The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [115]
his own shirts, did his own marketing, and cooked his own meals in his beaverboard quarters in a corner of this doggish place--his lab, kitchen, and bedroom. I realize much etter now what it means to be a Frenchman abroad, how irregular G 185 everything must appear, and not simply abroad but on North dark Street. We were located in no mere firetrap but had two stories of a fairlv new modern building just off the Gold Coast, not far from the scene of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and, for that matter, from the Humane Society on Grand Avenue. It was the great feature of this outfit, I say, paid for by the subscribers, that it was a club for class that the pets were entertained as well as steamed, massaged, nianicured clipped, that they were supposed to be taught manners and tricks. The fee was twenty dollars a month, and no shortage of dogs; more in fact than Guillaume could handle, and he had to fight the front office continually, which wanted to go beyond capacity. The club w^s already as hell-deep as dogs' throats could scrape it; the Cerberus slaver-choke turmoil was at the full when I came in from the last pick-up and chansed from truck livery to rubber boots and ponchos; the racket made the skylight glass shiver. Organization was marvelous, however. Guillaume had real know-how; and let people go a little and they'll build you an Escuria). The enormous noise, as of Grand Central, was only the protest of chaos coming up against regulation--the trains got off on time" the dogs got their treatment. ' Though Guillaume used the hypo more than I thought he should. He gave piqures for everything, and charged it extra. He'd say, "Cette chienne est galeuse--this is a mangy bitch!" and in with the needle. Moreover, he'd give a drop of dope to the savage ones whenever organization was threatened, yelling, "Thees jag-off is goin' to get it!" Consequently I carried home some pretty wan dogs, and it wasn't easy to come up a flight of stairs with a sleeping boxer or shepherd and explain to the colored cook that he was only tuckered out from playing and pleasure. Dogs in heat Guillaume wouldn't tolerate either. "Grue! En chasse!" Then he'd say to me anxiously, "Did anything 'appen in the back?" But since I had been driving, how was I to know? He was furious with the owners, especially if the animal was a chienne de race, and its aristocracy was not respected, and he wanted the office to slap an extra charge on them for letting them into the club in this State. Any pedigree made a courtier of him, and he could call on a very high manner, if he wanted to, and get his lips into a tight suppressive line of dislike to baseness--the opposite to breeding. He had the staff come over, two Negro boys and me, to show us the fine points of the aninial, and I will say for Guillaume that his idea was to run an atelier and to act like master in a guild, so that when he got a good poodle to trim it Was downtools for us while he demonstrated; there was then a spell of good feel186 "no and regard for him and for the lamb-docile, witty, small animal. Oh, it wasn't always vexation or the snapping and bickering of little dogs to which Marcus Aurelius compares the daily carryings on of men, though I once in a while see what he was getting at. But there's a dog harmony also, and to be studied by dog eyes, many of them, has its illumination too. Only the work fatigued me, and I stunk of dog. People would move from me on the streetcar, as they do from the hoof-and-hides stockyards' man, or give me round-eye glares and draw down their mouths on the mobbed Cottage Grove line. Furthermore, there was something Pompeian that I minded about the job--the opulence for dogs, and then their ways that reflected civilized mentality, spoiled temperaments of favorites, mirrors of neuroticism. Plus the often needling thought that their membership fee in the club was more than I had to pay for Mama in the Home. All this together once in a while got me down. From my neglected self-betterment I had additional pricks. I should be more ambitious. Often I looked for vocational