The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [212]
showers, or toilets. The lobby was also very fine, and empty. From above it had a diagrammatic look. The chairs and writing tables were arranged with geometry, but no one was there to use them. And soon we found that the queen for whom the place was named was the licentious old Cyprian one. The closets were full of douche pans, the beds were heavily prepared with rubber under the sheets, which was an annoyance. During the day we were alone in the hotel with the maids, whom we amused. They thought it was fun that we lived in a house of assignation and they waited on us, did laundry and pressed pants, fetched coffee and fruit, because we were the only guests. Thea's Spanish entertained them--I had only begun to pick up a few words--as did her requests, that she summoned them when we were in bed and ordered mangos for us and meat for the bird. Encouraged to be free around the place, we covered with only a towel when we went to take a shower, and when I wanted to be without the eagle nobody minded if we went into one of the other rooms. It was only at night that there were drawbacks to the Regina; though the clients were probably respectable people they had no ideas whatever about quiet, and very few of the doors had glass in the transom. However, we were out to all hours ourselves, seeing the city,, and we did a lot of daytime sleeping. I rested my arm, of which the gashes were healing. Thea took me to the palaces and night clubs, zoo and churches. The rideresses in Chapultepec, those patrician ladies in hard hats and immense skirts and foot-conforming little black leather shoes, sitting sidesaddle, they impressed me. I thought the world was really much greater than I had ever fancied. I said to Thea, "I don't actually know much, I begin to see." She laughed and answered, "You're welcome to all the side of things I can give information about. But how much are you obliged to know?" "No, there actually is a lot," I said, for I was amazed and struck, it was so splendid. I wanted to stay, but there was our business with the bird, and Thea didn't like the city very much. I couldn't question her judgment about Caligula--there I went along with her and had confidence by now, based on her proved ability with him, A creature like that, he'd have torn me to strips if I'd ever taken him on myself, assuming that I'd have had the nerve. No, where the eagle was concerned I did as she said, insofar as I backed the undertaking. When I knew more about it I trembled, thinking of the precautions we didn't take. We ought to have worn wire masks, especially at the time he was being taught to give up the lure for meat on the fist, since bald eagles are most dangerous when they have their quarry under them. She might have been struck in the eyes. But that never happened, and eventually she succeeded in teaching him to respond to our voices and come directly after the stoop for the hand-fed meat. We talked to him and used every gentleness on him. He liked to be stroked with a feather. He became pretty tame, but all the same my heart picked lip a few beats when we hooded him or struck the hood. At the Regina the scared maids were called in to be present when we worked with him. Thea lined them up and said, "Hablen, hablen ustedes!" They had to chatter. For the thing was to accustom Caligula to close human presence and sound. So the Indian women, in smocks, frightened as well as amused by us--they stood in a row and watched Thea take the eagle down from the dresser on her hand. What I had imagined at the first sight of him actually happened to one of these young chicks, that she wet her pants when the hood came off from the 340.. unmerciful face and weapon beak with its breathing holes. But it did affect Caligula to be surrounded by these women; he ate and then at one moment he seemed to lean his head toward Thea and act like a cat who wants to wipe and wreathe and ply himself at a woman's legs. "Oh, look at him," Thea cried. "Augie, see what he's doing, he wants to be petted!" ^ Then she was impatient with having to wait on in the city. "Now's the