The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [72]
a higher stage, when he had money and was looking for investments, particularly in real estate. For, he said seriously to Einhorn, on a summer evening, "I know what happens to guys who stay in the rackets. In the end they get blasted. I seen it happen enough." Einhorn told him he knew of a fine vacant lot that they could buy as partners. "If I'm going into it with you myself, you don't have to | worry that it's not on the up and up. I stand to lose if you do," he said with sincere heart to Mutchnik. The asking price for the property was six hundred dollars. He could get it down to five. This was a perfectly j just assurance, because Einhorn himself owned the lot, having acquired | it from a buddy of his father's for seventy-five dollars; and he now " became its half-owner at a further profit. All this was done by means of various tricks, and very coolly. It ended well, with Mutchnik finding a buyer for it, delighted to make a hundred dollars in a piece of legitimate business. But if he had found out he would have shot Einhorn or had him shot. Nothing simpler to do, or more natural in his eyes, in defense of his pride. I was in terror that Mutchnik might have taken a notion to investigate in the Recorder's Office and find out that a rela- j tion of Mrs. Einhorn had nominally owned the lot. But Einhorn said, "What are you bothering your head about, Augie? I've got this man figured out. He's terribly stupid. I keep suggesting angles to him for his protection." Thus, without risking a cent, Einhorn made more than four hundred dollars in this particular deal. He was proud, gleeful with me; this was what he really dug. It was a specimen triumph of the kind--only bigger and bigger--he wanted his whole history to consist of. While he sat still "US. at his Twenty-Six baize board, the leather dice cup there, and the green reflected up to his face, his white skin and underpainted eyes. He kept the valuable'ivory cue balls by him in a box, inside the nickel-candy case, and his attention to what went on in the establishment was keen and close. He ran it his own way entirely. I never knew another poolroom where there was a woman permanently, like Tillie Einhom, behind the lunch counter. She served very good chili con, omelettes, navy bean soup, and learned to operate the bi coffee urn, even the exact moment to throw in salt and raw egg to make the coffee clear. She took to this change in her life energetically, and physically she appeared to become broader and stronger. She flourished, and the male crowd made her tranquil. There was a lot said or shouted that she didn't know the meaning of, which was to the good. She didn't soften things in the poolroom, or put a limit, like a British barmaid or bistro proprietress; here things were too harsh and ornery to be influenced; the clamor and fights and the obscene yelling and banging weren't going to stop, and didn't stop. Only she somehow became part of the place. By limiting herself to the chili, wieners and beans, coffee and pie. The Depression had altered Einhorn too. Retrospectively, he was rather green in the Commissioner's lifetime, and some ways, for his years, unformed. Now he was no longer second-to-last, but the last and end-term of his family; there was nobody expected to die before he did, and, you could say, troubles came directly to his face, and he showed the test of them. No more willowiness; he had to get thicker and harder, and so he did. But toward women he didn't change at all. He saw fewer of them, naturally, than in past days. What women entered a poolroom? Lollie Fewter didn't come back to him. And for him--well, I suppose that souls not in the very best state have to have organizing acts, devices that brace them, must shave or must dress. To Einhorn, the enjoyment of a woman not his wife was such an organizing act. And Lollie must have been important to him, for he kept track of her to the last, for better than ten years, that is, when she was shot by a teamster-lover, the father of several children, whom she got involved in black marketing. He was caught, and there