The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [18]
CHAPTER XVIII
So I agreed to go down to Chilpanzingo with Thea; there was an interval, extremely short, when we both showed gratitude. I appreciated it that she let up her severity, and she was happy that she was still my preference. So on the night of Oliver's house-warming party she said, "Let's go and see what it's like," and I understood that she wanted to do something for me, because I wanted to go. Did I! I was wild to go, having been in the house for two days straight in support of my good intentions. I looked carefully at her and saw how she sustained her smile to back up her suggestion, but I thought. Hell, let's! I knew by this time what Thea thought of these people and in fact of most people, with their faulty humanity. She couldn't stand them. And what her eccentricity amounted to was that she proposed a different kind of humanity altogether. I guess nothing restrains people from demanding ideal conditions. Very little restrains them from anything. Thea's standard was high, but she wasn't exactly to blame as having arbitrarily set it high. For when she talked to me about some particular person she'd be more frightened than scornful. People with whom she had to struggle scared her, and what I'd call average hypocrisy, just the incidental little whiffs of the social machine, was terribly hard on her. As for greediness or envy, fat self-smelling of appreciation, hates and destructions, fraud, gnawing, she had a very poor tolerance of them, and I'd see her go out in the eyes in a really dangerous way at a gathering. So of course I knew she didn't want to go; but I did, badly, and my thought was, If I can stand her snakes, she can take this for one evening. I changed into good clothes, therefore. I took off my turban and wore only a patch of bandage over the shaved place. Thea put on an evening dress with black silk rebow. But there was nobody to take note how we arrived. I've never seen such a goons' rodeo as that party. When we got to the villa we found ourselves in the overflow of a mob that covered the street. I saw the most amazing male and female burns, master-molds of some of the leading turpitudes, fags, apes, goofs, and terminal and fringe types, lapping, lushing, gabbing, and celebrating notoriety. Because it was no secret that Oliver was wanted by the government and that this was a big last fling. Probably Thea was the only person in tovv'n who didn't know what was happening. Some of the guests were lying in the garden with bottles, about to pass out or already looped in full; the Japanese flowers were trod down and tequila empties floated in the fish pond. Things had been taken out of the hands of the servants, and people poured for themselves, broke off chunks of ice with candlesticks, grabbed glasses from one another. In the patio the hired orchestra fiddled weakly and the soberer company danced. Thea wanted to leave immediately, but as she began to say so I saw Stella by an orange tree. She made me a small sign, and I had to go and talk to her; I was very eager. Annoyed that Thea tried to pull me away as soon as we had arrived, I didn't look at her. And when Moulton in a dinner jacket but still in short pants asked her for a dance I handed her over. I thought her dislike for him was exaggerated and it wouldn't do her any harm at all to go around the floor with him once or twice. Since Oliver's trial when Stella said she had to talk to me I had been all worked up, I realized now. I didn't know what had got into me that I was so excited. But I was sure this was something I was bound to figure in; the play would go to me. So I got away from Thea on the dancing patio, aware how she appealed to me not to leave her, and how angry, also, she was. But it wouldn't really hurt her and I'd find out about this other thing. I could see another case much more clearly than my own, and because of that vagueness and incapacity that I felt about going to Chilpanzingo, or throwing myself more blind and deeper down into Chilpanzingo, I perhaps needed an opportunity to be definite and active and to believe that definiteness and action still existed. But in fact I also felt assailed by weakness when I saw Stella beckon. Not that I intended anything toward her. I thought merely I'd feel swayed, but nothing would happen. I'd be confidential with a beautiful woman. This was terribly pleasing to me, inasmuch as it followed, with self-appreciation, that such a woman would naturally turn for help to a man in her own class. I forgot that I had fallen from the horse on my face, and looked it. That's the kind of thing you're apt to forget. But it did occur to me that the last time I had been called aside like this for a discussion apart was with Sophie Geratis, when 3SO we had fallen into each other's arms. And what did I think of that? But some involutional, busy, dippy horsefly in me made such a mad fuss of love over this treasure of crystal-sugar esteem I didn't think much of that at all. Of course at the same time I was very serious; I knew she was in trouble. But that she chose me to consult with and to ask for helpfor what else could she do but ask help? was like a kindness she did me and I was under obligation to her before she spoke even a word. She said, "Mr. March, I count on you to help me." Immediately I was overwhelmed. I said, "Oh, sure, certainly. I'll do all I can." Down me went a shiver of willingness. My thought was fuzzy, yet my blood excited. "What can I do though?" "I'd better tell you what the situation is. Just let's get out of this crowd first." "Yes," I agreed, looking around. She assumed that I was watching out for Oliver and said, "He's not here. I don't expect him for half an hour yet." It was Thea, however, of whom the thought burdened me, just as much. But when