The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [66]
lying over this particular sparseness and desolation, plus the abasement from dollars to nickels. And he, a crippled and aging man, scaled down from large plans to mere connivances. In his own eyes, the general disaster didn't excuse him sufficiently--it was that momentum he had which often blurred out others--and -it appeared that as soon as he inherited the Commissioner's fortune it darted and wriggled away like a collection of little gold animals that had obeyed only the old man's voice. "Of course," he explained sometimes, "it isn't personally so terrible to me. I was a cripple before and am now. Prosperity didn't make me walk, and if anybody knew what a person is liable to have happen to him, it's William Einhom. You can believe that." Well, yes, I both could and couldn't. I knew this assurance was a growth of weak light, more pale than green, and what a time of creeping days he had had when he lost the big building and the remaining few thousands of Arthur's legacy in the final spurt to save it, inspired by pride instead of business sense. He officially let me go then, saying weakly, "You're a luxury to me, Augie. I'll have to cut you out." Dingbat and Mrs. Einhorn took care of him during that bad period when he kept to his study, hard hit, overcome, in his black thought, many days unshaved--and he a man whd depended for the whole tone of life on regularity in habit--before he left the drab, bookish room and declared he was taking over in the pool hall. An Adams, beaten for the presidency, going back to the capital as a humble congressman. Unless he took Arthur out of the university and sent him to work--provided Arthur would have agreed--he had to do something, for there was nothing to fall back on; he had even turned his insurance policies in to raise cash for the building. And Arthur had no profession; he had been--unlike Kreindl's son Kotzie, the dentist, who now supported his family--given a liberal education in literature, languages, and philosophy. Suddenly what the sons had been up to became exceedingly important. Howard Coblin earned money with his saxophone. And Kreindl didn't any longer scoff to me about his son's unnatural coolness with women. Instead he advsed me to ask him for a job in the pharmacy below his office. Kotzie got me a relief spot behind the counter as apprentice soda jerk. I was thankful, for Simon had graduated from high school and was cut off from Charity. Also, he had lost some of his days at the La Salle Street Station. Borg was putting in his own jobless brothers-in-law and giving others the shove, left and right. As for the savings, the family money Simon had handled as Grand- tna s successor, they were gone. The bank had closed in the first run, snd the pillared building was now a fish store--Einhom had a view of 109 it from his poolroom corner. Still, Simon graduated pretty well--I can't understand how he managed--and was elected class treasurer, in charge of buying rings and school pins. It was his rigorous-looking honesty, I suppose. He had to account to the principal for the money, but that didn't keep him from fixing a deal with the jeweler and making a clear fifty dollars for himself. He was up to much; so was I. We kept it from each other. But I, because I watched him by long habit, knew somewhat what he was up to, whereas he didn't pause to look back over my doings. He signed up at the municipal college, with the idea that everyone had then of preparing for one of the Civil-Service examinations. There was a rush on for Weather Bureau, Geological Survey, and post-office jobs, from the heavy-print announcements in layers of paper on the school and library bulletin boards. Simon had forefront ability. Maybe his reading was related to it, and the governor's clear-eyed gaze he had developed. Of John Sevier. Or of Jackson in the moment when the duelist's bullet glanced off the large button of his cloak and he made ready to fire--a lifted look of unforgiving, cosmological captaincy; that look where honesty had the strength of a prejudice, and foresight appeared as the noble cramp