The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [22]
CHAPTER XXIII
If the great Andromeda galaxy had to depend on you to hold it up, where would it be now but fallen way to hell? Why, March, let the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come (S. T. Coleridge) summon its giants and mobilizers, Caesars and Atlases. But you! you pitiful recruit, where do you come in? Go on, marry a loving wife and settle at March's farm and academy, and don't get in the way when the nations are furiously raging together. My friend, I said, speaking to myself, relax and knock off effort. The time is in the hands of mighty men to whom you are like the single item in the mind of the chief of a great Sears, Roebuck Company, and here come you, wishing to do right and not lead a disappointed life (sic!). However, my conscience had already decided. I was committed and couldn't stay, and at last the hour struck. There was a windy, flattening rain that beat the smoke down, the whole city sodden and black, the pillars of La Salle Street Station weeping. Clem said to me, "Don't push your luck. Don't take a risk with the clap. Don't tell your secrets to anybody to satisfy their curiosity. Don't get married without a sixmonth engagement. If you get in dutch I can always spare you a few bucks." I put in for the Purser's and Pharmacist's Mate's School, and the^ took my application. For a while I had a wrangle with a psychiatrist fellow. Why had I indicated with an X that I was a bed-wetter? I insisted my bed was always dry. "But here's the X opposite the question in the Yes column." Didn't he realize, I said, that in filling out twenty questionnaires and taking five examinations after thirty hours without sleep on the train a man might make a single slip? "But why this slip, not another?" he said cunningly. I began to hate him very much, sitting there on his cool white fanny while his lazy eyes arrived at unpleasant conclusions about me. I said, "Do you want me to confess that I do wet the bed even though it's not so? Or do you mean that I'd like to wet the bed?" He told me I had an aggressive character. Anyway, before I could start at the school, they sent us away on a training cruise in Chesapeake Bay. We sailed up and down through nickering heat. The ship was a many-decked old contraption from Mc Kinley's time. White, an iron, floury, adrift bakery, it wallowed wide and aimless all week. The white ferries with Dixie pillars passed us by, very elegant. Or the flattop whales that had planes like kids' jacks on the deck, and monstrous hair-stuffing smoke came from their sides. We did fire-fighting and abandon-ship drills eight or ten times a day. The boats crashed down from the davits; the trainees poured into them from manlines and cargo nets, rambunctious, mauling and horsing around, prodding with boat hooks, goosing and carrying on, screaming about female genitals. Then rowed. Hours and hours of rowing. The water curled like a huge bed of endive. Between times you could bask on the fantail of this painted old vertical bakery, and crates, spoiled lettuces, oranges, turds, and little crabs followed on the stream or departed. The sky enamel, the sun with gold spindles. It makes me think of the picture of the fools with fish and cake and the boaters with soup-ladle oars in the painting of the old master Hieronymus B.--this idle craft with the excursion strummers, roast chicken trussed in a tree; death's head in the little twigs above. Other scenes too: eegs spitted on knives trotting with tiny feet; men inside oyster shells carried to a cannibal banquet. Herring, meat, and other belly-goods. But, all the same, human eyes were looking out. Up to no good, maybe, but how do you know? Or the rich kings at Bethlehem. Joseph by a fire of sticks. But off in the meadow, what goes on? A wolf bleeding at a knife wound eating the swineherd who struck him, and someone else dashing like mad for the goofy towers of the city, the potato-masher castles and the pots, double-boilers, and smokehouses of habitations. We ate plenty: flapjacks, chops, ham, spuds, steak, chili con and rice, ice cream, pie. Everybody talked about the chow, discussed the menus, and remembered home recipes. Saturday we put in at Baltimore where the tramps of the port were waiting on Clap Hill, and the denominations with printed verses. There was mail call. Simon had been turned down for service because of a bad ear. "A way out I could've used," he said. Clem wasn't doing well at his new business. There were two letters from Sophie Geratis, now with her husband at Camp Blanding. She said farewell but kept saying it in different letters. From Einhom there was a mimeographed mes469 sage to his friends in the service, full of corny sentiment and comedy. In a personal note he added that Dingbat was a soldier in New Guinea, driving a jeep, and that he himself was ailing. And so, more weeks of captivity on this cruise, back and forth over the bay; the same endive waves and blare of public-address system, horseplay in the head, boat drills, brine, heavy meals, sun, hell-raising, and this continual whanging away on a few elements so as to deafen you. At last we were returned to Sheepshead, and I started to study bookkeeping and ship's doctoring. The science part consoled