Collected Stories by Saul Bellow

Author:Saul Bellow
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780142001646
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2002-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

ZETLAND: BY A CHARACTER WITNESS

YES, 1 KNEW THE GUY. We were boys in Chicago. He was wonderful. At fourteen, when we became friends, he had things already worked out and would willingly tell you how everything had come about. It went like this: First the earth was molten elements and glowed in space. Then hot rains fell. Steaming seas were formed. For half the earth’s history, the seas were azoic, and then life began. In other words, first there was astronomy, and then geology, and by and by there was biology, and biology was followed by evolution. Next came prehistory and then history—epics and epic heroes, great ages, great men; then smaller ages with smaller men; then classical antiquity, the Hebrews, Rome, feudalism, papacy, renascence, rationalism, the industrial revolution, science, democracy, and so on. All this Zetland got out of books in the late twenties, in the Midwest. He was a clever kid. His bookishness pleased everyone. Over pale-blue eyes, which sometimes looked strained, he wore big goggles. He had full lips and big boyish teeth, widely spaced. Sandy hair, combed straight back, exposed a large forehead. The skin of his round face often looked tight. He was short, heavyish, strongly built but not in good health. At seven years old he had had peritonitis and pneumonia at the same time, followed by pleurisy, emphysema, and TB. His recovery was complete, but he was never free from minor ailments. His skin was peculiar. He was not allowed to be in the sun for long. Exposure to sunlight caused cloudy brown subcutaneous bruises, brownish iridescences. So, often, while the sun shone, he drew the shades and read in his room by lamplight. But he was not at all an invalid. Though he played only on cloudy days, his tennis was good, and he swam a thoughtful breast-stroke with frog motions and a froggy underlip. He played the fiddle and was a good sight reader.

The neighborhood was largely Polish and Ukrainian, Swedish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical Lutheran. The Jews were few and the streets tough. Bungalows and brick three-flats were the buildings. Back stairs and porches were made of crude gray lumber. The trees were cottonwood elms and ailanthus, the grass was crabgrass, the bushes lilacs, the flowers sunflowers and elephant-ears. The heat was corrosive, the cold like a guillotine as you waited for the streetcar. The family, Zet’s bullheaded father and two maiden aunts who were “practical nurses” with housebound patients (dying, usually), read Russian novels, Yiddish poetry, and were mad about culture. He was encouraged to be a little intellectual. So, in short pants, he was a junior Immanuel Kant. Musical (like Frederick the Great or the Esterhazys), witty (like Voltaire), a sentimental radical (like Rousseau), bereft of gods (like Nietzsche), devoted to the heart and to the law of love (like Tolstoy). He was earnest (the early shadow of his father’s grimness), but he was playful, too. Not only did he study Hume and Kant but he discovered Dada and Surrealism as his voice was changing.

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