This is a time when we tell ourselves, it’s okay to cry as much as we want. For the state of the world, for our humanity. As Toni Morrison put it, “No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.” As I write these words, I listen to a large and steady stream of bell-ringing bicyclists and chanting pedestrians outside, filling the air with the names of those who’ve lost their lives in the past few weeks. The swell of their cries fills my apartment. I am struck by how events occurring outside bring fresh energy to words still wet on the page in here. It is a surreal moment.

I’ve turned to two beloved Nobel Laureates, Toni Morrison and Saul Bellow, to tell the story of the streets, the dangers lurking there, the randomness of being assailed and assaulted, the hidden traps that could kill you. These excerpts are from The Bluest Eye and from Herzog. It’s a little longer than usual, but one must give heavyweights like these their full due.

It is also Saul Bellow’s birthday today. He would have turned 105. Dear Saul, happy birthday to you, wherever you are. We will always, always, always miss you.

Thanks very much for listening. 

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Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord was one thing—unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to put one’s own kin outdoors—that was criminal.

There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but final. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and complementing our metaphysical condition. Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence, however, was something we had learned to deal with—probably because it was abstract. But the concreteness of being outdoors was another matter—like the difference between the concept of death and being, in fact, dead. Dead doesn’t change, and outdoors is here to stay.

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests. …Renting blacks cast furtive glances at these owned yards and porches, and made firmer commitments to buy themselves “some nice little old place.”

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And from Bellow’s Herzog, where Father Herzog has been to see an aunt to borrow money and is turned away, told from the son, Moses Herzog’s, perspective:

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Of course Zipporah, that realist, was right to refuse Father Herzog. He wanted to run bootleg whiskey to the border, and get into the big time. He and Voplonsky borrowed from moneylenders, and loaded a truck with cases. But they never reached Rouses Point. They were hijacked, beaten up, and left in a ditch. Father Herzog took the worse beating because he resisted. The hijackers tore his clothes, knocked out one of his teeth, and trampled him.

            He and Voplonsky the blacksmith returned to Montreal on foot. He stopped at Voplonsky’s shop to clean up, but there was not much he could do about his swollen bloody eye. He had a gap in his teeth. His coat was torn and his shirt and undergarment were bloodstained.

            That was how he entered the dark kitchen on Napoleon Street. We were all there. It was gloomy March, and anyway the light seldom reached that room. It was like a cavern. We were like cave dwellers. “Sarah!” he said. “Children!” He showed his cut face. He spread his arms so we could see his tatters, and the white of his body under them. Then he turned his pockets inside out—empty. As he did this, he began to cry, and the children standing about him all cried. It was more than I could bear that anyone should lay violent hands on him—a father, a sacred being, a king. Yes, he was a king to us. My heart was suffocated by this horror. I thought I would die of it. Whom did I ever love as I loved them?

            Then Father Herzog told his story.

            “They were waiting for us. The road was blocked. They dragged us from the truck. They took everything.”

            “Why did you fight?” said Mother Herzog.

            “Everything we had … all I borrowed!”

            “They might have killed you.”

            “They had handkerchiefs over their faces. I thought I recognized…”

            Mama was incredulous. “Landsleit? Impossible. No Jews could do this to a Jew.”

            “No?” cried Papa. “Why not! Who says not! Why shouldn’t they?”

            “Not Jews! Never!” Mama said. “Never. Never! They wouldn’t have the heart. Never!”

            “Children—don’t cry. And poor Voplonsky—he could hardly creep into bed.”

            “Yonah,” said Mama, “you must give up this whole thing.”

            “How will we live? We have to live.”

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Thanks very much for listening. Until next week.

These excerpts were from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, published in 1970 by Holt Rinehart and Winston; and Herzog by Saul Bellow, published by The Viking Press in 1964.