The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [22]
Altoona; she applied it with old toothbrushes she kept in a glass on the bathroom window; this gave her braids a peculiar Indian luster. They fell along her cheeks down to the multiform work of her chins. Her black eyes were small but merciful to confusion; she was popelike and liberal with pardons and indulgences. Jimmy had four brothers and three sisters, some of them occupied mysteriously, but all were genial and glad-handing, even the married elder daughters and the middle-aged sons. Two of her children were divorced and one daughter was a widow, so that Mrs. Klein had grandchildren in her kitchen at all times, some coming from school for lunch and after school for cocoa, others creeping on the floor or lying in buggies. Everyone in those prosperous days was earning money, and yet all had trouble. Gilbert had to pay alimony; the divorced sister, Velma, was not getting hers regularly. Her husband had knocked out one of her teeth in a brawl, and now he often came to beg her mother to plead with her to come back. I saw him lay his red head on the table and cry while his sons and daughters were playing in the seats of his taxi. He made good dough, still he wouldn't give Velma enough, figuring she'd come back to him if he kept her needy. She borrowed, however, from her family. I've never seen such people for borrowing and lending; there was dough changing hands in all directions, and nobody grudged anyone. But the Kleins seemed to need a great many things and bought them all on the installment plan. Jimmy was sent out--and I with him--the money put inside the earflaps of his cap, to make payments. On the phonograph, on the Singer machine, on the mohair suite with pelletfilled ashtrays that couldn't be overturned, on buggies and bicycles, linoleums, on dental and obstetrical work, on the funeral of Mr. Klein's father, on back-supporting corsets and special shoes for Mrs. Klein, on family photos taken for a wedding anniversary. We covered the city on these errands. Mrs. Klein didn't mind our going to shows, as we often did, to hear Sophie Tucker whack herself on the behind and sing "Red Hot Mama," or see Rose La Rose swagger and strip in the indolent rhythm that made Coblin her admirer. "That girl is not just a beautiful girl," he said. "There are a lot of beautiful girls, but this girl feels men's hearts. She doesn't drop off her dress the way others do, she pulls it over her head. That's why she's the top of her profession today." We were in the Loop much more than we ought to have been and were continually running into Coblin standing in theater lines during school hours. He never told on me. He only said, like a sport, "What's today, Augie? The mayor closed up the school?" Cheerful as usual, grinning and happy in the limy and red lights of the marquee, like the old kin" of the Scotch mists who had half a face of emerald and half of red jewel. "What's the feature?" "Bardelys the Magnificent plus Dave Apollon and his Komarinsky dancers. Come along and keep me company." We had a reason, at that time, for keeping away from school. Steve the Sailor Bulba, my lockermate, brute-nosed and red, with the careful long-haired bartering and toutish sideburns that gave notice that he was dangerous; bearish, heavy-bottomed in his many-buttoned, groundscuffing sailor pants and his menacing rat-peaked shoes; a housebreaker who stole plumbing fixtures and knocked open telephone coin boxes in recently vacated flats--this Bulba had taken my science notebook and turned it in as his own. Since there was nothing I could do with Bulba, Jimmy lent me his notes, and I carelessly erased his name and wrote my own over it. We were caught, and Simon had to be called in. Simon didn't want Mama to be brought to school any more than I did. He was able to get around Wigler, the science teacher, eventually. But all the while Bulba, small-eyed and looking mild, his forehead peaceful and blind, wrinkled to the gentle winter light of the classroom, was trying to make his clasp-knife stand up on its blades, like a horny insect. After this it wasn't hard for