me. As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay. Sylvester was in New York. Also Stella Chesney, the girl I had helped escape in Mexico. Of course I went to see her first. On my first liberty I phoned her, and she said to come right over. So I bought a bottle of wine and the delicacies of the season and went; and of course I told myself I could use the dough she owed me and what not, but I ought to have known myself better than that. What use was war without also love? The place where she lived seemed to be among dress factories, silent on Saturday. As I climbed the stairs I was very excited. But I warned myself not to think we could take up where we had stopped at Cuernavaca. Oliver being in jail, chances were that there was someone else. But there was the object of these wicked thoughts with a warm healthy face, looking innocent and happy to see me. What a beauty! My heart whanged without pity for me. I already saw myself humbled in the dust of love, the god Eros holding me down with his foot and forcing all kinds of impossible stuff on me. She made the same impression on me that she had made the first time when I saw her on the little porch above the Carta Blanca beer shield with bulge-eyed Oliver and the two friends. Then I thought of her in the lace dress she wore in court the time Oliver socked Louie Fu. Then in the mountains under the tarpaulin when her dress and petticoat went up so fast. And there were those same legs above me. They were bare, I saw, by the white of the skylight and the reflection of the green carpet. "Well, if it isn't a pleasure," she said and put out her hand. I was all dressed up in my brand-new government goods, and as I walked I felt upon me the skivvies and socks, new shoes and tight jumper and pants. To say nothing of the white cap and the embroidery of anchors on the sailor collar. "You didn't tell me you were drafted. What a surprise!" "When I look, I'm surprised myself," I said. But what I really thought of was whether to kiss her. It suddenly came back to me, to my cheek itself, what the sensation of her lips had been like in the hot market place. My face heated now. Finally I decided I'd better speak my mind, and I told her, "I can't decide whether it would be right to kiss you." "Please! Don't create a problem." She laughed, meaning that I should. I put my lips on the side of her face, exactly as she had done to me, and I flushed instantaneous as electricity. She colored too, pleased that I had done it. Was she not so simple and free of ulterior motives as she looked? Well, neither was I. We sat down to talk. She wanted to know about me. "What do you do?" she asked. When not a rich young beauty's friend, nor an eagletamer nor poker player, was what she meant. "I've had a hard time deciding just what I should do. But now I think I was cut out to be a teacher. I want to get a place of my own and have a family. I'm tired of knocking around." "Oh, you like children? You'd make a good father." I thought it was very nice of her to say so. I wanted to offer her everything I had, suddenly. Glorious constructions began to rise in my mind, golden and complicated. Maybe she would give up whatever life she was leading for my sake. If she had another man maybe she'd quit him. Maybe he'd be killed in an automobile accident. Maybe he'd go back to his wife and children. You perhaps know yourself what such vain imaginings can be .0 ye charitable gods, don't hold it against me! My heart was beginning to bake. I couldn't see her straight; she dazed me. She wore velvet houseshoes, with ties; her dark hair was piled three ways; she had on an orange skirt. Her eyes looked soft and gentle. I wondered if she could look so fresh without having a lover and bothered myself about it. I should hope!--about the father part, I mean. And what did she do? Well, it was hard to get a clear account. She mentioned various things unfamiliar to me. Women's colleges, musical career, stage career, painting. From college there were books; from music, piano, etcetera; from the theater inscribed photos, also a sewing machine of spidery castiron, circa 1910, which I connected with costumes; her pictures were on the walls--flowers, oranges, bedsteads, nudes in the bath. She talked about getting on the radio and mentioned the USO and Stage-Door Canteen. I did my best to follow. \ 471 "You like my house?" she said. It wasn't a house but a room, a parlor, high, long, and old-fashioned, with archduke moldings of musical instruments and pears. Plants, piano, a big decorative bed, fishes, a cat and dog. The dog was a heavy breather--he was getting on in years. The cat played around her ankles and scratched them; I quickly walloped him with a newspaper, but she didn't like that. He sat on her shoulder, and when she said, "Kiss, Ginger--kiss, kiss," he licked her face. Over the way were dress factories. Scraps of material floated and waved from the wire window guards. Planes with powerful rotary noise cut the blue air clear from Britain to California. She served the wine I brought. I drank and my head gave a throb in its injured place. Then I became very heated and filled with amorous anxiety. But I thought, There's her pride to consider. I wanted to get away from her in Cuemavaca. Why should she believe I'm falling for her now? And maybe I shouldn't fall. What if she's the Cressida type, as Einhom used to call Cissy F.? "I still intend to pay you the money you were so kind as to lend me," she said. "No, please, I didn't come for that." "But you probably need it now." "Why, I haven't even touched my last month's pay." "My father sends me an allowance from Jamaica. That's where he is. Of course I can't live on it. I haven't done any too well recently." This was not a complaint but sounded as though soon she'd do better. "Oliver set me back. I depended on him. I thought I was in love with him. Did you love that girl you were with?" "Yes," I said. I'm glad I didn't lie, I may say. "She must have hated me like poison." "She married a captain out in the Pacific."