Summary
Chapter 6
Rye is ahead and lard is holding its own when Tamkin and Wilhelm go out to a cafeteria for lunch. It is a busy place and old people are huddled over their coffee, gossiping and staring at others. Wilhelm wishes old people were as they used to be, not weird like this.
Tamkin engages Wilhelm in conversation, with Wilhelm wondering if he is trying to distract him from selling or from lingering on Tamkin’s comments about his neurotic character. They speak of Dr. Adler, with Tamkin suggesting the old man does have money for Wilhelm when he dies. Wilhelm replies that his father is obsessed with dying and though Wilhelm sometimes thinks of his father dying when he is mad at him, of course he does not actually want him to die.
Tamkin asks about his mother and something nags sharply at Wilhelm but it does not fully surface, so he says nothing more. Tamkin talks about his own eccentric father, but Wilhelm wonders if he is lying.
To Wilhelm, his father is a stranger and he hopes he is not a stranger to his own sons. He blames Margaret for turning them against him. She wants to ruin him, clearly, and all he wants to do is marry Olive but he cannot because Margaret will not let go.
Tamkin suggests Dr. Adler is jealous of Wilhelm because he actually left his wife, and Margaret must envy him as well for being free. Tamkin explains casually that his wife was a lush and she drowned at Provincetown; it was almost like suicide. Since he is a healer by nature, Tamkin asserts, all of this was very hard on him.
Wilhelm groans inwardly at this; to him Tamkin is obviously lying and trying to make an impression on him. He thinks “[Tamkin] thinks he has an imagination, but he hasn’t, neither is he smart” (92). But of course this makes Wilhelm wonder why he gave Tamkin his money, so he decides he better take a good, hard luck at the truth. Tamkin is a “charlatan” (92) and is desperate, but Wilhelm is “on Tamkin’s back… He was in the air. It was up to Tamkin to take the steps” (92). The doctor does not look anxious, but it is hard to tell. Sometimes it seems like there is fear in his eyes, but there is usually so little variety in his visage. Wilhelm knows he cannot get off this ride, and has to go along with him.
Tamkin turns to Rappaport, talking about how interesting he is because he had two separate whole families, and that he liked to read but only read books on Theodore Roosevelt. Wilhelm tells Tamkin to stop telling him this sort of stuff. Tamkin replies that he has a motive in doing so—that he wants Wilhelm to see “how some people free themselves from morbid guilt feelings and follow their instincts” (93). Women naturally like to cripple men, but someone like Rappaport does not let them. Ultimately, Tamkin’s point is for Wilhelm not to “marry suffering” (94) and simply to live.
Wilhelm is done with this irritating conversation, and tells Tamkin so. He suggests they go back to the market. As they walk back, Tamkin drones on about how he thinks Wilhelm will be fine, since he clearly is not trying to destroy himself and while many people want to die, Wilhelm does not. This strikes Wilhelm as true, for he believes he is trying so hard to live while others are dropping like flies.
The closer they get to the market, the more the question of the money comes back to the forefront of Wilhelm’s mind. They near, and see Rappaport with his cane. In a stentorian tone, Rappaport demands Wilhelm take him to the cigar store. Tamkin whispers Wilhelm has to go, and that he ought to live in this moment and not think about the market. Wilhelm is very annoyed but takes the old man on his arm.
Broadway is chaotic and the heat and odors are oppressive. Rappaport complains about hoodlums and Wilhelm complains of traffic. They reach the shop and Rappaport slowly picks out cigars while Wilhelm criticizes him silently for being a “poky old character” (97) who expects the whole world to wait on him. He assumes Rappaport hoards his money and gives none to his children, which makes him angry because it is old men like this who control the world—”They don’t need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don’t have. That would be too easy” (97).
Rappaport starts talking about fighting in the Spanish-American War, smiling at how much he loves Teddy Roosevelt because once Teddy told him to get off a beach that he and other soldiers were on.
