The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [323]
all I want to learn." "Oh, Augie! Please, honey, remember that you made mistakes too. You went to smuggle immigrants from Canada. You stole. A lot of people led you astray also." Okay, but why couldn't she be satisfied that I loved her and stop this talk? What did she mean, about the lumberman? Had she really intended to become a hostess? I would meditate over all this and sit there feeling terrible. The very arms of the chair seemed about to stab me through the sides, and the playful flowery Bavarian bed and the knickknacks and stuffed orioles, and all were a drag on me. Was I going to be wrong again? It was the thought I had in the boat when I was adrift with Basteshaw that I had been wrong again and again. Nevertheless I believed we would make it, finally. I don't want to give a false impression of one hundred per cent desperation. It is not like that. I don't know who this saint was who woke up, lifted his face, opened his mouth, and reported on his secret dream that blessedness covers the whole Creation but covers it thicker in some places than' in others. Whoever he was, it's my great weakness to respond to such dreams. This is the amor fati, that's what it is, or mysterious adoration of what occurs. There is a certain amount of simple-mindedness in Stella as well as deception, a sort of naive seriousness. She cries very sincerely and with utmost warmth. But it's not a simple matter to get her to change her mind on any matter. I've tried, for instance, to get her to wear her nails shorter; she grows them very long, and when they tear they tear into the quick and she starts to cry. Then I say, "Good heavens, why do you let them grow like that!" and take the scissors and trim them, which she submits to. However, she only lets them grow long again. Or, in the case of the cat. Ginger, who's very spoiled and wakes you up at night by turning over lamps and dishes so that you'll feed him, I only made myself look foolish arguing that he ought to be shut in the kitchen at night. I couldn't get anywhere. She'd repeat continually how she had wanted to be independent. "Naturally. Who doesn't want that?" "No, I mean I wanted to do something that was my own idea. It wasn't just a matter of money." He oppressed her, that was what, practically with wrung hands, she had to put across to me. "Every time he promised to let me do something he'd go back on his word. So finally I made a break and went to California. I knew someone there who once offered me a screen test. I took a wonderful test and got a part in a musical. But when the picture was released all my lines were cut out. I looked like such a fool, just smiling and getting ready to say something, and I never said it. After the preview I was sick. He used his influence to make the producer do it. I sent him a wire and told him I was through for good. Next day I had an attack of appendicitis and went to the hospital, and in about twenty-four hours he showed up by my bedside. I said to him, 'What excuse did you give your wife for this trip!' I was done with him forever." I always wince when I hear husbands and wives talking to each other about past marriages and affairs. I'm unusually sensitive in this respect. Of course I knew this was Stella's hard work. She wasn't done suffering from it, not by a long shot. She had to harrow his memory over and over, and in so doing she dug me up considerably too. "All right, Stella, now, please," I said at last. "All right what?" she said, angry. "Am I supposed not to talk about it at all, ever?" "But you talk about it all the time, and you talk about him more than anyone else." "Because I hate him. I'm still in debt because of all these obligations that were his fault." _ "We'll get rid of them." | "How?" "I don't know yet. I'll take it up with Mintouchian." She didn't want me to do that. She was seriously opposed, but I went to see him all the same. He already knew all about Cumberland, which isn't in the least sur- 1 prising. We talked it over in his office on Fifth Avenue. "Since you * bring it up," he said, "excuse me, but she's been a