5. More Die of Heartbreak, by Saul Bellow, pp. 132-163

From "The problem was not with opulence and luxury ..." through "... The rest follows from this."

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Mrs. Layamon, Benn tells Kenneth, has a "sanctum" in which she "tapes poetry for people in nursing homes." It also contains a splendid azalea, which to Benn's regret is off-limits to him. Matilda, he says, sleeps late and wakes "snappish, morose," which is a bit of a trial for him, "liveliest when he woke up." She also dislikes his friendliness with the servants. But Benn, familiar with the alien through his work with plants, takes it in stride, Kenneth observes:

For all I know, he viewed her as a sheaf of ferns bound up in the satin edging of the  eiderdown, and expanding at the top, fronds of long hair coming down over shut eyes. But then he hadn't married a plant. Matilda might remind you of a fern or a lily of the field, and maybe the plant element was strong in her -- the trouble she had waking suggested a struggle between the two natures -- but she did wake, however reluctantly, and came out at last in her gorgeous housecoat, a brocade of Far Eastern design. 

For Benn, one major problem with staying at the Layamons is the looming presence of the Electronic Tower that sat now on the neighborhood where he was raised and is a constant reminder of his being cheated by Vilitzer. Mrs. Layamon referred to the tower as an "important piece of modern beauty," but Benn keeps his silence about his opinion of it. He does venture a comment that the house that the tower replaced had two very fine mulberry trees. "Expressive looks passed among the Layamons. Uncle was aware of these but interpreted them as signs of boredom. There he was definitely wrong, as we shall see."

Matilda and her mother busy themselves "with bridal registry choices, deciding between Lalique and Baccarat and also linens and kitchenware. A more experienced housekeeper than either of them, Benn had ideas of his own about pots and pans and dishwashers.... However, he wasn't consulted, nor did he try to put in his two cents." He even goes shopping with Matilda and keeps his mouth shut when she buys a dishwasher, even though he knows that for a hundred dollars more they could get one "a thousand times better."

Kenneth comes to dinner one evening at the Layamons to watch his uncle "in the role of the botanical professor bridegroom and son-in-law -- Dr. Chlorophyll." He is able to see for himself the view of the Electronic Tower: "It drew close in the night, a mass of lighted windows bigger than the Titanic, and the fiery masts like a sign to the children of Israel."

Benn goes to the Roanoke to measure the rooms in the apartment Matilda had inherited from her aunt, and confirms Kenneth's "Venetian palace comparison." The rooms had been shut up for a year and "smelled like sickrooms." He wanted to ask Matilda if her aunt had "been incontinent? Did she keep cats or dogs?" But he doesn't. "All I could say was that it was pretty lavish." She does strike the right note when him when she points out that "the windows look straight into the treetops" -- a stand of sycamores.

A true plant man diffused his personal essence into leaves, internal tissues, and sent himself from the root-clutched soil to the highest extremities. As if talking to himself he spoke of forces from the center of the planet, akin to grief, driving green impulses to the surface and into the sun, which act was applauded by the leaves. I'm not sure he actually knew what he was saying. He trusted me enough to ramble, to put unaccountable thoughts, inadmissible notions, into words. 

But Benn's main concern about the apartment is the expense of remodeling and furnishing it. When he ventures to suggest an economy, she replies, "'No, dear.' ... This 'dear,' the 'dear' of contradiction, was laid down like a cement block." He comes to realize that "the Roanoke wasn't simply an apartment. You couldn't just live in it. If you tried, you'd decay.... You had to give parties here -- dinners, private concerts -- otherwise the surroundings would have a disembodying effect on you and pretty soon you'd be a spook, haunting the pantry." Matilda envisions it as a place for a salon: "Visitors passing through, people like Dobrynin, Kissinger, Marilyn Horne, ballet dancers, Günter Grass -- on the road, and no better place to kill an evening -- would discover a civilized haven."

Again, the expense troubles Benn: "This fifteen-room leviathan will swallow my whole salary, and then some." Matilda tells him not to worry:

"Naturally I've considered this from all sides," she said, smiling. "I thought it would appeal more to the Don Quixote in you."

Benn said, "Quixote was a bachelor."

"I meant that the irrationality of it might appeal to you." 

He suggests that they could "fix up the front, the showy part, and you and I can live in the rear," but that, too, is dismissed by Matilda. He tells Kenneth, "It's a three-cornered match: Matilda, me and the Roanoke. I hadn't realized that. Well, how could anybody, beforehand?" But to ease his concern about finances, she sets up a lunch with her father to talk about them.