Wilhelm guides him back to the brokerage. To his shock, the lard figures are now much lower, and rye is back where it started and they cannot sell anymore. Wilhelm strains his neck to see Tamkin but he is nowhere to be found. He asks Rowland where Tamkin is and the old man says he does not know. Wilhelm knows what he has dreaded has come to be—he is ruined. He knows there is no point asking the German manager what happened; after all, he probably knew not to trust Tamkin.
He steels himself against what has happened, pretending he is fine. He tells himself this is a temporary slump and he will be okay. The urge to cry is overwhelming but he will not do it in front of everyone else.
Tamkin is still missing and Wilhelm inspects the lavatory but Tamkin is not one of the businessmen in there. He is now bitter and angry and tells himself Tamkin will have to pay that two hundred of the original share deposit at least.
Chapter 7
Wilhelm returns to the Hotel Gloriana, where he phones Tamkin’s room to no avail. He also asks to phone Dr. Adler’s room, but his father is not there either. He walks to the health spa to find Dr. Adler, and locates him on a massage table. His father asks serenely if his son has taken his advice by being here, but Wilhelm responds by asking if his father got his note.
Dr. Adler tells him point-blank that he will not help him, that he has made a rule for himself not to do so and thus will not. Wilhelm confesses he lost everything with Tamkin and should have listened to his father. He feels like he just cannot catch his breath and is on the verge of an explosion. Unsympathetic, his father chides him for his excuses and says he is too old to be taking on new burdens. Wilhelm replies that there are other things a father can give a son, such as a word or two to help get him connected. He wishes his father was a kinder man, and would give him just a little bit.
At this, Dr. Tamkin becomes furiously angry and bursts out that he will die before he lets Wilhelm make himself into his father’s cross. He orders his son away, calling him a slob. Wilhelm feels a flood of anger, which dissipates quickly. He sadly leaves.
He checks if Tamkin is in, but he is not. There is a message from Margaret asking him to call her, so he complies. He tells her he does not like that she says her message is urgent when there is nothing wrong. She says what is wrong is that he sent her a postdated check. Wilhelm replies he has no money and cannot get the money by the twelfth likes she wants. He is doing the best he can, he explains, and today has been so bad that he will do no more thinking today but will go out tomorrow and talk to some people about getting a job.
Margaret has no sympathy for him, telling him he is immature and she hates chasing him for money. He becomes more and more upset and reminds her that he paid for her to go back to school and she will have to get a job. She refuses, saying the boys need her since they are at a dangerous age and might join a gang. She is reminding him that he left her, and it is as if ashes fill his mouth.
For a moment, he wonders if he would be better off with Margaret than alone, but he cannot return to her any more than he can return to Rojax. He begs her to understand he is at the end of his rope and is suffocating, and that she should not treat someone whom she knew and lived with for so long like this. Margaret is unyielding and asks what he expected when he left. She states that she will not talk to him anymore while he is like this. She hangs up.
Wilhelm tries to pull the phone from the wall in his despair, but sees an old lady looking at him. Outside on the street the masses of humanity heave; people labor and love and strive and give in and fail and die and want. He swears to himself he will get a divorce, will sell the car and pay rent, will marry Olive.
In the near distance, he thinks he sees Dr. Tamkin standing under the canopy of a funeral parlor talking to someone. The area is crowded and policemen roughly try to direct them all. Tamkin vanishes as Wilhelm calls out, and Wilhelm is deposited before the chapel.
It is cool and dark and he goes inside, deciding this is at least a more pleasant place to wait for Tamkin, whom he assumes will return. He forgets Tamkin soon enough, though, as he is in the line to view the deceased in the casket. The line moves up and he grows anxious.
When it is his turn, he looks at the dead man, who is not very old. He has a meditative look to him that makes Wilhelm so perplexed and affected that he begins to cry. This dead man was once a man like him who was a human creature and who had things torn from him just like Wilhelm is having things torn from him.
