The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [149]
of this during Einhorn's days of dirty mental weather. Or of the soul, not the mind, the sick evil of not even knowing why anything should all you since you're resigned to accept all conditions. The director and his wife boasted that they fed their people well; it was a fact that you knew the next menu in advance by the smell of the kitchen. In general I considered it a blessing that Mama was simple. I thought that if there were any characters here that were intriguing or quarrelsome--and how would there fail to be?--there must be some awful events in the innermost privacy of the house. But Mama had put in many years of appeasing tempestuousness or staying out of its way, and she very likely had more trouble as a result of one of Simon's visits than she ever did with her companions. For he came to check on how she was treated, and he had a harsh way of inquiring. He was tough with the director, who hoped to get mattresses wholesale from Arthur Magnus through him. Simon had promised him this favor. But he threw his weight around, full of menace, pleased with nothing. He objected to Mama's having roommates, and when he obtained a private room for her it was next to the kitchen and all its noise and smell, and that was nothing to thank him for. And then, one summer afternoon, we found her sitting on her bed at the task of fitting pins into Roosevelt campaign buttons; she was getting ten. cents a hundred and earning a few dollars a week by the goodheartedness of the precinct captain. Seeg her with her unskillful hands of rough housework at the brass pins, ; eling the two objects together in her lap, Simon went into a rage that ing her' feeling the two of made her flinch, and knowing that I was with him she turned her face and tried to find me and get me to intercede; she was frightened, too, to discover that she had been doing wrong unawares. "Stop roaring," I said, "for God's sake!" But he couldn't be stopped. "What do they mean! Look what they've got her doing! Where's that sonofabitch?" It was the director's wife who came, in her house dress. She meant to remain respectful but not be servile; she was white, and she already had a fighting face and quivered, but spoke up, practical and proud. "Are you responsible for this?" he shouted at her. She said, "Mrs. March wasn't made to do anything she didn't want. She was asked and she wanted to. It's good for her to have something to keep her occupied." "Asked? I know how people are asked so they're afraid to say no. I'll have you know that my mother isn't going to do any piecework for ten, twenty, thirty cents, or a dollar an hour. She gets all the money she needs from me." "You don't have to yell like this. These are all very sensitive people and easy disturbed." In the passage I saw many of the blind stop and a group gathered, while in the kitchen the big sloven-haired cook turned with her knife from the meatblock. "Simon, / wanted, / asked," said Mama. She was unable to put weight in her tones; she had never been able; she lacked experience. "Calm down," I said to him with some eifect at last. It appeared that he could no longer take out the first intention of his heart without touching the inflamed place of self-distinction. Wrongly blessing and cursing like Balaam, but without any outside power to reverse him, only his own arbitrariness doubling back on him. So he could not speak for Mama without commanding how he himself was to be looked upon. Next he went to the closet to see whether the things were there that Charlotte had given her, the shoes, handbag, dresses, and he missed at once a light coat, handed down by a more robust person, that didn't fit her anyway. ^'Where is itwhat have they done with that coat?" I sent it to the cleaners. She spilled coffee on it," the director's wife explained. I did," said Mama in her clear, tuneless voice. And the woman, "I'll take it in for her when it comes back, it's too "_ the siroylders." Simon wore a look of anger and detestation, silent, still regarding the closet. "She can afford a good tailor if she needs alterations. I want her