The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [190]
right to go since I couldn't any longer honestly sh that gay interest that had brought us together. A piece of paper slid under the door, and we heard Thea going |ay. t "At least she's not so brassy as to stand and look at me come out," ftsad Sophie. "Anyway, she had plenty of brass to knock when she could ^ffl you had company. Are you engaged to her or something? Go ahead ||ttd read your note." Sophie took her conge and kissed me on the face but wouldn't let me Morn the kiss or accompany her down to the door. So, undressed still, KSat on the cot in the May night air of the high window and opened f piece of paper. It gave her address and number and said, "Please THE ADVENTURBS call me tomorrow, and don't be angry because of what I can't help." When I thought how she had been ashamed for the jealousy rising to her face, and how rich in trouble the moment had been for her to hold fast while I came to the door naked and talked to her, I wasn't inclined to feel angry at all. In fact I couldn't help but be glad. Even though it was high-handed to go and proceed against Sophie as she did and assume that only she had the right grade of love. And then I had a lot of other notions, such as whether I was in danger of falling in love to oblige. Why? Because love was so rare that if one had it the other should capitulate to it? If, for the time, he had nothing more important on? In this thought there was a good measure of poking fun, with, however, the fact that I was stirred in all kinds of ways, including the soft shuffle in the treetop of leaves just broken out of the thick red beaks. I thought the business of a woman must be only love. Or, at another time, only a child. And I let this be an amusement and an objection in my light mind. And this lightness of mind--I could have benefited from the wisdom about it that the heavy is the root of the light. First, that is, that the graceful comes out of what is buried at great depth. But as wisdom has to spread and knot out in all directions, this can also refer to the slight laugh which is only a little of what is sent upward by great heaviness of heart, or also to the gravity which passes off by performer's flutter or pitch for laughs. Even the man who wants to'believe, you sometimes note kidding his way to Jesus. That night I fell deeply asleep, any old way, in and out of the sheets. They still smelled of Sophie's powder, or whatever she had imparted to them, so I slept wrapped in her banners, after a fashion. When I waked I thought it had been a peaceful sleep, and the early day was radiant. But I was mistaken. I remembered nightmares I had had of the jackals trying to get over the walls of Harar, Abyssinia, to eat the plague dead --from a book Arthur had left lying around, about one of his favorite poets. I heard Mimi below bitching and yelling at the telephone, though it was just some ordinary conversation. It was a fresh day, of beauty nearly material enough to pick up, with corners of the yard full of the heat of flowers grown in old iron and adapted cast-off boilers. That red which in the greater strength of the day would make you giddy and attack your heart with a power almost like a sickness, some sickness causing spat blood, spasm, and rot just as much and as rich as pleasure. My face prickled as if I had been hit sharp enough to cause nosebleed. I looked and felt puffy and sullen, and as if I had a surplus of blood and foresaw trouble from it, that it would have to be let. Also my hands and feet were that ominous way. I went out half stone, but even the pave302 ment chafed me through the leather; my veins seemed slowed up with lead. I couldn't bear being in the confinement of the drugstore even for the minute of time it took to swallow a cup of coffee. I dragged myself to the office in the poky cars, and when I had fallen into my chair with my legs spread out, I felt the toil of all my processes, down to the arteries of the feet as they sprung and shot with regularity, and I prayed I wouldn't have to get up. The door and window were open, the lustiness of the hard-trod place