Kenneth considers "the facts as I then knew them: A beautiful woman unites herself with a world-famous botanist. He may think it will serve his needs. No, all the while she has been thinking what she can do with him." And before Benn's lunch with Dr. Layamon, he suggests that his uncle ask about the judge who performed the wedding ceremony. Benn promises to do so.

The lunch takes place at a pretentious restaurant "on the seventy-fifth floor of one of the newest high-rises." The doctor indulges in medical talk, including the way he counsels aging patients on impotence, which provokes Benn to ask, "Okay, William, why are you telling me about hormones or inflating the genital? You think I'm going to make you some medical confession?" But he learns that the doctor already knows what he needs to know about him: "we ran a little check on you, purely private and absolutely discreet." The news is somewhat unsettling. As if to compensate, the doctor tells him that when Matilda was born, "we physicians had to puzzle over the baby. Was it a boy or a girl?" Benn assures him "she's a woman through and through."

Finally, Benn gets around to asking Kenneth's question: "I want to know why you brought in that Chetnik man to perform the ceremony." He's "an old family friend," Layamon replies, and when Benn says, "He was the judge in our case against Vilitzer," Layamon says he was aware of that, too. Finally, the doctor reveals that he was expecting the question. He had persuaded Matilda to have the judge do the ceremony, and after more back-and-forth on the matter, including a revelation that Amador Chetnik is "changing loyalties," Layamon comes out with the truth:

"Well, as you will have figured, with a brain like yours, the object is to recover money from Uncle Harold. That's the overall game plan."

"For the purpose of refitting the Roanoke palazzo?"

"Right! And then some."

A U.S. attorney is investigating Chetnik, who is ready to name Vilitzer in exchange for leniency. Layamon wants Benn to approach his uncle to discuss terms. If the attorney can put Vilitzer in jail, that will advance his political aims: "a clear path to the U.S. Senate. Or you become governor and you're even mentioned for the presidency." So if Benn threatens to reopen his case against Vilitzer, the threat of investigation will provide some leverage for Vilitzer to settle. It all becomes clear to Benn: "And with Amador Chetnik, now going in reverse, coaching us on the legal side. Yes, I get it. And this was why you asked the judge to unite Matilda and me."

But Benn also insists, "I don't want to harm Vilitzer -- he's my uncle. Sure he's been rough. Still, he's my uncle -- he's Mama's brother." Layamon retorts, "The main consideration is justice. You were gypped out of millions. And it turns out that your new family is protecting your rights, and by rights you should be set up in a place like the Roanoke." He tells Benn that he should ask Vilitzer for five million dollars, "ready to come down to three. I'd estimate his total net worth at a hundred million." Layamon says he should do it for Matilda, who "wants a brilliant position for herself, no more than a woman like that is entitled to." And he can't do it on his salary.

"If you're going to share the bed of this delicious girl of high breeding and wallow in it, you'll have o find the money it takes. And it so happens that the single most valuable piece of real estate in this town was your property until five years ago, when you were screwed out of it, chum. We think you can be made whole. So here goes."

4. More Die of Heartbreak, by Saul Bellow, pp. 104-132

From "I had gone to see my mother in East Africa ..." through "...Which side do you think I'm from?"

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Benn's marriage took Kenneth completely by surprise: When his uncle drove him to the airport for his trip to see his mother in Africa, Benn had made no mention of Matilda, or even of the fact that he was seeing her, even though Kenneth had introduced him to her. Kenneth's feelings are hurt, and he behaves like a jilted girlfriend. "Somewhere, I'm still sore because he cheated on me -- broke the rules of our relationship."

Kenneth's mother is surprised by the marriage, too, but she uses it as an occasion to warn him against his "tendency to imitate" his uncle, telling him: "Treckie would not be a suitable wife. She belongs to the Ken Kesey acid culture and all that craziness which is now passé and doesn't yet realize it." But she rubs salt in his wound by saying that "now your uncle will need you much less than formerly." Kenneth is convinced that "Uncle had never needed me so badly as now."

Matilda had come to Paris to do research for her Ph.D. thesis, which is where Kenneth's mother had become acquainted with her. When she returned home, she made contact with Kenneth and through him with Benn.

She was now in her thirties, had never been married, was not too old to have children, and what she was looking for was a husband. It never entered my mind that Uncle Benn might be thought a candidate for matrimony by this glittering, nervous, French-Midwestern woman.

