The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [202]
him to be sociable, it was such inaporopriate advice to a man in love. Nobody, then, gave the, happy bon voyage I'd have liked. Everybody warned me, in some way, and I even thought of Eleanor Klein and what Jimmy had told me of her being rooked there in Mexico, and her mishaps. I argued back to myself that it was just the Rio Grande I had to cross, not the Acheron, but anyway it oppressed me from somewhere. Really, it was the strangeness of the state I was in and not so much that of the destination I was aware of. The great astonishment of this state was that the unit of humanity should maybe be not one but two. Not even the eagle falconry distressed me as much as that what happened to her had to happen to me too, necessarily. This was scary. This trouble of course wasn't clear to me then. I put it all on Mexico and the hunting. And finally I said to Thea, on an evening while she was playing the guitar--with a rounded-back thumb on the hind string; she treated the instrument easily and it supplied its own strength--I said, "Do we have to go to Mexico?" "Do we have to?" she said and shut off the strings with her hand. "You can get a quick divorce in Reno and in other places." "But why shouldn't we go to Mexico? I've been there several times, many times. What's wrong with it?" "But what's wrong with other places?" "There's a house down in Acatia, and we're going there to catch some of those lizards and other animals. Besides, I've arranged with Smitty's lawyer to be divorced there. And there's still another reason why it's better for us to be there." "What's that?" "I won't have much money after the divorce." I shut my eyes and put my palm on my forehead as if trying to help the sudden astonishment go through. "Well, Thea, excuse me if I don't follow you. I thought you and Esther had lots of money. What about the stuff in the icebox?" "Augie, our part of the family never did have very much. It's my uncle, my father's brother, who's rich, and Esther and I are the only kin, and we always had allowances and were brought up in the money, but we were supposed to make good. Esther did; she married a rich man." "And so did you." "But it's over, and I may as well tell you there was a scandal about it. It isn't anything you should mind, it was just foolishness, but I took off from a party with a naval cadet. He looked just like you. It didn't amount to anything. I was thinking of you all the time, but you weren't there." "A substitute!" "Well, that Greek girl wasn't even that for you." "I never said I spent all the time since we were in St. Joseph thinking about you." "Nor about Esther?" "No." "Do you want to argue, or do you want to hear? I'm only trying to explain what happened. My aunt was visiting us--you remember the old lady--and the party was at our house, at Smitty's house. And she saw how this kid and I were petting. Augie, you really don't have to mind that. It was thousands of miles away and I didn't realize that I was going to come to Chicago to look for you. But I couldn't take Smitty any more. I had to have somebody else.' Even if it was only just another boy, like that Navy boy. After that my old aunt went home, and my uncle talked to me long-distance and told me I was on probation with him. And that's one more reason why I have to go to Mexico, to make some money." "With the eagle?" I cried out. Many kinds of things were disturbing me. "How do you expect to make anything with an eagle! Even if he catches those blasted lizards or whatever you mean. Holy smokes!" "It isn't just the lizards. We're also going to make movies of hunt324 ing, I have to capitalize on the things I know how to do. We can sell articles about it to the National Geographic." "How do you know we can? And who can write them?" "We'll have the material and find somebody to help us. There's always such a person wherever you go." "But. darling, you can't count on that. What do you think! It's not so easy." "It's not so terribly hard, I don't believe. I know lots of people everywhere who are crazy to do me a favor. I don't suppose it is going to be very