The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [247]
Iggy knew I was in a crisis and didn't want 11 me to be alone. But if I tried to say anything he turned the edge of it back against me and accepted nothing of what I told him even after he had encouraged me to talk. Of course I told him everything, to the end of my breath, and then I felt as if he had covered my face with his hand and wouldn't let me say any more. So after this stifling had happened a few times I quit talking. I thought he came to be merciful and stayed to be sure I choked. He got some obscure revenge out of me at the same time that he pitied me. Anyway, he sat by the dry handsome wall on which the sun fell in over the ledge where the pigeons landed with their red feet and fanned down dust and straw. Sometimes he would actually lay his cheek to the plaster. I knew I had done wrong. And as I lay and thought of it I felt my eyes roll as if in search of an out. Something happened to my forgetting power, it was impaired. My mistakes and faults came from all sides and gnawed at me. They gnawed away, and I broke out in a sweat, and turned, or felt the vanity of turning. I'd try again and say, "Iggy, what can I do to prove I love her?" "I don't know what. Maybe you couldn't prove it because you don't." "No, Iggy, how can you say that! Can't you see how it is?" "Why did you go away with that broad then?" "That was kind of a revolt or something. How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy." "You don't know the score yet, Boling. I'm sorry for you," he said from his wall, "honest I am. But this has got to happen to you before you get anywheres. You always had it too good. You got to get knocked over and crushed like this. If you don't you'll never understand how much you hurt her. You've got to find out about this and not be so larky." "She's too angry. If she loved me she wouldn't be so angry. She needs some reason to be so angry.". "Well, you gave her it." It was no use trying to argue with Iggy, so I lay silent and argued and pleaded in my mind with Thea instead, but I only kept losing more and more. Why had I done it? I had wounded her badly, I knew it. I could see it as clearly as I could see her saying, white, with a strained throat, "I am disappointed!" "Well, honey, listen," I wanted to tell her, "of course everybody is disappointed sometime or another. Why, you know that. Everybody gets damaged, and everybody does some damage. Especially in love. And I've done you this damage. But I love you, and you should forgive me so we can continue." I ought to have taken my chances with the snakes in the hot mountains, creeping after them with nooses on the brown soil up there, instead of hanging around the dizzy town where things were even more dangerous. It had hit her hard when I revealed what I thought of her hunting. But hadn't she also tried to carry me to the ground and crush me with the attack she made on me, saying how vain I was, how unreliable, how I was always looking at other women and had no conscience? And was it true, as she said, that love would appear strange to me no matter what form it took, even if there were no eagles and snakes? I thought about it and was astonished at how much truth there actually was in this. Why, it was so! And I had always believed that where love was concerned I was on my mother's side, against the Grandma Lausches, the Mrs. Renlings, and the Lucy Magnuses. If I didn't have money or profession or duties, wasn't it so that I could be free, and a sincere follower of love? Me, love's servant? I wasn't at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn't a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and lizards. Now I had started, and this terrible investigation had to go on. If this was how I was, it was certainly not how I appeared but must be my secret. So if I wanted to please, it was in order to mislead or show