When Saul wandered off, one time, he didn’t just go for a stroll and a potter around Crowninshield Road. After all, he was an American; he had absorbed the principles of mobility and self-reliance. So he took a cab to the airport and got on a plane. I was reminded of this incident out in Vermont when Saul’s secretary, a handsome and humorous BU graduate (cheerful, head-in-air) called Will Lautzenheiser, made one of his regular runs from Boston to bring the mail and a thick wedge of invitations and requests. He had been the point man when Saul went missing.
Will spent his couple of hours with Saul, and everyone had lunch, and then I walked him out to his car. We had met several times before and I always thought how lucky the Bellows were to have found such a congenial Boy Friday. Will was a hardened Joycean, by the way, with an unfeigned appetite for the avant-garde; he would save up and travel great distances to attend, say, a futuristic mime in Los Angeles or an atonal opera in Austin. I particularly liked Will’s attitude to his job and to his charge. It’s as if I’m making life a bit easier for Shakespeare, he told me. You’re proud to get the chance to do it. I now said in the driveway,
‘Rosamund described it to me but I’m hazy on the…Saul flew from Boston to New York – is that right?’
‘No. He flew from Toronto to Boston. He attempted to fly to New York – he bought a ticket to New York, he thought he was still living there. But he must’ve realised his mistake, or they…’
‘Mm, you have to do a lot of talking to get in and out of Canada. Customs, Immigration. Maybe they put him right. Wait. When did it happen?’
It happened surprisingly long ago: August 2001 (just after the visit to East Hampton and just before September 11). Saul had gone with Rosamund to Toronto, where she was speaking at a conference on Under Western Eyes (Conrad’s second consecutive novel about terrorism, following The Secret Agent). They brought Rosie with them, counting on the support of two very capable Torontoans, Harvey and Sonya Friedman, Rosamund’s parents.
‘So where exactly did Saul do a runner from?’
‘The hotel. They were going to pick him up for dinner, but he checked himself out and…That night I got home late.’ That night Will had characteristically sat through a six-hour screening of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom. ‘There was a message from Saul saying he was on his way in from Logan. Astounding.’
‘Yes he was uh, very bold.’
‘Very bold.’
And we laughed, shaking our heads.
‘It did seem kind of funny once we knew he was safe. When I called Rosamund in Toronto she was beside herself. The police were out. I was beside myself.’
And Will, I bore in mind, had a twin…He sprinted the mile to Crowninshield Road. Saul was there, tired, calm, lucid, and mainly just sad and anxious.
‘He thought Rosamund was about to leave him.’
‘…You’re kidding.’
‘I told him no, no, Rosamund loves you. And he said, Well that’s what I’ve always thought. But I’m not sure. I’m not sure today.’
‘He doubted Rosamund…Well he’s getting things wrong. Like he thought he lived in New York. He’s getting big things wrong.’
‘Yeah, he is.’ Will opened the car door, saying, ‘That night he talked on the phone with an old friend, who reassured him. So I got him to bed. And I stayed over.’
‘Good for you.’
In Will climbed. I told him to take care and I waved as he reversed into the lane.*5 For a while I stood on the drive, tangentially wondering if Saul, when he arrived at Toronto International, had asked for a ticket to Idlewild, which was what Herzog and everybody else called it, back in 1960.
Idlewild. There was much to admire in that name, that word. I always thought it derived from a flower, but it was just an inheritance from Idlewild Beach Golf Course, on which New York’s main airport was built in 1947 (to be rechristened JFK in 1963). ‘Idlewild’ is a familiar American place-name – there’s one in Michigan – but its origin is obscure. Some say it comes from a proverb or ditty: ‘idle men and wild women’…
—————
Rosamund said, ‘He keeps accusing me. Accusing me of…’
We were taking a turn in the garden (Eliza was up the slope and busy on the swing).
‘He keeps thinking I’m…’
The Alzheimer’s literature alerts relatives and carers to the sort of behaviour, or behaviours, considered ‘inappropriate’.*6 There are also pages and pages about infuriated (and of course delusive) sexual jealousy, among other concomitants. So I wasn’t completely astounded to learn the following: Saul was under the impression that Rosamund was interesting herself in other men.
‘Ah – poor you,’ I said. ‘How very awful.’ I clenched my eyes shut and groaned. And poor him, too. ‘I know this is asking a lot but you mustn’t take it personally. It’s just a symptom.’ Was that any better? Saul deindividualised, lost in a mess of symptoms and syndromes? I said feebly, ‘It’s like Elena’s mother. She wakes up every day thinking she’s been robbed in the night.’
‘He doesn’t think that.’
‘No, but he does think this.’
Again her frown, her defeated look. There was hurt in it all right, and lost patience. And another element, I saw: a self-accusing reassessment of her own strength. She believed she was up to it; now, facing daily insult and (truly definitive) injustice, she was wondering if that was true.
‘With the sexual stuff, when it recrudesces like this…You know it could be worse.’ What
