The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [8]
CHAPTER X
When evening came on we were tearing out of Gary and toward South Chicago, the fire and smudge mouth of the city gorping to us. As the flamy bay shivers for home-coming Neapolitans. You enter your native water like a fish. And there sits the great fish god or Dagon. You then bear your soul like a minnow before Dagon, in your familiar water. I knew I wasn't coming back to peace and an easy time. In rising order of difficulty, there'd be the Polish housekeeper, always crabbing about money; next Mama, certain to feel my unreliability; and Simon who'd have been storing up something for me. I was ready to hear hard words from him; I felt I deserved some for going off on this trip. I also had a few to answer with, about the telegram. But I wasn't approaching the usual kind of family fight with its hot feelings and wrangled-out points; it was something different and much worse. A new, strange Polish woman who spoke no English came to the door. I thought the old housekeeper had quit and this one had replaced her, but it was odd how the new woman had filled the kitchen with bleeding hearts, crucifixes, and saints. Of course, if she had to have them in her place of work, Mama couldn't see them anyhow. But there were also little children, and I wondered if Simon had taken in an entire family; and then, from the way the woman kept me standing, I began to grasp that this was no longer our flat, and an older girl wearing the dress of St. Helen's parochial school came to tell me that her father had bought the furniture and taken over the flat from the man who owned it. That was Simon. "But isn't my mother here any more? Where's my mother?" "The blind lady? She's downstairs by the neighbors." The Kreindls had put her in Kotzie's room, which had only a small window with bars on the passage where people ducked through the brick subterranean vault on a shortcut through the alley or stopped to take a leak. Since she could only just distinguish light from dark and didn't need a view, you couldn't say on that score it was an unkindness to have been put there. The deep kitchen cuts in her palms had never softened out, and I felt them when she took my hands and said in her cracky voice, queerer than ever just then, "Did you hear about Grandma?" "No, what?" "She died." "Oh no!" That was a shaft! It went straight and cold into my bowels, and I couldn't bring up my back or otherwise move, but sat bent over. Dead! Horrible, to imagine the old woman dead, in a casket, underground, with the face covered and weight thrown on her, silent. My heart shrunk before the idea of this violence. Because it would have had to be violent. She, who always tore off interferences as she did that dentist's hand, would have had to be smothered. For all her frailty she was a hard fighter. But she fought when clothed and standing up, alive. And now it was necessary to picture her captured and pulled down into the grave, and lying still. That was too much for me. My grates couldn't hold it. I shed tears with my sleeve over my eyes. "What did she die of, Ma, and when?" She didn't know. A few days ago, before she had moved down, Kreindl had told her, and she had been in mourning ever since. According to her notions of how she should mourn. All that she had in this vault of a room was a bed and chair. Well, I tried to find out from Mrs. Kreindl why Simon had done this. As it was suppertime, Mrs. Kreindl was at home. Usually she was away, afternoons, playing poker with other housewives; they played in earnest, for blood. How she had the repose of a big sheep, don't ask me, since she was always in a secret fever from gambling and from warring with her husband. She couldn't tell me anything about Simon. Was it to get married that he had sold everything? He had been desperate, before I left, about marrying Cissy. But the furniture was old stuff, and how much would the Pole have paid for it? What would anyone give for that cripple kitchen stove? Or for the beds, even older; and the leatherette furniture we used to slide and rock on when we were kids? This stuff went back to the time of Rameses' Americana set, to the last century. Maybe my father had bought the furniture. All pain-causing reflections. Simon must have been in a terrible way for money to. have sold off all of that veteran metal and leather and left Mama in this cell with the Kreindls. I was empty with hunger as I questioned Mrs. Kreindl but couldn't apply to her for a meal, remembering her to be not very free about food. "Do you have any money, Mama?" I said. But all she had in her purse was a fifty-cent piece. "Well, it's a good idea for you to have some change," I told her, "in case you happen to want something, like gum drops or a Hershey bar." I'd have taken a buck from her if Simon had left her something, but I could make out a little longer without her last fifty-cent piece. To ask for it, I thought, would scare her, and that would be barbarous. Especially on top of Grandma's death. And she already was frightened, although, as when sick, she was upright in her posture and like waiting for the grief to come to a stop; as if this stop would be called by a conductor. She wouldn't discuss with me what Simon had done but clung rather to her own idea of it. To which she didn't wish me to add anything. I knew her. I stayed a little longer because I sensed she wanted it, but then I had to leave, and when I scraped back my chair she said, "You going? Where do you go?" This was a question about my absence when the flat was sold up. I couldn't answer it. "Why, I have that room on the South Side still that I told you about." "Are you working? You have a job?" "I always have something. Don't you know me? Don't worry, everything is going to be all right." Answering, I shunned her face a little, though there was no reason to, and felt my own face bitten as though it were a key, notched and filed out, some dishonorable, ill-purpose key. I headed for Einhom's, and on the boulevard, where the trees had begun to bud in the favorite purple of Chicago April evening, instilled with carbon and with the smells of crocodile beds of guck from the cleaned sewers, by the lamps of the synagogue, people were coming out in new coats and business hats, with square velvet envelopes for their prayer things. It was the first night of Passover, of the Angel of Death going through all doors not marked with blood to take away the life of the Egyptian first-born, and then the Jews trooping into the desert. I wasn't permitted to pass by; I was stopped by Coblin and Five Properties, who had seen me as I got into the street to walk around the crowd. They were on the curb, and Five Properties snatched me by the sleeve. "Look!" he said. "Who is in shut tonight!" Both were grinning, bathed-looking, in their best cleanliness and virile good condition. "Hey, guess what?" said Coblin. "What?" "Doesn't he know?" said Five Properties. "I don't know anything. I've been out of town and just got back." "Five Properties's getting married," said Coblin. "At last. Toi beauty. You ought to see the ring he's giving. Well, we're throuit with whores now, aren't we? Ah, boy, somebody's in for it!" "True?" "So help me the Uppermost," said Five Properties. "I invite you i my wedding, kid, a week from nex-t Sunday at the Lion's Club Hall. North Avenue, four o'clock. Bring a girl. I don't want you should ha's anything against me." "What is there to have against you?" "Well, you shouldn't. We're cousins, and I want you to come." "Happy days, man!" I said to him, doing my best, and thankful tte murk was so deep they couldn't see me well. Coblin began to draw me by the arm. He wanted me to come to tilt Seder dinner. "Come along. Come home." While I stunk of jail and before I had begun to digest my misei;' Before I found Simon? "No, some other time, thanks. Cob," I sai A going backwards. "But why not?" "Leave him, he's got a date. Have you got a date?" "As a matter of fact I do have to see somebody." "He's starting his horny time of life. Bring your little pussy to tti6 wedding." Cousin Hyman still smiled, but he thought probably of his daughttf and so didn't urge me more; he clammed up. In Einhorn's door I met Bavatsky as he descended to replace a fuse Tillie had blown it with her curling iron, and, upstairs, one worn?1'1 hobbled and the other just as slow from weight and