The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [252]
there were pieces missing. Without thinking any more of knives, I ran there and went inside. No clerk was at the desk; there was only an old man who cleaned the sand of the path in the decayed patio. He told me Thea's room number. I had him go up and ask if she would see me. She herself called to me from a gap in the shutter. What did I want? I went up the stairs swiftly, and at the big wooden double doors of her room I said to her, "I have to talk to you." She let me in, and when I entered I looked first for signs of him. There was the usual mess of clothes and equipment. I couldn't tell whether any of it belonged to him. But it wouldn't have made any difference. I was determined to go beyond any such things. "What do you want, Augie?" she said again. I looked at her. Her eyes were not as keen as usual and she looked ill; above, her brilliant black hair was slipping from its combs. She wore a silk coat or robe. Apparently she had just put it on. In heat like this she preferred to go naked in her room. When I wanted to recall how she was, naked, I found I could do it very well. She saw my eyes on her lower belly and her hand descended to hold the edge of the robe there. Seeing that colorful, round-fingered hand descend I bitterly felt how my privilege had ended and passed to another man. I wanted it back. I said with my face naming, "I came to ask if we could be together again." "No, I don't think we can now." "I hear Talavera is here with you. Is he?" "Is it any business of yours?" I took that for an affirmative and felt in great pain. I said, "I suppose it isn't. But why did you have to take up with him right away? As soon as I had someone, you had to have someone. You're no better than I am. You kept him in reserve." "I think the only reason you're here is that you heard about him," she said. "No, I came to ask how about another chance. He doesn't make so much difference to me." "No?" she said with that white warmth of the face she had. She gave a momentary smile of thought. "I could forget about him if you still wanted me." "You'd be bringing him up every other day, whenever we had any trouble." "No, I wouldn't." "I know that now you're dying with worry that he'll come in and you'll have a fight. But he's not here, so you can set your mind at rest." "So he was here!" She didn't answer. Had she sent him away? Maybe she had. At least that mixed hope and anxiety could end. Of course I had been afraid. But also I hoped I might have killed him. I'd have tried to. I already had thought this over. I pictured that he would have stabbed me. She said, "You can't love me, thinking I'm with another man. You must want to murder the both of us. You must want to see him fall off a mountain ten thousand feet, and me in a coffin at my funeral." I was silent, and while she stared at me, what a strange view I had of her in this moldery Hispanic room, the tropical sun in the gaps of the shutter--decay in the town, the spiky, twisted patch of grave iron on the slope, bleeding bougainvillaea bubbles, purple and tubercular on the walls, vines shrieky green, and the big lips and forehead of the mountains begging or singing; then the mess of the room itself, the rags and costly things which she used alike as they happened to come to hand, Kleenexes or silk underthings, dresses, cameras, cosmetics. She did things fast, hoping she did them right. Evidently she didn't believe what I had come to say. She didn't believe because she didn't feel, and didn't feel because of a broken connection. "You don't have to decide now, Thea." "No, well--I suppose not. I may feel differently about you later, but I don't think I will. Right now I have no use for you. Especially when I think how you behave with other people. I wish you all the harm I can think of. I wish you were dead." "And I still love you," I said. And it must have been evident, for I wasn't lying. I stood and was shaking. But she gave no answer. "Don't you want to have it again the way it was?" I said. "I think I could do it right this time." "How do you know you could?" "Most people are probably