The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [11]
in the sweetness and calm of the leafy street and blue sky, he came down to breakfast in a white suit, picking his teeth finely, Scythian hair stroked down under a straw katie. Nonetheless he had not cast off his weekday milk smell. But how fine he was this morning, windburned and heartyblooded, teeth, gums, and cheeks involved in a bursting grin. He pinched his copper-eyed sister who was sullen with tears. "Annitchka." "Go, breakfast is ready.".; "Five prope'ties, plente money." - ' A smile stole over her face which she morosely resisted. But she loved her brother.: "Annitchka." "Go! My child is missing. The world is chaos." "Five prope'ties." "Don't be a fool. You'll have a child yourself, and then you'll know what wehtig is." Five Properties cared absolutely nothing about the absent or the dead and freely said so. Hell with them. He had worn their boots and caps while the stiffs were bouncing in his wagon through shot and explosion. What he had to say was usually on the Spartan or proconsular model, quick and hard. "You can't go to war without smelling powder." "If granny had wheels she'd be a cart." "Sleep with dogs and wake with fleas." "Don't shit where you eat." One simple moral in all, " mounting to, "You have no one to blame but yourself" or, Frenchy_jgg_for I have put in my time in the capital of the world--"Tu I'as voulu, Georges Dandin." Thus you see what views Five Properties must have had on his nephew's enlistment. But he partly spared his sister. "What do you want? He wrote you last week." "Last week!" said Anna. "And what about meanwhile?" "Meanwhile he's got a little Indian girl to tickle and squeeze him." "Not my son," she said, turning her eyes to the kitchen mirror. But in fact it appeared the boys had found someone to shack up with. Joe Kinsman sent his dad a snapshot of two straight-haired native girls in short skirts and hand in hand, without comment. Kinsman had shown it to Coblin. The fathers weren't exactly displeased; at least they didn't see fit to show displeasure to each other. On the contrary. But Cousin Anna didn't hear of the picture. Coblin had fatherly fears of his own, but not Anna's rage against Kinsman, and he kept up the necessary liaison with him at his office, for of course the undertaker couldn't enter the house. Generally speaking, Coblin's main lines were outside anyway, and he led a life of movement, steady and square-paced. By comparison with Anna and her brother he appeared small, but he was really a good size himself, sturdy, and bald in a clean sweep of all his hair, his features also big, rounded and flattened, puffy at the eyes which were given to blinking just about to the point of caricature. If you took this tic of his with the standard interpretation of meekness--well, there are types and habits that develop to beguile the experience of mankind. He was not beaten down by Anna or Five Properties or other members of the family. He was something of a sport, he had his own motives and he had established his own right of way with the determination of a man who is liable to be dangerous when he makes a fight. And Anna gave in. Therefore his shirts were always laid away in the drawer with strips of whalebone in the collar, and the second breakfast he took when he came back from morning deliveries had to include cornflakes and hardboiled eggs. The meals were of amazing character altogether and of huge quantity--Anna was a strong believer in eating. Bowls of macaroni without salt or pepper or butter or sauce, brain stews and lung stews, calves'foot jelly with bits of calves' hair and sliced egg, cold pickled fish, crumb-stuffed tripes, canned corn chowder, and big bottles of orange Pop. All this went well with Five Properties, who spread the butter on his bread with his fingers. Coblin, who ate with better manners, didn't complain either and seemed to consider it natural. But I know that when he went downtown to a carriers' meeting he fed differently. To begin with, he changed from the old check suit in which he did his route with a bagful of papers, like Millet's "Sower," for