The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [19]
CHAPTER XIX
The snakes escaped I presume to the mountains. I didn't go back to Casa Descuitada to find out. Iggy took me to a room in the villa where he stayed. For a time I didn't do anything, only lay in the small warm stone cell at the top of the house. You climbed the stairs till they gave out and then continued the rest of the way up a ladder. There I stretched out on the low bed and remained for days, sick. If Tertullian came to the window of heaven to rejoice in the sight of the damned, as he said he'd do, he might have seen my leg across his line of vision through the sunlight. That was how I felt. Iggy came and kept me company. There was a low chair on which he sat for hours without saying a word, his chin drawn inward so that his neck was creased and swollen, and his trousers tied at the bottom with the strings of the alpargatas like those of a bicycle rider who doesn't want his cuffs to tangle in the chain. So he sat, his head sunk and his green eyes with inflamed lids. Now and then the church bell would sound, lurching back and forth as if someone were carrying" water that was clear, all right, but in a squalid bucket, and stumbling jand slipping on the stones. Iggy knew I was in a crisis and didn't want 11 me to be alone. But if I tried to say anything he turned the edge of it back against me and accepted nothing of what I told him even after he had encouraged me to talk. Of course I told him everything, to the end of my breath, and then I felt as if he had covered my face with his hand and wouldn't let me say any more. So after this stifling had happened a few times I quit talking. I thought he came to be merciful and stayed to be sure I choked. He got some obscure revenge out of me at the same time that he pitied me. Anyway, he sat by the dry handsome wall on which the sun fell in over the ledge where the pigeons landed with their red feet and fanned down dust and straw. Sometimes he would actually lay his cheek to the plaster. I knew I had done wrong. And as I lay and thought of it I felt my eyes roll as if in search of an out. Something happened to my forgetting power, it was impaired. My mistakes and faults came from all sides and gnawed at me. They gnawed away, and I broke out in a sweat, and turned, or felt the vanity of turning. I'd try again and say, "Iggy, what can I do to prove I love her?" "I don't know what. Maybe you couldn't prove it because you don't." "No, Iggy, how can you say that! Can't you see how it is?" "Why did you go away with that broad then?" "That was kind of a revolt or something. How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy." "You don't know the score yet, Boling. I'm sorry for you," he said from his wall, "honest I am. But this has got to happen to you before you get anywheres. You always had it too good. You got to get knocked over and crushed like this. If you don't you'll never understand how much you hurt her. You've got to find out about this and not be so larky." "She's too angry. If she loved me she wouldn't be so angry. She needs some reason to be so angry.". "Well, you gave her it." It was no use trying to argue with Iggy, so I lay silent and argued and pleaded in my mind with Thea instead, but I only kept losing more and more. Why had I done it? I had wounded her badly, I knew it. I could see it as clearly as I could see her saying, white, with a strained throat, "I am disappointed!" "Well, honey, listen," I wanted to tell her, "of course everybody is disappointed sometime or another. Why, you know that. Everybody gets damaged, and everybody does some damage. Especially in love. And I've done you this damage. But I love you, and you should forgive me so we can continue." I ought to have taken my chances with the snakes in the hot mountains, creeping after them with nooses on the brown soil up there, instead of hanging around the dizzy town where things were even more dangerous. It had hit her hard when I revealed what I thought of her hunting. But hadn't she also tried to carry me to the ground and crush me with the attack she made on me, saying how vain I was, how unreliable, how I was always looking at other women and had no conscience? And was it true, as she said, that love would appear strange to me no matter what form it took, even if there were no eagles and snakes? I thought about it and was astonished at how much truth there actually was in this. Why, it was so! And I had always believed that where love was concerned I was on my mother's side, against the Grandma Lausches, the Mrs. Renlings, and the Lucy Magnuses. If I didn't have money or profession or duties, wasn't it so that I could be free, and a sincere follower of love? Me, love's servant? I wasn't at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn't a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and lizards. Now I had started, and this terrible investigation had to go on. If this was how I was, it was certainly not how I appeared but must be my secret. So if I wanted to please, it was in order to mislead or show everyone, wasn't it, now? And this must be because I had an idea everyone was my better and had something I didn't have. But what did people seem to me anyhow, something fantastic? I didn't want to be what they made of me but wanted to please them. Kindly explain! An independent fate, and love too--what confusion! I must be a monster