The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [265]
the toy department at Wieboldt's and he was going to learn the details the next day. He left at nine that morning and was back at eleven. They had showed him, but before he started he wanted to clean up an important chapter about Kierkegaardwhat do I know about it? 'So then he went away next day at half-past eight and was back at noon, fired, because the floorwalker told him to pick up a piece of paper and he said, 'Pick it up yourself, you dog. Your back isn't broken.' "Then Arthur came down with the flu and I had to get up and give him the sofa. But," she said, "I love him. It's never dull with him. The worse our life gets, the more good I feel in love. And you?" she said, looking closely at me, how I had been browned by Mexico, aged by hard going and experience, finally thrown on those rocks by Bizcocho and eating cinders and ashes over Thea. Why, the way I came back I must have had something in common with a survivor of Crassus's army in the eastern desert, barely making it back from the massacre in tattered armor scales. Well, people had warned me in the first place. Padilla, for instance, said, "Holy Christ, March, what did you have to go there for, with a broad like that and this bird! A girl who catches snakes, and God knows what else! What do you expect? No wonder you look like this. I hate like hell to be rubbing it in, but it seems to me you had it coming." "Manny, what was I supposed to do? I fell in love with her." "Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of loveor what good is it?" "That's right, but I didn't love her as I ought to have. You see, I missed out. I should have been more pure, and stayed with it. There was something wrong with me." "Old pal, let me tell you something," said Padilla. "You take too much blame on yourself, and the real reason is not such a good one. It's because you're too ambitious. You want too much, and therefore if you miss out you blame yourself too hard. But this is all a dream. The big investigation today is into how bad a guy can be, not how good he can be. You don't keep up with the times. You're going against history. Or at least you should admit how bad things are, which you don't do either. You should cut out this junketing around and go back to the university." "I think I might do that. Only I'm still collecting my thoughts." "Collect them meanwhile, in the evening. Can't you do two things at a time?" And then Clem Tambow told me practically the same thing. He was getting his degree soon, and he looked very mature now with his heavy mustache and the cigar. He dressed like a poor man's press agent and his clothes smelled of cleaning fluid and the masculine odor. "Well, big boy, I see you're the same as when you left," he said. Now Clem and I liked each other very much, a splendid and goodhearted fellow, salt of the earth, ready with sympathy and appreciative of the general human plight. But I went on a toot with a rich woman, as he saw it, and if I was roughed up I had it coming to me. That was what he meant, for I wasn't at all the same as when I left. "How is your campaign after a worth-while fate, Augie?" asked Clem, for he knew a lot about me, you see. Alas, why should he kid me so! I was only trying to do right, and I had broken my dome, lost teeth, got burned in my progress, a mighty slipshod campaigner. Lord, what a runner after good things, servant of love, embarker on schemes, recruit of sublime ideas, and good-time Charlie! Why, it was a crying matter, no fooling, to anyone who might know which side was up, that here was I trying to refuse to lead a disappointed life. A hell of a cause of sympathetic tears but also, as Clem saw, of haw-haws, as great jokes often are. So I looked desolated, and Clem laughed like anything. I couldn't feel sore at him. You know why I struck people funny? I think it was because of the division of labor. Specialization was leaving the likes of me behind. I didn't know spot-welding, I didn't know traffic management, I couldn't remove an appendix, or anything like that. I