The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [243]
on the hooks the tripes and lights and the carcasses were slung, on which the flies gave out nearly a roar and bounded like the first drops of cloudburst on a red wall. Under a chopping block squatted a naked kid and he slowly made a strange color of defecation. We went slowly around the broad steel gallery, the glass roof rising over the packed tinware, peppers, beef, bananas, pork, orchids, baskets, and this flash, rage, the chitin, electric loud tissue-sound of fond love, the wild loving hum of the bluebottles and green. As if a huge spool were revolving that caught up all threads from the sunlight. The driver came around. She made sure again that I had written down the name of her theatrical agent who always knew where to find her. She kissed me, and her lips made an unknown sensation on the side of my face, so I asked myself what mistake might I be on the verge of making now. Whilst the cab moved slowly in the market crowd, I walked beside it and we pressed hands through the window. She said, "Thank you. You were a real friend." "Good luck, Stella," I said. "Better luck..." "I wouldn't let her be too rough on me if I were you," she told me. I wasn't going to let her be rough, I thought as I went to face and to lie to Thea. I didn't really feel the sharpness of the lying I was prepared to do. I came back to her thinking I was now more faithful than before, so I believed I was going to maintain something more true than not. And I didn't expect to feel as bad as I did feel when I saw her in the garden, by a hedge that had turned out to have a red waxy berry. She wore the punctured hat and was ready to start for Chilpanzingo. I too was ready to go immediately, if she'd let me. I wanted her back in the worst way. But then I decided I'd better not go. My idea now was that'l'd already given in too much to these strange activities; with the eagle, even, I should have called a halt, not seemed so unsurprised by every bizarre thing as if I had seen it before. But I was moving toward the future much too fast. "Well! Here you come," she said harshly. "I didn't know whether to expect you. I thought you'd stay away. I think I'd have liked that better." "All right," I said, "don't be so spoken in full. Just come to the point." She did speak differently, next, and I was sorry I had asked her to. On a sort of cry, and with mouth trembling, she said, "We're washed up--washed up! It's all finished, Augie. We made a mistake. / made a mistake." "Now don't rush like that. Wait, will you? One thing at a time. If what's bothering you is that Stella and I--" "Spent the night together!" "We had to. But because I got on the wrong road, that's why." "Oh, please, stop that, don't say that! It just poisons me to hear you sound like that," she said with uncontrollable wretchedness. Her look was very sick. "Why, it's true," I insisted. "What do you mean? You shouldn't be jeaious like this. The car got stuck in the mountains." "I could hardly get out of bed this morning. And now it's worse, it's worse. Don't tell me this story. I can't stand stories." "Well," I said, looking down at the fresh-washed stones where the sun cooled all over, uneven, the green like velvet, "if you're bound to have such thoughts and be tortured by them, nobody can help that." She said, "In a way I wish it were just my own trouble." Somehow this made me stiffen toward her. "Well, it is your trouble," I said to her. "Suppose it was really what you think. It wouldn't be so hard to tell you after what you've told me about yourself, about the Navy man and so forth, while you were married to Smitty. You're quite a few up on me." We flushed, both of us, in each other's sight. "I didn't think what I said to you would come back to me this way," she said unevenly, and this shiver of voice made me feel a chill, like briny thick ice on the shore in the first freezes, "or that there was a score to keep." She looked very bad, with that more brilliant than friendly glance from her black eyes, her pallor very deep; her nostrils seemed as if they had accepted some of the sickness, smelled