to make such confusion. But no, I couldn't be a monster and suffer both. That would be too unjust. I didn't believe it. ' It wasn't right to think everyone else had more power of being. Why, look now, it was clear as anything that it wasn't so but merely imagination, exaggerating how you're regarded, misunderstanding how you're liked for what you're not, disliked for what you're not, both from error' and laziness. The way must be not to care, but in that case you must know how really to care and understand what's pleasing or displeasing in yourself. But do you think every newcomer is concerned and is watching? No. And do you care that anyone should care in return? Not by a long shot. Because nobody anyhow can show what he is without a sense of exposure and shame, and can't care while preoccupied with this but must appear better and stronger than anyone else, mad! And meantime feels no real strength in himself, cheats and gets cheated, relies on cheating but believes abnormally in the strength of the strong. All this time nothing genuine is allowed to appear and nobody knows what's real. And that's disfigured, degenerate, dark mankind--mere humanity. But then with everyone going around so capable and purposeful in his strong handsome case, can you let yourself limp in feeble and poor, some silly creature, laughing and harmless? No, you have to plot in your heart to come out differently. External life being so mighty, the , 401 instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can't get justice and he can't give justice, but he can live. And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention, which is the invention maybe of the world itself, and of nature, becomes the actual world --with cities, factories, public buildings, railroads, armies, dams, prisons, and movies--becomes the actuality. That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version. I certainly looked like an ideal recruit. But the invented things never became real for me no matter how I urged myself to think they were. My real fault was that I couldn't stay with my purest feelings. This was what tore the greatest hole in me. Maybe Thea couldn't stand many happy days in a row either, that did occur to me as a reason for her cooling off. Perhaps she had this trouble too, with her chosen thing. The year before, when Mimi was in trouble, Kayo Obermark had said to me that this happened to everyone. Everyone got bitterness in his chosen thing. It might be in the end that the chosen thing in itself is bitterness, because to arrive at the chosen thing needs courage, because it's intense, and intensity is what the feeble humanity of us can't take for long. And also the chosen thing can't be one that we already have, since what we already have there isn't much use or respect for. Oh, this made me feel terrible contempt, the way I felt, riled and savage. The f----slaves! I thought. The lousy cowards! As for me personally, not much better than some of the worst, my invention and special thing, was simplicity. I wanted simplicity and denied complexity, and in this I was guileful and suppressed many patents in my secret heart, and was as devising as anybody else. Or why would I long for simplicity? Personality is unsafe in the first place. It's the types that are safe. So almost all make deformations on themselves so that the great terror will let them be. It isn't new. The timid tribespeople, they flatten down heads or pierce lips or noses, or hack off thumbs, or make themselves masks as terrible as the terror itself, or paint or tattoo. It's all to anticipate the terror which does not welcome your being. Tell me, how many Jacobs are there who sleep on the stone and force it to be their pillow, or go to the mat with angels and wrestle the great fear to win a right to exist? These brave are so few that they are made the fathers of a whole people. While as for me, whoever would give me cover from this mighty free-running terror and wild cold of chaos I went to, and therefore to temporary embraces. It wasn't very courageous. That I was like many others in this was no consolation. If there were so many they must all suffer the same way I did. Well, now that I knew of this I wanted another chance. I thought I must try to be brave again. So I decided I'd go and plead with her in Chilpanzingo, and say that though I was a weak man I could little by little alter if she'd bear with me. As soon as I had decided this I felt much better. I went to the peluqueria and had myself shaved. Then I ate lunch at Louie Fu's and one of his daughters pressed my pants for me. I was overwrought but primed with hopes too. I already saw how she'd whiten in the face as she denounced me, and her eyes darken and flash out at me. But also she'd throw her arms around me. Because she also needed me. And all her eccentric force, which came from doubt as to whether her desire could ever trust someone again, would stop and rest on me. Imagining how this would be, I melted, my chest got hot, soft, sore, and yearning. I saw it already happening. It's always been like that with me, that fantasy went ahead of me and prepared the way. Or else, as it seems, the big heavy personal van, dark and cumbersome, can't start into strange terrain. But this imagination of mine, like the Roman army out in Spain or Gaul, makes streets and walls even if it's only camping, for the night. While I sat in my shorts and waited