The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [154]
from her. What a turnout from our side!" I let her keep the cane, and had to pacify Cousin Anna and beg her to stay for Mama's sake. Money makes you meshuggah," she said, sitting heavy and tall in "er corset, glaring maddened into the luxurious lounge. approved of Mama's exhibition of will, wondering at the surprises the meek will pull. Anyway, Simon dropped the matter; he was too / to fight every fight through, a^ he was somewhere off the ba UDUS7, where the ceremony was s\- I went around looking roo. g the guests for some I knew, ^ ^ad invited the Einhoms, inam , ng Arthur. Arthur, who had gr^uated from the University of Illici" was m Chicago, where he was doing nothing in particular. Occano1 ally I saw him on the South Side ^d knew that he was friendly with m^1 s set and that he was ^PP^d to be translating poems from the " ^ch. Einhorn would always ba^ him in any intellectual pursuit. l_ fe were the Emhorns then, in t^ ballroom, the old man with a sort l"iditary cloak, gray, looking like ^e former possessor of a splendor of as good as this who, without sp^al rancor but understanding how 1^,1 comes about, watches it chan^ hands. He said to me, "You look fit fine in y^tuxedo> ^g10-" ^Ilie kissed me, taking my face in her w K hands, Arthur smiling. He co^ behave with exceptional charm, w this was absent-mindedly conferred on you bu^ went on to welcome Happy Keiierman and his wife, a thin blond ,le of a woman who bore out he,. belly and was wound high and low K1 (i beads and pearls. Next I saw l^e Properties and Cissy. Simon had ^ ^d them from motives not hard to understand, partly to show Cissy y he had gone on to d0 and ALSO to ^b)01 Five Properties to a cruel w. ipanson. Cissy defeated all, t^ugh, with that sly provoking dec ^cy about her female gifts, brea^ touching breast in the low opening c tier dress. She showed her ton^g softly in the few words that she ^m o ike. Five Properties had come for a reconciliation of cousins. She Ji st J taught him to comb his Scythe ^air differently; it now came lower t^ the rugged forehead without modifying the skeptical grinning of his | 0 ^s; that savage green would a^ays express everything that Five ^perties thought. He too was dr^sed in a tuxedo, wore it on his enor V t, us trunk to be equal to the opuig^ce Simon had invited him to see. %d so he grinned all around with his gum-buried teeth and green eyes. r was evident that Cissy steered (^ ^g^ him civilized behavior--^. fi who had loaded and driven t^e wagon of jolting corpses the Rus* .^ns and Germans had made of one another in the Polish mud. She yched him. All the same she CQu^n't prevent him by her smile and , t, w murmured word from feelii^ her on the back and fondling her. "',$0 what's wrong, babe?" he saiq Well, the wedding music bega^ t went to see that Mama was taken ^ a plush bench, her place inside ^e flower cage beside the altar--the ^bims were with her--and then ^to rehearsed position in the proces^n, with Lucy Magnus, along the white carpet down which the princi,1s came: Charlotte and her fa^er with rose-scattering children be' fore Mrs. Magnus and Uncle Charlie, and then Simon with Lucy's brother Sam, first-string guard on the Michigan team, a hulky walker. Throufhout the ceremony Lucy looked at me in her unambiguously declarative way, and when the ring was on and Simon swung Charlotte back before all to kiss her, and all clapped and cried out, Lucy came and took my arm. We went in to the banquet; ten dollars a plate, it was _for that day a staggering price. But I couldn't sit through the meal in peace. An usher came to tell me I was wanted and rushed me to the back of the hall. Five Properties, angry, was walking out because he and Cissy had been put at a little table apart behind a pillar. Whether it was Charlotte who was responsible for this, or Simon himself, I never found out. One was as capable of it as the other. Whoever had done it, Five Properties was powerfully offended. " 'S okay, Augie. Against you I got nothing. He asked me? I came. I wish him all. But what way is it to treat a cousin? Okay. Eat I can