The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [169]
said Simon, out of Happy's hearing; and, strangely, his look got hung up on something that resembled satisfaction and pleasure more than anything else, and I saw that he had already handled the consequences of this to himself; he'd repudiate me, and it would do him no harm. As for his notions, the wedding night, of what we two would be able to combine and achieve, he had no doubt changed them, deciding that all should be the work of a single mind and authority. But I was not thinking of this much, but rather of Mimi in the hospital. I was sure she had gone through with her plan to trick the doctors. Late afternoon I saw her, in a ward; I was in the door, and she was snapping her fingers from the distance and trying to sit up in bed. "You went through with it?" "Oh, sure! Didn't you know I would?" "Well? At least, is it over?" "Augie, I've had an operation for nothing. It's all normal. I still have the thing to go through with." I didn't get it at first; I felt block-headed and stupid. She said with devilish towering humor and plunging bitterness, Augie, they all come in to congratulate me that I'm going to have a normal baby. It's not a fallopian pregnancy. The doctor, the internes, the nurses, they think I should be wild with happiness, and I can't even yell at them. I've been crying. I'm so crossed up." But why did you go through with it? Didn't you know? You invented the symptoms." ' 263 "No, I wasn't sure. I didn't invent everything, I had some. Maybe it was that injection. And when they thought it might be in the tube I was afraid not to have the operation. Then I thought when they had me on the operating table they'd do it for me. But they didn't." "Of course they didn't, they're not allowed to. That's what it was all about in the first place." "I realize. I realize. I thought I could crash the gate, I suppose. One of my bright schemes." She wasn't crying now, though in her eyes there were the crimson threads that tear salts bring out, and her nose was stung with them too, but she was not less but more, as was clear on her push-faced beauty, an aristocrat in her idea of the energy you should devote to love. "How long are you supposed to stay in bed, Mimi?" "I'm not going to stay as long as they think. I can't." "But you have to." "Oh no. It's getting late. A little more and I won't be able to. You call that man and get an appointment for me for late next week. By that time I'll be able to take it." This touched me very wrong, and I couldn't help it, I showed my horror at such nerve to practice on one's own body. "Oh, you think a woman should be more fragile than that," she said. "I keep forgetting you're just about engaged to be married." "But shouldn't you wait at least until they let you out?" "They say ten days, and it'll only weaken me to stay in bed that long. Anyhow, I can't stand the ward. And the nurses' being so pleased about the blessed event. I can't put up with it. And I'm beginning to be nervous. Do you have any dough?" "Not much. Do you?" "Not even half of what I need, and can't raise much. He won't touch me for a buck under the price, I know. Frazer hasn't got anything either." "If I could get into his room I could take some of his books and sell them. There are things there worth good money." "He wouldn't like that. Anyhow, you can't get in." She broke her preoccupation to give me a look for my own sake, straight, and said with a laugh that didn't last, "You take my side, don't you?" I saw no necessity to answer. "You can see the point of love, I mean." She kissed me feelingly, and with some pride in me'. All the rest, the women, wan, visiting or gazing around. "Well," I said, "we can raise this money. How much short of the hundred are you?" "I'll need at least fifty more." "We'll get it." The easiest way I knew to raise'extra dough--so easy I was rather proud of it--was to steal books. I needed to ask no one, and Simon least of all. I headed downtown right away. It was still early in the evening, glittering with electric, with ice; and trembling in the factories, those nearly all windows, over the