The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [174]
with this aim. But since probably very few people are now helped by these things and lessons, each falls back on whatever he has. I flung the bloody bedclothes into the closet, and she noticed the energy of the swing and said, "Don't be panicky, Augie." I sat down by her, trying to be calmer. "Did you realize it might be like this?" "Or even tougher," she said; and as her eyes were yellowish and lacking in moisture and her mouth was pale, it occurred to me that possibly she couldn't grasp just how tough it already was. "But..." "But what?" I said. "You can't let your life be decided for you by any old thing that comes up." "A champion way to be independent," I said, intending the words for myself, but she heard me. "It makes a difference what you go down from, don't fool yourself. It does to me, now. Though," she said, face frowning and then growing smooth while she made the concession, "probably that is only if I come up again. If you're dead, does it make a difference for what?" I couldn't bear to talk now, and sat quiet, watching. And as she had thought it would, the hemorrhaging gradually let up; she was less braced and stiff-spread on the bed, and I was less benumbed in the muscles. My thoughts were crumbled, for I had been having fancies about how I was going to get her into a hospital, knowing how tough it was in such casss, and I imagined pleading and being refused, and official highhandedness and being driven mad. "Well," she said, "it looks as if even he couldn't croak me." "You beginning to feel better?" "I'd like a drink." "Shall I bring you something soft? I don't think you ought to drink whisky tonight." "I mean whisky. I think you could use some yourself." I took Simon's car to the garage and came back in a cab with a bottle. She took a good-sized slug, and I drank the rest, for now that I felt reassured about Mimi my own trouble came forward; as I was crawling naked into my sheetless bed in the dark it gave me an enormous squeeze, and I took a last swig at the bottle for the sake of stupefaction and sleep. But I woke in the small hours, earlier than my usual rising time. Kelly Weintraub would never let me get by but would nail me. And what I felt about this more definite than general darkness and fear, like the unlighted gathered cloud that hung outside, I didn't know. I dressed in my yard clothes. The whisky was still working in me; I was not used to drink. In the grimness and mess of her room Mimi seemed to be very hot but normally asleep. When I went to have coffee I arranged at the drugstore to have breakfast sent up to her. Watchfulness and care made me rocky that morning. The weather stayed black, undispersed soot sitting on the snow. Like the interior of something that should be closed. It was much more awful than sad, even to me, a native who didn't have much else. to know. Out of this middle-of-Asia darkness, as flat in humanity as the original is in space, to the yard, on business, came trucks and wagons, dying nags inquiring through the window with their grenadiers' decorations of velvet green or red, looking at us under the brilliant bulbs making out receipts and laying the dollars in the cash drawer. The dollar bills felt snotty and. smelled perfumed. Simon kept examining me, so that I wondered whether Kelly had already reached him. But no, he was only keeping me under his severity, stout and red in the eye. And I wasn't doing too well. It was, however, a short day, the last of the year. We were passing out little single-snort bottles of bourbon and gin and the joint got merry and jumping, peppered with these empties on the floor. Even Simon loosened up by and by. With the scrapping of the calendar and the old twelvemonth sagging off with his scythe and Diogenes lantern, Simon was after all on a new beginning. His summer troubles were well behind him. He said to me, "I understand you and Lucy are going formal tonight. Well, how can you put on a tux with a head of hair as wild as that? Go and see a barber. In fact, get some rest. You been balling it somewhere? Take the car and go on. Uncle Artie