The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [253]
in the same condition I'm in. But there must be a way to learn to do better." "Must there?" she said. "I guess you would think so." "Of course. How would the hope be there at all otherwise? How would I know what to want? How did you know?" "What do you want to prove by me and what I know?" She said in a low voice, "I've been wrong a good many times--more than I want to discuss with you." She changed the subject. "Jacinto sent me a message about the snakes," she said. "If you had been around I'd have hit you with something." < But I sensed that this was one offense of mine that didn't displease her. I had an impression of a smile of halfway appreciation of it. But I couldn't take much hope from that, because smiling and abstraction, obstinacy, intention to hurt, alternated fast in her cloudy white nervousness, and I saw she was unable to gather together her feelings toward 0 409 CHAPTER XX Back in Acatia I lay around. I hoped all the same to hear from Thea, and though it was useless I kept calling at the post office. Notified of nothing, I generally went, then, and drank tequila with beer chasers. I no longer played poker at Louie's and saw none of that gang. Jepson was picked up for vagrancy and sent back to the States, thus Iggy's wife wanted him back. The little kid knew what it was all about, and when I saw them out walking sensed how sharp she was already, at her age, and pitied her. So on some of the golden afternoons by the dive where I sat on a bench in neglected pants and dirty shirt and with three days of bristles, I had the inclination to start out and say, "0 you creatures still above the ground, what are you up to! Even happiness and beauty is like a movie." Many times I felt tears. Or again I'd be angry and want to holler. But while no other creature is reprimanded for its noise, for yelling, roaring, screaming, cawing, or braying, there is supposed to be more delicate relief for the human species. However, I'd go up one of the mountain roads where only an occasional Indian heard and wouldn't say what he thought of it, and there I'd speak my feelings aloud or I'd yell, and it made me feel better temporarily. There was one companion I had for a few days, a Russian who had been dropped by the Cossack chorus after a fight. He still wore his serge tunic with white piping and all the spaces for bullets. He was very proud and nervous, he bit his nails. His scalp was bare and gave like a soft light on the handsome solemnity of his face, clean shaven at all times. His nose was straight, his mouth was held in with tender rancor, and he had black, continuous, illustrious brows. Damn, if he didn't look like a picture of the poet D'Annunzio that I once saw. He drank and he was broke, and pretty soon he'd be picked up too, like Jepson. I had very little money left but I bought a bottle of tequila now and then, so he was attached to me. Well, I felt about my relations with him somewhat as I did about Iggy's little girl, pitying her for what she had to understand. At first I was sorry he was my companion. But then I liked him better. And as I wanted to tell someone about Thea, I confessed all to him. I told the whole story. I thought he'd sympathize with me. Those many deep hash marks of enlistment with grief that he had on his forehead were what made me think so. "So you see how rough it's been," I said. "I'm not having it easy. I suffer a great deal. Part of the time I'm half dead." "Wait," he told me, "you haven't seen anything yet." This made me furious with him. All in a rush I said to him, "Why, you lousy egotist!" I wanted to knock him down; I was drunk enough then to do it. "What do you mean, you runt! You cheesecloth Cossack you! After I've told you how I feel" But he wanted to carry the emphasis over to how he felt. He with his naked head and reddened nose and rancor of the mouth. 'But he wasn't such a bad wretch at that. It was actually only natural. Why, he too had a life. He sat there hopeless. He smelled like a bygone brand of footpowder there had once been in the house. But all the same he was simpatico. "All