Stella took my hand and led me deeper into the trees I felt her touch leap through my arm and further, and as I went along with her my sense of consequences was never weaker, not even when I committed robbery. I was full of curiosity to hear the truth about Oliver, yet I knew he was as light a being as I had ever weighed in my judgment. "You must know about the government man who's here to get Oliver," she said. "Everybody knows. But do you know why he's here?" "No, why?" "Wilmot's Weekly was bought by money that came from the Italian government. There was a fellow in New York who did it. His name is Malfitano. He bought the magazine and made Oliver editor. All the important things that were printed were planned in Rome. Now this Malfitano was arrested a couple of months ago; that's why we didn't go back. I don't know what he was arrested for. Now they've sent this government man for Oliver." "Why?" "I don't know why. I know about the entertainment world. Ask me why something is in Variety and I can maybe explain it." "They probably want him to give evidence against this Italian. I believe the smartest thing would be for him to go back. Oliver is just one of those old-time journalists who don't see any difference between one government and the next." She misunderstood me. "He's not so terribly old."; "He should make a deal and go back to testify." "That's not what he aims to do," she said. "No? Don't tell me he's going to try to run away? Where to?" "I can't tell. It wouldn't be fair." "To South America? He's wacky if he thinks he can. And that will make the thing serious, if they have to chase him. Why, he's small fry." "No, he thinks it was a very serious thing." "And what do you think?" "I think I've had about enough," she said. She looked with her wide swimming eye-surfaces in which the lanterns from the garden were changed entirely into the lights of her meaning. "He wants me to come with him." "No! Down to Guatemala, Venezuela. Where--?" "That's one thing I don't want to say, even though I trust you." "But on what? Does he have money socked away? No, he wouldn't have. You'd be on the beach with him somewhere. He probably hopes you love him that much. Do you?" "Oh--not that much, no," she said as if it was something she hoped to find the degree of. I suppose she had to say she loved him somewhat, to give herself character. Why, that po6r, bony, dopey skull and romantic jumping-jack of an Oliver! I saw his imaginary luck of money and car and love collapsing, and was bitter for him in a kind of fleeting way. I caught a glimpse of her ingratitude too, but I couldn't for long see anything to her discredit. Before her, hid in the trees from the crackling party, I felt something happen to me that drew upon my character in the most vital part, where I couldn't prevent. "The party is supposed to be just a cover-up," she said. "He went out to take the car down the road and hide it, and then he's coming back for me. He says the cops are ready to arrest us." "Oh, he is loony," I said with fresh conviction. "How far does he expect to get in that red convertible?" "In the morning he's going to ditch it. He's really serious. He's carrying a gun. And he has gone a little crazy. He was pointing it at me this afternoon. He says I want to two-time him." "That poor fool! He thinks he's a big-league fugitive. You'll have to get away from him. How did you ever get into a fix like this?" I knew this was a foolish question to put to her. She couldn't tell me. About some paths of life either you guess or you never know, because you can't be told. Yes, it was very foolish; but then I was aware of many wrong things said and done which I nevertheless couldn't stop. "Well, I've known him for quite a while. He was likable, and he had lots of money." "Oh, all right, you don't have to tell me." She said, "Didn't you come to Mexico in something like the way I did?" So that was what she thought we had in common. "I came because I was in love." "Well, she is so lovely that of course that's a difference. But all the same," she said with a sudden shrewdness and frankness--and I might have known it was there--"it's her house, isn't it, and all the things are hers? What have you got of your own?" "What have I got?" "You don't have anything, do you?" Of course I wasn't going to be such a hypocrite as to argue with her and put on a face, as though I had never in all the world given a momentary thought, not even a one, to the matter of money. For what was that stuff in my pockets, that assorted dough, my winnings, the rainbow foreign currencies I had raked in at the Chinaman's? Even czarist rubles had been thrown in the pot, for which I blamed those Cossack singers. Don't worry, I had been mindful of money, all right, so I knew what she was talking about. "I do have something," I said. "I can lend you enough to get away on. Don't you have any money at all?" At this moment of our conversation we were very close together in understanding. "I have a bank account in New York. But what good does that do me now? I can give you a check for the pesos you lend me. There's no money I can lay my hands on right away. I'd have to go to Mexico City and wire from Wells Fargo to the bank." "No, I don't want a check." "It won't bounce--you don't have to worry about that!" "No, no. I'll just take your word for it. I meant that you don't have to give me any check at all." "What I thought of asking was whether you'd take me to Mexico City," she said. This I had been expecting, though I don't think I ever intended to do anything about it. Now, when it came, it did something to me. I shivered, as if my fate had brushed me. Admitted that I always tried to elicit what I hoped for; how did people, however, seldom fail to supply it so mysteriously? "Why--why, where does that suddenly fit?" I said, treating