The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [324]
nuisance to him. He was unfair to her, but he's an older fellow now and the whole thing is over. It's difficult for his family. His son is now head of the firm;.; and he says she won't get anywhere by threatening them. She wouldn't 1 have much coming legally." f "Threatening? What threat? You mean to say she's bothering him? Why, she told me she hasn't had anything to do with him for two years!" "Well, she hasn't told you the truth--strictly speaking." I was overthrown by this; I was very ashamed. How are you supposed to proceed? If you don't defend yourself you can get murdered, and if you do defend yourself you're liable to die of that too. "I'm afraid she's impatient to go to law," said Mintouchian. "She's very restless." I said to Stella, "You've got to quit this. There isn't going to be any lawsuit. You always know where this man is and what he's doing. You haven't told me the truth. It has to stop immediately- I have to ship again in a week and I don't want to be mulling it over for months and months. If you won't promise to stop I can't come back." She gave in. She cried with bitterness that I threatened her, but she promised. She has a warm, easily coloring face, Stella. When she starts to cry the pink of it begins to darken and darkens up into her eyes, which seemed so amorous the first time I saw them in Acatla. Her features rise very slightly from the surface of her face, as if she had a Javanese or Sumatran inheritance. I sat both hurt and comforted as she wept. Crying is further stubbornness with some women, but with Stella it's the truthful moment. She knew she shouldn't talk so much about the old man, she confessed, and try to make him take all the blame. So I sailed in a better frame of mind, and this was when she bought me a book on bee culture. I studied it with devotion and learned a lot about bees and honey, which I knew, however, wouldn't likely be of any practical use. Of course the whole movie enterprise is to show Cumberland that she could make the grade independently. She doesn't have any terrific talent for acting, but that's how it appears to go. People don't do what they have a talent for but what the preoccupation leads to. If they're good at auto-repairing they have to sing Don Giovanni; if they can sing they have to be architects; and if they have a gift for architecture they wish to become school superintendents or abstract painters or anything else. A nything! It's a spite. It's having to prove full and ultimate self-sufficiency or some such monster dream that you don't need anyone else to do these things for you. Well, Stella is in du Niveau's film company, and I am in illicit dealing --to discriminate against myself, more than half the business of Europe being the same. It is indeed cockeyed. But there is nothing I can do about it. It must be clear, however, that I am a person of hope, and now my hopes have settled themselves upon children and a settled life. I haven't been able to convince Stella as yet. Therefore while I knock around on rapides over falling horizons, over Alps, in steam and haste, or blast the air in my black Citroen, smoking cigars and watching the road through polaroid glasses, it's unborn children I pore over far oftener than business deals. I wonder if it's a phase, or what, but sometimes I feel I already am a father. Recently in Rome a whore tried to pick me up on the Via Veneto. The circumstances were peculiar; I am a tall man and the girl who propositioned me was very small, plump, and dressed in second- or third-year mourning. A sad face. "Come with me," -she said. Now let me not be a liar and say I was not in the least drawn. You always are, somewhat. However, it cost no great effort to refuse, and when I said no, she looked deeply wounded, personally, and said, "What's the matter, am I not good enough for you?" I said, "Oh, of course, signorina, but I'm married. I have children, lo ho bambini." So she was overwhelmed entirely and said, "I'm very sorry, I didn't know you had children," and she was about to cry over this error. To have been perfectly fair I should