for my pants, Louie's dog came out. Listless and fat, she smelled like old Winnie. She stood square before me and gazed. Not wanting to be stroked, she backed away with clicking claws when I reached out, and she showed little old teeth. Not that she was sore, but wanted to go back to her isolation. So she did, under the curtain with an extreme sigh. She was very old. The bus, an old rural schoolbus from the States, arrived like the buckboard of olden times. I was already inside, holding my ticket, when Moulton came up and said through the window, "Come out, I want to talk to you." "No, I won't." "Come," he said earnestly. "It's important. You'd better." Iggy said, "Whyn't you mind your own business, Wiley?" Moulton's big brow and squash nose were covered with a white sweat. "Will it be better if he walks into something and gets knocked over?" he said. I got out. "What do you mean, knocked over?" I asked. Before Iggy could interfere, if he was about to try, Moulton clasped my hand next to his hard belly, drew my arm taut under his, and with burly haste he made me walk a few fast steps on the stones and rosy garbage, on my turned-over heels. "Get onto yourself," he said. "Talavera was Thea's friend, old man. He's there with her in Chilpanzingo." I tore loose. I was going to get my fingers into his neck and choke him to death. "Ig," he yelled, "you better hold on to him!" Iggy who was just behind us took hold of me. "Let go!" "Wait, you're not going to kill him right here with cops and everybody around. You better beat it, Wiley. He's pulling like a bull." I wanted to smash Iggy to the ground too as he held my arm. "Now wait, Boling. Find out first if it's true. Chrissake, use your head!" Moulton was going backwards while I dragged Iggy on my arm. "Don't be a foolish bastard, Boling," said Moulton. "It's true all right. You think I want trouble with you? I only did it to help, so you wouldn't get hurt. It's dangerous down there. Talavera will kill you." "Look what a favor you done him!" said Iggy. "Look at his face!" "Is it true he went down there with her, Iggy?" I said, stopping. I was so clawed and bit inside I could hardly get out this question. "He was her boy friend here before," Iggy said. "A guy told me yesterday that Talavera took off for Chilpanzingo right after Thea." "When was he--?" "A few years ago. Why, he was living at Casa Descuitada, just about," said Moulton. I couldn't any longer stay on my feet and slumped down against the bandstand. I covered my head with my hands and shivered, my face on my knees. Moulton was severe toward me. "I'm surprised the way you take it, . March," he said. "How do you want him to take it? Stop layin' it on him," said Iggy- "He acts like a kid and you encourage him," Moulton said. "This has happened to me, it's happened to you. It happened to Talavera when she showed up with Smitty and then with him." "No, it didn't. Talavera knew she was married." "What's the difference? Even if Talavera is a chorus-boy horse-rider he has his feelings. Well, shouldn't a man find out when this happens to him? Shouldn't I have found out? Shouldn't you have found out? This is one of those damn facts that have got to be known." "But the guy still loves her. You got mad when somebody put the blocks to your wife, but not because you loved her." "Well, does she love him?" said Moulton. "Then what was she doing in the mountains with Talavera after March got knocked on the dome and was laid up?" "She was doing nothing in the mountains with him," I cried out, raging again. "If he's in Chilpanzingo now, he's just in Chilpanzingo and not with Thea." He stared at me, acting full of curiosity. He said, "Brother, I bet you see exactly what everybody else sees, but you just stick by your opinions. Why didn't she tell you he was her old boy friend? And what were they doing, just having a debate of yes or no, and she didn't get off her horse for him?"; "Nothing went on. Nothing! If you don't stop talking I'll ram one of these stones down your throat!" But he was terribly roused too and bound to go on; he wasn't just trifling but intended something. His eyes were open large and fixed on me. "Too bad, friend, but women have no judgment. They aren't just for happy young fellows like you. What do you want to bet her britches came down for him, and she didn't save all her sweet little things for you?" I jumped at him. Iggy held me from the back, and I picked him off the ground and tried to get rid of him by dashing him against the bandstand, but he clung, and when I threw my weight backwards and crushed him so he'd let go, he gasped, "Christ, you lost your mind? I'm keepin' you outa trouble." Moulton had already gotten away, down the busy street that led to the market. I yelled after him, "Okay, you filthy slob sonofabitch. You wait. I'll kill you!".. "Quit that, Boling, there's a cop with his eye on you." An Indian policeman sat on the running board of a nearby car. He probably was used to drunken gringos wrangling and scrapping. Iggy had forced me down on my knee; he still clutched my arms. "Can I let you loose now? You won't run after him?" I uttered a kind of sob and shook my head. He helped me to stand up. "Look at you covered with muck. You'll have to change your clothes." "No, I haven't got time." "Come on to my room. I'll get this stuff off you at least with a brush." "I'm not going to miss that bus." "You mean to say you're going down