Humboldt's Gift Read Online Free PDF

finally gave up, turning off the ignition. Then in a checked sport jacket and strap-fastened polo boots he came out, swinging shut a door that seemed two yards long. His greeting was silent, the large lips were closed. His gray eyes seemed more widely separated than ever—the surfaced whale beside the dory. His handsome face has thickened and deteriorated. It was sumptuous, it was Buddhistic, but it was not tranquil. I myself was dressed for the formal professorial interview, all too belted furled and buttoned. I felt like an umbrella. Demmie had taken charge of my appearance. She ironed my shirt, chose my necktie, and brushed flat the dark hair I still had then. I went downstairs. And there we were, with the rough bricks, the garbage cans, the sloping sidewalks, the fire escapes, Demmie waving from above and her white terrier barking at the window sill.
      “Have a nice day.”
      “Why isn’t Demmie coming? Kathleen expects her.”
      “She has to grade her Latin papers. Make lesson plans,” I said.
      “If she’s so conscientious she can do it in the country. I’d take her to the early train.”
      “She won’t do it. Besides, your cats wouldn’t like her dog.”
      Humboldt did not insist. He was devoted to the cats.
      So from the present I see two odd dolls in the front seat of the roaring, grinding four-holer. This Buick was all over mud and looked like a staff car from Flanders Field. The wheels were out of line, the big tires pounded eccentrically. Through the thin sunlight of early autumn Humboldt drove fast, taking advantage of the Sunday emptiness of the streets. He was a terrible driver, making left turns from the right side, spurting, then dragging, tailgating. I disapproved. Of course I was much better with a car but comparisons were absurd, because this was Humboldt, not a driver. Steering, he was humped huge over the wheel, he had small-boy tremors of the hands and feet, and he kept the cigarette holder between his teeth. He was agitated, talking away, entertaining, provoking, informing, and snowing me. He hadn’t slept last night. He seemed in poor health. Of course he drank, and he dosed himself with pills, lots of pills. In his briefcase he carried the Merck Manual . It was bound in black like the Bible, he consulted it often, and there were druggists who would give him what he wanted. This was something he had in common with Demmie. She too was an unauthorized pill-taker.
      The car walloped the pavement, charging toward the Holland Tunnel. Close to the large form of Humboldt, this motoring giant, in the awful upholstered luxury of the front seat, I felt the ideas and illusions that went with him. He was always accompanied by a swarm, a huge volume of notions. He said how changed the Jersey swamps were, even in his lifetime, with roads, dumps, and factories, and what would a Buick like this with power brakes and power steering have meant even fifty years ago. Imagine Henry James as a driver, or Walt Whitman, or Mallarmé. We were off: he discussed machinery, luxury, command, capitalism, technology, Mammon, Orpheus and poetry, the riches of the human heart, America, world civilization. His task was to put all of this, and more, together. The car went snoring and squealing through the tunnel and came out in bright sunlight. Tall stacks, a filth artillery, fired silently into the Sunday sky with beautiful bursts of smoke. The acid smell of gas refineries went into your lungs like a spur. The rushes were as brown as onion soup. There were seagoing tankers stuck in the channels, the wind boomed, the great clouds were white. Far out, the massed bungalows had the look of a necropolis-to-be. Through the pale sun of the streets the living went to church. Under Humboldt’s polo boot the carburetor gasped, the eccentric tires thumped fast on the slabs of the highway. The gusts were so strong that even the heavy Buick fluttered. We plunged over the Pulaski Skyway while the stripes of