The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [29]
this inexorability she was all the time warning t|e sat there with one foot stepping on the other and ate the t'fliat unconscious, mind-crippled seraph's way of his by con- Qtis worldly reasoning. Mama in her hurt, high voice tried to Iwt only spoke confusion. She was anyway incapable of saying At was clear, and when she was excited or in pain you couldn't Md her at all. Then Georgie stopped eating and began to moan. "You! Quiet!" said the old woman. I spoke up on his side and Mama's. I said that George hadn't done wrong yet and that we wanted to keep him with us. She had counted on this from me and was prepared. "Kopfmensch meiner," she said with powerful irony. "Genius! Do you want to wait until he gets in trouble? Are you here to take care of him when you're needed? You're in the streets and alleys with Klein, that hoodlum, learning to steal and every kind of dirt. Maybe you'd enjoy being an uncle to a bastard by your brother from a Polish girl with white hair, and explain to her stockyards father that he would be a fine son-in-law to him? He'd murder you with a sledgehammer, like an ox, and bum down the house." "Well," Simon said, "if Augie really wants to take charge of him--" "Even if Augie were better than he is," she answered quickly, "what would be the good of it? When Augie works once in a while, there's more trouble than money. But if he didn't work at all, imagine how fine it would be! He'd leave the boy at the Kleins' anyhow, and bum with his friend. Oh, I know your brother, my dear boy; he has a big heart if it costs him no trouble, pure gold, and he can promise you anything when his heart is touched. But how reliable he is I don't have to tell you. But even if he were as good as his word, could you afford for him to stop bringing in the little he makes? What? Did you inherit a fortune? Can you have servants, gouvernantkes, tutors, such as Lausch laid down his life to give our sons? I have done as much as I could to give you a little education and an honest upbringing, even tried to make gentlemen of you. But you must know who you are, what you are, and not get unreal ideas. So I tell you that you better do for yourself, first, what the world will do anyway for you without kindness. I've seen a little more than you; I know how mistakes are corrected, and how many ways there are to die just from foolishness alone, not to say other things. I tried to explain something about this to your brother, but his thoughts are about as steady as the way a drunkard pees." Thus she went on with this ominous crying and prophecy. She didn't have to win Simon over; in this one matter of Georgie he was with her. He wasn't openly going to join her because of his feeling for Mama, but when we were alone in the bedroom he let me make all my accusations and arguments, waiting me out with a superior face, taking it easy full-length on the sheets--sewed together of Ceresota sacks--and when he thought I was ready to hear him he said, "Tell it to the Marines, kid. Whyn't you use your brains once in a while before they turn to powder and blow away? The old woman is right and you know it. And i Uunk you're the only one. that cares about George either, but J^ng has got to be done with him. How do you know what he Ipick up and do? He's not just a sprout any more, and we can't Idling him all his life." (on had been rough on me since I had lost the job at the station luring my trials with Wigler and Sailor Bulba and my crookedtt Deever's. Nor did he think much of Clem and Jimmy, and I lade the mistake of telling him how I felt about Hilda and laid feopen to ridicule. "Why," he said, "Friedl Coblin'll be better jig than that when she grows up. She'll probably have tits any|0f course Simon knew I wasn't a real grudge-bearing character B type that comes down as fast as he boils up. And he considered 6 had the right to treat me like this, because he was making ss while I was making a fool of myself, and be intended to carry ittg with him, when it was time, the way Napoleon did his brothuring my worst difficulties with the old lady he'd be stiff