., "I'm sorry." "Oh no, don't be. It's been over for quite a while." "I felt in the wrong afterward. But you were the only person who would have helped me. And I never thought--" "I'm glad I was able to help. As far as that goes, I came out way ahead." "It's nice of you to say so. But you know--now that it's finished you won't care if I say it--I thought we were in the same boat. Everybody said how she--" "Went hunting without me. I know." I hoped she wouldn't mention Talavera.... "You got into trouble without knowing it, the way I did. Maybe you deserved it though--like me. It served me right. I was on my way to Hollywood with him. Mexico was just a side trip; he was going to make a star of me. Wasn't that ridiculous?" "No, it wasn't. You'd make a first-rate star. But how could Oliver do that to you when he knew he was going to jail?" "He put it over easily because for a while I was in love." It went to my head when she spoke that word. I was constructing higher and higher, up to the top spheres, and simultaneously committing a dozen crimes to achieve my end. The cat scratched my hand as it swung by the chair. I thought I was going to have a nosebleed also, from passion. One minute I felt gross and swollen, and the next my soul was up there concertizing among her brilliant sister souls. "Or worse than ridiculous," said she, pointedly. Worse? Oh, how she paid her way, did she mean? She didn't have to say that. It pained me that she should feel such explanations necessary. I certainly was lucky to be seated; my legs wouldn't have kept me up. "Why, what's the matter?" she said in her warmhearted voice. I begged her not to make fun, please. I said, "When I was covered with bandages and playing poker at the Chinaman's, how could you' think we were in the same boat?" "I'm sure you remember how we looked at each other that day in the bar where they had that monkey thing." "The kinkajou." Crossing her hands in her lap and bringing her knees together around them--which I admired and wished she would, however, not do--she said, "Nobody should pretend to be always one hundred per cent honest. I wish I knew how to be seventy, sixty per cent." I swore she must be one hundred and ten, two hundred. Then I said something I didn't expect myself. I said, "Nobody should be a mystery intentionally. Unintentionally is mysterious enough." "I'll try not to be. With you, anyway." She was sincere. I knew it. I saw how her throat suddenly grew full. My body, which is maybe all I am, this effortful creature, felt subject to currents and helpless. I wanted to go and hug her by the legs, but I thought I'd better wait. For why should I assume it would be right? Because I felt like? I said, "I suppose you see how I'm getting to feel about you. If I'm making a mistake, you'd better tell me." "A mistake? Why do you say that?" "Well, in the first place," I said, "I haven't been here long. You'll think I'm in too much of a hurry." './ "And the second place? What makes you speak so slowly?" Was I speaking in an unusual way? I didn't even know it. "In the second, I feel I did wrong in Cuemavaca by going back." "Maybe you can do right this time," she said. Then I dropped to the ground and hugged her legs. She bent to kiss me. I would have hurried, but her idea was to be slower. She said, "We'd better shut the animals in the kitchen." She collared the dog, I lifted up the cat from underneath, and we put them there. The kitchen door was fastened with a bent nail, having no knob or hook. Then she took the cover from the bed and we helped each other to undress. "What are you saying to yourself?" she whispered when we lay down. I wasn't aware that I was saying anything. I was afraid she would bump her head against the wall and tried to cover it with my hands, which she then understood, and helped me. I was hungry and kissed her wherever my mouth could reach, till she kept my lip in her teeth and drew on me, drew on me. Nothing could be put over by effort any more, and there was nothing to try. Was she a vain person, or injurious or cynical, it couldn't make any difference now. Or was I a foolish, uncorrected, blundering, provisional, unreliable man, this was taken away as of no account and couldn't have any sense or meaning. The real truth about one or the other was simpler than any such description. I told her I loved her. It was true. I felt I had come to the end of my trouble and hankering, and it was conclusive. As we lay in bed kissing, whispering, and loving all weekend long, the air was strong and blue outside, the