Free Herzog by Saul Bellow

head was hot and damp and he sat doubled over while Asphalter gave him first aid.
        All the while, the large brown monkey, with arms folded over his chest, and red, dry eyes, was looking on, silently disseminating his grimness. Death, thought Herzog. The real thing. The animal was dying.
        "You better?" Asphalter said.
        "Just open a window. These zoology buildings stink."
        "The window is open. Here, drink some water." He handed Moses a paper cup. "Take one of these.
        Take this first, and then the green and white. Prozine.
        I can't get the cotton out of the bottle.
        My hands are shaking."
        Herzog refused the pills. "Luke... Is this really true, about Madeleine and Gersbach?" he said.
        Intensely nervous, pale, warm, looking at him with his dark eyes, his mottled face, Asphalter said, "Christ! you don't think I'd invent such a thing.
        I probably haven't been tactful. I thought you must have had a pretty good idea.... But it's absolutely true." Asphalter in his soiled lab coat put it to him with a complicated helpless gesture-I lay it all before you, was what it said. His breathing was labored. "You didn't know anything?"
        "No."
        "But doesn't it make sense? Doesn't it add up now?"
        Herzog rested his weight on the desk, knitting his fingers tightly. He stared at the dangling catkins, reddish and violet. Not to burst, not to die-to stay alive, was all he could hope for.
        "Who told you?" he said.
        "Geraldine."
        "Who?"
        "Gerry-Geraldine Portnoy. I thought you knew her. Mady's sitter. She's down in the anatomy lab."
        "What..."
        "Human anatomy, in the Med School, around the corner. I go out with her. In fact, you know her, she was in one of your classes. Do you want to talk to her?"
        "No," said Herzog violently.
        "Well, she's written you a letter. She gave it to me and said she'd leave it up to me, whether I should hand it over or not."
        "I can't read it now."
        "Take it," said Asphalter. "You may want to read it later."
        Herzog stuffed the envelope into his pocket.
        He was wondering, as he sat in the plush seat of the train, holding his valise desk, and leaving New York State at seventy m. p. h., why he hadn't cried in Asphalter's office. He could burst into tears easily enough, and he was not inhibited with Asphalter, they were such old friends, so similar in their lives- their backgrounds, their habits, temperaments. But when Asphalter raised the lid, revealed the truth, something bad was released in his office overlooking the Quadrangle; like an odor, hot and raw; or a queer human fact, almost palpable. Tears were not relevant. The cause was too perverse, altogether too odd for all concerned.
        And then, too, Gersbach was a frequent weeper of distinguished emotional power. The hot tear was often in his magnanimous ruddy-brown eye. Only a few days earlier, when Herzog landed at O'Hare and hugged his little daughter, Gersbach had been there, a powerful, burly figure with tears of compassion in his eyes. So evidently, thought Moses, he's fucked up weeping for me, too. At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
        Yes, the shadow of death was on Rocco, then.
        "Damn unpleasant," said Asphalter. He smoked a bit and put out his cigarette. The tray was filled with long putts-he used up two or three packs a day. "Let's have some drinks. Let's all have dinner tonight. I'm taking Geraldine to the Beachcomber, near-north. You can size her up for yourself."
        Now Herzog had to consider some strange facts about Asphalter. It's possible that I influenced him, my emotionalism transmitted itself to him. He had taken that brooding, hairy Rocco into his heart.
        How else could you account for such agitation-lifting Rocco in his arms and forcing his lips open, breathing mouth to mouth. I suspect