it not merely as a plan for her safety but as a proposal involving me. The holleration and screeches of the party were loud and the narrow grove of oranges where we were seemed like the last strip of field the harvesters are cutting. Any minute I awaited some drunk interrupter or a blazing couple crashing in. I knew I had to get out and start looking for Thea. But first this had to be attended to. "You don't have to put it to me that way," I said. "I'll help you anyway." "You're getting ahead of yourself. I don't blame you, but you are. Maybe I'd even feel bad if you didn't, but... I can't be as vain as to think I deserve the very best way of escaping from my trouble. You don't even know me. And all I should think about now is getting away from this poor guy who's lost his mind." "I'm very sorry. I apologize. I talked out of turn." "Oh, you don't have to apologize. We know what the score is here, pretty much. I admit I was often looking, and I have thought of you. But one of the things I thought is that you and I are the kind of people other people are always trying to fit into their schemes. So suppose we didn't play along, then what? But we don't have the time to go into it now." To these words that she spoke I responded tremendously, I melted toward her. I was grateful for her plain way of naming a truth that had been hanging around me anonymously for many long years. I did fit into people's schemes. It was an emotion of truth that I had, hearing this. Mainly of truth. For I will admit that among other things I considered that here was a woman who wouldn't put me on trial for my shortcomings or judge me. Because I was tired of being socked on the head and banged by judgments. But that was all. However, we had no time to go into this further. Oliver would be coming back right away. He had packed her things and taken them away, all but a few articles she had hidden from him. "Listen," said I, "I can't take you to Mexico, but what I can do is take you a good way out of town, where you'll be safe. Meet me by the station wagon in the zocalo. Which way was he going? You can trust me. I don't especially want to see him get caught. I have no reason to." "He was going toward Acapulco." "Okay, that's fine. We'll go the other way." So he wanted to catch a ship at Acapulco, did he, the poor jerk! Or was he plotting to escape through the jungle into Guatemala, as brainsoftened as that? Why, if the Indians didn't murder him for his black and white sport shoes he'd die of exhaustion. I hurried to find Thea. She had gone, Iggy told me, leaving Moulton in the middle of the floor. "She was quite in a mood," said Iggy. "We looked for you. Then she said for me to tell you she was pulling out for Chilpanzingo first thing in the morning. She was all nervous and shaking, Bolingbroke. Where did you disappear?" "I'll tell you some other time." I ran down to the zocalo and opened the station wagon. Soon Stella arrived and slipped in. I threw off the brake and twisted the ignition key. From disuse the battery was low; and the starter chattered but the motor failed to turn. Not to run the battery any lower I nervously took to the crank. As I began to turn it I right away had a crowd to watch me, that unfailing bunch of a Mexican square that comes to maintain its secret view of life. Sweating with the crank, I was in a furious rage, and I said to a few of them, "Beat it! Scat, goddam you!" But this fetched only jeers and scorn, and I heard my old title, el gringo del dguila. My heart was full of murder toward them, as toward the motorman that day on the State Street line when the slugger was in pursuit of me. But I put my breast against the radiator and heaved. Stella hadn't had the sense to duck down--I suppose she had to see what was happening and be ready for flight. Now she had been recognized by the bystanders, and it was too late. "Augie, what are you doing?" I had prayed that Thea had gone straight back to Casa Descuitada to pack for Chilpanzingo, but she was here, and the crowd around me at the station wagon had brought her over. She stared at Stella through the windshield. "Where are you going with her? Isn't she the hostess? Why did you dump me at that horrible party?". "Oh, I didn't dump you." "With that terrible Moulton. No? Well, I couldn't find you." I couldn't pretend that it was an extremely serious thing to have left her alone at that party. "It was just for a few minutes," I said. "And now where are you going?" "Listen, Thea, this girl is in a lot of trouble." "Is she?" "I'm telling you she is." Stella didn't come out, or change her position behind the spotted dust of the glass. "And are you getting her out of trouble?" said Thea, angry, ironic, and sad. x* 385 THH ADVENTURES "You can think what you want about me," I said, "but it's because you don't understand how urgent it is, and that she's in danger." I was full of the frantic hurry of escape, and in true fact I already felt caught. As for Thea, enfolded in the rebow, she stared at me--hard, begging, firm and infirm, all together. There was something about Thea of a nervousness, and she was a kind of universalist, believing that where she stood the principal laws were underfoot. And this made her tremble, but also she was daring. So at a time like this I didn't know what to expect from her. One thing more: she was, like Mimi, a theoretician about love. She was different from Mimi in that Mimi really intended to do everything for herself if others failed her. And maybe Mimi didn't even need others except as witnesses or accessories. Thea knew better than that. I had heard from various men, and especially from Einhom, about women's fanaticism in love, how for them all life was knotted around this one thing whereas men found several other vital places of attachment and therefore were more