sun was splendid and sailed around handsome and haughty. We got up only to take the dog, Harry, to the roof. The cat walked on the covers over the bed and kneaded us with its paws. The only people we saw were two old guys playing pinochle on a cutting table of the dress factory over the way. However, Monday morning I had to be back at the base. She woke me in the middle of the night and got me dressed and went down with me to the subway. I kept asking, Would she marry me? She said, "You want all your troubles to be over all of a sudden and you're so anxious for it you may be making a mistake." This was just before dawn, by the descent-into-hell stairs of the .474" -.,, subway, just under the Eastern vault of wired glass, and the blackout light like a dumb posy on its thick iron. So by this blue illumination we were kissing with loving faces until it began to drizzle and her slippers got wet. "Darling, go home," I said. "Will you phone me?" "Every chance I get. Do you love me?" "Of course I love you." Every time she said this I was so moved that happy gratitude poured over me down to my very feet while my back-hair prickled. Like when you're swimming in the pleasure of the sea and feel some contact come up behind. All the deep breathes like silent concertinas and the shore is gay with stripes and bunting. Finally I had to go down into the tunnel and take a train. I couldn't see her for five days. And meantime I didn't dare fall behind in the Purser's School or tangle with a master-at-arms and lose my next liberty. Every evening I went down by the sea where the phone booths were; and she was often out, having a busy life. I had a terrible fear that she had spent the weekend with me out of friendliness alone, or so that I would understand better what should have happened in the mountains that night. If this was so, I was sunk, for by now I was more in love than-I could stand, as if some mineral had got into my veins and arteries and I ached, flesh and bones, the way you will on the verge of the grippe. All week the freighters groaned in from the sea, while Coney Island was wrapped in gray or lilac fog and I sat with a suffering spirit of love in the phone booth after evening chow trying to do my lessons and waiting for her to answer. I was afraid I was too much of a latecomer and had nothing to expect. In which case I was ruined, because everything now depended on her. On Saturday, in a fever, I got off the base as soon as the usual parade shenanigans were over. What a state I was in! When I rode over the bridge from Brooklyn suspended on those heaven-hung struts over the brick valleys, then the fiery flux of harbor water, the speedy gulls, the battleships open like vast radio sets in the yards, beast-horns of Hengist and Horsa, and then the tunnel again, I felt that if I had to continue to ride and ride I would certainly not last but would give out. But there was no need to be scared, for Stella was waiting. She had been sick all week because I wasn't there, running a temperature, wondering did I love her. She cried when we were in bed, with her hands pressed on my back and her breasts against me. She said that when she saw me in front of the cathedral from the balcony of the bar where the Carta Blanca shield was hung she fell in love with me. She didn't even need the money she borrowed from me at Cuemavaca but took it as a means of keeping in touch. As for Oliver-- "What's it to me what happened with Oliver? It's none of my business," I said. "I want to get married." Clem had urged me to be engaged for six months, in view of my personality and make-up. But this advice was good for people who were merely shopping, not for someone who had lived all his life with one great object. "Of course," she said, "I want to get married if you love me." I deeply assured her. "If you still love me after lunch," she said, "ask me again." She brought the lunch to me in bed, which was a bed she had bought at an auction, ivory colored and painted with wreaths and Arcadia roses. It came from Bavaria. Well, she served me here, and wouldn't even let me butter my own bread. As if I was the Elector, I got waited on hand and foot, and in turn I gave the animal staff ham trimmings and leftovers. She felt obliged to tell me all she could about herself. "I buy a ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes every year," she said. I could see nothing objectionable in this. r- "Also I'm a mystic, a Gurdjieff follower." This was a new one on me. She showed me a picture of this old boy, a shayed head, deep eyes, and mustachios of the old school of Crimean fighter. I saw no special harm in him. What else? She spent lots of money on clothes. This I could see; her closets were stuffed with dresses. But I didn't bother my head about it. Since she went along with me in my scheme for the fosterhome and academy, and she enthusiastically did, what difference could her wardrobe make? In fact, I was proud that she was so elegant. Also she owed money, she said. "Why, darling, don't worry, we'll pay everybody. C'est la moindre des chases, as they say on the other side." When I was loved and sitting in a fine bed like this, I was just like royalty and disposed-of all matters with a word. We decided to get married as soon as I graduated from Sheepshead.