there anyway? You must be cracked." But I had decided I'd go, I washed my face at Louie's and got into the bus; my place was taken there, and all the early birds who had watched me by the bandstand appeared to have understood what it was about, that I was a poor cabron who had lost his woman. Iggy entered the bus with me. He said, "Never mind him. He tried to make her himself and propositioned her a dozen times. He was dying to get her. That's why he was interested in you and would come up to the villa. At Oliver's party he tried to make her again. It was why she left so fast." It didn't matter so much; it was about like a burning match next to a four-alarm fire. "Don't go getting into a fight there. You'd be nuts. Talavera will kill you. . Maybe I should come and keep you out of trouble. You want me to?" "Thanks. Just let me alone." He didn't really want to come with me. The old bus made a sudden noise, as of sewing machines in a loft. Through the fumes the cathedral seemed as if reflected in a river. "Shoving off," said Iggy. "Remember," he warned me again as he got to the ground, "you're foolish to go. You're just asking for it." As the bus rolled down from the town a peasant woman kindly shared her edge of the seat with me. When I sat down I felt it start to burst through me again. Oh, fire, fire! Spasms or cramps of jealous sickness, violent and burning. I held my face and felt that I might croak. What did she do it for? Why did she take up with Talavera? To punish me? That was a way to punish somebody! Why, she was guilty herself of what she accused me! Was I looking over her shoulder at Stella? Well, she was looking over mine at Talavera and had revenge ready right away. Where was that little cat we used to have in Chicago? All at once I wondered. Because one time when we had been away in Wisconsin for two days and came back at night this little thing was crying from hunger. Then Thea started to weep over it and put it inside her dress while we drove to Fulton Street market to feed it a whole fish. And where was this cat now? Left behind somewhere, nowhere special, and that was how permanent Thea's attachments were. Then I thought that I had loved her so, it was a pleasure to me that the creases at the joints of our fingers were similar; so now with these fingers she would touch Talavera where she had touched me. And when I thought of her doing with another man what she had done with me, that she would forget herself the same, and praise him and kiss him, and kiss in the same places, gone out of her mind with tenderness, eyes wide, hugging his head, opening her legs, it just about annihilated me. I watched in my imagination and suffered horribly. I had wanted to marry her, but there isn't any possession. No, no, wives don't own husbands, nor husbands wives, nor parents children. They go away, or they die. So the only possessing is of the moment. If you're able. And while any wish lives, it lives in the face of its negative. This is why we make the obstinate sign of possession. Like deeds, certificates, rings, pledges, and other permanent things. We tore toward Chilpanzingo in the heat. First the brown stormy mountains, then badland rocks and green Florida feathers. As we rolled into the town someone jumped on the side of the bus for a free ride, grabbing my arm and digging his fingers into it hard. I fought and tore it free. In jumping off this joy-rider whacked the palm of my hand as I reached after him. It stung, and I was furious. Here was the zocalo. White filthy walls sunk toward the ground and rat-gnawed Spanish charm moldered from the balconies, a horrible street like Seville rotting, and falling down to flowering garbage heaps. I thought if I saw Talavera on the street I'd try to kill him. What with? I had a penknife. It wasn't dangerous enough. In the square I looked for a shop where I could buy a knife, but I saw none. What I did see was a place that said "Cafe." It was a square black opening in a wall, as if dug free in the Syrian desert from thousand-years' burial. I went in with the object of stealing a knife off the counter. There weren't any knives there, only tiny spoons with braided necks in the sugar. A piece of white mosquito net hung down torn, like close, fine work done to no useful purpose. Coming out of the cafe, I saw the station wagon parked in front of a New Orleans ironwork kind of a place from which there were pieces missing. Without thinking any more of knives, I ran there and went inside. No clerk was at the desk; there was only an old man who cleaned the sand of the path in the decayed patio. He told me Thea's room number. I had him go up and ask if she would see me. She herself called to me from a gap in the shutter. What did I want? I went up the stairs swiftly, and at the big wooden double doors of her room I said to her, "I have to talk to you." She let me in, and when I entered I looked first for signs of him. There was the usual mess of clothes and equipment. I couldn't tell whether any of it belonged to him. But it wouldn't have made any difference. I was determined to go beyond any such things. "What do you want, Augie?" she said again. I looked at her. Her eyes were not as keen as usual and she looked ill; above, her brilliant black hair was slipping from its combs. She wore a silk coat or robe. Apparently she had just put it on. In heat like this she preferred to go naked in her room. When I wanted