The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [214]
away. The toilet became his mews; he perched on the waterbox or cistern where the sound of trickling seemed to please him. The boy, Jacinto, tagged after to see how we handled him. He was thrilled. Sometimes I thought that if to earn money was the reason for this goofy undertaking I should devote myself to the money question and " " 343 how to make a killing; then I'd set Caligula free or give him away. But I knew that to make money was not Thea's objective. I didn't overlook the nobility of her project, how ancient it was, the kind of ambition that was involved or the aspect of game or hazard; I even was aware of a link to earliest times in the great venture of domestication. Yes, for all my opposition and dread of the bird, wishing him a gargoyle of stone or praying he would drop dead, I saw the other side of it, and what was in it for her, that she was full of brilliant energy. But I thought, What was wrong with the enjoyment of love, and what did there have to be an eagle for? So then, if I had dough at least there couldn't be that pretext. Then I understood, next, how to think idly of money is terribly frivolous. Being unreasonable perhaps about the capture of the lizards, Thea nevertheless had a bird and had made a start, whereas my thought of money was only a flutter of imagination. What was I doing in breeches and campaign hat down here in Central Mexico if I wanted to be serious about it? In short, I saw anew how great a subject money is in itself. Here was vast humankind that meshed or dug, or carried, picked up, held, that served, returning every day to its occupations, and being honest or kidding or weeping or hypocritic or mesmeric, and money, if not the secret, was anyhow beside the secret, as the secret's relative, or associate or representative before the peoples. Here we arrived, and lunch was served to us--soup, chicken with black mole sauce, tomato and avocados, coffee and guava jelly. And this strange, mouth-inflaming delicate food, as I was eating, was what brought my mind to this question of the dollar. The house was handsome and wide, deeper than appeared from outside, because from the garden you descended to the rooms. The walls were reddish and floors darker red or green tile. There were two patios, one with a fountain and barrel-shaped oxhide chairs; the other was by the kitchen, a sort of old stable yard, and here we continued Caligula's training. He flew down to us from the tiles of the shed where Jacinto slept. From the porch where we ate we had the town and the cliffs before us. Nearly immediately below was the zocalo, the dippy bandstand and its vines, the monstrous trees around. The cathedral had two towers and a blue-varied belly of dome, finely crusted and as if baked in a kiln, overheated, and in places with the mutilated spectrum that sometimes you split out of brick. It was settled uneven on the stones of the square, and occasionally in the midst of admiration gave you a heavy, squalid, gut-sick feeling, so much it incorporated all that was in the surroundings. The bells clung like two weak old animals, green and dull and the doors opened on a big gloom in which stood dead white altars and images slashed and scratched with axes, thorns, raked with black woundssome of these flashy with female underpants on their hips, nail-cloven and hacked as they were, and bleeding as far as their clothespin white fingers. Then on a hill to one side was the cemetery, white and spiky, and on another side and higher in a star of connecting gullies was a silver mine, and there you could see where the force of great investment had dented. The mountainside was eaten for some distance by machine. I was intrigued and climbed up there one day. It certainly was odd what mechanisms you saw all over Mexico, what old styles there gnawed and crawled, pit or tunnel makers, and machine scarabaeuses, British and Belgian doojiggers, Manchester trolleys or poodle locomotives at the head of sick cars covered with blanketed men and soldiers. Within the town still, along the road to the mine, the garbage was thrown into