Religion. When I was a child (in a household where that kind of thing just never came up), other children’s parents sometimes took me along to church on Sunday mornings; and I sat through it all in perplexity, estrangement, and, after five or ten minutes, heartfelt and then passionate boredom. But now I was half a century older, and – let’s be fair – the Judaic faith was twice as old as the Christian; so I was intrigued and perhaps minutely solaced by the strength of these continuities and observances.
By one in particular. On the brink of the grave stood a considerable pyramid of earth intermixed with orange sand. In Jewish lore it is felt that the dead should not be inhumed by strangers – that this work belongs to the near and dear, to the loved and loving, to family and friends. Rosamund went first, getting right down on her haunches and emptying the shovel gently and almost soundlessly; followed by the three sons (the three half-brothers), Gregory, Adam, Daniel; followed by all able-bodied mourners, in their turn…When it came to Philip Roth, he gave the shovel a dismissive glance and reached into the grit with his bare right hand, raised his arm, and splayed his fingers over the rectangular cavity in the ground.*2 Most of the real spading, and the conscientious levelling of the surface, fell to Mr Frank Maltese, the local man who built Saul’s nearby house, back in 1975.
And death is still death, whenever it comes – death is always death. Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale:
What is this world? what asketh man to have?
Now with his love, now in his cold grave,
Alone, withouten any company.
—————
Shiva, the prescribed period of mourning, starts immediately after interment and lasts seven days. I stayed in Boston for about that long, putting up at a downtown Marriott and presenting myself at Crowninshield Road before lunch and leaving after dinner. I was just present and around, autonomous but available, along with Rosamund’s parents, her sister, her niece, and other friends and helpers, and of course Rosie – we were the circled wagons of Rosamund’s train.
That week there were further attendances at shul, and there were other rituals. At Crowninshield Road life solidified around the kitchen table, where we talked and reminisced, and although there was a great deal of eating there was hardly any cooking. Every day at dusk a family group would appear on the front doorstep: neighbours, in this Judaeo-academic enclave, bearing those tubs and tureens heavy with thick stews and thick soups…You could hear a laconic exchange of words but there was no ingress, no intrusion. And always, it seemed, a companionable little party was in progress on the front path, people coming or going, bearing meals or bearing away various rinsed containers and utensils, and modestly reminding you that food is love.
In 2005 I was the son of a dead writer, Kingsley (1922–95). I ought to have known better than anyone that writers survive their deaths. A sceptic might say that only their books survive; but their books were and are their lives, and this was most pointedly true of Saul, the master of the Higher Autobiography – the Life-Writer.
The table in that spacious kitchen had an additional strength and virtue: it featured stacks of Saul – the novels, the stories, the essays and reportage – and they were often consulted during the week-long wake. There was one especially intensive session involving Rosamund and me plus the critic–novelist James Wood and his wife, the novelist–critic Claire Messud, and when it was over I thought – yes, the trick really works. I felt as stimulated, as stretched, and as satisfied as I used to feel after a long evening with Saul.*3 I hoped and trusted that Rosamund felt as I did. This transfusion from the afterlife of words must surely hasten another of the projects of grief: finding the space to step back, to step back and see the whole man (and in his fullest vigour), rather than simply the poor bare forked creature under your care, confused by the struggle to complete his allowance of reality.
‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ said Eugene Goodheart (literary theorist and the author of Confessions of a Secular Jew). ‘Would Saul be awake? Would he recognise me? So I decided to be brusque. I marched in there and…Saul was fully conscious and he looked – meditative, on that raised bed.*4 I even felt I might be disturbing his train of thought. Anyway I kept to my plan.’
Eugene: ‘Well, Bellow – what have you got to say for yourself?’
Saul: ‘…Well, Gene, it’s like this. I’ve been wondering. Wondering, Which is it? Is it, There goes a man? Or is it, There goes a jerk?’
Eugene (firmly): ‘There goes a man.’
‘Which was the right answer,’ I said. ‘If he’d asked me that…’ If he’d asked me that, I would’ve honestly (and I now see romantically) added, Saul, don’t worry about a thing. You never put a foot wrong.
But I also took note. In the end, it’s not your Nobel Prize you’re thinking of, it’s not your three National Book Awards, and all that. It’s your sins of the heart (real or imagined), it’s your wives, your children, and how things went with them.
∗
Saul’s last day on earth.
I heard about it from each of the three witnesses, Rosamund, Maria (the sweet-looking but incredibly strong Latina maid, who used to gird her spine, reach out her arms, and carry the forward-facing Bellow to the top of the stairs), and also from the devoted and indispensable factotum, Will Lautzenheiser.
That morning Saul woke up believing he was in transit – on a ship, perhaps? ‘He didn’t really
