The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [260]
girl." "You were, uh? And what else?" I didn't say anything about the bird or my failures and lessons. Maybe I should have. He criticized me anyway in his mind for my randomness and sentiment. So what did I stand to lose by telling him the facts? However, something haughty kept me. That was how brief the first warmth of love turned out to be. So he was judging me--what of it? Let him. Wasn't I busted down, creased, head-damaged, missing teeth, disappointed, and so forth? And couldn't I have said, "Well, all right, Simon, here I am." No, what I told him was that I had gone down to Mexico to work out something important. Then he started to talk about himself. He had built up his business and sold it at a whopping profit. Since he didn't want to have to do with the Magnuses he had gone into other kinds of business and he was very lucky. He said, "I certainly do have the gold touch. After all, I did start in the Depression when everything was supposed to be over and done with." Then he described how he had bought an old hospital building at auction and turned it into a tenement. Inside of six months he had cleared fifty thousand bucks on this, and then had organized a management company and run the place for the new owners. He had a large interest in a Spanish cobalt mine now. They sold the stuff in Turkey, or some place in the Middle East. He also had a potato-chip concession in several railroad stations. In fact, Einhom himself couldn't have dreamed up such deals, much less have made them pay oil. "How much do you think I'm worth now?" "A hundred grand?" He smiled. "Let yourself go a little," he said. "If I'm not a millionaire soon there's a hitch in my arithmetic." It impressed me; who wouldn't be impressed? He couldn't help seeing this. Nevertheless, with his autocratic blue eyes darkening, he looked at me and asked, "Augie, you don't think you're superior to me because you have no money, do you?" The question made me laugh, and maybe I laughed more than I should have. I said, "That's a strange thing to be asking. How can I? And if I can, why should you care?" Then I said, "I guess it's true that people fix it to come out better than those near to them. Why, sure I'd like to have money too." I didn't say that I had to have a fate good enough, and that this came first. My answer satisfied him. "You're wasting a lot of time," he said. "I know it." "You ought to quit stalling. You're not a boy. Even George is something, he's a shoemaker." You know, I did admire Georgie for the way he took his fate. I wished I had one that was more evident, and that I could quit this pilgrimage of mine. I didn't fee! I was better than Simon, not at all. If there had been real ease in me, he might have envied me. As it was, what was there to envy? Bodily overbearing, his fashionable pointed shoe on the rubber pad of the accelerator, he drove over the streets. This proud car, it had heraldry, it was royal, and wasn't my brother like a prince of Detroit, full of force and darkness? Why, what was the matter with that, to be a power of the world of machinery? Wasn't it good enough? And to what should you go rather? I wasn't proud of myself, believe me, and my stubbornness about a "higher," independent fate .1 was no wizard, for sure, nor gazetted as anything illustrious, nor billed to stand up to Apollyon with his horrible scales and bear's feet, nor slated to find the answer to all my shames like Jean-Jacques on the way to Vincennes sinking down with emotion of the conception that evil society is to blame for all that happened to warm, impulsive, loving me. There was no such first-rate thing that I could boast, and who was I, not to make up my mind and be so obstinate? The one thing I could say was that though I wanted this independent fate it wasn't merely for my own sake I wanted it. Oh, but why get too earnest? Seriousness is only for a few, a gift or grace, and though all have it rough only the favorites can speak of it plain and sober. "So when are you going to start what you're going to do?" "I wish I knew. But it seems to be one of those