The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [59]
an angry quarter--the payoff--which I couldn't refuse, couldn't pocket, could scarcely close my hand on. Things were in a queer way at Einhorns' too, where the Commissioner was dying in the big back room, while up front, in the office, deeds were changing hands with more thousands and greater prosper- rty than ever. A few times a day Einhom had himself wheeled to his father's bedside to ask advice and get information, now everything ^s in his hands, grave and brow-drawn as he began to feel the unruliness of what he had to manage, and all the social chirping of the ffice became the dangerous hints of the desert. Now you could see d* 97 how much he had been protected by the Commissioner. After all, he became a cripple at a young age. Whether before or after marriage I never did find out--Einhorn said after marriage, but I heard it told here and there that the Commissioner had paid off Mrs. Einhorn's cousin Karas (Holloway) and bought his paralytic son a bride. That she loved Einhom wasn't any evidence against this, for it'd be constitutional with her to adore her husband. Anyhow, regardless of what he bragged, he was a son who had lived under his father's protection. That's something that / wouldn't have failed to see. And his worldgypping letters and operations, and all his poetical schemes, even if he had a son at the university himself, were doings of a boy. And, indulged so long, into middle age, how was he going to get over it? He thought, by being fierce and serious. He stopped his old projects; "The Shut-in" wasn't published any more and the on-approval packages no longer opened--I toted them down to the storeroom with the pamphlets and the rest of the daily prizes of the mail; and he got himself consumed by business and closed and opened the deals on the Commissioner's calendar, began or dissolved partnerships in lots or groceries in the suburbs, and, on his own--the kind of thing he loved-- cheaply bought up second mortgages from people who needed ready money. He insisted on kickbacks from plumbing, heating, or painting contractors with whom the Commissioner had always been cronies, and so made enemies. That didn't bother him, to whom the first thing was that the faineants shouldn't be coming after Charlemagne--as long as people understood that. And furthermore, the more difficulty and tortuousness there were, the more he felt safe. So there were quarrels about broken agreements; he'd never pay bills till the last day of grace; and most people who put up with this did it for the Commissioner's sake. He grabbed command very toughly. "I can argue all day the runner didn't touch base," he said, "even if I know damn well he did. The idea shouldn't get started that you can be made to back down." This was the way the lessons and theories of power were taught to me in the intervals of quiet that became fewer and fewer; and these lessons were self-addressed mostly, explanations of what he was doing, that it was right.. At this time all his needs were very keen, and he wanted things in the house he hadn't cared much about before--a special kind of coffee that only one place in town carried, and he ordered several bottles of bootleg rum from Kreindl, which was one of Kreindl's sidelines; he brought them in a straw satchel from the South Side, where he was in second- or third-hand touch with all kinds of demon, dangerous elements. But Kreindl had an instinct to get people what they had a craving for--of a steward or batman or fag or a Leporello or pimp. He hadn't quit on Five Properties. And now that the Commissioner was dying, and Dingbat, who would inherit a lot of money, was still unmarried, Kreindl hung out at Einhom's, keeping the Commissioner company in the bedroom, talking to Dingbat, and having long conversations privately with Einhorn, who made use of him in various ways. One of their subjects was Lollie Fewter, who had quit in September and was working downtown. Einhorn suffered over her no longer being in the house, impossible as it would have been during his father's sickness and his increased work to put the blocks