like to avoid monomania. You could always get part of the truth from Einhorn. "It's a fad," I said. "Oliver went crazy and tried to kill her today." "What are you trying to give me! Whom could that poor idiot hurt? Besides, why do you have to be the one to protect her? How do you get into this?" "Because," I said, impatient over logic, "she asked me to take her out of town. She's trying to get to Mexico City, and she can't get on the bus here. The police might try to pick her up too." "Even so, where do you come in?" "But don't you see? She asked me!" "Did she just? Or did she ask because you wanted her to?" "Now how would I do that?" I said. "As if you didn't know what I was talking about! I've seen you with women. I know what you look like when a handsome woman or even not such a handsome woman passes by." I said, "Well--" about to assert how normal that was. Then I wanted to say instead, "What about the men out East, that Navy officer and the others?" But I held this back even though it crawled into my throat with a bitter taste. Minutes counted now; I remembered, however, seeing the Mexican faces that listened to this wrangle as if it were the New Testament. "Why do you have to do this?" I said. "Can't you take my word for it she's in danger? Let me do something for a change. We can take up these other things later, in private." "Do you have to rush like this because of Oliver? Can't you protect her from him here?" "I told you he was dangerous. Look!" I was out of my mind, nearly, with impatience. "He's going to try to get away and he wants to drag her v.'ith him." "Oh, she's going to ditch him and you're helping her." "No!" I almost yelled, then dropped my voice low. "Don't you understand any part of what I'm trying to tell you? Why are you being so stubborn?" "For God's sake, go then, if you have to go. What are you arguing with me for! Are you waiting for my permission? Because you won't get it. You're telling me something ridiculous. She doesn't have to go with him if she doesn't want to." "Right, she doesn't, and I'm helping her to get away." "You? You'll be glad if Oliver doesn't have her." I threw myself on the crank, ramming it in the shaft. "Augie, don't go! Listen, we're supposed to go to Chilpanzingo in the morning. Why don't we, take her up to the house? He won't dare bother us up there." "No, this is something I've decided to do. I promised." "Why, you're ashamed to change your mind and do the right thing!" "Maybe so," I said. "You may understand this better, but that won't stop me."; "Don't go! Don't!" "Well," I said, turning to her, "suppose you come along. I'll drive her up to Cuemavaca and we'll be back in a few hours." "No, I won't come along." "Then I'll see you later." "By a little flattery anyone can get what he wants from you, Augie. I've told you that before. Where does that put me? I came after you. I flattered you. But I can't outflatter everyone in the world." She stabbed me hard with this, and suffered as she did so. I knew I'd bleed a long time from it. I grabbed and gave an inhuman twist to the crank. The kick of the motor tore at my arms, and I jumped to the wheel. In the headlights I saw Thea's dress; she v/as standing still and probably she was waiting to see what I would do. My real desire was to get out. But already the car had gone a way over the cobbles and it seemed to me that having just got it under way I couldn't check it. That's so often what it is with machinery: be somewhat in doubt and it carries the decision. I took the turn for Cuernavaca, a climbing, steep road, black, badly marked. We rose above the town, which sat like embers in its circle; and I put on as much speed as I dared, for enough people had seen us in the square so that Oliver would quickly know. I thought if Stella could hire a taxi in Cuernavaca it would be better than the bus, for the bus made all the one-horse stops and Oliver could easily catch up with it. ' At a terrible rate for that dark road we climbed toward Cuernavaca, even while, in the black air and orangy fragrance which we burned through in our speed, the danger we were escaping appeared smaller and slighter every minute; flying up the mountain in the machine from tliat pipsqueak Oliver began to seem what Thea had thought it was-- foolish. This silent Stella in the seat, who lit cigarettes with the dashboard lighter in such apparent calm of mind, it was hard to think how she could have taken seriously the ability of a man like Oliver to do harm. Even if he had threatened her with his gun it must have been in a kind of dither, and more than likely she was escaping from his trouble not his threats. "I see some lights in the road," she said. They were flares; it was a detour. I went very slow over the ruts of an old cari track until I came to a big arrow nailed pointing upward. There were wheel marks in both directions. Having detoured to the right, I bore left, and that was a mistake. We went up a narrowing, long way, I heard brush and grass underneath but was scared to try to back down and went on looking for a widening of the road where I could maneuver a turn. I came to one I reckoned I could try, and I twisted hard and raced the motor, for I dreaded to stall. The clumsy wagon just failed to make the circle. Cautious, I eased out the clutch, the gear in reverse, but the transmission was poor; the clutch grabbed and the lurch killed the engine. Which was just as well, there being an unusual softness under the rear right wheel. When I went out I saw that it rested on a tuft of grass right on the edge of a deep drop. I couldn't measure the distance below, but we had been climbing a good while, and it wouldn't have been any mere fifty feet. I was all over sweat, and I lightly opened the other door and said to Stella, low, "Quick!" which she understood, and she slipped