The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [326]
paints. I can't explain how come we were there. Maybe nothing better was open just then. Simon and I dropped behind for a while and I asked him, "Whatever happened to Renee?" A heavy red color crowded his blond face--he had become very stout. He said, "Why do you have to ask me here, for the love of God!" "We can talk, Simon. They won't overhear anything. Did she have a kid?" "No, no, it was just a bluff. There wasn't any kid." "But you said--" "Never mind what I said. You asked me, and I'm telling you." I didn't know whether or not to believe him, he was in such a rush to get rid of the subject. And how touchy he was! He didn't want to be talked about. But at lunch, when Stella and du Niveau had gone back to the studio, Charlotte opened up. She was sitting upright in her mink and in a velour hat which suited her face because she has a very downy skin which was covered with high color. Evidently Simon's trouble with Renee had been all over the Chicago papers, and she took it for granted that I had read about it. No, I hadn't heard a thing. I was completely surprised. Simon kept his mouth shut during this, and perhaps it tormented him that I might add something which Charlotte didn't happen 53i to know. Not me; I was silent too and didn't ask any questions. Renee had sued him and made a scandal. She claimed she had a child by him. She might have accused three other men, said Charlotte, and Charlotte knew what she was talking about you can be sure; she was a well- informed woman. If the case hadn't been thrown out of court right away she was ready with plenty of evidence. "I'd have given her a case!" she said. "The little whore!" Simon wasn't having anything to do with either of us during this conversation. He sat at the table but, as it were, we didn't have his company. "Every minute she was with him she was collecting evidence," said Charlotte. "They never stopped at a place but what she didn't take a pack of matches and write the date inside. She even had his cigar butts for evidence. And all the time it was supposed to be love. What did she love you for?" said Charlotte with a terrible sudden outburst. "Your fat belly? Your scar on your forehead? Your bald spot? It was the money. It never was anything except money." I wanted to duck as this came down; my shoulders flinched. Down it burned and beat on us. Simon nevertheless didn't seem much disturbed, only thoughtful, and continued drawing at his cigar. At no time did he answer anything. Maybe he thought that as he himself had wanted money he couldn't condemn Renee for wanting it, but he didn't say. "Then she'd phone me and say, 'You can't have children, you should let him go, he wants a family.' 'Go on, take him away if you can,' I said to her. 'You know you can't get him because you're nothing but a little tramp. You and he are both no good.' But she got out a summons for him, and when they tried to serve it I phoned him and told him he'd better get out of town. He wouldn't leave without me. 'What've you got to be afraid of?' I said. 'It isn't your kid. It's three other guys'.' I happened to have the flu then and was supposed to stay in bed, but when he wouldn't leave alone I had to come to the airport to meet him, and it was a rainstorm. Finally we took off, and we had to make an emergency landing in Nebraska. And he said, 'I might as well get knocked off. I've wasted my life anyhow.' And what did I do, if he wasted his life? What was I there for? What was in it for me? As soon as it got bad he came running to me for protection, and I protected him. If he didn't have such an abnormal idea about being happy in the first place it wouldn't have happened. Who told him he had any business to expect all that? What right has anybody? There is no such right," she said. In the back the musicians were smoothing their bows away over their instruments. "Now she's married. She married one of those guys and disappeared with him somewhere..." I wanted Charlotte to stop. It now was too much, flying in the rainstorm and about wasted lives, while he looked more and more indifferent, which