The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [254]
right pal," I said. "That's true, you have had a bad time. You may never see Harbin again, or wherever you're from." "Not Harbin, Paris," he said. "Okay, you poor jerk, Paris. Let it be Paris then." "I had an uncle in Moscow," he said, "who dressed himself like a woman and went to the church. And he scared everybody because he had a beard and looked very fierce. A policeman said to him, 'You look to me, sir, like a man and not a woman.' So he said, 'Do you know, you look to me like a woman and not a man.' And he went away. Everybody was scared of him." "This is very fine, but how does it mean I haven't seen anything yet?" "I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible. Don't you think my uncle must have been desperate to go in that dark church and frighten everybody? He bad to use his powers. He felt he had only a few years more to live." Well, I pretended not to understand because it suited me to make him out as ridiculous, but I knew very well what he was trying to get across. Not that life should end is so terrible in itself, but that it should end with so many disappointments in the essential. This is a fact. Finally I had to stop going around with him. He took to pimping for Negra who was the madame of the foco rojo, and I decided to make a move. I sold my fancy equipment, like the riding boots and the lifesaving Lake Huron jacket, to Louie Fu, and with the pesos I went to Mexico City. I gave up on waiting for Thea to forgive me. It was sad putting up at the Regina without her. The management and the chambermaids remembered her and the bird and saw I had come down in life; no station wagon, no bags, no wild beast, no happy joy and eating mangos in bed, etcetera. The assignation couples made noise at night, when this was no place for me. But it was cheap and so I closed my ears. There was no dough from Stella at Wells Fargo. However, I had Sylvester's number at Coyoacan and could call him when flat broke. First I thought I'd try Manny Padilla's cousin. He was nothing like Manny, but scrawny, red-skinned, glittering his teeth and hungry, a fast man with a buck. He wanted to be my guide to the city, but Thea had already shown me it; he wanted to introduce me to Spanish literature and finally he put the touch on me for some dough. He said he was going to buy me a blanket with it, but he never showed up again. I ached in my body for Thea though I knew she was by now unobtainable and absolutely removed from me by the difficulty of her mind and the peculiarity of my own character. So I knocked around the city thinking things over. I'd watch the mariachis and death-song fiddlercripples or the flower-sellers and the bees feeding off the candystands. Whichever way you turned there was the snow of one of the volcanoes and the whole mountain floating in. If I could help it I wouldn't look in a mirror those days, being haggard and ill. At one time I felt that if Death came up and tapped me on the shoulder, saying, "Ready?" I'd think it over a minute and then say, "Okay." So in a way I died somewhat, and if there was anything I knew by now it was how impossible it is to live without something infinitely mighty and great. However, the city was beautiful--even the unsightliness, misery, and scrawls were rich--it was warm, and this kept me going. My heart would complain and I felt sick, but not continually in the utmost despair. At last I got in touch with Sylvester. He came to see me and lent me some dough. He wasn't saying much at first. I understood that he couldn't talk about political and confidential things. "You look starved and raggedy," he said. "If I didn't know you I'd say you were one of these Pan-American burns. You've got to clean yourself up." I felt as if I were an object Caligula had dropped about a thousand feet to the earth. The air screamed. The colors were about like the colors of Jerusalem. However, getting up stunned, I wanted to be steadfast. Go and be