The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [287]
Charlotte went to Florida the girl came along a day or so later and stayed at as swanky a hotel. He didn't so much worry about the expenses. What poisoned his life by this time was the slavery of constant thought and arrangement-making. He went to defy his wife, and soon he found himself twice-married. Poor Simon! I pitied him. I pitied my brother. All along he had been telling me the affair would never be permanent. So? How short is temporary? Eventually his idea was Renee would marry some rich man. I was once present when they discussed it. "This guy Karham at the club," he said. "He asked me about you after we ran into him. He wants to go out with you." "I won't do it," she said. "You will. Don't be a sap. We have to set you up. He's got a lot of dough. A bachelor. In the paving business." "I don't care what he's got. He's an ugly old man. His mouth is full of bridges. What do you think I am! Leave me alone." She folded her arms, angry, holding her small bicepsit being warm summer she was in a sleeveless dress; she brought her knees together and looked fixedly through the windshield. You have to remember these conversations took place mostly in the car. I told Simon afterward, "It's you she aims to marry." "No, she only wants to stay with me. It suits her this way. She's got it better than a wife." "Some conceit you've got, Simon. You mean to say she can't think up anything better than to ride around with you every day and read movie magazines while you make your calls?" But what he was telling me at Henrici's now was that a few weeks before, Charlotte had come out and said the affair had gone far enough. It had to stop now. Fights broke out. But not because he disagreed with Charlotte. He knew he had to stop and told Renee, and what happened with her was even worse. She screamed, threatened to take him to court, and fainted. Next Simon's lawyer came into the picture. He called a meeting in his office to settle everything. Renee was told Charlotte wouldn't be there, but then Charlotte showed up. Renee cursed her. Charlotte slapped her. Simon slapped Renee too. Then they all cried, for which there seemed to be plenty of reason. "Why did you have to slap her?" "You should have heard what she was saying. You would have done the same," he said. "I got carried away." Finally Renee agreed to go away to California provided she was paid off. And she did go. But now she was back again and said on the phone that she was pregnant. "I don't care," Simon told her. "You're a crook. You took the dough and went to California when you knew you'd be coming right back." After a silence she hung up. This was when he thought she would kill herself. And, sure enough, when he got to the hotel it was just after she had swallowed the pills. She was in her fourth month of pregnancy. "What'll I do?" he said. "What's there to do? Nothing. There'll be a kid now. Who knows but that this is the way you and George and I happened to come into the world." I comforted him the best I knew how.
CHAPTER XXIII
If the great Andromeda galaxy had to depend on you to hold it up, where would it be now but fallen way to hell? Why, March, let the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come (S. T. Coleridge) summon its giants and mobilizers, Caesars and Atlases. But you! you pitiful recruit, where do you come in? Go on, marry a loving wife and settle at March's farm and academy, and don't get in the way when the nations are furiously raging together. My friend, I said, speaking to myself, relax and knock off effort. The time is in the hands of mighty men to whom you are like the single item in the mind of the chief of a great Sears, Roebuck Company, and here come you, wishing to do right and not lead a disappointed life (sic!). However, my conscience had already decided. I was committed and couldn't stay, and at last the hour struck. There was a windy, flattening rain that beat the smoke down, the whole city sodden and black, the pillars of La Salle Street Station weeping. Clem said to me, "Don't push your luck. Don't take a risk with the clap. Don't