The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [32]
of course to help him, but my idea was that he should be master of a little of his own, when he went from place to place. We also bought him a hat in the drygoods store. It was sunless but snow-melting weather at the late start of spring, and the trees and roofs dripped. In that grown man's hat and the coat he didn't wear intelligently--not appearing to feel the need to settle it right on his shoulders--he looked grown up and like a traveler. In fact, beautiful, and the picture of a far traveler, with his pale, mind-crippled, impotent handsomeness. It was enough to make you break down and cry, to see him. But nobody did cry; neither of us, I mean, for by then there were only my mother and I--Simon had given him a kiss on the head when leaving in the morning and said, "Good-by, old socks, I'll; come and see you." As for Grandma Lausch, she stayed in her room.: Mama said, "Go and tell Gramma we're ready to go."; "It's Augie," I said at Grandma's door. "Everything is set." [, "Well? Go, then." This she said in her onetime deci Idtpatient way, but without the brightness or what you might tea ring of real command. The door was locked, and I suppose |nng on the featherbed in her apron, shawl, and pointing slip It the bric-a-brac of her Odessa existence on her vanity table, pp, and on the walls. jk Mama wants you to say good-by." t is there to say good-by? I'll come and visit him later on." idn't have the strength to go and look at the results she had ^hard to get and then still keep on trying to hold power in her |Bd how was i supposed to interpret this refusal if not as feebleta cracking of organization? I showed at last the trembling anger of weak people that it Bch to bring on. She seemed determined that Georgie should teatment of a child from the old woman. But in a few minutes H-ned alone from the bedroom and said with harshness not tfor me, "Pick up the satchel, Augie." I took hold of Georgie's Ingh the wide sleeve and we left by the door of the front room, Vinnie was snoozing under the ferns. Georgie softly chewed 'ses of his mouth as we went. It was a slow trip on the cars; we ithree times, and the last stretch on the West Side took us by Hoson's shop. te about an hour getting to the Home--wired windows, dogclone fence, asphalt yard, great gloom. In the tiny below-stairs itooody-looking matron took the papers and signed him into it. We were allowed to go up to the dormitory with him, where fe stood around under the radiator high on the wall and watched m took off George's coat and the manly hat, and in his shirt of ittons, with whitish head and big white, chill fingers--it was I that they were so man-sized--he kept by me beside the bed igain showed him the simple little stunt of the satchel lock. But |& distract him from the terror of the place and of boys like around--he had never met such before. And now he realized would leave him and he began to do with his soul, that is, to Is moan, worse for us than tears, though many grades below 8 of weeping. Then Mama slumped down and gave in utterly. hen she had the bristles of his special head between her hands H'tissing him that she began to cry. When I started after a |(faaw her away he tried to follow. I cried also. I took him (Be bed and said, "Sit here." So he sat and moaned. We went ^C .57 down to the car stop and stood waiting by the black, humming pole for the trolley to come back from city limits. After that we had a diminished family life, as though it were care of Georgie that had been the main basis of household union and now everything was disturbed. We looked in different directions, and the old woman had outsmarted herself. Well, we were a disappointment to her too. Maybe she had started out by dreaming she might have a prodigy in one of us to manage to fame. Perhaps. The force that directs these things in us higher beings and brings together lovers to bear the genius that will lead the world a step or two of the slow march toward its perfection, or find the note that will reach the ear of the banded multitude and encourage it to take that step, had come across