out. Reaching through the window, I turned the wheels and drew the gearshift back to neutral position. The car rolled a few feet and stopped against the mountain wall. But the battery was dead now, and the crank wouldn't work. She said, "Are we going to be stuck here all night?" "It could have been even more permanent than that. And I told 388:. Thea I'd be back in a few hours," I said. Of course she had heard the whole conversation between Thea and me. This fact made an enormous difference. It was just as if, after that talk in the orange grove, Thea had given Stella and me a new introduction to each other. Was I so vain and nonsensical, and was Stella so unscrupulous? We didn't speak about it. Stella could, and did, act as though it was no use answering the accusations of an overwrought woman. As for me, I thought that if what Thea said of me was true, then the truth must be sticking out all over me, and if it was so plain there was nothing much to say. And after all the rush and anxious sweat and urgency, to be here on the mountain like the millipede with one bank of legs suddenly out of commission while the other tried to continue with haste, gave me an unpleasant sort of feeling inside. "If there were a couple of men to pick up the front end and straighten us out we could get a start by rolling." "What," she said, "roll with those lights?" The lights were just a feeble yellow. "Anyhow, where are you going to find two men to help you?" Nevertheless I went to look for help and descended as far as the giant arrow pointing nowhere. Over the grass distances I couldn't be sure whether what 1 saw was stars or human lights, but I knew I better not try to find out now which they were. There'd be many a fall on terrain like this before I reached what possibly was a village. Or I might be trying to reach the southern heaven. And even to say "southern heaven" is to try to familiarize terrific convulsions of fire in the million light-year distances (and why, from space to space, does the occupancy have to be by fire?). There were falls, though, and also thorns and cactuses, from huge maguey to vicious leg-tearing pads; and animals too. No car came along the detour, and then it occurred to me that the next car that passed might be Oliver's. Was I waiting there for him to come and shoot at me with his pistol? I gave up and went back to the station wagon. There were some blankets and a shelterhalf in the back. As I hunted them with the flashlight I thought how much dislike I bore to this machine and the false positions it had put me in. I spread the canvas shelter-half on the wet grass, and when I crouched and was nearly still great speed and motion continued to go through me. I worried about Thea; I knew she was bound to let me have it. She'd never excuse me for this. And now Stella was lying close to me, for it was cold. Her smell was tender, from her hair and face powder--I suppose the mountain coldness made a difference in the odor. I felt her weight full, both soft and heavy, from her hips and breasts. And if before I vaguely thought how I'd be swayed, there wasn't much vagueness now. I suppose if you pass the night with a woman in a deserted mountain place there's only one appropriate thing, according to the secret urging of the world. Or not so secret. And the woman, who has done so much to be dangerous in this same scheme, the more she comes of the world the less she knows how to vary from it. I thought that in the crisis that seems to have to occur when a man and a woman are thrown together nothing, nothing easy, can happen until first one difficulty is cleared and it is shown how the man is a man and the woman a woman; as if a life's trial had to be made, and the pretensions of the man and the woman satisfied. I say I thought, and so I did. A considerable number of things. But I was terribly hot for this woman. As, suddenly, with a breathless impulse toward me, she was for me too. Her tongue was in my mouth, my hands were drawing up her clothes. It made no difference what other thought beat on me, it beat from outside. As her things came off, as in the cold of night her shoulders, her breasts, and her humid heat I fell on maddened me, my voice came out of me strangely. She talked rapidly in my ear, she heaved her body, pressed my face, gathered up her breasts, and she gave herself like a prize. She did many things like a woman who had studied from men what it was that pleased them. This was in part innocent in her. It seemed an instant after blowing that, happily, she began to talk, every now and then kissing. It made her laugh that back at the party she had told me that I mistook her, and that I had apologized. I had known then that it had no more weight than a matchstick, that. The inevitability that brought us together on this mountain of wet grass was greater than the total of all other considerations. We had all known that, all three of us. After much making with sense, it's senselessness that you submit to. Thea foresaw that I'd do this. It annoyed me all the more with her, as though if she hadn't made the prediction it wouldn't have happened. And I thought savagely that if she hadn't put herself in the way and told me what to do there wouldn't have been this struggle with my pride. It was my unreasonable idea that she had tried to spoil everything for me. But I could bring forth a lot more reasons without reaching as high as the foot of the inevitability. Between Stella and me only one true subject was possible now, whether there was anything permanent between us. But I was thinking mostly of Thea. And as this couldn't be said, neither could any other genuine thing. Therefore we didn't talk of genuine things. She mentioned Thea once, saying that her standards were awfully high, it seemed. At last we were both silent, and then we