The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [198]
if I v/eren't her lover would come to me. She assumed she understood everything about me, and it was astonishing how much she did know; the remainder she made up with confidence and trusted to closed eyes and fast strokes. She therefore said some harsh and jealous things and her look occasionally was more brilliant than friendly. She was aware of her weakness in having come after me--in her confident moments she thought of it instead as strength and was proud of it. "Did you like that Greek girl?" "Yes, sure I did." "Was it just the same with her as with me?" "No." ': "I can tell you're just lying, Augie. Of course it was the same for you." "Don't you find it different with me? Am I like your husband?" "Like him? Never!" "Well, can it be so different for you and not also for me? You think I can put it on and not love you?" "Oh, but I came to look for you, not you for me. I had no pride"-- she was forgetting that I scarcely knew her in St. Joe. "You were getting tired of this little Greek chambermaid, and I happened to show up, and it flattered you so much you couldn't resist. You like to get bou1 quets like that." And now, to say this, made her breathe with labor; [ she was suffering. "You want people to pour love on you, and you soak it up and swallow it. You can't get enough. And when another woman runs after you, you'll go with her. You're so happy when somebody begs you to oblige. You can't stand up under flattery!" Maybe so. But what I couldn't stand up under at the moment was this glare, when she went so hot and white in the face with its strong nerve and metaphysical reckless assertion. Although she painted her mouth with carnation lipstick she didn't make it sensual, nor did she have a sensual face, but any excitement, no matter what it was, took up her person, her entire being. It was the same whether she was angry or when she was loving and had her breasts against me, clasping hands, touching feet. So even if this jealousy made no sense, still it wasn't play-acting jealousy.. "If I'd been wise enough I'd have come for you," I said. "I just didn't have enough sense, so I'm grateful that you did. And you don't have to be afraid." No, no, what did I want with the upper hand or pride contests? None of that stuff. When she heard me speak like this there was a tremor in her features of the strain passing off; she shrugged and smiled at herself and a more normal color began to appear. Not only was she accustomed to independence struggles and to resistance, to going counter to the open direction of everyone else, which made her judgments severe, but she was in many ways suspicious. Her experience was, socially, much wider than mine, and so she suspected many things which at the time were out of my range. She must have remembered that when we met I seemed an old woman's hanger-on who sponged on her and maybe worse than that. Of course she knew better. What she knew of me by now, really knew, was plenty, from information I gave freely. Because involuntarily. But so was her habitual shrewdness involuntary, the shrewd suspiciousness of a rich girl. And then, once you've irrevocably made up your mind, does that mean you don't sweat and fear you can be wrong? Even Thea with her convictions and confidence wasn't immune to occasional fits of doubt. "What makes you say these things about me, Thea?" They bothered me. Certainly there was some truth in them; I felt it in my lining, somewhere, like an object that had slipped down out of the pocket. "Aren't they right? Especially about your being so obliging?" "Well, partly. I used to be much more so. But not so much now." I tried to tell her that I had looked all my life for the right thing to do, for a fate good enough, that I had opposed people in what they wanted to make of me, but now that I was in love with her I understood much better what I myself wanted. But what she had to answer was this: "What makes me say these things is that I see how much you care about the way people look at you. It matters too much to you. And there are people who take advantage of that. They haven't