uncertainty aj" preached with candles and so recalled to me a second time it was til6 night of Exodus. But there was no dinner or ceremony here. Einhof11 observed only one holy day, Yom Kippur, and only because Kara?' Holloway, his wife's cousin, insisted. "What happened to that drunken- wart Bavatsky?" "He couldn't get to the fuse box because the cellar was locked, sf he went to fetch the key from the janitor's wife," said Mildred. "If she has beer in the house we go to bed in the dark tonight." Suddenly Tillie Einhorn, with candle in a saucer, saw me by tt16 flame. "Look, it's Augie," she said. "Augie? Where?" said Einhom, quickly glancing between the ur' even sizes of light. "Augie, where are you? I want to see you." apply to her for a meal, remembering her to be not very free about food. "Do you have any money, Mama?" I said. But all she had in her purse was a fifty-cent piece. "Well, it's a good idea for you to have some change," I told her, "in case you happen to want something, like gum drops or a Hershey bar." I'd have taken a buck from her if Simon had left her something, but I could make out a little longer without her last fifty-cent piece. To ask for it, I thought, would scare her, and that would be barbarous. Especially on top of Grandma's death. And she already was frightened, although, as when sick, she was upright in her posture and like waiting for the grief to come to a stop; as if this stop would be called by a conductor. She wouldn't discuss with me what Simon had done but clung rather to her own idea of it. To which she didn't wish me to add anything. I knew her. I stayed a little longer because I sensed she wanted it, but then I had to leave, and when I scraped back my chair she said, "You going? Where do you go?" This was a question about my absence when the flat was sold up. I couldn't answer it. "Why, I have that room on the South Side still that I told you about." "Are you working? You have a job?" "I always have something. Don't you know me? Don't worry, everything is going to be all right." Answering, I shunned her face a little, though there was no reason to, and felt my own face bitten as though it were a key, notched and filed out, some dishonorable, ill-purpose key. I headed for Einhom's, and on the boulevard, where the trees had begun to bud in the favorite purple of Chicago April evening, instilled with carbon and with the smells of crocodile beds of guck from the cleaned sewers, by the lamps of the synagogue, people were coming out in new coats and business hats, with square velvet envelopes for their prayer things. It was the first night of Passover, of the Angel of Death going through all doors not marked with blood to take away the life of the Egyptian first-born, and then the Jews trooping into the desert. I wasn't permitted to pass by; I was stopped by Coblin and Five Properties, who had seen me as I got into the street to walk around the crowd. They were on the curb, and Five Properties snatched me by the sleeve. "Look!" he said. "Who is in shut tonight!" Both were grinning, bathed-looking, in their best cleanliness and virile good condition. "Hey, guess what?" said Coblin. "What?" "Doesn't he know?" said Five Properties. gs "I don't know anything. I've been out of town and just got back." "Five Properties's getting married," said Coblin. "At last. To a beauty. You ought to see the ring he's giving. Well, we're through with whores now, aren't we? Ah, boy, somebody's in for it!" "True?" "So help me the Uppermost," said Five Properties. "I invite you to my wedding, kid, a week from next Sunday at the Lion's Club Hall, North Avenue, four o'clock, firing a girl. I don't want you should have anything against me." "What is there to have against you?" "Well, you shouldn't. We're cousins, and I want you to come." "Happy days, man!" I said to him, doing my best, and thankful the murk was so deep they couldn't see me well. Coblin began to draw me by the arm. He wanted me to come to the Seder dinner. "Come along. Come home." While I stunk of jail and before I had begun to digest my misery? Before I found Simon? "No, some other time, thanks, Cob," I said, going backwards. "But why not?" "Leave him, he's got a date. Have you got a date?" "As a matter of fact I do have to see somebody." "He's starting his horny time of life. Bring your little pussy to the wedding." Cousin Hyman still smiled, but he thought probably of his daughter and so didn't urge me more; he clammed up. In Einhorn's door I met Bavatsky as he descended to replace a fuse. Tillie had blown it with her curling iron, and, upstairs, one woman hobbled and the other just as slow from weight and uncertainty approached with candles and so recalled to me a second time it was the night of Exodus. But there was no dinner or ceremony here. Einhom observed only one holy day, Yom Kippur, and only because Karas Holloway, his wife's cousin, insisted. "What happened to that drunken wart Bavatsky?" "He couldn't get to the fuse box because the cellar was locked, so he went to fetch the key from the janitor's wife," said Mildred. "If she has beer in the house we go to bed in the dark tonight." Suddenly Tillie Einhorn, with candle in a saucer, saw me by the flame. "Look, it's Augie," she said. "Augie? Where?" said Einhom, quickly glancing between the uneven sizes of light. "Augie, where are you? I want to see you." I came forward and sat by him; he shifted his shoulder in token of wanting to shake hands. "Tillie, go in the kitchen and make coffee. Mildred, you too." He sent them back into the dark kitchen. "And take the plug out of the curler. I go nuts with their electric appliances." "It is out," said Mildred, with a voice tired of, but always ready for, the duty of these answers. Obedient in the smallest point, however, she shut the doors, and I was alone with him. In his night court. At least I thought he was grimacing with strictness at me. He had shaken hands only to give me a formal feel of his fingers and of the depth of his coldness. And the candles were now as genial to me as though they had been the ones stuck into loaves of bread by night and sailed on a black Indian lake to find the drowned body sunk to the bottom. Now the white middle way of his hair was down near the plate glass of his desk as he fixed to get and light a cigaretteas ever, the methodical struggle and pulling of the arms by the sleeves, that transport of flies by the ants. Then he began to blow smoke and prepared to speak. I decided I couldn't allow myself to be chided like a kid of ten for the Joe German deal, of which he by now certainly knew. I had to talk to him about Simon. But then it seemed he wasn't going to lecture me at all. I must have looked too sicklow, gaunt, pushed to an extreme, burned. Last time we met I had had my Evanston fat on me; I had come to consult him about the adoption. "Well, you haven't been doing so well, it looks like." "No." "German was caught. How did you get away?" "By dumb luck." "Dumb? In a hot car, without even changing the plates! Talk about brainlessness! Well, they brought him back. The picture was in the Times. You want to see?" No, I didn't want to, for I knew what it would be like: between two hefty detectives and probably trying to tip his hat over his eyes as much as his held arms would allow, and spare his family direct eyes into the camera, or his plastered face. It was always like that. "How come it took you so long to get back?" said Einhorn. "I bummed, and I wasn't very lucky." "But why did you have to bum? Your brother told me he was sending you the money to Buffalo." "Why, did he come and tell you?" I creased my brow with effort. "You mean he tried to borrow from you?" "He got it from me. I made him another loan too." "What loan? I didn't get anything from him." "That's no good. I was stupid. I should have sent it to you myself. Beh?" He let out his tongue and his eyes went bright, looking surprised. "He took me--well, so he took. But he shouldn't have let you down. Especially since I gave it to him over and above what I lent him personally. Even if he was in bad shape that's too much." I was powerfully bitter and mad, but I felt an advance sway from a wave of something even worse, below the present depth. "What do you mean--in bad shape? Why was he raising money? What did he want?" "If he had told me for what I might have helped. I lent it to him because he is your brother; otherwise I hardly