slept, and that was more intimate than talk. A similar night for me was, years after this, on a crowded ship from Palma de Mallorca to Barcelona. The cabins were full, and I slept on deck where there was a throng of what they call there the humble people, laborers in denim jumpers, whole families, babes at breast, young girls of delicate stomach vomiting in the sea, singers who pumped on the concertina, old people on the deck cargo--like dead, or musing, with awkward released feet and large bellies. A sad night, damp, with floating carbon flakes from the cheap fuel. The puny officers in white, stepping over the bodies on the boards. A young Texas girl shared my coat; she was frank to say she had sought out another American in the foreign crowd. So all night she lay close to me, and in the shrimp chill of dawn when the pink light of the rocking sea fell on us she reminded me powerfully of Stella. That rising was in the Spanish commotion of the wet deck, and this other in the smoky white dawn sun and a freight-yard hush of mountains, like the silence after the crash of cars, here and there a skinny, armored cricket still trying out a trill. The gray-green cold came down from the rocks, the smoke from a village mixed with it. Such a smell of charcoal, the very smell of familiarity and welcome day to some, was the last tinge of foreignness to me. Stella stood rolled in the blanket and tried to look to the bottom of the cliff; the sight of that depth shriveled my stomach. Some Indians, for a peso apiece, set the car straight. When we started to roll the engine caught, and we went on to Cuernavaca, where I hired a car to take her to Mexico, giving her all the dollars I had. She said she'd pay me through Wells Fargo, and there was all that talk about settling up indebtedness that's so hard to give a definite character. I didn't believe her, but money was the only subject we now could talk of. Gratitude wasn't all she felt, that's certain, but since she did have some gratitude to express, she stuck to that and let the rest go. She did say, however, "Someday, will you come see me?" "Sure I will." Waiting in the sun for the taxi, we were at the side of the market, by the flowers, and stood where the stones were slippery from the castoff blooms, just the light greasiness of flowers underfoot. Facing us were the butchers' stalls, and on the hooks the tripes and lights and the carcasses were slung, on which the flies gave out nearly a roar and bounded like the first drops of cloudburst on a red wall. Under a chopping block squatted a naked kid and he slowly made a strange color of defecation. We went slowly around the broad steel gallery, the glass roof rising over the packed tinware, peppers, beef, bananas, pork, orchids, baskets, and this flash, rage, the chitin, electric loud tissue-sound of fond love, the wild loving hum of the bluebottles and green. As if a huge spool were revolving that caught up all threads from the sunlight. The driver came around. She made sure again that I had written down the name of her theatrical agent who always knew where to find her. She kissed me, and her lips made an unknown sensation on the side of my face, so I asked myself what mistake might I be on the verge of making now. Whilst the cab moved slowly in the market crowd, I walked beside it and we pressed hands through the window. She said, "Thank you. You were a real friend." "Good luck, Stella," I said. "Better luck..." "I wouldn't let her be too rough on me if I were you," she told me. I wasn't going to let her be rough, I thought as I went to face and to lie to Thea. I didn't really feel the sharpness of the lying I was prepared to do. I came back to her thinking I was now more faithful than before, so I believed I was going to maintain something more true than not. And I didn't expect to feel as bad as I did feel when I saw her in the garden, by a hedge that had turned out to have a red waxy berry. She wore the punctured hat and was ready to start for Chilpanzingo. I too was ready to go immediately, if she'd let me. I wanted her back in the worst way. But then I decided I'd better not go. My idea now was that'l'd already given in too much to these strange activities; with the eagle, even, I should have called a halt, not seemed so unsurprised by every bizarre thing as if I had seen it before. But I was moving toward the future much too fast. "Well! Here you come," she said harshly. "I didn't know whether to expect you. I thought you'd stay away. I think I'd have liked that better." "All right," I said, "don't be so spoken in full. Just come to the point." She did speak differently, next, and I was sorry I had asked her to. On a sort of cry, and with mouth trembling, she said, "We're washed up--washed up! It's all finished, Augie. We made a mistake. / made a mistake." "Now don't rush like that. Wait, will you? One thing at a time. If what's bothering you is that Stella and I--" "Spent the night together!" "We had to. But because I got on the wrong road, that's why." "Oh, please, stop that, don't say that! It just poisons me to hear you sound like that," she said with uncontrollable wretchedness. Her look was very sick. "Why, it's true," I insisted. "What do you mean? You shouldn't be jeaious like this. The car got stuck in the mountains." "I could hardly get out of bed this morning. And now it's worse, it's worse. Don't tell me this story. I can't stand stories." "Well," I said, looking down at the fresh-washed stones where the sun cooled all over, uneven, the green like velvet, "if you're bound to have such thoughts and be tortured by them, nobody can help that." She said, "In a way I wish it were just my own trouble." Somehow this made me stiffen toward her. "Well, it is your trouble," I said to her. "Suppose it was really what you think. It wouldn't be so hard to