to recall how she was, naked, I found I could do it very well. She saw my eyes on her lower belly and her hand descended to hold the edge of the robe there. Seeing that colorful, round-fingered hand descend I bitterly felt how my privilege had ended and passed to another man. I wanted it back. I said with my face naming, "I came to ask if we could be together again." "No, I don't think we can now." "I hear Talavera is here with you. Is he?" "Is it any business of yours?" I took that for an affirmative and felt in great pain. I said, "I suppose it isn't. But why did you have to take up with him right away? As soon as I had someone, you had to have someone. You're no better than I am. You kept him in reserve." "I think the only reason you're here is that you heard about him," she said. "No, I came to ask how about another chance. He doesn't make so much difference to me." "No?" she said with that white warmth of the face she had. She gave a momentary smile of thought. "I could forget about him if you still wanted me." "You'd be bringing him up every other day, whenever we had any trouble." "No, I wouldn't." "I know that now you're dying with worry that he'll come in and you'll have a fight. But he's not here, so you can set your mind at rest." "So he was here!" She didn't answer. Had she sent him away? Maybe she had. At least that mixed hope and anxiety could end. Of course I had been afraid. But also I hoped I might have killed him. I'd have tried to. I already had thought this over. I pictured that he would have stabbed me. She said, "You can't love me, thinking I'm with another man. You must want to murder the both of us. You must want to see him fall off a mountain ten thousand feet, and me in a coffin at my funeral." I was silent, and while she stared at me, what a strange view I had of her in this moldery Hispanic room, the tropical sun in the gaps of the shutter--decay in the town, the spiky, twisted patch of grave iron on the slope, bleeding bougainvillaea bubbles, purple and tubercular on the walls, vines shrieky green, and the big lips and forehead of the mountains begging or singing; then the mess of the room itself, the rags and costly things which she used alike as they happened to come to hand, Kleenexes or silk underthings, dresses, cameras, cosmetics. She did things fast, hoping she did them right. Evidently she didn't believe what I had come to say. She didn't believe because she didn't feel, and didn't feel because of a broken connection. "You don't have to decide now, Thea." "No, well--I suppose not. I may feel differently about you later, but I don't think I will. Right now I have no use for you. Especially when I think how you behave with other people. I wish you all the harm I can think of. I wish you were dead." "And I still love you," I said. And it must have been evident, for I wasn't lying. I stood and was shaking. But she gave no answer. "Don't you want to have it again the way it was?" I said. "I think I could do it right this time." "How do you know you could?" "Most people are probably in the same condition I'm in. But there must be a way to learn to do better." "Must there?" she said. "I guess you would think so." "Of course. How would the hope be there at all otherwise? How would I know what to want? How did you know?" "What do you want to prove by me and what I know?" She said in a low voice, "I've been wrong a good many times--more than I want to discuss with you." She changed the subject. "Jacinto sent me a message about the snakes," she said. "If you had been around I'd have hit you with something." < But I sensed that this was one offense of mine that didn't displease her. I had an impression of a smile of halfway appreciation of it. But I couldn't take much hope from that, because smiling and abstraction, obstinacy, intention to hurt, alternated fast in her cloudy white nervousness, and I saw she was unable to gather together her feelings toward 0 409 CHAPTER XX Back in Acatia I lay around. I hoped all the same to hear from Thea, and though it was useless I kept calling at the post office. Notified of nothing, I generally went, then, and drank tequila with beer chasers. I no longer played poker at Louie's and saw none of that gang. Jepson was picked up for vagrancy and sent back to the States, thus Iggy's wife wanted him back. The little kid knew what it was all about, and when I saw them out walking sensed how sharp she was already, at her age, and pitied her. So on some of the golden afternoons by the dive where I sat on a bench in neglected pants and dirty shirt and with three days of bristles, I had the inclination to start out and say, "0 you creatures still above the ground, what are you up to! Even happiness and beauty is like a movie." Many times I felt tears. Or again I'd be angry and want to holler. But while no other creature is reprimanded for its noise, for yelling, roaring, screaming, cawing, or braying, there is supposed to be more delicate relief for the human species. However, I'd go up one of the mountain roads where only an occasional Indian heard and wouldn't say what he thought of it, and there I'd speak my feelings aloud or I'd yell, and it made me feel better temporarily. There was one companion I had for a few days, a Russian who had been dropped by the Cossack chorus after a fight. He still wore his serge tunic with white piping and all the spaces for bullets. He was very proud and