The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [163]
climbing stairs, and hot baths, and now one of the waitresses at the co-op told her of a doctor near Logan Square who brought on miscarriages by injection. "I never heard of such a thing before, but it's worth a try, and I'm going to try." "What is it that he uses?" "How should I know? I'm not a scientist." 'And if it has a bad effect you'll have to go to the hospital, and then what?" ' 6 v Oh, they have to take you in if you're in danger of your life. Only they'd never get out of me'how it happened." '^It sounds risky. Maybe you'd better not try at all." "And have a baby? Me? Can you see me with a kid? You don't care how the world gets populated, do you! Maybe you're thinking about your mother"--I thus knew that either Sylvester or Clem Tambow had talked to her about me--"and that you wouldn't be here if your mother had ideas like mine. Nor your brothers either. But even if I could be sure I'd have a son like you," she said, with her usual comment of laughter, "not that I don't think the world of you, pal, even with all your faults--why should I get into this routine? So the souls of these things shouldn't get after me when I die and accuse me of not letting them be born? I'd tell them, 'Listen, stop haunting me. What do you think you ever were? Why, a kind of little scallop, that's all. You don't know how lucky you are. What makes you think you would have liked it? Take it from me, you're indignant because you don't know.' " We were sitting near the counter, and all the help stopped and listened to this speech. Among them was a man who said, "What a crazy broad!" She heard him, he caught her eye, and she laughed at him and said, "Here's a guy who'll live and die trying to look like Cesar Romero." "First thing, she comes in, she has to take off her stockings and show her gams..." This argument had to run its course, and then we couldn't stay; we _ finished our conversation in the street. li "No," I said, "I can't complain about having been born." | | "Yes, sure, you'd even feel grateful if you knew to whom, and for what was only an accident." "It couldn't have been all an accident. On my mother's side at least I can be sure there was love in it." "Is it love that saves it from being an accident?" "I mean the desire that there should be more life; from gratitude." "Show me where that is! Why don't you go down to the Fulton egg market and think it over there. Find me the gratitude--" "I can't argue with you that way. But if you ask me whether obliviousness would have been better for me, then I'd be a liar if I answered 'yes' or even 'maybe,' because the facts are against it. I couldn't even swear that I knew what obliviousness was, but I could tell you a lot about how pleasant my life has been." "That's hunky-dory for you; maybe you like the way you are, but most people suffer from it. They suffer from what they are, such as they are; this woman because she's getting wrinkled and her husband won't love her; and that one because she wants her sister to die and leave her her Buick; and still another who is willing to devote her whole life to keep her fanny in the right shape; or getting money out of somebody; or thinking about getting a better man than her husband. Do you want me to give you a list on men too"? I could go on as long as you like. They'll never change, one beautiful morning. They can't change. So maybe you're lucky. But others are stuck; they have what they have; and if that's their truth, where are we?" Me, I couldn't think all was so poured in concrete and that there weren't occasions for happiness that weren't illusions of people still permitted to be forgetful of permanent disappointment, more or less permanent pain, death of children, lovers, friends, ends of causes, old age, loathsome breath, fallen faces, white hair, retreated breasts, dropped teeth; and maybe most intolerable the hardening of detestable character, like bone, similar to a second skeleton and creaking loudest before the end. But she, who had to make up her mind practically, couldn't be expected to make it up by my feelings. She let you