The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [219]
chance. "But you did write magazine articles at one time," said Thea, "and you can show us how to do it." "I take it Mr. March is not a writer." * "No." I answered for myself. What he was fishing for was my calling. I suppose he knew that I didn't have one I could announce even to these worldly people--for I imagined they were of the great world, and they just about were. Moulton smiled at me, and not without kindness. With the deep creases of his eyes, he took on a powerful resemblance to a fat lady of the old neighborhood. "Well, in a pinch maybe Iggy can help if I can't." Moulton and Iggy were friends, but this recommendation everybody knew was a joke, because Iggy specialized in blood-curdlers for Doc Savage and Jungle Thrillers. He couldn't write anything else. I liked this Iggy Blaikie. His real handle was Gurevitch, but that didn't have the dash that went with the proud Anglo-Saxon names of his heroes. So as Gurevitch was abandoned and Blaikie had never been real in the first place he became entirely Iggy. He had a real poolroom look. The boy with the bucket in Nagel's corner, a little weavy and punchy himself. He wore an apache jersey and a pair of the rope-soled sandals from the Chinese shop; he was lean but his face was flushed and gross, with bloodshot green eyes and mouth of froggy width, the skin of his throat creased, dirty, half shaved; his voice was choky and his conversation only part coherent. Except by someone experienced in sizing up such people, who would have known he was innocent, he might have been taken for a dope peddler, a junk-pusher, or minor hoodlum. His was a case of a strongly misleading appearance. As to young Talavera, I didn't know just what to make of him. It was obvious that he looked me over measuringly, and he made me conscious, from the outside, of how I seemed, with tanned face and freestyle hair. I felt foolish somewhat, but I had to grant after all that I had studied him too. I wasn't experienced enough to be suspicious of the young man and native of the place who attaches himself to the foreign visitors, especially to women. Such are the broke characters to whom ancient names belong, in Florence in front of Gilli's Cafe, or the young men in tight pants who wait around at the top of the funicular in Capri for Dutch or Danish girls to pick up. And if I had been that experienced I might not have been quite right about Talavera. He was a mixed type. Very handsome, he looked like Ramon Navarro of the movies, both soft and haughty, and was said to be a mining engineer by profession; that was never proved but he had no need of work, his father was rich, and Talavera was a sportsman. I said to Thea, "I don't think that young fellow likes me much." "Well, what about it?" she answered carelessly. "We're only renting horses from his father." For Caligula we first tried a burro, but though he stood hooded on the saddle and was well secured, the burro was bowed with terror and its head bristled. We then tried horses, and they were shy of him. I couldn't keep my seat when Thea handed Caligula up to me. And she herself wasn't more successful. Finally Talavera Senior brought out an old horse who had been through the Zapatista rebellion and wounded in guerrilla battles. To be ridden by a picador was all this gray animal appeared fit for, and be gored in the ring. But he was first-rate with the eagle. I would have said myself there was more sorrow than anything else in his accepting the bird on his back. Old Bizcocho, that was what this horse was called; it was hard to make him go at more than a fast amble, though he still had a few bursts of speed in him. We took him out of town to a flat place, first, to practice. Out beyond the cemetery and its bones that lay accidental on the ground, the reek of flowers along the white tomb walls: first I on the gray animal who clopped slow, the eagle braced on my arm; then Thea on another horse; and Jacinto in his white sleeping-suit garb and dark feet carried just above the ground riding a donkey. We would pass a funeral, often of a child, and the father himself