nervous, he bit his nails. His scalp was bare and gave like a soft light on the handsome solemnity of his face, clean shaven at all times. His nose was straight, his mouth was held in with tender rancor, and he had black, continuous, illustrious brows. Damn, if he didn't look like a picture of the poet D'Annunzio that I once saw. He drank and he was broke, and pretty soon he'd be picked up too, like Jepson. I had very little money left but I bought a bottle of tequila now and then, so he was attached to me. Well, I felt about my relations with him somewhat as I did about Iggy's little girl, pitying her for what she had to understand. At first I was sorry he was my companion. But then I liked him better. And as I wanted to tell someone about Thea, I confessed all to him. I told the whole story. I thought he'd sympathize with me. Those many deep hash marks of enlistment with grief that he had on his forehead were what made me think so. "So you see how rough it's been," I said. "I'm not having it easy. I suffer a great deal. Part of the time I'm half dead." "Wait," he told me, "you haven't seen anything yet." This made me furious with him. All in a rush I said to him, "Why, you lousy egotist!" I wanted to knock him down; I was drunk enough then to do it. "What do you mean, you runt! You cheesecloth Cossack you! After I've told you how I feel" But he wanted to carry the emphasis over to how he felt. He with his naked head and reddened nose and rancor of the mouth. 'But he wasn't such a bad wretch at that. It was actually only natural. Why, he too had a life. He sat there hopeless. He smelled like a bygone brand of footpowder there had once been in the house. But all the same he was simpatico. "All right pal," I said. "That's true, you have had a bad time. You may never see Harbin again, or wherever you're from." "Not Harbin, Paris," he said. "Okay, you poor jerk, Paris. Let it be Paris then." "I had an uncle in Moscow," he said, "who dressed himself like a woman and went to the church. And he scared everybody because he had a beard and looked very fierce. A policeman said to him, 'You look to me, sir, like a man and not a woman.' So he said, 'Do you know, you look to me like a woman and not a man.' And he went away. Everybody was scared of him." "This is very fine, but how does it mean I haven't seen anything yet?" "I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible. Don't you think my uncle must have been desperate to go in that dark church and frighten everybody? He bad to use his powers. He felt he had only a few years more to live." Well, I pretended not to understand because it suited me to make him out as ridiculous, but I knew very well what he was trying to get across. Not that life should end is so terrible in itself, but that it should end with so many disappointments in the essential. This is a fact. Finally I had to stop going around with him. He took to pimping for Negra who was the madame of the foco rojo, and I decided to make a move. I sold my fancy equipment, like the riding boots and the lifesaving Lake Huron jacket, to Louie Fu, and with the pesos I went to Mexico City. I gave up on waiting for Thea to forgive me. It was sad putting up at the Regina without her. The management and the chambermaids remembered her and the bird and saw I had come down in life; no station wagon, no bags, no wild beast, no happy joy and eating mangos in bed, etcetera. The assignation couples made noise at night, when this was no place for me. But it was cheap and so I closed my ears. There was no dough from Stella at Wells Fargo. However, I had Sylvester's number at Coyoacan and could call him when flat broke. First I thought I'd try Manny Padilla's cousin. He was nothing like Manny, but scrawny, red-skinned, glittering his teeth and hungry, a fast man with a buck. He wanted to be my guide to the city, but Thea had already shown me it; he wanted to introduce me to Spanish literature and finally he put the touch on me for some dough. He said he was going to buy me a blanket with it, but he never showed up again. I ached in my body for Thea though I knew she was by now unobtainable and absolutely removed from me by the difficulty of her mind and the peculiarity of my own character. So I knocked around the city thinking things over. I'd watch the mariachis and death-song fiddlercripples or the flower-sellers and the bees feeding off the candystands. Whichever way you turned there was the snow of one of the volcanoes and the whole mountain floating in. If I could help it I wouldn't look in a mirror those days, being haggard and ill. At one time I felt that if Death came up and tapped me on the shoulder, saying, "Ready?" I'd think it over a minute and then say, "Okay." So in a way I died somewhat, and if there was anything I knew by now it was how impossible it is to live without something infinitely mighty and great. However, the city was beautiful--even the unsightliness, misery, and scrawls were rich--it was warm, and this kept me going. My heart would complain and I felt sick, but not continually in the utmost despair. At last I got in touch with Sylvester. He came to see me and lent me some dough. He wasn't saying much at first. I understood that he couldn't talk about political and confidential things. "You look starved and raggedy," he said. "If I didn't know you I'd say you were one of these Pan-American burns. You've got to clean yourself