The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [230]
for me. She was gone for two days in the mountains. When she returned I heard of it but didn't go up to the house; I was in a game at Louie Fu's and couldn't leave. Next morning I saw her in the garden, in riding breeches and the heavy boots she wore for snaking, thick and sturdy so that fangs couldn't pierce. Her white skin showed she was unwell, sullen; she hadn't rested and she craved and smarted, she wanted to punish me. Under the eyes there was a thickening of trouble. From her head the black hair gave back the heat of the sun, and along those particular hairs of irregular departure from her forehead there burned the red thread that was part of the secret of the black. She said fiercely, "Where were you!" "I got in very late." She was hot, shaky, and hasty, and heavy clear tears gave her eyes that crazy largeness of grievance that sometimes they would get. I thought she would sob, but she only shook. "I kind of expected you, the night before last," I said, and she didn't answer me. We were both sore but not prepared really to fight. What she shook with was breaking and not increasing anger. "What do you see in those people down there?" she demanded. "I think they must make you feel ashamed of me, ever since Caligula. They make fun of me." "You think I'd let them do that?" "I know them better than you do. That Moulton stinks." She lit into Wiley Moulton and other residents. I listened, and in this way we ignored our real differences. We couldn't yet stand a fight. Sometimes I almost convinced myself that I was ready to bat around the mountains with the snake nooses and cameras and guns. I could have used some action, because I was nervous and overcharged and because I longed that she and I should be back as we had been in Chicago. But I never could quite bring myself to go. It seemed to me that I had to continue playing poker. I was ahead and couldn't quit. Moulton kept yelling how I had drawn blood on everybody; I had to give people their chance for revenge. So I had a deck of cards between my fingers as their most familiar object, and actually I became a very dexterous and fancy dealer. Soon people were looking for me who didn't even know me, and I seemed to be running a game at the Chinese restaurant. Louie Fu in his coat sweater was of that opinion even. I was Bolingbroke or the Eagle Man to tourist strangers who sat in the game, world-tour burns, Moulton called them. My pockets were full of different foreign currencies. I didn't know exactly what I had. But I did have money. It was mine, not Smitty's. There was no longer any refrigerator with bills in the greens and dishes; Thea never seemed to think to offer me an allowance. If I hadn't been sick I'd have felt well-off, prosperous, with my pounds, dollars, pesos, and Swiss francs. But it was only my superficial luck that was good; I was rattled, I was bandaged in an unclean bandage, gaunt, the town seemed to want to blow its silly self to pieces, Thea was collecting coral snakes and rattlers, I had to win a fight of patience with my anxious backside to sit at Louie's, or in somebody's hotel room, or even at the foco rojo where the game sometimes moved. There the whores were in the rear; in front there was a little bar which was a soldiers' hangout, before the tourists took over. The soldiers read comic books, ate beans, and drank pulque. Rats walked on the beams. The girls cooked, swept, or read too, or washed their hair in the yard. One half-naked kid with a garrison cap clonked on the marimba; the little black rubber balls on his sticks struck fast. I felt I had to do something well, so it shouldn't all be a total loss, and so I watched the cards. I didn't convince Thea when I said that I'd go along with her just as soon as I felt up to it, nor did she convince me by her gestures toward me. She consented to keep me company in town some evenings, and it was good to see her legs in skirts, not covered by trousers. But it burned me up on the day her divorce papers came and I said, as I had figured to do, "Let's get married," and she simply shook her head. Then I