The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [62]
and Dingbat had razor slits in their vests, symbolizing rent clothes. The ex-Mrs. Tambow was there, in duenna hairdress and arched pince-nez, along with her son Donald, who sang at receptions and weddings; and, also on family duty, Karas Holloway and his wife, she with poodle tuft on the front of her head and her usual concentrated unrest or dislike. She had a lot of flesh, and her face was red, resentful, criticizing. I was aware that she was always after her cousin-in-law to protect herself from the Einhorns. She didn't trust them. She didn't trust her husband'either, who gave her everything, a large super-decorated flat on the South Side, Haviland china, Venetian blinds, Persian rugs, French tapestry. Majestic radio with twelve tubes. That was Karas, in a sharkskin, double-breasted suit and presenting a look of difficulties in shaving and combing terrifically outwitted, the knars of his face gotten-around and his hair flattened. His smoothness was a huge satisfaction to him, as, also, his extraordinary English that hadn't hampered him in making a fortune, plus his insignificance in the old country--people gave way before his supple wrinkles and small eyes and, comparably, the onslaught of his sixcylinder car, a yellow Packard. Long afterward I had a queer ten minutes with Mrs. Karas, in a bakery near Jackson Park where I came in with a Greek girl she assumed to be my wife because we were arm in arm, in summer flannels, intimate early in the morning. She recognized me on the spot, with a coloring of extreme pleasure, but with errors of memory there was no stopping or correcting, they were so singular. She told the girl I had been practically a relative to her, she had loved me as much as Arthur, and received me in her own house like kin--all joy and happy reunion, she was, embracing me by the shoulders to say how fine and handsome I had become, but then my complexion had always been the envy of girls (as if I had been Achilles among the maidens, in the office and poolroom). I must say I was stumped by such major will to do over the past with affection and goodness. People have been adoptive toward me, as if I were really an orphan, but she had never been like that, but only morose with her riches, and mad at her mystifying, dapper husband, and critical of the Einhorns. I had been in her flat only as Einhom's chauffeur and sat in another room while they visited. Tillie Einhorn, not the hostess, brought me sandwiches and coffee from the table. And now Mrs. Karas, who had come out to buy rolls for breakfast, fell into a lucky chance to adorn the past with imaginary flowers grown in worried secret. I didn't deny anything; I said it was all true, and allowed her her enthusiasm. She even chided me for not coming to visit her. But I remembered her off-with-theirheads stony-facedness and the breakfast before the funeral when I helped out in the kitchen. Bavatsky made the coffee. Einhorn, weary but not crushed, had his black homburg on the back of his head as he smoked--no word to spare for me but an occasional one of command. Dingbat insisted with dry, roughened voice that he was going to wheel his brother into Kinsman's parlors. After that it was I who carried Einhom, not Arthur, who walked alongside with his mother. On my back, I took him in and out of the limousine, in the autumn park of the cemetery, low-grown with shrubs and slabs; back again to the cold-cuts dinner for the mourners, and afterward, at nightfall, to the synagogue in his black duds, his feet riding stirrupless and weak by sides and his cheek on my back. Einhorn wasn't religious, but to go to the synagogue was due form and, regardless of what he thought, he knew how to conduct himself. The Coblins belonged to this congregation too, and I had strung along with Cousin Anna in the oriental, modified purdah of the gallery while she wept for Howard amid the coorooing and smelling salts of the women in finery, sobbing at who would be doomed the coming year by fire or water--as the English text translated it. This was different, however, from the times of crowds praying