Once he starts crying, he cannot cease. The “source of all tears had suddenly sprung open within him, black, deep, and hot” (113). He is crippled, convulsed, unable to stop. People whisper to each other about who he might be, and one sighs “To be mourned like that” (114).
The flowers and the lights overwhelm Wilhelm’s wet eyes and the music seeps in “where he had hidden himself in the center of a crowd by the great and happy oblivion of tears” (114). He gives into his sorrow, crying “toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need” (114).
Analysis
The jig is up—Wilhelm has lost all of his money, and Tamkin is nowhere to be found. He has failed himself, his wife and children, his father and dead mother. He has nothing left and nowhere to go; his future looks bleak, for how can he marry Olive now? It is no wonder that when he accidentally stumbles into a funeral thinking Tamkin has gone in there, he is overcome by emotion and begins to sob uncontrollably.
One of the novella’s most famous passages is the description of Broadway as Wilhelm experiences it getting off the demoralizing phone call with Margaret. Bellow writes of the “great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence—I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want” (111). Julia Eichelberger writes of Wilhelm’s encounter with the crowd, “[it] seems to Wilhelm to be great because it cannot be commodified. The strangers in this crowd do not know Wilhelm; he has no expectation of becoming their superiors, of making money from them, or even of receiving benign personal affirmation from them. Yet, unlike Rappaport, who ‘ignored’ both the beauty of his cigar leaf and the human being beside him, Wilhelm is moved, awed by the crowd. As Wilhelm recognizes the humanity of the people around him, he experiences something much larger than ‘the world's business’ and larger than himself… The physical world, which is almost non-existent to the money-grubbers at the broker's office, floods Wilhelm's senses… In this ecstatic merging with palpable light and seemingly infinite space, Wilhelm experiences a reality that has no reference to the domineering values of his culture.”
In the funeral parlor, Wilhelm’s cry is a cri de coeur; the “source of all tears had suddenly sprung open within him, black, deep, and hot, and they were pouring out and convulsed his body” (113). The music fills him and “He heard it and sunk deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need” (114). What exactly is this “source” Wilhelm taps into, this “ultimate need”? What does he realize? Eichelberger suggests, “Wilhelm mourns himself, expressing emotions that have no commercial value and that reveal his vulnerability and sadness. His weeping reveals the emotional needs that can never be met in a life based on domination. Before this moment, concealment of his unhappiness was the only act he was able to take to imply he was a successful businessman… Now he surrenders that last element of respectability, giving up entirely on a culture that demands such unnatural and harmful behavior.” Lee J. Richmond says that “Wilhelm's heart has not died. The last sentence fixes him beyond despair and registers his propulsion toward ‘the heart's ultimate need’: love of self, identity, the reconciliation of the divided self. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the ‘Day of Atonement,’ Tommy has experienced the purgation which comes of self-confession.”
Gilead Mohrag sees the end of Wilhelm’s day as one that offers hope: “it is only after the final fiasco on the commodities market that Wilhelm, now wholly dispossessed of his monetary hopes, finds the strength to disburden himself of his past and dedicate himself to the present. Literally and figuratively cleaned out, Wilhelm is finally able to break away from his father and wife and to commit himself to a new mode of existence based not on the pursuit of the respectability and financial success demanded by Dr. Adler and Margaret, but on the love offered by Olive.” And Elizabeth Frank claims Bellow “comes out firmly on the side of the heart—even a bleeding one belonging to a clumsy ex-wannabe actor, a self-pitying loser without a job, a guy who up to this moment has been a walking embarrassment not just to his father but to himself.”
Tamkin, who is responsible for Wilhelm losing everything, is understandably nowhere to be found at the end of the novel, but interestingly enough, it is the charlatan’s earlier advice of “seizing the day” that is still reverberating in Wilhelm’s head and beginning to shape itself into his new way of approaching the world. Does this mean Tamkin isn’t a fraud or a foe? Definitely not, but it does mean that people are more complex than they might initially appear to be, and that good advice and help can be found in even the most unlikely places.
