The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [270]
is a very strange fellow, Augie, he ought to amuse you." "Oh hell, I don't want him to amuse me. I just want a job." "Well, you'll have to try to understand him. He's very peculiar. He partly gets it from his mother. She thought she was the quee0 ^ Rockford, Illinois. She wore a crown. She had a throne. She enpected everyone in town to bow to her." "Does he live in Rockford now?" "No, he has a mansion here on the South Side. When he ^s a student a chauffeur used to drive him to campus. For a long tlme he was mad on Great Books and he used to buy space in the wan1 a(^ and put in quotations from Plato or Locke, Like, "The unexani1"^ life is not worth living.' He has a sister who's wacky too--Car O^i"- She think she's a Spaniard. But you have a gift of getting along wltn these temperaments. You were a jewel with my dad." "I was kind of in love with him." "Maybe you'll love Robey too." "He sounds to me like another crank. I can't always be connsc1^ with ridiculous people. It's wrong." But not long afterward, on a drizzly afternoon, I found riiyself' face to face with this man Robey in his house on the lakefront. And what a face it was--what an appearance! Big, inflamed, reticent e^s, a reddish beard, red sullen lips, and across his nose a blotch; the night before, when he was drunk or sleepy, he had walked into the door of a taxi. His stutter was bad; when it really caught him he niade a great effort, fixed his soul, and twisted his head while his eyes tok on this discipline and almost hatred. At first I was astonished, an^ I was sorry for his sake when his teeth clicked or a snarl escaped- But I soon found out how fluent he could be in spite of it. With those reticent, blood-flickered eyes of his he looked at r^s like someone who had to explain he was born to difficulty and hard l1"^, and he opened his lips before starting to speak, as if to separ^s ^s upper and lower hairs of the beard. He said, "What about 11lunch?" We had a rotten lunch--thin clam chowder, a smoked ham which he sliced himself, boiled potatoes, wax beans, and twice-heated coffee. It made me kind of sore that a millionaire should invite you to lunch and put on such a lousy feed. He did the talking. Background first, he said. As his collaborator I'd have to have some personal knowledge of him. He started to tell me of his five marriages, taking his share of the blame for each divorce. But the marriages formed part of his education; therefore he had to evaluate them. I was disgusted. I took a sip of the coffee and let it flow back into the cup through my teeth, and made a face. But he didn't notice. He was on his third wife, terribly boring. The fourth gave him real insight into his character. I think he still carried the torch for her. As he was vibrating his neck over a troublesome word I interrupted. I was about to say, "What about some fresh coffee at least?" but I didn't have the heart. Instead I asked, "But can you give me an idea as to what my work will be?" He became more tongue-free then. "I need advice," he said. "Help. I need to clear up some of my concepts, m-my thinking, nn-need cl-clarity. This is s-something, this book." "But what's it about?" "It's not j-just a book--it's a guide, a p-p-program. I originated the idea b-but now it's too much for me. I need help." As he spoke of help he sounded frightened. "I discovered much too m-much. It was just an accident that it happened to be me, and now I'm stu-stuck with the responsibility.": We went into the salon to continue the conversation. His walk was belly-heavy, dragging, as if he had to remind himself not to step on his own dong. It kept on drizzling; the lake looked like milk. Indoors, moony lamps glowed on the plush and Far East crimson and mahogany. There were Persian screens and Invalides horsehair helmets, busts of Pericles and Cicero and Athena, and who-else-not. And there was a portrait of his mother. Sure enough, she looked demented and wore a crown, a scepter in one hand and a rose in the other. The fog-cradled ore-boats from Duluth to Gary were moaning. Robey sat under a light, which