The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [231]
remembered how once when afraid of pregnancy she let escape the fear of explaining to her family that I was the father. Where at first it had disappointed me, and later graveled me more, this now gave me a harsh sting. For sure enough I had a glimmer of things from her standpoint, of how it is one thing to have a young man for your happy friend in the rosy days of love, and quite different the faulty creature to face in practical weather. I knew how I'd seem to her uncle, the powerful millionaire with his squash white-haired nose and his tailor-made Havanas. It was true that Thea defied him and aimed to become financially independent; but as she couldn't count on me she wouldn't cut herself off from her family for my sake. Had I been as enthusiastic on birds, snakes, horses, guns, and photography as she we might have made the grade. But I wouldn't have read a light meter for gold, I didn't want to capture snakes, and I felt ornery about it all. I hoped Thea would tire of it; while she, I suppose, waited for me to get tired of Moulton and Co. It was one fiesta after another meantime. The band plunged in the zocalo, clashed, drummed, and brayed; the fireworks bristled and ran off in strings, the processions swayed around with images. A woman died of a heart attack at a five-day drunk: party, and there were scandals. Two young men, lovers, had an argument about a dog and one of them took an overdose of sleeping pills. Jepson forgot his jacket in the foco rojo; the madame herself, Negra, brought it to the house. Iggy's ex-wife locked Jepson out, so he begged to sleep on Moulton's porch. Moulton wouldn't let him stay because he tried to borrow money, he drank his whisky. Now Jepson was living in the street, but as the town was foaming his sorrow wasn't particularly noticeable in it. Wolves or wild swine or the giant iguanas themselves or stags wouldn't have been either if they had slipped in from the mountains. A bright dust blew around and whitened the nights. The hotels and shops wanted there should be a hullabaloo and paid money for the music and shots and tolling, but to keep up these long fiestas cash wouldn't have been enough, and the energy for them must have come from the olden-time worship of those fire snakes and smoke mirrors and gruesome monster gods. Even the dogs ran and mumbled as if fresh back from their errand in the land of death, Mictlan. The old belief of the Indians was that dogs carried the souls of the dead there. There was an intestinal-amoeba epidemic which was hushed up, but funerals tangled with the other processions. There were big enter372 tainments. A Cossack chorus sang in the cathedral; the priest had never had such a crowd inside, and it made him frantic; he scolded and clapped his hands at everyone, crying we were in la casa de Dios. It didn't do a bit of good with that crowd. I can't say those Russians looked out of place in the zocalo in their tunics, boots, and tucked-in pants, musing around at night, burning their long cigarettes. A Brazilian-Italian opera company did La Forza del Destiiw. They sang and throbbed powerfully, but as though they didn't believe any of it themselves. Therefore I was skeptical too. Thea didn't come back for the second act. Then there was an Indian circus that gave a grim performance. The equipment of the acrobats was as if ripped out of an old foundry; the horses were shabby; the performers were solemn Michoacan Indians, and they stunted without nets or any safety devices. The savage little girls who came out in their soiled trousers to juggle and walk the wires and perform other tasks never smiled or bowed. Thus in this town I didn't see anything familiar, except in reminiscence--as when those Russians made me remember Grandma Lausch. Until one day when it was fairly quiet and I was sitting on a bench in the zocalo petting a kitten that tried to get into my armpit, and several large cars drove up to the cathedral. They were old cars but powerful, with something cast-iron about them, the long hoods, the low sling of expensive European automobiles. Immediately I