know the man. He went into a proposition with Nosey Mutchnik--the one I had that deal with in the lot. Remember? Now I could hold my own with him, but your brother is green. He took an interest in a betting pool, and the first game the White Sox played this season they told him he lost his share and if he wanted to stay in he'd have to bring another hundred bucks-- I have the whole story now. They took that from him too, and he got a sock in the teeth when he became hotheaded. Mutchnik's hooligans knocked him into the gutter. That's what happened. I suppose you know why he wanted to make a fast buck?" "Yes, to get married." "To get on top of Joe Flexner's daughter, who made him wild. He never will now.". "But why not? They're engaged." s "I begin to feel sorry for your brother, though he isn't very smart, and if I did drop seventy-eight bucks..." As I saw the anguishing thing of Simon knocked over and bloodied in the gutter, I only listened and didn't speak of Grandma's death, or the furniture, and Mama put out of the house. "Now she won't marry him," said Einhorn. "She won't? Tell me!" "Kreindl is the one I heard it from. He made a match for her with a relative of yours." "Not Five Properties--with him?" I shouted. "Your greenhorn cousin. It's going to be his hand that sets apart those fine legs." "Oh hell! No! They couldn't do that to Simon!" "They did." "And by now I guess he knows." "Does he! He went to Flexner's and started a riot, breaking chairs. JTbe girl went and locked herself in the toilet, and then the old man had to send for the police. The squad car came and got him." Arrested too! I suffered to myself for Simon. It was crazy, how. It crushed me to hear and picture. "Cynical quiff, ah?" Einhorn said. He wanted to bring it all home to me with his queer stare of severity. "Cressida going over to the Greek camp--" "And where's Simon, in jail still?" "No, old Flexner let the charge drop when he promised no more trouble. Flexner is a decent old man. He went broke owing nobody. He wouldn't have the heart. He's a sport too. They kept your brother one night and let him out this morning." "He spent last night in jail?" "One night, that's all," said Einhorn. "Now he's out." "Where is he though? Do you know?" "No. But I can tell you you won't find him at home." Kreindl had told him about Mama, and he was preparing to let me hear all; but I said I had already been home. I sat before him stripped; I knew of nowhere to turn and had no force to leave. Till now, as a family, we had had some privacy, even if it was known that we were deserted as kids and on Charity. In Grandma's time nobody, not even the caseworker Lubin, was informed exactly about us. At the free dispensary I'd go and do my guile not just on account of the money but so we should have some power of guidance over ourselves. Now there were no secrets, so anybody interested could look. This maybe was the consideration which made me not say to Einhorn what was the cruelest thing of all, that Grandma was dead. "I'm sorry for you; especially for your mother," Einhorn started out, trying to raise me up. "Your brother got ahead of himself. Too inspired by tail. What got him so hot?" In part I thought this question came from envy that anyone should be subject to such inspirations and heat. . But also, on this side, Einhorn couldn't be altogether unsympathetic. Gradually, talking, he lost view of his first aim, which was to comfort me, and he got so bitter he tried to curl his fists inward and breasted the desk. "Why should you care if your brother gets a rupe up the behind!" he said. "He deserves it. He left you in a hole, he sold the flat, he got the money out of me because of you and you didn't smell a dime of it. If you were honest with yourself you'd be glad. You'd do yourself some good by saying so, and I'd respect you more for it." "Say what? That it's all his fault and I'm glad of that? That falling in love made him not care what happened to Mama? Or just that he's miserable? What am I supposed to be glad about, Einhom? "Don't you realize the advantage you have from now on? You'd better not be easy on him. He's got to make it right to you. The advantage has passed to you, and you've got him by the balls. Don't you understand that? And if there's only one thing you can get out of this right now it's to admit at least that you're happy he caught it in the neck. Jesus! if anybody did this to me I'd certainly have satisfaction knowing he was good and burned himself. If I didn't, I'd worry I wasn't clear in my head. Good for him! Good, good!" I'm not sure why Einhorn worked over me with such savagery approaching waked-up despair. He even forgot to raise hell about Joe German. I guess, back of it, that he thought of Dingbat's inheritance which he had run into the ground. Maybe he didn't want me to be despised as he somewhat despised Dingbat for not being angry. No, there was even more to the view he was driving so strongly, though sprawl-handed, against the desk. He intended that, as there were no more effective prescriptions in old ways, as we were in dreamed-out or finished visions, that therefore, in the naked form of the human jelly, one should choose or seize with force; one should make strength from disadvantages and make progress by having enemies, being wrathful or terrible; should hammer on the state of being a brother, not be oppressed by it; should have the strength of voice to make other voices fall silent--the same principle for persons as for peoples, parties, states. This, and not a man-chick, plucked and pinched, with scraggle behind and anxious face full of sorrow-wrinkles, human fowl chased by brooms. Now the lights began to twitter as Bavatsky fiddled in the fuse box, and it was discovered that instead of considering this as I should have been, I was bawling. I think Einhom was disappointed and maybe even shocked; shocked, I mean, by his misjudgment of my fitness to follow him in his shooting trajectory into what a soul should be. He gave me chilly gentleness such as he might have offered a girl. "Don't worry, we'll work something out for your mother," he said, for he seemed to think it was mainly that. He didn't know I was mourning Grandma too. 'Blow out these candles. Tillie's bringing coffee and sandwiches. You can sleep with Dingbat tonight, and tomorrow we'll start on something." Next day I hunted for Simon and couldn't locate him; he hadn't been "ack to see Mama. I did find Kreindl at home, however, as he sat at a late breakfast of smoked fish and rolls. He said to me, "Sit down and catch a bite." "I see you finally found a bride for my cousin," said I to the cockeyed old artilleryman, observing how the short, sufficient muscles of his forearms were operating in the skinning of the golden little fish and how the scabbards of his jaw were moving. "A beauty. Such tsitskies! But don't blame me, Augie. I don't force anybody. Zwing keinem. Especially a pair of proud tsitskies like that. Do you know anything about young ladies? I should hope! Well, when a girl has things like that nobody can tell her what to do. There's where your brother made his mistake, because he tried. I'm sorry for him." He whispered, mounting his eyes to make sure his wife was at a distance, "This girl makes my little one stand up. At my age. And salute! Anyways, she's too independent for a young fellow. She needs an older man, a cooler head who can say yes and do no. Otherwise she could ruin you. And maybe Simon is too young to marry. I've known you since you both was snot-noses. Pardon, but it's true. Now you're big, so you're hungry, and you think you're ready to marry, but what's the hurry? You got plenty of jig-jig ahead of you before you settle down. Take it! Take, take if they give you! Never refuse. To come together with a peepy little woman who sings in your ear. It's the life of the soul!" He argued this to me with a squeeze of his awkward eyes, the old pimp and egger-on; he even made me smile, and I was in no mood for smiling. "Besides," said he, "you can see what kind of a man your brother is, that when he gets it in his mind he can sell the goods of the house and put his mother out." I expected him to mention this and pass from defense to the practical matter of Mama's support. In the past Kreindl had always been a kind enough neighbor, but we couldn't expect him to keep Mama. Especially as Simon now had him down as one of his