The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [233]
the onetime owner of the Star Thpater, the engineering student from Armour Tech, the exhusband of Mimi Villars' sister, the former subway employee. I recognized him in his Western-style rig. Ye gods! How severe, melancholy, duty-charged, and baffled he looked! Same as the others, he packed a pistol; the spread of his pants was wide at the back and his belly hung over the belt. I hollered at him, "Sylvester! You, Sylvester!" He looked sharply at me, as if I took a dangerous liberty; yet he was curious. I | was full of glee, and my head was pounding. My face got very red with Ji laughter and excitement, because I was so extremely happy to see him. "You damned fool, Sylvester, don't you know who it is? It's Augie March. You mean to stand there and not recognize me? I haven't changed that much, have I?" "Augie?" he asked and smiled a little with dark bitter lips, incredulous. His question made an uncertain creak in his throat. "Of course! It's me, you dope! Jesus, how did you get here? What are you doing with that hardware?" "How did you land down here? Gosh, we sure get around. What's wrong with your head?" "I fell off a horse," I said, and in spite of my joy at seeing him I quickly ran through in my mind a variety of reasonable, and not especially true, accounts. But he didn't ask, which astonished me. It now astonishes me less, for I know more about how people get preoccupied. "Gee, it's swell tosee you, Sylvester. How come you're doing this?" "I got assigned to it--what do you mean? They wanted somebody with a technological background." Technological background! As I was laughing still from pleasure at meeting him I could get away with a laugh over this too. Poor Sylvester, with this story about being a technician. Well, well, whatever we got out of this meeting it sure wasn't going to be the truth. I had prepared a story myself, should he ask me what I was up to. That's how it is. One day's ordinary falsehood if you could convert it into ":; silt would choke the Amazon back a hundred miles over the banks. ' However, it never appears in this form but is distributed all over like the nitrogen in potatoes. "So?" I said. "You're with Trotsky all the time, you know him well, I guess? It must be marvelous. I wish I could know him!" "You?" "Gosh, I suppose I wouldn't fit in. What's he like? Do you think I could at least meet him, Sylvester? You could introduce me." "Yeah? Just like that?" said Sylvester, amused, with his heavy eyes. "It couldn't be more complicated than you think, could it? You're a funny guy. But look, I have to go. When you get up to the city phone me. I'd like to see you; we'll have a beer. You remember Frazer from Chicago? He's one of the old man's secretaries. Don't for"et now." Another guard was calling him, and he trotted away to the cars. Oliver cursed the Japanese for the delay about the villa, but finally the Japanese sailed for Japan and Oliver moved in and prepared to throw a huge party and have the best society in town. That would poison his enemies at the Carlos Quinto. Moulton helped him make up a guest list and invitations were sent out to the old residents. Mostly a lot of riffraff turned up, however, in observance of his troubles, which were by then public and had been for some time. A Treasury agent came to town, and he didn't hide his identity but told everyone, with swell humor, what he was. He sat spread on one of Hilario's wireharp chairs and drank beer as if on a holiday, or fed peanuts to the kinkajou. Oliver managed to look indifferent when he went through the square, he and Stella as usual dressed up to the eyes. The more he looked self-possessed, the more it was a, disaster, and I was sorry for him. Stella was scared. She sometimes tried to make me understand that she'd like to talk to me about this. I never thought it unnatural that I should be the one she wanted to discuss her troubles with. However, there was no chance to do it. Oliver watched her very closely. I said to Moulton, "What do they want Oliver for? It must be serious or they wouldn't have sent a man from Washington."