tell you after what you've told me about yourself, about the Navy man and so forth, while you were married to Smitty. You're quite a few up on me." We flushed, both of us, in each other's sight. "I didn't think what I said to you would come back to me this way," she said unevenly, and this shiver of voice made me feel a chill, like briny thick ice on the shore in the first freezes, "or that there was a score to keep." She looked very bad, with that more brilliant than friendly glance from her black eyes, her pallor very deep; her nostrils seemed as if they had accepted some of the sickness, smelled the poison she spoke of. And the animals and animal objects, the oxhide chairs, the straw-rustle snakes, the horned and shaggy heads, all that had seemed to have raison d'etre got dull, useless, brutal, or to be a jumble, a clutter merely, when something was wrong with her. While she herself looked tired, tendony in the neck, pinched on the shoulders. She- didn't even smell right. And up and down she was gripped by the most frightful jealousy; she wanted, and needed, to do me harm. For some reason I thought this would pass presently. But at the same time I trembled too. I said, "You can't even imagine that nothing happened, can you? And you have to assume that because we were together all night we made love too." "Well, maybe it is irrational," she said. "But whether it is or not, can you tell me it really didn't happen? Can you?" I was about, slowly, to do that, because it was necessary--and I felt monstrous to be putting up a lying face not having even washed Stella's odor from me--but Thea stopped me. She said, "No, don't, you'll only repeat the same thing. I know. And don't ask me to imagine anything. I already have imagined everything. Don't expect me to be superhuman. I won't try. It's too painful already, and a lot more than I thought I could stand." She didn't have any outburst of tears, but just like a sudden darkness, just that silent, they appeared in her eyes. That softened or melted all my hardness, as if by this quick heat. I said, "Let's quit this, Thea," and came toward her, but she moved away. "You should have stayed with her." "Listen--" "I mean it. You can be tender with me now. In ten minutes you could be with her, and fifteen minutes later with some other tramp. There isn't that much of you to go around. How did you get mixed up with this girl? That's what I want to know." "How? I met her with Oliver, through Moulton." "Why didn't she ask your friend Moulton then? Why you? Because you flirted with her." "No, because she picked me for someone sympathetic. She knew how I was with you, and she must have thought I'd understand a woman's situation faster than somebody else would." "That's just the kind of easy lie you often tell. She picked you because you look so damn obliging and she figured she could do what she wanted with you." "Oh no," I said, "you're wrong. She was just in a bad spot and I felt for her." But I remembered, of course, in the orange grove, that sensation of something that drew on me in a vital place and where I couldn't stop it. Apparently Thea knew something about this too, which amazed. me. Back in Chicago she had predicted that I'd go for another woman who ran after me. If only she hadn't described me to myself so mercilessly hard though. There, however, in Chicago, I thought how pleased I was I didn't have to have secrets from her; now there was a dusky sort of fluctuation back from this, as if it were fatal to be without hidden things. "I really and truly wanted to help her," I said. She cried, "What are you talking about--help! The man was picked up by the police just about as you were leaving." "Who, Oliver?" It stunned me. "Arrested? I guess I shouldn't have been in such a hurry. But I was afraid he'd drag her with him. Because he did have a gun, and he hit Louie Fu, he was getting to be violent, and I thought he'd force her--" "That foolish, weak, poor drunk moron--force her? That girl? What did he force before? She didn't lie in bed at the point of a gun, did she? She's a whore! But it didn't take her very long to see what you were like, that you'd be afraid to fall beneath her expectations, not be the man she wanted you to be, that you'd play her game. You play everyone's." "You're mad because I don't always play yours. Yes, I reckon she did understand me. She didn't tell me to do this. She asked me. She must have seen I was fed up with being told--" This made her look with intensified sickness at me, as if a new gust of it had hit her; she held her lip an instant with her teeth. Then she said, "It wasn't a game. I see you took it that way. Well, it wasn't, it was genuine. As far as I could make it, it was. It may have looked like a game to you. I guess it would. Maybe you wouldn't have anything else." "We're not talking about the same thine. Not the love. It's the other things you're so fantastic about." "Me--so fantastic?" she said with dry mouth and laid her hand over her breast. "Well, how can you think you're not--the eagle, the other things, the snakes, hunting every day?" It gave her another hurt. "What, were you just being indulgent with me? About the eagle? That didn't mean anything to you? All along you thought I was only fantastic?" I felt what a terrible thing I had done to her by this, and so I tried to mitigate it. "Don't those things ever strike you as queer, even for a minute?" I said. This made her throat tighten, and the tears, before, were nothing to this tightness. She said, "A lot of things look queer to me too. Some of I them maybe much more than what I do seems to you. Loving you, that wasn't queer at all to me. But now you start to seem queer, like many other things. Maybe I am peculiar, that I only know these strange ways of doing something. Instead of sticking to the ordinary