chief enemies. Furthermore, I couldn't let her stay in that brick vault, and I told Kreindl I'd make other arrangements for her. I went to appeal to Lubin, at the Charity, on gloomy Wells Street. Lubin had always visited us as a sort of distant foster-uncle, formerly. In his office, to my maturer eyes, he came out differently. Something in his person argued what the community that contributed the money wanted us poor bastards to be: sober, dutiful, buttoned, clean, sad, moderate. The sadness and confusion of the field he was in made him sensible. Only a certain heaviness of breath that drew notice to the thickness of his nostrils gave you a sense of difficulty and, next, one of the labor of being patient. I made note in this broad man of the tame ape-nature promoted to pants and offices. This is the opposite of that disfigured image of God that fails away by its sin from Eden; or of the ame bad copy excited and inflamed by promise of grace to recover its sacredness and golden stature. Lubin's belief was that he didn't fall from Paradise but rose from the caves. But he was a good man, and this is no slander of, him, but merely his own view. When I told him Simon and I had to find a home for Mama he doubtless thought we were getting rid of everyone--Georgie first, then Grandma, and now Mama. Therefore I said, "It's only temporary, till we set on our feet, and then we'll have another flat and housekeeper for her." But he took this very aridly, which wasn't to be wondered at, considering the tramp appearance I made, in the wrack of my good clothes, inflamed at the eyes, and looking garbage-nourished. However, he said he could get her into a Home for the blind on Arthington Street if we could pay part of the cost. It came to fifteen bucks a month. That was as good as I could expect. Also he sent me with a note to an employment bureau, but there was nothing doing at the time. I went to my room on the South Side and took most of my clothes to hock, the tuxedo, sports clothes, and hound's-tooth coat. I pawned them and I got Mama established, and then started to hunt work. Being as they say up against it and au pied du mur, I took the first job that came, and I've never had one that was more curious. Einhom got it for me through Karas-Holloway, who had a financial interest in the business. It was a luxury dog service on North dark Street, among the honkytonks and hock shops, antique stores and dreary beaneries. In the morning I drove out in a station wagon along the Gold Coast to pick up the dogs, at the back doors of mansions or up the service elevators of lakeshore apartment hotels, and I brought the animals back to this club joint--it was called a club. The chief was a Frenchman, a dog-coiffeur or groom or mattre de chiens; he was rank and rough, from Place Clichy near the foot of Montmartre, and from what he told me he had been a wrestler's shill in the carnivals there while studying this other profession. Some ways his face was short of humanity, by its energetic stiffness and abruptness of color, like an injection. His relation with the animals was a struggle. He was trying to wrest something from them. I don't know what. Perhaps that their conception of a dog should be what his was. He was on the footing of Xenophon's Ten Thousand in Persia, here in Chicago; for he washed and ironed his own shirts, did his own marketing, and cooked his own meals in his beaverboard quarters in a corner of this doggish place--his lab, kitchen, and bedroom. I realize much etter now what it means to be a Frenchman abroad, how irregular G 185 everything must appear, and not simply abroad but on North dark Street. We were located in no mere firetrap but had two stories of a fairlv new modern building just off the Gold Coast, not far from the scene of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and, for that matter, from the Humane Society on Grand Avenue. It was the great feature of this outfit, I say, paid for by the subscribers, that it was a club for class that the pets were entertained as well as steamed, massaged, nianicured clipped, that they were supposed to be taught manners and tricks. The fee was twenty dollars a month, and no shortage of dogs; more in fact than Guillaume could handle, and he had to fight the front office continually, which wanted to go beyond capacity. The club w^s already as hell-deep as dogs' throats could scrape it; the Cerberus slaver-choke turmoil was at the full when I came in from the last pick-up and chansed from truck livery to rubber boots and ponchos; the racket made the skylight glass shiver. Organization was marvelous, however. Guillaume had real know-how; and let people go a little and they'll build you an Escuria). The enormous noise, as of Grand Central, was only the protest of chaos coming up against regulation--the trains got off on time" the dogs got their treatment. ' Though Guillaume used the hypo more than I thought he should. He gave piqures for everything, and charged it extra. He'd say, "Cette chienne est galeuse--this is a mangy bitch!" and in with the needle. Moreover, he'd give a drop of dope to the savage ones whenever organization was threatened, yelling, "Thees jag-off is goin' to get it!" Consequently I carried home some pretty wan dogs, and it wasn't easy to come up a flight of stairs with a sleeping boxer or shepherd and explain to the colored cook that he was only tuckered out from playing and pleasure. Dogs in heat Guillaume wouldn't tolerate either. "Grue! En chasse!" Then he'd say to me anxiously, "Did anything 'appen in the back?" But since I had been driving, how was I to know? He was furious with the owners, especially if the animal was a chienne de race, and its aristocracy was not respected, and he wanted the office to slap an extra charge on them for letting them into the club in this State. Any pedigree made a courtier of him, and he could call on a very high manner, if he wanted to, and get his lips into a tight suppressive line of dislike to baseness--the opposite to breeding. He had the staff come over, two Negro boys and me, to show us the fine points of the aninial, and I will say for Guillaume that his idea was to run an atelier and to act like master in a guild, so that when he got a good poodle to trim it Was downtools for us while he demonstrated; there was then a spell of good feel186 "no and regard for him and for the lamb-docile, witty, small animal. Oh, it wasn't always vexation or the snapping and bickering of little dogs to which Marcus Aurelius compares the daily carryings on of men, though I once in a while see what he was getting at. But there's a dog harmony also, and to be studied by dog eyes, many of them, has its illumination too. Only the work fatigued me, and I stunk of dog. People would move from me on the streetcar, as they do from the hoof-and-hides stockyards' man, or give me round-eye glares and draw down their mouths on the mobbed Cottage Grove line. Furthermore, there was something Pompeian that I minded about the job--the opulence for dogs, and then their ways that reflected civilized mentality, spoiled temperaments of favorites, mirrors of neuroticism. Plus the often needling thought that their membership fee in the club was more than I had to pay for Mama in the Home. All this together once in a while got me down. From my neglected self-betterment I had additional pricks. I should be more ambitious. Often I looked for vocational hints in magazines, and I considered training at night school to become a court reporter, should I have the aptitude, and even going back to the university for something bigger. And then I not seldom had Esther Fenchel on my mind, since I moved around the dog-owning height of society. I never had a back-door glimpse of it without a twinge of the soul for her sake, and similar childishness. The sun of that childishness goes on shining even when the larger bodies of hotter stars have risen to smelt you and cover you with their influence. The recenter stars may be more critical, more in the eye, but that earlier sun still remains a long time. I had some spells of adoring-sickness, and then I had deeper pangs of sex, later; from service with animals maybe. The street too was aphrodisiac, the honkytonks and titty photos, legs with sequins. Plus Guillaume's girl friend, who was a great work of ripple-assed luxury with an immense mozzarella bust, a middle-aged lady who'd go straight to bed and wait for him just as we started to close up shop in the evening, soughing in there like a white stout tree. But there wasn't much I could do about my needs. I was too strapped by money to chase. 