobody’s fault but yours.” I tried to answer but he shouted me down. “You forced me! You made me! Okay, last night was only step one.”
      “What does that mean?”
      “Don’t pay me and you’ll see what it means.”
      “What kind of threat is that? This is getting out of hand. Do you mean my daughters?”
      “I’m not going to a collection agency. You don’t know what you’re into. Or who I am. Wake up!”
      I often said “Wake up!” to myself, and many people also have cried, “Wake, wake!” As if I had a dozen eyes, and stubbornly kept them sealed. “Ye have eyes and see not.” This, of course, was absolutely true.
      Cantabile was still speaking. I heard him say, “So, go and ask George Swiebel what to do. He gave you the advice. He , like, smashed your car.”
      “Let’s stop all this. I want to settle.”
      “No settle. Pay. Make good the check. The full amount. And cash. No money orders, no cashier’s check, no more fucking around. Cash. I’ll call you later. We’ll make a date. I want to see you.”
      “When?”
      “Never mind when. You stick by the telephone till I call.”
      Next instant I heard the interminable universal electronic miaow of the phone. And I was desperate. I had to tell what had happened. I needed to consult.
      A sure sign of distress: telephone numbers stormed through my head—area codes, digits. I must telephone someone. The first person I called was George Swiebel, of course; I had to tell him what had happened. I also had to warn him. Cantabile might attack him, too. But George was out with a crew. They were pouring a concrete footing somewhere, said Sharon, his secretary. George, before he became a businessman, was, as I have said, an actor. He started out in the Federal Theater. Afterward he was a radio announcer. He had tried television and Hollywood as well. Among business people he spoke of his show-business experience. He knew his Ibsen and his Brecht and he often flew to Minneapolis to see plays at the Guthrie Theatre. In South Chicago he was identified with Bohemia and the Arts, with creativity, with imagination. And he was vital, generous, had an open nature. He was a good guy. People formed strong attachments to him. Look at this little Sharon, his secretary. She was a hillbilly, dwarfish and queer-faced, and looked like Mammy Yokum in the funnies. Yet George was her brother, her doctor, her priest, her tribe. She had, as it were, surveyed South Chicago and found only one man there, George Swiebel. When I spoke to her, I had enough presence of mind to dissemble, for if I had told Sharon how shocking things were she would not have given George the message. George’s average day, as he and his people saw it, was one crisis after another. Her job was to protect him. “Ask George to call me,” I said. I hung up thinking of the crisis-outlook in the USA, a legacy from old frontier times, etcetera. I thought these things from force of habit. Just because your soul is being torn to pieces doesn’t mean that you stop analyzing the phenomena.
      I restrained my real desire, which was to scream. I recognized that I would have to recompose myself unassisted. I