The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [65]
eviction proceedings against him and several others, and for this he was picketed by a Communist organization. "As if I didn't know more about communism than they do," he said with bitter humor. "What do they know about it, those ignorant bastards? What does even Sylvester know about revolution?" Sylvester was now a busy member of the Communist party. So Einhom sat at the Commissioner's front desk where the pickets could see him, to await action by the sheriff's office. He had his windows smeared with candle wax, and a paper sack of excrement was flung into the kitchen. Whereupon Dingbat organized a flying squad from the poolroom to guard the building; Dingbat was in a killing rage against Betzhevski and wanted to raid his shop and smash his mirrors. It wasn't much of a shop Betzhevski had moved into at this point of the Depression, a single chair in a basement, where he also kept canaries in a sad Flemish gloom. Clem Tambow still went to him to be shaved, saying that the redheaded barber was the only one who understood his beard. Dingbat was annoyed with him for it. But Betzhevski was evicted, and his wife stood on the sidewalk and cursed Einhorn for a stinking Jew cripple. There was nothing Dingbat could do to her. Anyhow, Einhom had eommanded, "No rough stuff unless I say so." He didn't rule it out, but he was going to control it, and Dingbat was obedient, even though Einhom had lost him every cent of his legacy. "It didn't hit only just -, 107 us," Dingbat said, "it hit everybody. If Hoover and J. P. Morgan didn't know it was coming, how should Willie? But he'll bring us back. I leave it to him." The reason for the evictions was that Einhorn had had an offer from a raincoat manufacturer for the space upstairs. Walls were torn out in several apartments before City Hall came down on him for violating fire and zoning ordinances and trying to get industrial current into a residential block. By that time some of the machinery had already been installed, and the manufacturer--a shoestring operator himself--was after him to foot the bill for removal. There was another suit about this when Einhorn tried to claim, throwing away all principle, that the machinery was bolted to the floor, hence real property belonging to him. He lost this case too, and the manufacturer found it handier to break out windows and lower his equipment by pulley than to disassemble it, and he got a court order to do so. Einhom's huge, chainhung sign was damaged. Only this didn't matter any more because he lost the building, his last large property, and was out of business. The office was shut down and most of the furniture sold. Desks were piled on desks in the dining room and files by his bed, so that it could be approached only from one side. Against better times, he wanted to keep as much furniture as he could. There were swivel chairs in the living room, where the burned furniture (the insurance company was kaput and had never paid his claim), cheaply reupholstered and smelling of fire, was brought back. He still owned the poolroom, and personally took over the management of it; he had a sort of office installed in the front corner, around the cash register, and still, after a fashion, did business. Dropped down into this inferior place, he was slow to get over it. But in time he became chief here too, and had reorganizing ideas for which he began to accumulate money. First, a lunch counter. The pool tables were shifted to make room. Then a Twenty-Six green diceboard. He had remained a notary public and insurance agent, and he got himself accredited by the gas, electric, and telephone companies to take payment of bills. All this slowly, for things had low action these mortified times, and even his ingenuity was numb from the speed and depth of the fall, and much of his thought went into tracing back the steps he should have taken to save at least Arthur's money--and Dingbat's. Besides, there was the environment, narrowed down to a single street and place now that he had lost all other property, the thickened and caked machine-halted silence from everywhere