The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [112]
"He took me--well, so he took. But he shouldn't have let you down. Especially since I gave it to him over and above what I lent him personally. Even if he was in bad shape that's too much." I was powerfully bitter and mad, but I felt an advance sway from a wave of something even worse, below the present depth. "What do you mean--in bad shape? Why was he raising money? What did he want?" "If he had told me for what I might have helped. I lent it to him because he is your brother; otherwise I hardly know the man. He went into a proposition with Nosey Mutchnik--the one I had that deal with in the lot. Remember? Now I could hold my own with him, but your brother is green. He took an interest in a betting pool, and the first game the White Sox played this season they told him he lost his share and if he wanted to stay in he'd have to bring another hundred bucks-- I have the whole story now. They took that from him too, and he got a sock in the teeth when he became hotheaded. Mutchnik's hooligans knocked him into the gutter. That's what happened. I suppose you know why he wanted to make a fast buck?" "Yes, to get married." "To get on top of Joe Flexner's daughter, who made him wild. He never will now.". "But why not? They're engaged." s "I begin to feel sorry for your brother, though he isn't very smart, and if I did drop seventy-eight bucks..." As I saw the anguishing thing of Simon knocked over and bloodied in the gutter, I only listened and didn't speak of Grandma's death, or the furniture, and Mama put out of the house. "Now she won't marry him," said Einhorn. "She won't? Tell me!" "Kreindl is the one I heard it from. He made a match for her with a relative of yours." "Not Five Properties--with him?" I shouted. "Your greenhorn cousin. It's going to be his hand that sets apart those fine legs." "Oh hell! No! They couldn't do that to Simon!" "They did." "And by now I guess he knows." "Does he! He went to Flexner's and started a riot, breaking chairs. JTbe girl went and locked herself in the toilet, and then the old man had to send for the police. The squad car came and got him." Arrested too! I suffered to myself for Simon. It was crazy, how. It crushed me to hear and picture. "Cynical quiff, ah?" Einhorn said. He wanted to bring it all home to me with his queer stare of severity. "Cressida going over to the Greek camp--" "And where's Simon, in jail still?" "No, old Flexner let the charge drop when he promised no more trouble. Flexner is a decent old man. He went broke owing nobody. He wouldn't have the heart. He's a sport too. They kept your brother one night and let him out this morning." "He spent last night in jail?" "One night, that's all," said Einhorn. "Now he's out." "Where is he though? Do you know?" "No. But I can tell you you won't find him at home." Kreindl had told him about Mama, and he was preparing to let me hear all; but I said I had already been home. I sat before him stripped; I knew of nowhere to turn and had no force to leave. Till now, as a family, we had had some privacy, even if it was known that we were deserted as kids and on Charity. In Grandma's time nobody, not even the caseworker Lubin, was informed exactly about us. At the free dispensary I'd go and do my guile not just on account of the money but so we should have some power of guidance over ourselves. Now there were no secrets, so anybody interested could look. This maybe was the consideration which made me not say to Einhorn what was the cruelest thing of all, that Grandma was dead. "I'm sorry for you; especially for your mother," Einhorn started out, trying to raise me up. "Your brother got ahead of himself. Too inspired by tail. What got him so hot?" In part I thought this question came from envy that anyone should be subject to such inspirations and heat. . But also, on this side, Einhorn couldn't be altogether unsympathetic. Gradually, talking, he lost view of his first aim, which was to comfort me, and he got so bitter he tried to curl his fists inward and breasted the desk. "Why should you care if your brother gets a rupe up the behind!"