The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [223]
But I understand he's flunked." "Who said so?" "Oh, the word went around that he was a flop." That little bastard Jacinto! "Is it true, Bolingbroke--is that mighty bird funky? Is he yellow?" "Why," I said, "that's a lot of nonsense! How's one eagle different from another? They're all more or less the same. An eagle is an eagle, a wolf a wolf, a bat a bat." "You're right, Boling. I'd say in our species, even, we're pretty much alike. Just the same, the differences are interesting. So what about your eagle?" "He's not ripe yet for this kind of hunting. But he will be soon. Thea's a great trainer." "I wouldn't deny it. But if he's timid he must have been a lot easier to train than a real triple-threat, piss-and-vinegar eagle like the one that actually caught those lizards a while back." "Caligula is a bald American, the strongest and most savage kind." I had yet to find out how little people want you to succeed in an extraordinary project, and what comfort some have that the negligible is upheld and a! l other greater effort falls on its face. On behalf of the writers I had been reading I felt a grievance too. "Oliver is editor of a magazine," said Iggy. "Maybe he wants the story on your eagle." "Which magazine is that?" "Wilmot's Weekly." "Yes, we drove down for a holiday," said this Oliver. He looked rather silly, frail in the head, with thready lips, small mustache, and knobby cheekbones. Obviously he was a lush, and a very vain man. It was only recent, his coming up in the world. Moulton and Iggy had known him back in New York, and one of the first things Moulton told me about him was that only a couple of years before if you let this Oliver into your house you ran the risk that he would steal some of your clothes and hock them for whisky; and when last heard from he was in the booby-hatch for the insulin cure, with the screaming meemies. Yet here he was, dressed to kill, with a new convertible and this beauty who was supposed to be an actress. And he was really the editor of Wilmot's Weekly. Of which he now said, "We're interested mainly in political articles." "Well, Christ, Johnny, don't try to tell me it's all so serious in your mag--all think-pieces. It never used to be." "Under the new owners everything is different. You know," he said, and changed the subject in a way that soon became predictable. "I wrote my autobiography last week. Just before we started out. It took a week. Childhood one day, boyhood next, and the rest in five days flat. Ten thousand words a day. It's coming out next month." When he talked about himself it was with such satisfaction that for the moment he looked healthy and well, glossy. Then he had a relapse when the topic got away from him, and seemed very meager. Stella said, "We're staying at the Carlos Quinto. Come and have a drink with us." "Yes, why don't we," said Oliver. "We ought to take advantage of it; it's costing plenty. We can sit in the garden at least." I went away, for I was really worked up about the eagle after Moulton's ribbing. I'd have thought, myself, that Caligula's flop would give me a sort of pleasure, but, curiously, that wasn't how it worked out. Before, he had interfered with love; but now that he had flopped he did even more harm. Suddenly Thea and I appeared to have lost the place, and I was bewildered. What was the matter that pureness of feeling couldn't be kept up? I see I met those writers in the big book of Utopias at a peculiar time. In those Utopias, set up by hopes and art, how could you overlook the part of nature or be sure you could keep the feelings up? I went home determined that we would not back down but fly Caligula and catch those giant iguanas, just like that other American couple. First I wanted to collar Jacinto for blabbing, but I couldn't find him. Nor was Thea in the house. The cook told me, "Est�cazando." I said, "Qu� "Culebras," said she, in that voice that was like a haywisp of antiquity, it was always so thin and distant. I looked the word up in the dictionary. They had gone to hunt snakes. Caligula was in his closet. At night they returned.