The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [167]
he was really going to be man's God, a god who was human. She also goes in for it." He gave a heave of terrible impatience. "That was Christ. Other gods poured on the success, knocked you down with their splendor. Those that didn't give a damn. Real success, you see, is terrifying. Can't face that. Rather ruin everything first. Everything would have to be changed. You can't find a pure desire except the one that everything should be mixed. We run away from what can be conceived pure, and everyone acts out this disappointment in his own way as if to prove that the mixed and impure will and must win." I was always impressed by him and his big horse's eyes startled by wisdom or the shadow of it, as a horse may shy at a ridiculous thing the same as at an important one. I felt what he was saying. I knew there was truth in it, and had respect for him as the source of illumination; even while himself he was in dark colors, some of smudge, and green and blue by the eyes, but some of radiance; and, hands on his fat hips, he looked at me with a face in which some original beauty was turned down as a false lead. That this fact that all had to give in was acted out I could see, and the accompanying warning that to hope too much was a killing disease. Yes, pestilential hope that passes under the evils and leaves them standing. I had enough of a dose of it to recognize it. So I was both drawn to Kayo's view and resistant to it. No painted sky of the human theater for him, but always on the outside toward the diamond-drop true sky by means of the long, star-crawling clear fog of the medulla and brain, a copy of the Milky Way. But I had the idea also that you don't take so wide a stand that it makes a human life impossible, nor try to bring together irreconcilables that destroy you, but try out what of human you can live with first. And if the highest should come in that empty overheated tavern with its flies and the hot radio buzzing between the plays and plugged beer from Sox Park, what are you supposed to do but take the mixture and say imperfection is always the condition as found; all great beauty too, my scratched eyeballs will always see scratched. And there may gods turn up anywhere..; "If you go into reasons," I said to Kayo, "there may be reasons for these mixed things too." "Not real," he answered. "You wouldn't try to live on a movie screen. When you understand that, you'll be on your way to something. You can be too, if I'm not wrong about your character. You wouldn't be afraid to believe in something. What I don't get is why you want to make a dude of yourself. It won't keep up though." Mimi heard that we were talking and she called me. I went back to her. "What does he want?" she said. "Kayo?" "Yes, Kayo." "We were just talking." "You were talking about me. If you tell him anything I'll murder you. All he ever looks for is proof he's right, and he'd walk on my chest with his big feet if he could." "It's you yourself that don't keep your own secrets," I said, trying to be easy about it, however. It wasn't the time to talk back in any fashion, and she stared at me, harsh, from the bent-metal bed with its so many cast-iron nuclei and iron ribbon bows. "What I say, I say, but I can tell you not to." "Just take it easy, Mimi, I won't." Nevertheless I had to ask Kayo to keep an eye on her next day, not knowing what might come up and worrying through it at the office and at the supper meeting of the Magnus Cousins Club that took place once a month in an oak room downtown. I tried phoning the house and couldn't get anyone but Owens himself, who when peeved, and he was with Mimi, put on a Welsh accent I couldn't penetrate, so that it was- just wasting nickels to continue phoning. Lucy wanted to go dancing I after the meeting; I got out of that by alleging tiredness, which I didn't have to counterfeit, and cut out for home. Mimi was there, and she had happy news. Dressed in a black and white suit, a black ribbon in her hair, she was sitting in my room. "I used my head today," she said. "I started by saying to myself, 'Are there any