'Though I risked running into the Renlings in that neighborhood, I went to Evanston to look for my friend Willa at the Symington, but she had quit to get married. As I returned on the El I was engrossed in thoughts of marriage bed, of Five Properties' behavior with Cissy, and of my brother's losing his head when he thought of their nuptials and honey Simon meanwhile stayed away from me and didn't answer the mes187 sages I left with Mama and elsewhere. I knew he must be in a bad way. He wasn't giving any money to Mama, and folks who saw him told me how beat he looked. So his keeping to himself, in some hole of a room like mine, or worse, was understandable; he never before had had to approach me abashed, owing explanations and excuses, and wasn't going to do it now. With my last message to him I enclosed five bucks. He took this fin all right, but I didn't hear from him till he was able to repay it, and that was some months later. One possession of mine that was saved from the sale of the furniture was the damaged set of Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf that Einhorn gave me after his fire. I had it with me in my room and read at it when I could. And I was blasting out a paragraph of von Helmhoitz one day, on a corner downtown, between cars, when a onetime classmate of mine, at Crane College, a Mexican named Padilla, took it out of my hand to see what I was reading and gave it back saying, "What are you on this stuff for? It's been left way far behind." He started to tell me the latest, and I had to say I couldn't keep up with him. He asked me how things were then, and we had a long conversation. In my math section Padilla had been the great equation cracker. He sat at the back of the room, rubbing his narrow front peak and working over smoothed-out pieces of paper others had stuffed into the desk, since he couldn't afford to buy a notebook. Called to the board whenever everyone else was stumped, he came with haste in his filthy whitish or creamed-hening suit, of cloth used in the cheapest summer caps, and naked feet in a pair of Salvation Army rummage shoes, also white, and would start hanging up the answer, covering his scrappy chalkings with his skinny body, infinity symbols like broken ants, and blittering Greek letters aimed downward to the last equal sign. As far as I was concerned, it was godlike that relations should be so clear to anyone. Sometimes he'd get a hand for his performance when he went clacking back swiftly in his shoes, which were loose because he had no socks. But his face, with small beak and the pricked skin of smallpox, didn't stock anything in gratification as we understand it. Anyway, he didn't deal much in expression. He often seemed chilly. And I'm not speaking of his character now, but it was cold winter, and sometimes I'd see him flying down Madison Street in his white suit, across the snow, running from home to warm himself in the school building. He never did look warm enough, but chill and sickly and with primitive prohibition of anyone's approaching him. Smoking Mexican cigarettes, he went through the halls by himself, often with a comb, running it through his hair, which was beautiful, black and high. Well there had been some changes. He looked healthier, or at least didn't have that thistle-flower purple in his tinge, and he wore a better suit. Under his arm were heavy books. "Are you at the university?" I said. "I got a scholarship in math and physics. What about you?" "I wash dogs. Can't you tell I spend my time with dogs?" "No I don't notice anything. But what are you doing?" "That is what I'm doing." It greatly bothered him that I had such a flunky job, washing cages and sweeping up dogs' hair; and also that I was no longer a college man but trying to keep up on Helmholtz who was a dead number to him; in other words, that I should be of the unformed darkened-out mass. It was often that way with me, that people would feel the world owed me distinctness. "What would I do at the university? I'm not like you, Manny, with a special talent." "Don't tear yourself down," he said. "You should see the snots there are on campus. What special have they got, except the dough? You should go and find out what you can do, and then after four years if you aren't any good at any special thing, you at least have this degree, and it won't be just any sonofabitch who can kick you around." My aching back! I thought. There'd still be black forces waiting to give me the boot, and if I had a degree the indignity would be all the greater, and I'd have heartburn from it. "You shouldn't waste your time," he further said. "Don't you see that to do any little thing you have to take an examination, you have to pay a fee and get a card or a diploma? You better get wise to this. If people don't know what you qualify in they'll never know where to place you, and that can be dangerous. You have to get in there and do something for yourself. Even if you're just waiting, you have to know what you're waiting for, you have to specialize. And don't wait too long or you'll be passed by." It wasn't so much what he said that affected me, though that was interesting and probably full of truth; it was his friendship that I responded to. I didn't want to let go of him, and I clung to him. I was moved that he thought of me. '^How'm I supposed to go to school, Manny, if I'm broke?" "How do you think I do it? The scholarship isn't enough, it's only V tuition scholarship. I get a little dough from the NYA and I'm in a racket swiping books." "Books?" "Like these. I stole them this afternoon. Technical books, texts. I take orders even. If I pick up twenty or thirty a month and get from two to five bucks apiece, I make out all right. Texts cost. What's the matter, are you honest?" he said, looking to see if he had queered himself with me. "Not completely. I'm just surprised, Manny, because all I knew about you was that you were a wizard at math." "Also I ate once a day and didn't own a coat. You know that. Well, I give myself a little more now. I want to have it a little better. I don't go stealing for the kicks. As soon as I can I'll quit." "But what if you get nailed?" He said, "I'll explain how I feel about it. You see, I don't have larceny in my heart; I'm not a real crook. I'm not interested in it, so nobody can make a fate of it for me. That's not my fate. I might get into a little trouble, but I never would let them make it my trouble, get it?" I did get it, having been around Joe German, who looked at the same question another way. But Padilla was a gifted crook all the same and took pride in his technique. We made a date for Saturday, and he gave me an exhibition. When we walked out of a shop I couldn't tell whether or not he had taken anything, he was so good at maneuvering. Outside he'd show me a copy of Sinnott's Botany or Schlesinger's Chemistry. Valuable books only; he'd never take orders for cheaper ones. Handing me his list, he'd tell me to pick the next title and he'd swipe it even if it was kept back of the cash desk. He went in carrying an old book with which he covered the one he wanted. He never hid anything under his coat, so that if they were to stop him he could always plead he had set down his own book to look at something and then picked up his own and another, unawares. Since he delivered the books on the same day he stole them, there was nothing incriminating in his room. It was greatly in his favor that he didn't in the least look like a crook, but only a young Mexican, narrow-shouldered, quick in his movements, but somewhat beaten down and harmless, that entered the shop, put on specs, and got lost with crossed feet in thermodynamics or physical chemistry. That he was pure of all feeling of larceny contributed a lot to his success. There's an old, singular, beautiful Netherlands picture I once saw in | an Italian gallery, of a wise old man walking in empty fields, pensive, j while a thief behind cuts the string of his purse. The old man, in black, j thinking probably of God's City, nevertheless has a foolish length of nose and is much too satisfied with his dream. But the peculiarity of the thief is that he is enclosed in a glass ball, and on the glass