The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [325]
have explained this to her, that it was hokum and that I just had an impulse. But let me say that I am aware where this deception of bambini came from. It came from that picture of Stella's that I mentioned to Frazer, Les Orphelines. I had to see it several times, in the course of events, and one part of it made a deep impression on me once in the cutting room, this boarded, insulated, burlap-deadened room where it stunk of Gauloise cigarettes and highgrade perfume. The scene was one in which Stella pleaded with an Italian doctor for a woman and her baby. They had coached her on the Italian lines and so she cried out, "Ma Maria, ed il bambino. II bambino!" And the doctor, who couldn't offer help, shrugged and said, "Che posso fare! Che posso fare!" I saw this run over and over and was full of sorrow, almost provoked to an outburst of tears and ripe to exclaim to Stella, "Here, here, if you want something to ery out about! Right here! What do you need theoretical people for and these ghosts of emotions never of this world anyway?" The grief was about to drop down from my eyes. It's supposed to be easier to suffer for hypothetical people too, for Hecubas. It ought to be easier than for the ones you yourself hurt, for you can see their enemies or persecutors better than you can see yourself balking someone of life or doing him wrong. Be that as it may, this was why I imagined I already had the bambini. Simon and Charlotte came to Paris and put up at the Crillon. I wished that they had brought Mama too, although it would have been probably lost on her. Something big would have to be done for her one of these days, I thought; I'd have to decide what was appropriate, and I could now swing it by myself, having the money. It satisfied Simon that I was now in business. Charlotte thought better of me also, though she wanted to know more particulars. Some chance she had of getting them out of me! I took them around to the Tour d'Argent and the Lapin Agile and Casino de Paris, The Rose Rouge and other gaiety haunts, and picked up the tab. This made Simon say proudly to Charlotte, "Well, what do you think now? My kid brother has turned out to be a regular man of the world." Stella and I smiled across the Rose Rouge table. Charlotte, this solid and suspecting woman in her early thirties, handsome, immovable in her opinions, was full of grudges. Whatever she had against Simon she formerly would take out on me. Now that I looked a little more substantial than I used to and seemed to have a few right ideas anyhow, she could'complain about him to me. I was eager to know the score. The first week or so there was not much I could find out, because we were on the town. Du Niveau helped a lot; he made a big hit with them because of being a genuine aristocrat and the deference of flunkies to him in restaurants and night clubs and haute-couture joints. Stella helped too. "What a dish!" said Simon. "She's good for you also; she'll keep you on your toes." He meant that to provide for a beautiful woman is stabilizing; it makes a man earn money. "The only thing," said Simon, "is why you keep her in such a pigpen." "It's hard to find apartments in this section of Paris near the Champs Elysees. Besides we're not at home much, either of us. But I aim to get a villa out at St. Cloud if we have to settle here." "If you have to? You sound as if you didn't want to." "Oh--it's all the same to me where I live.". Of all places, we were in the Petit Palais at a picture exhibition from the Pinacothek of Munich. These grand masterpieces were sitting on the walls. Du Niveau was along, massive, in his red suede coat and highly polished pointy shoes. Simon and he admired each other's clothes. Stella and Charlotte were wearing mink stoles, Simon a doublebreasted plaid and crocodile shoes, and I a camel's-hair coat, so that we looked appropriately gorgeous to pass in one of those Italian portrait crowds of gold and jewels. Du Niveau said, "I love pictures, but I can't stand religious subjects." Nobody was thinking much about painting, unless it was Stella who sometimes