up." I felt as if I were an object Caligula had dropped about a thousand feet to the earth. The air screamed. The colors were about like the colors of Jerusalem. However, getting up stunned, I wanted to be steadfast. Go and be steadfast though! Just like that! It's not a small order. Sylvester realized that I wanted to get myself reconstructed and not go to wrack. He gave me his grin with little dark lines, always amused at me. "My luck has been very bad, Sylvester," I said. "I see. I see. Well, do you want to stick around here until it changes or do you want to go back to Chicago?" "What do you think? I don't know what I should do." "Stick around. There's a sympathizer who'll put you up for a while if Frazer asks him." "I'd be glad. I'd be very grateful, Sylvester. Who is this sympathizer?" "He's a friend of the Old Man from away back. He'd put you up. I don't like to see you go around the way you are." "Gee thanks, Sylvester. Thanks." So then Frazer came around and took me over to be introduced to the sympathizer, whose name was Paslavitch. He was a friendly Yugoslavian who lived in a little villa out in Coyoacan. Beside his mouth were deep folds and inside them grew little shining bristles, as the geode or marvel of the rock world is full of tiny crystals. He was a very original kind of person. His head was onion-shaped and clipped close. In the garden where he was when we met the heat was trembling off the top of his dome. He said, "You are very welcome. I am glad to have company. Maybe you will give me English lessons?" "Sure he will," said Frazer. Frazer's looks had changed too. I never understood better why Mimi had called him "Preacher." With the pucker of thought between his eyes he did look like a minister. And also like an officer of the Confederate Army. He appeared to have grave weights on his mind and to be preoccupied with superior things. He left me with this Paslavitch, then, and for some reason I felt I was put in deposit or reserve, but I was tired and didn't much care what he had in mind. Paslavitch showed me the rooms and the garden. I gazed at the birds, caged and free, the hummingbirds in the flowers and the spiny applauding of the cactuses. Lying in the grass or standing along the path were Mexican gods who gripped and clutched on themselves and cooled their hot teeth and tongues in the blue air. Paslavitch was a kind, worried, meek, stubborn man who covered Mexico for the Yugoslav press. He considered himself a Bolshevik and old revolutionary but he was a lacrimae rerum type if I ever saw one; everything was forever touching him, and he had tears the way a pine has gum to give. He played Chopin on the piano, and when he executed a particular march he'd say to me, "Frederic Chopin wrote this during a storm when he was in Mallorca with George Sand. She was sailing on the Mediterranean. When she arrived he said, 'I thought you were drowned!' Pressing on the pedals in his Mexican shoes, he made you think of Nero acting in a tragedy. Most of all this Paslavitch was in love with French culture and had a keen wish to teach me. In fact he had an obsession about teaching and was always saying, "Teach me about Chicago," "Teach me about General Ulysses S. Grant. I will teach you. I will tell you about Fontenelle's ham omelette. We will exchange." He was very eager. "Fontenelle wanted to eat a ham omelette on a Friday but a terrible storm started, with thunder. So finally he threw the omelette out of the window and said to God, 'Seigneur! Tant de bruit pour une omelette.' " It could be illuminating. He'd sway, with closed eyes and tight pronunciation. Or else he'd tell me, "Louis Thirteenth loved to play barber and would shave his gentlemen whether they wanted it or not. Also he enjoyed to imitate dying agonies, so he would make faces, and furthermore he would spend the wedding night in the same bed with young couples and was the last expression of feudal degeneracy." Maybe he was, but Paslavitch loved him because he was French. He'd keep me after supper and repeat these conversations of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, de la Rochefoucauld and the Duchesse de Longueville, Diderot and a young actress, Chamfort and somebody else. I liked Paslavitch but sometimes it was heavy going, being his guest. I also had to go and play billiards with him at a club on the Calle de Uruguay. And to drink with him, when he felt like drinking. I did not want to do it in the afternoon because it reminded me too much of the tequila drinking I did in Acatla. But we'd sit and kill a few bottles of wine. Thousand soft moose-lashes of the copper forest sun passed through the trees; the garden was green while the woman's form of the volcano slept in the snow. I was a guest and guests have to go along with hosts. I paid my way by teaching him about the major leagues, etcetera. Meanwhile I was building up my health somewhat, and then Frazer came around and sprung what he had been saving me for. "You know that the GPU wants the Old Man's life," said Frazer. I knew it. I had read in the papers about the machine-gun attack on his villa and Paslavitch had told me many other details. "Well," said Frazer, "a man named Mink who is the chief of the Russian police has arrived in Mexico to take over the campaign against the Old Man." "What a terrible thing! What can you do to protect him?" "Well, the villa is being fortified, and we have a bodyguard. But