The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [217]
the air. Caligula made a noise. I don't believe he had ever in his life been hurt and his astonishment was enormous. He tore off the lizard, and when he had already squeezed and wounded it past recovery he hopped off. I couldn't show it, but it did my heart good to see Caligula so offended. He sorted among the feathers with his beak to find the hurt place. Thea was furious at him, her face red. She shouted, "Get him! Go finish him!" But when he heard her voice he rose up and flew to her for his usual meat. Since he came to her she had to let him land and extended her arm. But she was very angry. "Oh, the dirty bastard! We can't let him run away from a little bit of an animal like that. What'll we do? Augie, don't you grin about it!" "I'm not, Thea, it's the sun making me squint." "What should we try now?" "I'll pick up the lizard and call Caligula back. The poor thing is almost dead." "Jacinto, kill the lagarto," Thea said. With pleasure the boy ran from the shed on bare feet and hit the creature on the head with a stone. I laid it, dead, on my gauntlet, and Caligula didn't refuse to come but he wouldn't eat. He shook the lizard with fury and let it drop to the ground. When I offered it a second time, now a dusty dead thing, he did the same. "Oh, that damned crow! Get him out of my sight!" "Now, Thea, wait a minute," I said. "This has never happened to him before." "Wait? He only came out of an egg once. How many times did he have to do that? He's supposed to have instincts. I'll wring his neck. How is he going to fight the big ones if a little nip does this to him?" "Why, if you're hurt, what do you expect?" But that was my humanizing again, and she shook her head. She believed fierce nature shouldn't be like that. I put the eagle on his waterbox, and gradually Thea let me pacify her. I said, "You've done wonders with this bird already. You can't miss. We'll make it, sure. After all, he doesn't have to be as terrible as he looks. He's still a young bird." At last, in the afternoon, she got over her anger and proposed for the first time that we go to Hilario's bar in the wcalo for a drink. While she was unpleasantly stirred against Caligula I felt a little condemned with him. Though Thea was specially loving when we went into the room to change for Sunday p. m. in the zocalo. She took off her clothes. The outer were rugged, the inner silky. And when she was naked, smoking a cigarette, she looked at me differently as I sat shirtless and pulled off my boots in the heated shade and the radiated color of the tiles. I went and put my head on her breast. But I knew that, both in love, we were not quite the same in our purpose. She had the idea of an action for which love makes you ready and sets you free. This happened to be connected with Caligula. He meant that to her. But as she suspected now that he preferred brought meat to prey, perhaps she thought also, about me, whether I could make the move from love to the next necessary thing. We rose from bed and dressed. In the lace blouse she wore, how soft she looked. Her hair fell long on her back. She took my arm, not because she needed its support on the sharp cobbles, but to keep close, and in the shade of the fruit trees she looked very much as she had in St. Joe on the swing, a young girl. Since the Fenchels had owned the Acatia house for many years Thea was acquainted in the town. But at Hilario's bar we sat at a small table; she didn't want company. Nevertheless, people came over to greet her, to ask after her sister, her aunt and uncle, and Smitty, and of course to give me the once-over. Many of these remained. Thea continued to hold my arm. To my Chicago eyes these others mostly looked far and odd. Now and then Thea explained who or what they were, and I didn't always understand her. So then this bald old German had been a dancer, and on this side was a jeweler, and the blonde, his wife, came from Kansas City; here was a woman of fifty who was a painter, and the man with her was a sort of cowhand, or Reno-cowhand; and coming up now was a rich fairy, once a queen. Here