The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [122]
bad to us when we were kids. You haven't forgotten that, have you? I don't want her to make me act like a damn Eskimo dog with his scruff up about a piece of fish. I used to have my sights set kind of high, as a kid. But after a while you find out what you've really got or haven't, and you wise up to the fact that first comes all the selfish and jealous stuff, that you don't care what happens to anybody else as long as you get yours; you start to think such things as how pleasant it would be if somebody close to you would die and leave you free. Then I thought it would be all the same to the somebodies if / died." "What do you mean, died?" "By suicide .1 came close to it in jail, 'there on North Avenue." This reference to suicide was only factual. Simon didn't work me for pity; he never seemed to require it of me. "I don't have much feeling against death, do you, Augie?" he said. Tn the change of leaves about him he was calmer, heavy in his seated nosition, with the crown of his felt hat taking the side against variants, played by the green shadow and yellow of the leaves. "Well, say, do you?" "I'm not so hot about dying." This, after two or three thoughts had come in succession to his face, made him easier and more relaxed, softer with me. He laughed at last. He said, "You'll die like everybody else. But I have to admit that's not what you make people think of when they look at you. You're a pretty pay numero, I'll say that for you. But you're not much good at taking care of yourself. Any other brother but you would have sweated the money out of me. If you had pulled what I pulled I'd have made things rough for you. Or anyway I'd be glad to see you land on your ass the way I've done. I'd say, 'It serves you right. Good for you!' Well, since you won't look out for your interests I see I'm going to have to do it for you." "My interests?" "Sure," he said, a little angered by the question. "Don't you believe I ever think about you? We've both been running too much with the losers, and I'm tired of it." "Where're you living now?" I said. "On the Near North Side," he said, brushing this off, that I wanted to know definite things about him. He wasn't going to say whether there was a sink in his room, or carpet or linoleum, or whether he was on a car line or facing a wall. It's normal for me to have such curiosity about details. But he wasn't going to satisfy this curiosity, since to dwell on such things implied it would be hard to get away from them; for him they were things to pass quickly. "I'm not going to stay there," he said. "What have you been living on?" I asked. "What are you doing?" "What do you mean, living on?" He threw difficulties in my way by repeating questions. He stood too much on his pride to say how things were and show what a bad rip he had gotten in his stuff. A kind of gallantry of presentation he had always had in the quality of older brother he wouldn't give up. He had been a fool and done wrong, he showed up sallow and with the smaller disgrace that he was fat, as if overeating were his reply to being crushedand with this all over him he wasn't going to tell me, he balked at telling, some small details. He ook my asking as a blow at him while he was trying to climb out of the nole of mortification, and he warded it off with a stiff arm, saying, "What ao you mean?" as if he'd remember later I had tried to hit him or at least goad him. Later he didn't mind telling me that he had washed floors in a beanery, but this was long afterward. But now he fought this off. Loaded on the hard black armchair--I put it that way because of his increased bulk--he passionately pulled together his perves and energies--I could see him concentrate and do it--and he started to deal with me. He did it more strongly than was necessary, with pasha force. "I haven't been wasting my time," he said. "I've been working on something. I think I'm getting married soon," he said, and didn't allow himself to smile with the announcement or temper it in some pleasant way. "When? To whom?" "To a woman with money." "A woman? An older woman?"