ball there . surmounting cross, and it looks like the emperor's symbol of rule. Meaning that it is earthly power that steals while the ridiculous wise in a dream about this world and the next, and perhaps missing this one, they will have nothing, neither this nor the next, so there is a sharp pain of satire in this amusing thing, and even the painted field does not have too much charm; it is a flat place. Well, Padilla in his thieving wasn't of this earthly-power class, and had no ideas such as involved the whole world. It wasn't his real calling. But he enjoyed being good at it and liked the whole subject. He had all kinds of information about crooks, about dips, wires, and their various tricks; about Spanish pickpockets who were so clever they got to the priest's money through the soutane, or about the crooks' school in Rome of such high tuition that the students signed a contract to pay half their take for five years after graduation. He knew a lot about Chicago clipjoints and rackets. It was a hobby with him, as other people go in for batting averages. What fascinated him was the little individual who tries to have a charge counter to the central magnetic one and dance his own dance on the periphery. He knew about B girls and how the hip-chicks operated in the big hotels; a book he read often was the autobiography of Chicago May, who used to throw her escorts' clothes out of the window to her accomplice in the alley, and was a very remarkable woman. Padilla himself when he went to have a good time didn't stint; he spent everything he had. I was his guest at a flat on Lake Park Avenue that a couple of'Negro girls kept together. First he shopped at Hillman's; he bought ham, chicken, beer, pickles, wine, coffee, and Dutch chocolate; then we went there and spent Saturday evening and Sunday in those two rooms, kitchen and bedroom. The only retiring space was the toilet, so everything was in common. This suited Padilla. Toward niorning he started to say that we should make an exchange so no exclusive feelings would develop. The girls were glad and voted that this made sense. They appreciated Padilla and his spirit of the thing, so let themselves into the fun. Nothing was very serious nor much held back but in the very best sympathy. I liked best the girl I had first, as she was willing to be more personal with me and wished our cheeks to touch. The second was taller and less given to it; she seemed to have more of a private life to defend against us. There was more style to her. Also she was an older girl. Anyway, it was Padilla's show. If he got out of bed to eat or dance he ranted me to do likewise, and on and off during the night he was sitting "P on the pillows, talking of his life. "I once was married," said Padilla when the subject came to that. "In Chihuahua when I was fifteen. I had a kid before I was a man myself." I didn't approve of his boasting that he had left a wife and kid behind in Mexico, but then the tall girl said she had a child too, and maybe the other did also and just didn't say, and so 1 let the subject pass, since if so many do the same wrong there maybe is something to it that's not right away apparent. We were lying in the two beds, all four, with only as much shape as there was light to reveal it proceeding from the curtains in the slow opening of Sunday, originating white in the east but falling gray upon the upright staggers of walls. Such a sight as the old Negro walls in these streets had a peculiar grandness, if dread too, where this external evidence was of a big humanity which you now couldn't see. It was like the Baths of Caracalla. The vast hidden population slept away into the morning of Sunday. The little girl I liked lay with saddle nose and her sleepy cheeks and big, sensitive, thoughtless mouth, smiling a little at Padilla's speeches. We lay and warmed ourselves by the girls, like kings, till nearly evening, then we left, kissing and fondling while dressing and then to the door, promising we'd be back. Broke, Padilla and I had supper at his house, a more empty house than the one we had just left; that at least had old carpets, old soft chairs, and doodad girls' ingenuities, whereas Padilla lived with some aged female relatives in a big railroad flat off Madison Street. It was almost empty; in one room was a table with a few chairs and in another nothing but mattresses laid on the floor. The old women sat in the kitchen and cooked, fanning a charcoal fire, fat-burdened, slow, stoneinexpressive old creatures to whom he didn't even speak. We ate soup with ground meat at the bottom of the bowl and tortillas which came wrapped in a napkin. Finishing quickly, Padilla left me at the table, and when I went to see what had become of him found him already in bed, an army blanket drawn up to his face, with sharp nose and hair fallen back. He said, "I have to get some sleep. I have a quiz first thing in the morning." "Are you ready for it, Manny?" He said, "Either this stuff comes easy or it doesn't come at all." And that stayed with me. Therefore I was thinking on the streetcar. Of course! Easily or not at all. People were mad to be knocking themselves out over difficulties because they thought difficulty was a sign of the right thing. So I decided to try this out and, to begin with, to experiment with book stealing. If it went easily I'd leave the dog club. And if I made as much at it as Padilla did, that would be double what Guillaume paid me, and I could start saving toward the tuition fee at the university. I didn't mean to settle down to a career of stealing even if it were to come easy, but only to give myself a start at something better. So I began; at first with more excitement than I could tolerate. I had nausea after, on the street, and sweated. It was a big Jowett's Plato that I took. But I was severe with myself to finish the experiment. I checked the book in a dime locker of the Illinois Central station as Padilla had told me to do and immediately went after another, and then I made good progress and became quite cool about it. The difficult moment wasn't that of walking out of the store; it came when I picked the books up and put them under my arm. But then I felt more casual, confident that if stopped I'd be able to explain myself, laugh it off as an error of thoughtlessness and charm my way out. In the store, Padilla told me, the dicks would never arrest you; it was when you stepped into the street that they nabbed you. However, in a department store, without glancing back, I'd drift into another sectionmen's shoes at Carson Pirie's, candy or rugs at Marshall Field's. It never entered my mind to branch out and steal other stuff as well. Sooner than I had planned I quit the dog club, and it wasn't only confidence in my crook's competence that made me do it, but I was struck by the reading fever. I lay in my room and read, feeding on print and pages like a famished man. Sometimes I couldn't give a book up to a customer who had ordered it, and for a long time this was all that I could care about. The sense I had was of some live weight driven into tangles or nets of hungry feeling; I wanted to haul it in. Padilla was sore and fired up when he came to my room and saw stacks of books I should have gotten rid of long ago; it was dangerous to keep them. If he had restricted me to books on mathematics, thermodynamics, mechanics, things probably would have been different, for I didn't carry the germ of a Clerk Maxwell or Max Planck in me. But as he had turned over to me his orders for books on theology, literature, history, and philosophy, and I copped Ranke's History of the Popes and Sarpi's Council of Trent for the seminary students, or Burckhardt or Merz's European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, I sat reading. Padilla raised hob with me about the Merz because it took so long. to finish and a man in the History department was after him for it. "You can use my card and get it out of the library," he said. But somehow that wasn l the ^me. As eating your own meal, I suppose, is different from a g. ^3 handout, even if calory for calory it's the same value; maybe the body even uses it differently. Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering. And what did I think of myself in relation to the great occasions, the more sizable being of these books? Why, I saw them, first of all. So suppose I wasn't created to read a great declaration, or to boss a palatinate, or send off a message to Avignon, and so on, I could see, so there nevertheless was a share for me in all that had happened. How much of a share? Why, I knew there were things that would never, because they could never, come of my reading. But this knowledge was not so different from the remote but ever-present death that sits in the corner of the loving bedroom; though it doesn't budge from the corner, you wouldn't stop your loving. Then neither would I stop my reading. I sat and read. I had no eye, ear, or interest for anything else--that is, for usual, second-order, oatmeal, merephenomenal, snaried-shoelace-carfare-laundry-ticket plainness, unspecified dismalness, unknown captivities; the life of despair-harness, or the life of organization-habits which is meant to supplant accidents with calm abiding. Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and all the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vaultlike rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods? Why, everybody knows this triumphant life can only be periodic. So there's a schism about it, some saying only this triumphant life is real and others that only the daily facts are. For me there was no debate, and I made speed into the former. This was when I heard from Simon again. He said on the phone he was coming to repay the five bucks I had sent him. It meant that he felt ready to face me--otherwise he'd have mailed the money. Thus when he entered I sensed how he carried a load of lordly brass and effrontery; that's how he was ready; he was prepared to put me down, should I begin to holler and blame. But when he saw me surrounded by books, barefoot in an old gown, and noted, probably, the air puffs and yellow blisters of wallpaper and the poverty of light, he was more confident and easy. For he very likely felt that I was the same as before, that my wheels turned too freely, that I was hasty, too enthusiastic, or, in few words, something of a schlemiel. Suppose he touched on Grandma's death, I'd easy be led to cry, and then he'd have me. The question for him was always whether I was this way by character or choice. If by choice I could maybe be changed. Me, on my side, I was glad he had come and eager to see him. I could never in the world have taken Einhom's advice to be hard with him and keep him down. It's true he ought to have sent me that money when I wired from Buffalo, but he'd been in dutch and I could forgive him that. Then the loan from Einhom wasn't too grievous either, since Einhorn himself had let lots of people down for far larger amounts; and he, Einhorn, was big enough and gentleman enough not to scream and moan about it. So far so good. But what about Mama and the flat? I confess that had gone down hard, and that if I had seen Simon when I was rushing downstairs to Kreindl's to look for Mama I'd have broken his head for him. But later when I had thought it through I conceded to myself that we couldn't have kept the old home going much longer and set up a gentle kind of retirement there for Mama, neither of us having that filial tabby dormancy that natural bachelors have. Something in us both consented to the busting up of the house. All Simon had to do was speak of this; if he didn't it was because he felt his blame too much to have a clear head. I expected to see him haggard; instead he was fatter. However, it wasn't comfortable-looking fat but as if it came from not eating right. It took me a minute to get over my uneasiness about his creasing smile and the yellow and gold bristles on his chin--it wasn't like him not to shave; but then he was all right and sat down, big fingers knit on his chest. It was summer, a late afternoon, and though I was on the top floor of this old frame house the shade tree was so huge it passed the roof, so all around it was green, as if in the woods, glossy; and underneath on the lawn this bird was, like a hammer tapping a waterpipe in the grass. It could have helped us to feel peaceful, but it didn't. I believe people never knew how to observe one another so damagingly as they do now. Kin too, of course. I tried to avoid it with Simon, but we couldn't. So on each side, for a moment, the worst was thought. Then he said, "What are you doing out on the South Side with all these books, becoming a student?" "I wish I could afford to." "So you must be in the book business. It can't be much of a business though, because I see you read them too. Leave it to you to find a business like this!" He said it scornfully, or meant to, but there was a dead Place where the scorn should have rung; and he said reasonably, "But suppose you could ask where my mastermind got me." "I don't have to ask. I know. I can see." "Are you sore, Augie?" "No," I said, husky, and with one glance he could see how far from anger my feeling was. One glance was all he wanted, and he dropped his eyes. "I was sore when I found out. It came all together, including the news about Grandma." "Yes, she's dead, isn't she? I guess she must have been very old. Did you ever find out how old? I guess we'd never..." And so he passed over it with irony, sadness, even awe. We'd always smile and attribute extraordinary things to her. Then Simon put off the brass he had come in, and he said, "I was a damn fool to get mixed up with that mob. They took away the dough and beat me up. I knew they were dangerous, but I thought I could hold my own with them. I didn't think, I mean, because I was in love. Love! She let me go only so far. On the sun porch at night., I thought I'd bust out of my skin. I was dying for her, just to get a touch of it, and that's about all I got." He said it with coarse anger, despisingly. It gave me a shiver. "When I heard they were married I had dreams about them jazzing, like a woman with an ape. She wouldn't care. And you know what he's like. But it makes no difference, he can raise hell up there same as any other man. Besides he has dough. That's what she thinks is dough! All he owns is a few buildings. It's chickenfeed. It'll look like a lot to her until she gets to know better." Now his face was red, and with an emotion different from that despising anger. He said, "You know I hate to be like this and have such thoughts. I'm ashamed of it, I tell you honestly. Because she wasn't all that glorious and he's not all that bad. He wasn't bad to us when we were kids. You haven't forgotten that, have you? I don't want her to make me act like a damn Eskimo dog with his scruff up about a piece of fish. I used to have my sights set kind of high, as a kid. But after a while you find out what you've really got or haven't, and you wise up to the fact that first comes all the selfish and jealous stuff, that you don't care what happens to anybody else as long as you get yours; you start to think such things as how pleasant it would be if somebody close to you would die and leave you free. Then I thought it would be all the same to the somebodies if / died." "What do you mean, died?" "By suicide .1 came close to it in jail, 'there on North Avenue." This reference to suicide was only factual. Simon didn't work me for pity; he never seemed to require it of me. "I don't have much feeling against death, do you, Augie?" he said. Tn the change of leaves about him he was calmer, heavy in his seated nosition, with the crown of his felt hat taking the side against variants, played by the green shadow and yellow of the leaves. "Well, say, do you?" "I'm not so hot about dying." This, after two or three thoughts had come in succession to his face, made him easier and more relaxed, softer with me. He laughed at last. He said, "You'll die like everybody else. But I have to admit that's not what you make people think of when they look at you. You're a pretty pay numero, I'll say that for you. But you're not much good at taking care of yourself. Any other brother but you would have sweated the money out of me. If you had pulled what I pulled I'd have made things rough for you. Or anyway I'd be glad to see you land on your ass the way I've done. I'd say, 'It serves you right. Good for you!' Well, since you won't look out for your interests I see I'm going to have to do it for you." "My interests?" "Sure," he said, a little angered by the question. "Don't you believe I ever think about you? We've both been running too much with the losers, and I'm tired of it." "Where're you living