The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [121]
world have taken Einhom's advice to be hard with him and keep him down. It's true he ought to have sent me that money when I wired from Buffalo, but he'd been in dutch and I could forgive him that. Then the loan from Einhom wasn't too grievous either, since Einhorn himself had let lots of people down for far larger amounts; and he, Einhorn, was big enough and gentleman enough not to scream and moan about it. So far so good. But what about Mama and the flat? I confess that had gone down hard, and that if I had seen Simon when I was rushing downstairs to Kreindl's to look for Mama I'd have broken his head for him. But later when I had thought it through I conceded to myself that we couldn't have kept the old home going much longer and set up a gentle kind of retirement there for Mama, neither of us having that filial tabby dormancy that natural bachelors have. Something in us both consented to the busting up of the house. All Simon had to do was speak of this; if he didn't it was because he felt his blame too much to have a clear head. I expected to see him haggard; instead he was fatter. However, it wasn't comfortable-looking fat but as if it came from not eating right. It took me a minute to get over my uneasiness about his creasing smile and the yellow and gold bristles on his chin--it wasn't like him not to shave; but then he was all right and sat down, big fingers knit on his chest. It was summer, a late afternoon, and though I was on the top floor of this old frame house the shade tree was so huge it passed the roof, so all around it was green, as if in the woods, glossy; and underneath on the lawn this bird was, like a hammer tapping a waterpipe in the grass. It could have helped us to feel peaceful, but it didn't. I believe people never knew how to observe one another so damagingly as they do now. Kin too, of course. I tried to avoid it with Simon, but we couldn't. So on each side, for a moment, the worst was thought. Then he said, "What are you doing out on the South Side with all these books, becoming a student?" "I wish I could afford to." "So you must be in the book business. It can't be much of a business though, because I see you read them too. Leave it to you to find a business like this!" He said it scornfully, or meant to, but there was a dead Place where the scorn should have rung; and he said reasonably, "But suppose you could ask where my mastermind got me." "I don't have to ask. I know. I can see." "Are you sore, Augie?" "No," I said, husky, and with one glance he could see how far from anger my feeling was. One glance was all he wanted, and he dropped his eyes. "I was sore when I found out. It came all together, including the news about Grandma." "Yes, she's dead, isn't she? I guess she must have been very old. Did you ever find out how old? I guess we'd never..." And so he passed over it with irony, sadness, even awe. We'd always smile and attribute extraordinary things to her. Then Simon put off the brass he had come in, and he said, "I was a damn fool to get mixed up with that mob. They took away the dough and beat me up. I knew they were dangerous, but I thought I could hold my own with them. I didn't think, I mean, because I was in love. Love! She let me go only so far. On the sun porch at night., I thought I'd bust out of my skin. I was dying for her, just to get a touch of it, and that's about all I got." He said it with coarse anger, despisingly. It gave me a shiver. "When I heard they were married I had dreams about them jazzing, like a woman with an ape. She wouldn't care. And you know what he's like. But it makes no difference, he can raise hell up there same as any other man. Besides he has dough. That's what she thinks is dough! All he owns is a few buildings. It's chickenfeed. It'll look like a lot to her until she gets to know better." Now his face was red, and with an emotion different from that despising anger. He said, "You know I hate to be like this and have such thoughts. I'm ashamed of it, I tell you honestly. Because she wasn't all that glorious and he's not all that bad. He wasn't