The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [137]
profoundly believable; he had some notes in the end of the scale that I would rather not have heard played for the consents to death that rang in them, but I was forced to listen to all he had, struck right on the key and sounded from top to bottom. I could be sure these said-in-jest things were the weirdest of their kind ever to be laughed at and spoken in that carpeted peace and brown-gravy velour. It was all supposed to pass for fun and bridegroom's lustiness, energy, and play-wickedness, and it came through to me that he was being tortured by thought of suicide, stronger than a mere hint, but simultaneously he could dive to clasp his compensations, such as his pride in audaciousness and strength of nerve and body or the luxury he was coming into, and furthermore, a certain recklessness in demands: the sense of what he could do and what he could exact without caring what anybody thought was much to him. Then the family came in, wondering what type- of person I might be. I wondered at them no less. They were so big you thought what could prevent them from handling even Simon and me like children, though we were by no means midgety--Simon was nearly six feet tall and I only an inch shorter than he. It was their width that made the difference, and even now that he was getting stout Simon didn't begin to approach them. They were substantial in their lives as in girth; they made their old people respected--there was a grandmother there that evening--and they bought the best of everything, clothes, furniture, or machinery. Also they were grateful for entertainment and admired speed of wit, which they didn't have themselves, and dramatic selfpresentation, which Simon gave them. He more than pleased them and more than made a big hit. He went both deep and far into the place of star and sovereign. They had patriarchs and matriarchs but they had no prince before him. To make this of himself, the prince, be went through a metamorphosis. That was the next of my astonishments. Elsewhere I've said that he had always, even when silent, been noticeable But he wasn't silent any more, and his old reserve was gone to nieces; he was boisterous, capricious, haughty, critical, arbitrary, mimicking and deviling, and he crowed, croaked, made faces and had the table all but spinning in this dining room of stable and upright wealth. I saw Grandma's satire in him, across the plaited white bread and the sprigged fish and candles--yes, the old woman's hardness of invention and travestying savagery, even certain Russian screams. I didn't know Simon had gotten so much from her. I could draw my mind back over some six or seven hundred Friday nights and see his uncommenting eyes follow a performance of the old woman's. And how deep that had sunk in, without even appearing to. At the shrieks he caused I nearly heard her comment of disdain, a disdain of which Simon was not all innocent either. He both borrowed from her and burlesqued her. His appearance was new in more than one way; more was new than the shirt, or the jewel on his finger and minor gems in his cuffs, or even the fat, and the haggardness from unwanted thought that lit on him in instants between the turns of his performance. The task of doing bold things with an unhappy gut, that was it. In a way he made them meet the expense of this too, as when he imitated his good queen mother-in-law's accent. But it was just the opposite of offensive to her and to them all; it was grand and uproarious. However, he wasn't just their entertainer; when he turned grave and stopped the vaudeville with a pair of somber eyes he got earnest silence for the speech he was going to make, and a full weight of respect. He spoke to me, but of course his words were in large part for them. "Augie," he said, putting his arm around Charlotte--she laid her painted nails on his hand--"you can see how unlucky we were not to have this kind of close and loyal family. There isn't anything these people won't do for one another. We don't even understand what that is because we never experienced it, we missed it all our lives.