The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [60]
to her as in the leisurely summer. There were always people in the flat and office. But it was now that he wanted her and kept sending her notes and messages and harping about it. And at such a time! It hurt him too. Nevertheless he kept thinking how, in spite of the time, he could carry it off., and didn't merely brood, but discussed, obstinately, how it could be done. I heard him with Kreindl. And still he was the family leader, the chief, the man of administration and thought, responsible custodian, remarkable son of a remarkable father. Awfully damn remarkable. Even the rising of his brows toward his whitening hair was that. And what if, together with this, he had his inner and personal growths of vice, passion, even prurience, unbecoming obscenity? Was it unbecoming because he was a cripple? And then if you satisfy that difficult question by saying it's not up to us to declare what a man should renounce because he is crippled or otherwise cursed, there's still the fact that Einhorn could be ugly and malicious. You can know a man by his devils and the way he gives hurts. But I believe he has to run a chance of injuring himself too. In this way you can judge, if he does it safely for himself, that he is wrong. Or if he has no spur gear to something not himself. And Einhorn? Jesus, he could be winsome-- the world's charm-boy. And that was distracting. You can grumble at it; you can say it's a ruse or feint of gifted people to sidetrack you from the viper's tangle and ugly knottedness of their desires, but if the art of it is deep enough and carried far enough into great play, it gets above its origin. Providing it's festive, which sometimes it was with Einhorn, when he was not merely after something but was gay. He could be simple-hearted. Nevertheless I was down on him occasionally, and I said to myself he was nothing--nothing. Selfish, ]ealous, autocratic, carp-mouth, and hypocritical. However, in the SBd, I every time had high regard for him. For one thing, there was always the fight he had made on his sickness to consider. No doubt smiting the sledded Polack on the ice was more, or being a Beiisarius, and Grail-seeking was higher, but weighing it all up, the field he was put into and the weapons he was handed, he had made an imposing showing and, through mind, he connected with the spur gear that I, mentioned. He knew what retributions your devils are liable to bring ^ S for the way you treat wife and women or behave while your father is on his deathbed, what you ought to think of your pleasure, of acting like a cockroach; he had the intelligence for the comparison. He had the intelligence to be sublime. But sublimity can't exist only as a special gift of a few, due to an accident of origin, like being born an albino. If it were, what interest could we have in it? No, it has to survive the worst and find itself a dry corner of retreat from the mad, bloody wet, and mud-splashing of spike-brains, marshals, Marlboroughs, goldwatch-consuiting Plugsons, child-ruiners, human barbecuers, as well as from the world-wide livery service of the horsemen of St. John. So why be down on poor Einhorn, afflicted with mummy legs and his cripple-irritated longings? | Anyway, I stood by him, and he said to me, "Oh, that bitch! That lousy freckle-faced common coal-mine whore!" And he sent messages by Kreindl to her, downtown, with lunatic offers. But also he said, "I know I'm no goddam good to have pussy on the brain at a time like this. It'll be my downfall." Lollie answered his notes but didn't come back. She had other ideas for herself. And meantime the Commissioner was passing out of the picture. At first he had lots of friends coming to see him in the onetime sumptuous bedroom, furnished by his third wife, who had left him ten years ago, with an Empire four-poster bed and gilded mirrors, Cupid with his head inside a bow. Spittoons on the floor, cigars on the dresser, check stubs and pinochle decks, it had become an old businessman's room. He seemed to enjoy himself, when old-country and synagogue buddies and former partners were there,