As it turned out, she was the one who asked Benn to keep their relationship secret. "I might be a dear person, and obviously Uncle doted on me, but nobody could deny that I was a bit on the weird side and notorious for the kinkiness of my theories. Even Mother had hinted (more than hinted) that I was somewhat unstable." Benn describes the places where he used to meet Matilda, and Kenneth recognizes them as "Places where you'd never run into me." Benn denies that he was responsible for that, so Kenneth puts the blame on Matilda.

Benn is staying with Matilda and her parents "in their duplex penthouse, at the peak of a newly constructed building in what passes in this town for a 'fine old neighborhood' -- a cluster of residential condominiums, many of them tawny pink." Kenneth is convinced that his "uncle had no business in such a location." They meet in Kenneth's room in one of the university dormitories, a "bare, devoid-of-comforts place."

Benn tells Kenneth that he is staying with the Layamons temporarily before he and Matilda leave for their honeymoon in Brazil. Kenneth reminds him that he "didn't like Brazil the first time," to which Benn replies, "You'd have to be pretty spoiled to reject such a big piece of the continent," and that Matilda wants to go "To escape the winter. To honeymoon in a warm climate." Kenneth adds, "'Also, to have you to herself for two or three months.' I didn't add: 'To cut me out.'" After they return, they will be moving into a co-op called the Roanoke, which Matilda's aunt left to her in her will. "The Roanoke! Sixteen Venetian palaces piled on top of one another in a towering heap," Kenneth says in astonishment tinged with distaste.

I took the trouble of recording Benn's conversations from his other life (the Layamon one) as he reported them to me, and I've kept the notes. At first he was reserved, intent on making an impression. With time, however, he began to go into greater detail, consistent with his habit of mind.... When he described the wedding ceremony to me, he mentioned that it had been performed near the Layamons' Christmas tree. Although dusted with plastic snow, the tree itself was real. It was a balsam fir, and to this bristling little plant he connected himself somehow. It was like a sister to the bridegroom, the nearest thing to a relative standing up at his wedding.... If while he and Matilda were being united by the judge Benn closed his eyes and swayed slightly, it was because his imagination was enlarging in his head the heavily cutinized epidermis of the needle leaves -- the stomata beneath the surface, the mesophyll, the trabecular projections, the resin canals, the procambium.

Kenneth asks if Vilitzer had been invited, and Benn admits that he was on the guest list though he didn't attend. But he reveals that the judge who performed the ceremony was also the judge, Amador Chetnik, who presided over the trial when Kenneth's mother sued Vilitzer. "At this, my legs dropped off the recliner and I sat upright and turned my head to hear better." He tells Benn that he hopes that the choice of "One of Vilitzer's stable of judges" wasn't his new father-in-law's idea of a joke. "Doctor is a sort of humorist," Benn replies. "He isn't a smooth type at all. But it may have a tactical meaning we can't see yet. Fence mending of some kind."

The Layamons, Benn says, are "definitely friendly" toward him. Mrs. Layamon is "only eight years my senior, about the same age as your mother. Instead of a son-in-law I might be her brother." Dr. Layamon has, in addition to the twelve-room penthouse, a house in Palm Springs, and plays golf with Bob Hope and Gerald Ford. Norman Lear had had them to dinner, and Layamon felt obliged to make a contribution to the American Civil Liberties Union, "As payola." The Layamons had expected Matilda to choose "a husband form any of these spheres. According to Doctor, she passed up a national network anchorman, then a fellow who was now on the federal appeals bench, plus a tax genius consulted by Richard Nixon. The list was fairly long.... Matilda just naturally drew men."

Dr. Layamon is convinced that she

had brains enough to be chief executive officer of a blue-chip corporation. With her mentality you could manage NASA. When Mondale announced for the presidency she sent him a campaign blueprint, and if he had been smart enough to put her in charge he might be in the White House now. Her head is like a computer bank, and all she ever used it for was to contrive more personal trouble, a migraine for her parents, lasting more than three decades. On the chance that there would be less trouble to get into in higher education, they sent her to the best institutions. As a result she has more degrees than a thermometer -- all useless, worth shit.

Layamon, Benn says, has a way of giving compliments and then undermining them. "He complimented Benn on his eminence in botany," and then would make some remark about what a shame it was that he hadn't had his teeth straightened. And in the restroom he inspected Benn's genitals while they were urinating. "His comment was: 'Fire-fighting equipment seems adequate, anyway.'" Matilda later told Benn that she had noticed how quickly her father had followed him to the men's room: "Genitals are a common fixation among doctors."

But Benn also insists, "I am happy with this woman."