The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [322]
confronted by a fiery god, etcetera. When he mentioned Cumberland to me we were in the lobby of the Paramount Theatre waiting for Stella. Oliver's name came up, and du Niveau said, "He's still in jail." "Did you know the guy?" I said. "Yes. And what a comedown for her after Cumberland. I knew him t OO."...!.. "Who?" He didn't realize what he had said. He hardly ever did. I felt as if I had been trapped in a shaft by a sudden fall of dirt. Terrible despair, rage, jealousy, burst out in me. z.' "Who? What Cumberland?" Then he looked at me and realized that for some reason my eyes were burning and I was in pain. I think he was very surprised and tried to remove himself with dignity from this trouble. Actually I had been aware for some time of something peculiar that would sooner or later have to be explained. People were dunning Stella constantly. There was trouble about a car. She didn't own a car. And there was litigation about an apartment uptown. What sort of apartment had she had uptown? And as it would have been inhuman not to mention it, I guess, she had told me about a seventy-five-hundreddollar mink coat she had had to sell, and a diamond necklace. Business envelopes came in the mail which she wouldn't open. There's something about those business envelopes with the transparent oblong address part that my soul runs away from. And then, was I supposed to overlook what Mintouchian had said to me in the Turkish bath? How could I? "Who is this Cumberland?" I said. Just then Stella came down from the ladies' lounge and I took her arm and hurried her out to a cab. We tore back to the apartment and I blew my top. "I should have known there was something dishonest!" I yelled at her. "Who is this Cumberland?" "Augie! Don't carry on," she said, pale. "I should have told you. But what difference. does it make? It proves that I love you and didn't want to lose you by telling you." "He was the one that gave you the coat?" "Yes, darling. But I married you, not him." "And the car?" "It was a present, honey. But, sweetheart, it's you I love." "And all the things in the house?" "The furniture? Why, it's just stuff. It's only you that matters." Gradually she calmed me. "When was the last time you saw him?" "I haven't had a thing to do with him for two years." "I can't stand these fellows being brought up," I said. "I can't take it. There shouldn't be these secret things jumping out." "But after all," she cried, "it was rougher on me. I was the one that actually suffered from him. All you suffer from is hearing about it." Now that the subject was open it became very hard to put an end to. She wanted to talk about it. To prove that I had no reason to be jealous she had to tell me every last thing that had happened, and I couldn't stop her--a gallant, active flashing temperament like that, you see, you can't control her easily. "What a dog!" she said. "What a coward! He didn't have a single human feeling. He mainly wanted me to help him entertain his business friends and show off because he was ashamed of his wife." It didn't absolutely square with her attitude toward the things she had enjoyed, like the summer house in New Jersey, the charge accounts, and the Mercedes-Benz automobile, which was an extremely hardheaded attitude. She was very well informed about the tax situation and the insurance and so on. Of course it's nothing against a woman that she should understand these things. Why shouldn't she understand them? But I was afraid I'd have to give up on an ideal explanation of her past life. Oh well, there didn't have to be one necessarily. "He wouldn't let me be independent. If he found out I had a savings account he made me spend the money. He thought I should be helpless. Once the president of a lumber company whom I knew was going to open a big gambling joint on Long Island and offered me fifteen thousand a year to be hostess. Cumberland was furious about it when he heard." "He found out everything?" "He hired detectives. You have a lot to learn about such people. He'd rent the moon if he had any use for it." "I already have learned