Free Herzog by Saul Bellow Page A

Luke may be in a very bad way. I must try to think about him as he is- strangeness and all.
        You'd better take the tuberculin test. I had no idea that you ... Herzog broke off. A dining-car steward rang the chimes for lunch, but Herzog had no time to eat. He was about to begin another letter.
        Dear Professor Byzhkovski, I thank you for your courtesy in Warsaw. Owing to the state of my health, our meeting must have been unsatisfactory to you.
        I sat in his apartment making paper hats and boats out of the Trybuna Ludu while he tried to get a conversation going. The professor-that tall powerful man in a sandy-tweed shooting costume of knickers and Norfolk jacket-must have been astonished. I'm convinced he has a kind nature. His blue eyes are the good sort. A fat but shapely face, thoughtful and manly. I kept folding the paper hats-I must have been thinking of the children. Mme.
        Byzhkovski asked me did I want jam in my tea, bending over hospitably. The furniture was richly polished, old, of a vanished Central European epoch-but then this present epoch is vanishing, too, and perhaps faster than all the others.
        I hope you will forgive me. I have now had an opportunity to read your study of the American Occupation of West Germany. Many of the facts are disagreeable.
        But I was never consulted by President Truman, nor by Mr. Mc Cloy. I must confess I haven't examined the German question as closely as 1 should. None of the governments are truthful, in my opinion. There is also an East German question not even touched upon in your monograph.
        I wandered in Hamburg into the red-light district.
        That is, I was told that I should see it.
        Some of the whores, in black lace underthings, wore German military boots and rapped at you with riding crops on the windowpanes. Broads with red complexions, calling and grinning. A cold, joyless day.
        Dear Sir, wrote Herzog.
        You have been very patient with the Bowery bums who enter your church, pass out drunk, defecate in the pews, break bottles on the gravestones, and commit more nuisances. I would suggest that as you can see Wall Street from your church door you might prepare a pamphlet to explain that the Bowery gives additional significance to it. Skid Row is the contrasting institution, therefore necessary. Remind them of Lazarus and Dives. Because of Lazarus, Dives gets an extra kick, a bonus, from his luxuries.
        No, I don't believe Dives is having such a hot time, either. And if he wants to free himself, the doom of Skid Row awaits him. If there were a beautiful poverty, a moral poverty in America, that would be subversive. Therefore it has to be ugly. Therefore the bums are working for Wall Street -confessors of the name. But the Reverend Beasley, where does he get his dough?
        We have thought too little on this.
        He then wrote, Credit Department, Marshall Field and Co. I am no longer responsible for the debts of Madeleine P. Herzog. As of March 10, we ceased to be husband and wife. So don't send me any more bills - I was knocked over by the last - more than four hundred dollars. For purchases made after the separation. Of course I should have written sooner - to what is called the credit nerve-center -Is there such a thing? Where can you find it?- but I temporarily lost my bearings.
        Dear Professor Hoyle, I don't think I understand just how the Gold-Pore Theory works. How the heavier metals - iron, nickel-get to the center of the earth, I think 1 see. But what about the concentration of lighter metals? Also, in your explanation of the formation of smaller planets, including our tragic earth, you speak of adhesive materials that bind the agglomerates of precipitated matter....
        The wheels of the cars stormed underneath. Woods and pastures ran up and receded, the rails of sidings sheathed in rust, the dipping racing wires, and on the right the blue of the Sound,