The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [255]
steadfast though! Just like that! It's not a small order. Sylvester realized that I wanted to get myself reconstructed and not go to wrack. He gave me his grin with little dark lines, always amused at me. "My luck has been very bad, Sylvester," I said. "I see. I see. Well, do you want to stick around here until it changes or do you want to go back to Chicago?" "What do you think? I don't know what I should do." "Stick around. There's a sympathizer who'll put you up for a while if Frazer asks him." "I'd be glad. I'd be very grateful, Sylvester. Who is this sympathizer?" "He's a friend of the Old Man from away back. He'd put you up. I don't like to see you go around the way you are." "Gee thanks, Sylvester. Thanks." So then Frazer came around and took me over to be introduced to the sympathizer, whose name was Paslavitch. He was a friendly Yugoslavian who lived in a little villa out in Coyoacan. Beside his mouth were deep folds and inside them grew little shining bristles, as the geode or marvel of the rock world is full of tiny crystals. He was a very original kind of person. His head was onion-shaped and clipped close. In the garden where he was when we met the heat was trembling off the top of his dome. He said, "You are very welcome. I am glad to have company. Maybe you will give me English lessons?" "Sure he will," said Frazer. Frazer's looks had changed too. I never understood better why Mimi had called him "Preacher." With the pucker of thought between his eyes he did look like a minister. And also like an officer of the Confederate Army. He appeared to have grave weights on his mind and to be preoccupied with superior things. He left me with this Paslavitch, then, and for some reason I felt I was put in deposit or reserve, but I was tired and didn't much care what he had in mind. Paslavitch showed me the rooms and the garden. I gazed at the birds, caged and free, the hummingbirds in the flowers and the spiny applauding of the cactuses. Lying in the grass or standing along the path were Mexican gods who gripped and clutched on themselves and cooled their hot teeth and tongues in the blue air. Paslavitch was a kind, worried, meek, stubborn man who covered Mexico for the Yugoslav press. He considered himself a Bolshevik and old revolutionary but he was a lacrimae rerum type if I ever saw one; everything was forever touching him, and he had tears the way a pine has gum to give. He played Chopin on the piano, and when he executed a particular march he'd say to me, "Frederic Chopin wrote this during a storm when he was in Mallorca with George Sand. She was sailing on the Mediterranean. When she arrived he said, 'I thought you were drowned!' Pressing on the pedals in his Mexican shoes, he made you think of Nero acting in a tragedy. Most of all this Paslavitch was in love with French culture and had a keen wish to teach me. In fact he had an obsession about teaching and was always saying, "Teach me about Chicago," "Teach me about General Ulysses S. Grant. I will teach you. I will tell you about Fontenelle's ham omelette. We will exchange." He was very eager. "Fontenelle wanted to eat a ham omelette on a Friday but a terrible storm started, with thunder. So finally he threw the omelette out of the window and said to God, 'Seigneur! Tant de bruit pour une omelette.' " It could be illuminating. He'd sway, with closed eyes and tight pronunciation. Or else he'd tell me, "Louis Thirteenth loved to play barber and would shave his gentlemen whether they wanted it or not. Also he enjoyed to imitate dying agonies, so he would make faces, and furthermore he would spend the wedding night in the same bed with young couples and was the last expression of feudal degeneracy." Maybe he was, but Paslavitch loved him because he was French. He'd keep me after supper and repeat these conversations of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, de la Rochefoucauld and the Duchesse de Longueville, Diderot and a young actress, Chamfort and somebody else. I liked Paslavitch but sometimes it was heavy going, being his guest. I also had to go and play billiards