now?" I said. "On the Near North Side," he said, brushing this off, that I wanted to know definite things about him. He wasn't going to say whether there was a sink in his room, or carpet or linoleum, or whether he was on a car line or facing a wall. It's normal for me to have such curiosity about details. But he wasn't going to satisfy this curiosity, since to dwell on such things implied it would be hard to get away from them; for him they were things to pass quickly. "I'm not going to stay there," he said. "What have you been living on?" I asked. "What are you doing?" "What do you mean, living on?" He threw difficulties in my way by repeating questions. He stood too much on his pride to say how things were and show what a bad rip he had gotten in his stuff. A kind of gallantry of presentation he had always had in the quality of older brother he wouldn't give up. He had been a fool and done wrong, he showed up sallow and with the smaller disgrace that he was fat, as if overeating were his reply to being crushedand with this all over him he wasn't going to tell me, he balked at telling, some small details. He ook my asking as a blow at him while he was trying to climb out of the nole of mortification, and he warded it off with a stiff arm, saying, "What ao you mean?" as if he'd remember later I had tried to hit him or at least goad him. Later he didn't mind telling me that he had washed floors in a beanery, but this was long afterward. But now he fought this off. Loaded on the hard black armchair--I put it that way because of his increased bulk--he passionately pulled together his perves and energies--I could see him concentrate and do it--and he started to deal with me. He did it more strongly than was necessary, with pasha force. "I haven't been wasting my time," he said. "I've been working on something. I think I'm getting married soon," he said, and didn't allow himself to smile with the announcement or temper it in some pleasant way. "When? To whom?" "To a woman with money." "A woman? An older woman?" That was how I interpreted it. "Well, what's the matter with you? Yes, I'd marry an older woman, Why not?" "I bet you wouldn't." He was still able to amaze me, as though we had remained kids. "We don't have to argue about it because she's not old. She's about twenty-two, I'm told." "By whom? And you haven't even seen her?" "No, I haven't seen her. You remember the buyer, my old boss? He's fixing me up .1 have her picture. She's not bad. Heavy--but I'm getting heavy too. She's sort of pretty. Anyhow, even if she weren't pretty, and if the buyer isn't lying about the dough--her family is supposed to have a mountain of dough--I'd marry her." "You've already made up your mind?" "I'll say I have!" "And suppose she doesn't want you?" "I'll see that she does. Don't you think I can?" "Maybe you can, but I don't like it. It's cold-blooded." "Cold-blooded!" he said with sudden emotion. "What's cold-blooded about it? I'd be cold-blooded if I stayed as I am. I see around this marriage and beyond it. I'll never again go for all the nonsense about marriage. Everybody you lay eyes on, except perhaps a few like you and me, is born of marriage. Do you see anything so exceptional or wonderful about it that makes it such a big deal? Why be fooling around to make this perfect great marriage? What's it going to save you from? Has it saved anybody--the jerks, the fools, the morons, the schleppers, the jag-offs, the monkeys, rats, rabbits, or the decent unhappy people or what you call nice people? They're all married or are born of marriages, so how can you pretend to me that it makes a difference that Bob loves Mary who marries Jerry? That's for the movies. Don't you see people pondering how to marry for love and petting the blood gypped out of them? Because while they're looking for the best there is--and I figure that's what's wrong with you--everything else gets lost. It's sad, it's a pity, but it's that way." I was all the same strongly against him; that he saw. Even if I couldn't just then consider myself on the active list of lovers and wasn't carrying a live torch any more for Esther Fenchel. I recognized his face as the face of a man in the wrong. I thought there was too much noise of life around him for a right decision to be made. Furthermore, the books I had been reading--I noticed that Simon was aware of their contribution to my opposition and his eye marked them as opponents, and there was a little bit of derision in his glance too. But I couldn't deny or be disloyal to, at the first hard blink of a challenger or because of derision, things I took seriously and consented to in my private soul as I sat reading. "What do you want me to agree with you for? If you believe what you're saying, it shouldn't make any difference whether I agree or not." "Oh hell!" he said, sitting forward and looking into me with widened eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, kid. If you really understood you'd agree. That would be nice, but I can certainly get along without if I have to. And besides, though this may not flatter either of us, we're the same and want the same. So you understand." I wasn't of that opinion, and not from pride; only because of the facts. Seeing that he needed me to be similar, however, I kept quiet. And if he was talking about the mysterious part of parentage, that our organs could receive waves or quanta of the same length, I didn't know enough about it to differ with him. "Well, maybe it's as you say. But what makes you think this girl and her family are going to want you?" "What are my assets? Well, first of all we're all handsome men in our family. Even George, if he were normal, would have been. The old lady knew that and thought we'd capitalize on it. But besides, I'm not marrying a rich girl in order to live on her dough and have a good time. They'll get full value out of me, those people. They'll see that I won't lie down and take it easy. I can't. I have to make money. I'm not one of those guys that give up what they want as soon as they realize they want it. I want money, and I mean want; and I can handle it. Those are my assets. So I couldn't be more on the level with them." You couldn't blame me for listening to this with some amount of skepticism. But then things like this are done by people with the specific ambition to do them. I didn't like the way he talked; for instance, the boast that we were handsome men--it made us sound like studs. However, I couldn't hope that he'd have another failure; he wasn't that rich in heart that he could make good use of it. "Let's see the girl's picture." He had it in his pants pocket. She seemed young enough, a big girl, with a pretty good face. I thought she was rather handsome, though not of an open or easy nature. "She's attractive, I told you. A little too heavy maybe." Her name was Charlotte Magnus. "Magnus? Wasn't it a Magnus truck that delivered coal to the Einhoras?" "That's her uncle, in the coal business. Four or five big yards. And her father owns property by the acre. Hotels. Also a few five-and-dime stores. It'll be the coal business for me. That's where I think the most dough is. I'll ask for a yard as a wedding present." "You have it all pretty well figured out" "Sure. I have something figured out for you too." "What, am I supposed to get married also?"; "In time, yes, we'll fix you up. Meanwhile you have to help me out. I'have to have some family. I've been told they're family-minded people. They wouldn't understand or like it, the way we are, and we have to make it look better. There'll be dinners and such things, and probably a big engagement party. You don't expect me to go downstate and fetch George here to show them, do you? No, I have to have you. We need clothes. Do you have any?" "They're in hock." "Get them out.".... "And what am I going to use for money?" "Don't you have any at all? I thought you were in some kind of book business here.";,' "Mama gets all the money I have to spare." He said tightly, "All right, don't be wise. I'll take care of all that soon. I'll raise the dough." I wondered where his credit might still be good. Perhaps his buyer friend lent him some money. Anyway, I got a postal order from Simon a few days later, and when I redeemed the clothes he came to borrow one of my Evanston suits. Soon he said that he had met Charlotte Magnus. He believed she was already in love with him. ift*