The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [226]
on her face either. When I started to recover I didn't want her to hang around for my sake and company, if she was going to look like this. We had one of those arguments of sacrifice; she didn't want to leave me alone and I insisted that she go out, though I didn't want it to be afte; snakes that she went. But somebody had tipped her off to some green and red vipers, and what didn't show in her looks, patient toward me as I lay deaf and gaunt in my turban, in the sequel of the great flopwhat didn't show was how she sat and dreamed of catching these snakes. I recognized that she was bored and needed action. At first she went after wild pigs and such creatures, to l: eep me satisfied, but later she brought home snakes from the mountains in a burlap sack. Because of the good it did her I didn't squawk about it. I could measure her improvement daily with the eye. Only I didn't want her to go hunting alone, and I urged her to get some of her friends to accompany her, not just Jacinto. There was a huntiig set in town, and sometimes the doctor went out with her, sometimes young Talavera. So I was alone and went around the villa in robe and bondages, into the garden, along the porch with the snakes who writhed in the straw and raced their tongues I had a cold eye for them. I felt it was less from horror than from antagonism. After all, I had timed an eagle and got somewhere with wildlife, so I could claim s certain amount of courage. I didn't have to be clothed in intrepidity all the time or love all creatures. There was a kind of snake smell, like the smell of spoiled mango or rotten hay, the same as where we hai hunted the giant iguana. When I wasn't too restless I sat in one of the bullhide chairs and read the Utopia book. I still had the dysentery bug and in the morning often felt that heavy drape of the guts that made me run to fhe biffy, Caligula's old roost. There I kept the door open. It gave m; a view of the entire town, which now, late fall, after the deepest teats had passed off, was very beautiful. There weren't real seasons liere, but the shadows of harsher climates varied the months, from the north or from the south. Daily there was this sure blue, while the powerful forces of heaven took it easy over the mossy tiles. This blus beauty compensated me considerably, as did the book when I was in the right mood for it. Otherwise I schlepped around useless and melancholy, feeling like a slob. As my cheeks had fallen, their bones became large and my eyes appeared a little sleepy, from the uneasiness they'd have shown had they opened wider. I grew a kind of Indian mustache of fair hair by the sides of my mouth too. Thea drank her coffee, told me to be well, put on her sombrero of brass eyelets, and went out to the horses. I would come and watch her mount. With just the slight heaviness of confident body she sat in the saddle. She no longer asked me whether I wanted her to stay with me, only recommended that I take a walk in the afternoon. I said I'd see ' about it., v.' Moulton and Iggy came to visit me, and Moulton said, "Boling, you look like hell," so I felt even more sad over myself and was in the dumps, with omens that moved around in my heart. Stella too, Oliver's girl friend, regretted that I didn't look better when I talked to her from the garden wall. I observed there was a shadow over her also. These days I was drinking up a fair amount of tequila limonada, and I invited her to join me. She refused. Regretfully she said, "I wish I could. One of these days maybe I will. I'd like to talk to you. But you know we're supposed to move out of the Carios Quinto." I didn't know, and before I could find out why, thin Oliver:; ' came lifting his feet over the flowers, his horsy ankles in gartered;;' I silk socks, his little red mouth sullen. He took her away from the wall, not even talking to me. ^: |' What was wrong with him? Moulton said he was jealous. "And she says they're moving out." "Yes, Oliver rented that Jap's villa. The Jap has to go back to Nagasaki. Oliver says the biddies at the Carios are giving Stella the treatment.