The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [241]
through the window, I turned the wheels and drew the gearshift back to neutral position. The car rolled a few feet and stopped against the mountain wall. But the battery was dead now, and the crank wouldn't work. She said, "Are we going to be stuck here all night?" "It could have been even more permanent than that. And I told 388:. Thea I'd be back in a few hours," I said. Of course she had heard the whole conversation between Thea and me. This fact made an enormous difference. It was just as if, after that talk in the orange grove, Thea had given Stella and me a new introduction to each other. Was I so vain and nonsensical, and was Stella so unscrupulous? We didn't speak about it. Stella could, and did, act as though it was no use answering the accusations of an overwrought woman. As for me, I thought that if what Thea said of me was true, then the truth must be sticking out all over me, and if it was so plain there was nothing much to say. And after all the rush and anxious sweat and urgency, to be here on the mountain like the millipede with one bank of legs suddenly out of commission while the other tried to continue with haste, gave me an unpleasant sort of feeling inside. "If there were a couple of men to pick up the front end and straighten us out we could get a start by rolling." "What," she said, "roll with those lights?" The lights were just a feeble yellow. "Anyhow, where are you going to find two men to help you?" Nevertheless I went to look for help and descended as far as the giant arrow pointing nowhere. Over the grass distances I couldn't be sure whether what 1 saw was stars or human lights, but I knew I better not try to find out now which they were. There'd be many a fall on terrain like this before I reached what possibly was a village. Or I might be trying to reach the southern heaven. And even to say "southern heaven" is to try to familiarize terrific convulsions of fire in the million light-year distances (and why, from space to space, does the occupancy have to be by fire?). There were falls, though, and also thorns and cactuses, from huge maguey to vicious leg-tearing pads; and animals too. No car came along the detour, and then it occurred to me that the next car that passed might be Oliver's. Was I waiting there for him to come and shoot at me with his pistol? I gave up and went back to the station wagon. There were some blankets and a shelterhalf in the back. As I hunted them with the flashlight I thought how much dislike I bore to this machine and the false positions it had put me in. I spread the canvas shelter-half on the wet grass, and when I crouched and was nearly still great speed and motion continued to go through me. I worried about Thea; I knew she was bound to let me have it. She'd never excuse me for this. And now Stella was lying close to me, for it was cold. Her smell was tender, from her hair and face powder--I suppose the mountain coldness made a difference in the odor. I felt her weight full, both soft and heavy, from her hips and breasts. And if before I vaguely thought how I'd be swayed, there wasn't much vagueness now. I suppose if you pass the night with a woman in a deserted mountain place there's only one appropriate thing, according to the secret urging of the world. Or not so secret. And the woman, who has done so much to be dangerous in this same scheme, the more she comes of the world the less she knows how to vary from it. I thought that in the crisis that seems to have to occur when a man and a woman are thrown together nothing, nothing easy, can happen until first one difficulty is cleared and it is shown how the man is a man and the woman a woman; as if a life's trial had to be made, and the pretensions of the man and the woman satisfied. I say I thought, and so I did. A considerable number of things. But I was terribly hot for this woman. As, suddenly, with a breathless impulse toward me, she was for me too. Her tongue was in my mouth, my hands were drawing up her clothes. It made no difference what other thought beat on me, it beat from outside. As her things came