The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [93]
Tower of Babel plotted in common, but hundreds of thousands of separate beginnings, the length and breadth of America. Energetic people who build against pains and uncertainties, as weaker ones merely hope against them. And, even literally, Mrs. Renling was very strong, and as she didn't do any visible work it must have come, the development in her muscles, from her covert labor. Mr. Renling also was willing to adopt me and said he would be happy to be my father. I knew it was more than he would say to anyone else. From his standpoint, for me, reared by poor women, it was a big break to be rescued from the rat race and saved by affection. God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few. When I told Mrs. Renling that Simon was going to get married and that Cissie was the daughter of a busted drygoods man, she began to work it out and do the sociology of it for me. She showed me the small flat and the diapers hanging in the kitchen, the installment troubles about furniture and clothes and my brother an old man at thirty from anxiety and cut-off spirit, the captive of the girl and babies. "While you at thirty, Augie, will just start thinking about getting married. You'll have money and culture and your pick of women. " Even a girl like Thea Fenchel. An educated man with a business is a lord. Renling is very clever and has come far, but with science, | literature, and history he would have been a real prince and not just average prosperous--", She pressed in the right place when she mentioned the Fenchels. | It opened up a temptation. But it was only one temptation and that was not enough. I didn't believe Esther Fenchel ever would have me. j And, moreover, though I was still in love with her, my attitude toward 1 her wasn't what it had been. I more and more believed what her sister had said. And then, when I told myself absolutely the truth, I conceded that I didn't have a chance. Anyway, Mrs. Renling put tender weights on me. She called me "son," and she would introduce me to people as "our youngster," and she petted me on the head and so forth. And I was robust and in possession of my sex; I mean by that that it wasn't stroking a boy of eight on his new glossy hair, and there was something more to be assumed than that I was a child. | ;, That I didn't want to be adopted never spontaneously occurred to ^.:, 152: ' her, and she assumed, as if it were normal but not to be mentioned, something else: that, like everyone, I was self-seeking. So that if I had any objections in reserve, they'd be minor ones, and I'd keep them covered. Or if I had thoughts of helping my brothers or Mama, those thoughts would be bound up and kept in the back. She had never seen Mama and didn't intend to; and when I told her in St. Joe that Simon was coming she didn't ask to meet him. There was a little in it of Moses and the Pharaoh's daughter; only I wasn't a bulrush-hidden infant by any means. I had family enough to suit me and history to be loyal to, not as though I had been gotten off of a stockpile. So I drew back; I turned down the hints, and when they became open offers I declined them. I said to Mr. Renling, "I appreciate your kindness, and you two are swell. I'll be grateful to you as long as I live. But I have folks, and I just have a feeling--" "You fool!" said Mrs. Renling. "What folks? What folks?" "Why, my mother, my brothers." "What have they got to do with it? Baloney! Where's your father-- tell me!" I couldn't say. "You don't know even who he is. Now, Augie, don't be a fool. A real family is somebody, and offers you something. Renling and I will be your parents because we will give you, and all the rest is bunk." "Well, let him think about it," said Renling. I think that Renling was out of sorts that day; he had a cowlick at the back of his hair and the loops of his suspenders showed from his vest. Which indicated that he suffered some, with a despair of his own, nothing to do with me, for as a usual thing he presented himself perfect. "Oh, what's to think!" Mrs. Renling cried. "You see how he thinks! He has to learn how to think