way and doing something false. So"--and I was silent, recognizing the right on her side in this--"you made allowances for me." I could scarcely bear how she suffered. Sometimes I wasn't sure whether she could add the next word, her throat kept so many other sounds back, in abeyance. "I didn't ask you to--ever. Why didn't you say how you felt? You could have told me. I didn't want to seem fantastic to you," "You yourself, you never were. No, you weren't." "You don't tell anybody, I suppose. But to me you didn't have to behave as you do with anyone else. You could have done as you couldn't with anyone else. Isn't there one person in the whole world to whom you could? Do you tell anybody? Yes, I guess love would come in a queer form. You think the queemess is your excuse. But perhaps love would bs strange and foreign to you no matter which way it happened, and maybe you just don't want it. In that case I made a mistake, because I thought you did. And you don't, do you?" "What do you want to do to me, burn me down to the ground? It's just because you're so jealous and sore--" "Yes, I am jealous. I feel very sick and disappointed, otherwise I probably wouldn't do this. I know you can't take it. But I'm disappointed. I'm not just jealous. When I came up to your room in Chicago you had a girl, and when you came to see me I didn't ask you first whether you loved her or not. I knew it couldn't amount to much. But even if it had been important I thought I had to try! I felt mostly alone, as if the world were full of things but empty of people. I know," she admitted, dismaying me deeper than ever, "I must be a little crazy." She said it in a husky and quiet tone. "I must be, I have to admit. But I thought if I could get through to one other person I could get through to more. So people wouldn't tire me, and so I wouldn't be afraid of them. Because my feeling can't be people's fault, so much. They don't make it. Well, I believed it must be you who could do this for me. And you could. I was so happy to find you. I thought you knew all about what you could do and you were so lucky and so special. That's why it's not just jealousy. I didn't want you to come back. I'm sorry you're here now. You're not special. You're like everybody else. You get tired easily. I don't want to see you any more." Now she bent her head. She was crying. The hat dropped from her head and held by the cord. Gripped hard in my chest like a sick squir- i rel trapped in a chimney, in the silky shudder of smoke, was a terrible stuck feeling. I tried to come near again, and she straightened, looked me in the face, and cried, "I don't want you to do that! I don't want it; I can't allow you to. I know you think this, that, or the other can; always be overlooked, but I don't.": She walked past me to the door, where she stopped. "I'm going to Chilpanzingo," she said. She had stopped crying. "I'll come with you." "No, you won't. There won't be any more games. I'm going there alone." "And what am I supposed to do?" "Don't ask me. You figure that out yourself." "I get it," I said. I was in the room collecting my stuff, burning, with tears and cries 3 that couldn't find an outlet from suffocation, and stones of pity heaped up in me, when I saw her descending to the zocalo with a rifle, and Jacinto with baggage behind her. She was leaving immediately. I wanted to yell to her, "Don't go!" as she had called to me last night in the zocalo, and tell her what a mistake she was making. But what I called her mistake was, in my own emotion, that she was abandoning me. That was wnat made me tremble when I tried to call to her. She couldn't leave me. I ran through the house to holler from the kitchen garden wall. Something about me scared the cook; she grabbed up her kid and beat it when she saw me. And suddenly I was as full of rage as of grief, so that they choked me. I tore open the garden door and ran pounding down toward the zocalo, but the station wagon was no longer there. I turned back and kicked open the gate of the house, looking for what to attack and smash. Swooping and bursting, I tore up rocks in the garden and hurled them at the wall, knocking down the stucco. I went into the living room and wrecked the oxhide chairs, the glassware, tore off curtains and pictures. Next, finding myself on the porch, I kicked to pieces the snake cases, overturned them, and stood and watched the panic of the monsters as they flowed and fled, surged for cover. Every last box I booted over. Then I grabbed my valise and got out. I pounded down into the zocalo, sobbing in my chest. On Hilario's porch, there was Moulton. I saw only his face above the Carta Blanca shield. He looked down. Him, the pope of rubble. "Hey, Bolingbroke, where's the girl? Oliver is in the jug. Come on up here, I want to talk to you." "Why don't you go to hell!" He didn't hear. "Why are you carrying a valise?" he said. I went away and roamed the town some more. In the market place I met Iggy and his little daughter. "Hey, where did you come from? Oliver was arrested last night." "Oh, ft--Oliver!" "Please, Bolingbroke, don't talk that way in front of the kid." "Don't call me Bolingbroke any more." I went around with him though, as he led the kid by the hand. We looked at the stalls and finally he bought the kid a cornhusk dolly. He talked about his troubles. Now she was through with Jepson, should he remarry his wife? I had nothing to say, but felt my eyes burn as I looked at him. "So you helped Stella get away, huh?" he said. "I guess you did right. Why should she get it in the neck because of him? Wiley says in jail last night he was screaming about her running out on him." Then he saw my valise for the first time and said, "Oh-oh, I'm sorry, man! Busted up, huh?" I flinched, my face twisted, I made a dumb sign and then burst into tears.