The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [109]
to slide and rock on when we were kids? This stuff went back to the time of Rameses' Americana set, to the last century. Maybe my father had bought the furniture. All pain-causing reflections. Simon must have been in a terrible way for money to. have sold off all of that veteran metal and leather and left Mama in this cell with the Kreindls. I was empty with hunger as I questioned Mrs. Kreindl but couldn't apply to her for a meal, remembering her to be not very free about food. "Do you have any money, Mama?" I said. But all she had in her purse was a fifty-cent piece. "Well, it's a good idea for you to have some change," I told her, "in case you happen to want something, like gum drops or a Hershey bar." I'd have taken a buck from her if Simon had left her something, but I could make out a little longer without her last fifty-cent piece. To ask for it, I thought, would scare her, and that would be barbarous. Especially on top of Grandma's death. And she already was frightened, although, as when sick, she was upright in her posture and like waiting for the grief to come to a stop; as if this stop would be called by a conductor. She wouldn't discuss with me what Simon had done but clung rather to her own idea of it. To which she didn't wish me to add anything. I knew her. I stayed a little longer because I sensed she wanted it, but then I had to leave, and when I scraped back my chair she said, "You going? Where do you go?" This was a question about my absence when the flat was sold up. I couldn't answer it. "Why, I have that room on the South Side still that I told you about." "Are you working? You have a job?" "I always have something. Don't you know me? Don't worry, everything is going to be all right." Answering, I shunned her face a little, though there was no reason to, and felt my own face bitten as though it were a key, notched and filed out, some dishonorable, ill-purpose key. I headed for Einhom's, and on the boulevard, where the trees had begun to bud in the favorite purple of Chicago April evening, instilled with carbon and with the smells of crocodile beds of guck from the cleaned sewers, by the lamps of the synagogue, people were coming out in new coats and business hats, with square velvet envelopes for their prayer things. It was the first night of Passover, of the Angel of Death going through all doors not marked with blood to take away the life of the Egyptian first-born, and then the Jews trooping into the desert. I wasn't permitted to pass by; I was stopped by Coblin and Five Properties, who had seen me as I got into the street to walk around the crowd. They were on the curb, and Five Properties snatched me by the sleeve. "Look!" he said. "Who is in shut tonight!" Both were grinning, bathed-looking, in their best cleanliness and virile good condition. "Hey, guess what?" said Coblin. "What?" "Doesn't he know?" said Five Properties. "I don't know anything. I've been out of town and just got back." "Five Properties's getting married," said Coblin. "At last. Toi beauty. You ought to see the ring he's giving. Well, we're throuit with whores now, aren't we? Ah, boy, somebody's in for it!" "True?" "So help me the Uppermost," said Five Properties. "I invite you i my wedding, kid, a week from nex-t Sunday at the Lion's Club Hall. North Avenue, four o'clock. Bring a girl. I don't want you should ha's anything against me." "What is there to have against you?" "Well, you shouldn't. We're cousins, and I want you to come." "Happy days, man!" I said to him, doing my best, and thankful tte murk was so deep they couldn't see me well. Coblin began to draw me by the arm. He wanted me to come to tilt Seder dinner. "Come along. Come home." While I stunk of jail and before I had begun to digest my misei;' Before I found Simon? "No, some other time, thanks. Cob," I sai A going backwards. "But why not?" "Leave him, he's got a date. Have you got a date?" "As a matter of fact I do have to see somebody." "He's starting his horny time of life. Bring your little pussy to tti6 wedding." Cousin Hyman still smiled, but he thought probably