the fortification isn't ready yet. The cops aren't enough to do the job. Stalin is out to get him because he's the conscience of the revolutionary world.". "Why are you telling me this, Frazer?" "Here's the thing. There's a scheme being discussed. Maybe the Old Man will shake the GPU by traveling incognito around the country." "What do you mean, incognito?" "This is confidential, March. I mean that he should take off his beard and mustache, cut his hair, and pass as a tourist." Well, I thought this mighty queer. As if Gandhi should go dressed in a Prince Albert. That this formerly so mighty and commanding man should have to alter and humble himself. Somehow, though I had seen and known lots of trouble, this struck me very hard. I said, "Whose idea is this?" "Why it's been discussed," said Frazer in his professional revolutionary way, meaning it wasn't any of my business. "I trust you, March, or I wouldn't have suggested you for a part in this." "Why, where do I come in?" I said. He said, "If the Old Man is going to travel incognito as a visitor to Mexico he's going to need a nephew from the States." "Me, you mean?" "You and a girl comrade as husband and wife. Would you do it?" I saw myself driving around Mexico with this great person, tracked by secret agents. I felt too worn out to take it on. "There wouldn't be any hanky-panky with the girl," said Frazer. "I don't even understand what you mean. I'm trying to recover from the injury of a love affair." Please God! I thought, keep me from being sucked into another one of those great currents where I can't be myself. Naturally I wanted to be of help, and rescue and peril attracted me. But I wasn't up to it at all, going up and down the mountains of Mexico through the bazaar of red nature and dizzy with deaths and noises. "I'm telling you this because the Old Man is very moral." Frazer spoke as though he too were very moral. Tell it to the marines! I thought. "He won't do it anyhow," I said. "It's a loony idea." "That's for the people who've protecting him to decide." But to me it seemed his appearance was his trademark. His head was. Sooner than touch it he'd maybe let it be taken off him and kept just as it was for martyrdom. Kind of like St. John and Herod. And I had to stop and ask myself about martyrdom. Out in Russia was his enemy who didn't mind obliging him. He'd kill him. Death discredits. Survival is the whole success. The voice of the dead goes away. There isn't any memory. The power that's established fills the earth and destiny is whatever survives, so whatever is is right. That's what passed through my mind. "You'd have to pack a gun. Does that scare you?" "Me? Of course not," I said. "Not that part of it." I reflected in my private mind that I must have holes in my head like a colander not to refuse. Was I so flattered by the chance to be with this giant historical personality, speeding around the mountains? The car would rush like mad. The wild beasts would flee. The terrible earth would turn around. And he would be silent to me on his thoughts of nations and destiny. The lost world would call after us with secret voice, and behind us there would be a Jeam of international killers pursuing and waiting for their chance. "Sometimes I wonder," I said, "if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn't make sure first that they can defend themselves." "That's not a good point of view," said Frazer. "No? Maybe. It's just a thought." "Will you do it?" "You feel I'm the right sort of guy for it?" "We need somebody who looks very American." "I guess I could spare some time," I said, "if it doesn't take too long." "A few weeks, just to shake off Mink and his men." He went away, and I was sitting in the garden where the lizards were tickling in the grass and there was a choke of gorgeous color by the birds along the hot walls. The gods stood or lay and persisted in their gray volcano illustrations of what the forces of life are. Paslavitch was playing Chopin upstairs. My next idea was how nothing was more dreadful than to be forced by another to feel his persuasion as to how horrible it is to exist, how deathly to hope, and taste the same despair. How of all the impositions this was the worst imposition. Not just to be as they make you but to feel as they dictate. If you didn't have o. ' 417 the strongest alliance you surely would despair at last and your mouth would drink blood. Paslavitch came out on his balcony in his blue bathrobe and asked meekly if I wanted a drink. "Okay," I said. I was very worried about this whole scheme. But it fell through, and when it did I was very glad. I had been in a clutch about it and lost sleep dreaming how we would chase from town to town all the way through Jalisco or out into the deserts. But the Old Man vetoed this. I wanted to send him a letter telling him how smart I thought he was, but then I thought it wouldn't be right for me to discuss secrets of his political activity. He must certainly have given a scream when they propositioned him on it. Anyhow, I felt now that there was something about the effect of Mexico on me, that I couldn't hold my own against it any more and had better get back to the States. Paslavitch lent me two hundred pesos and I bought my ticket to Chicago. He was affected a lot by my going and told me many times in French that he would miss me. Likewise, I'm sure. He was a very decent guy. You don't meet so many such.