by Saul Bellow
As soon as the women signed there was a wild excitement and up-rush of indignation and they began to call out, as if it was a working woman’s Thesmophoria of these pale people. They wanted to be led into a strike right away. But I explained, and felt as usual the creep over me of legalistic hypocrisy, that it was a case of dual unionism. Legally they were represented by the AFL and therefore another union couldn’t bargain for them. But when a majority of the employees was on the CIO side an election could be held. They didn’t understand this, and as I couldn’t talk against their noise I asked Sophie to come out with me and I would make the position clear. The corridor being empty for the moment, we kissed at once, riskily. Our legs were shaking. She said under her breath that I could explain the whole thing to her later; she would take the women away and come back. I locked up the office, and when she returned I took her home with me. We couldn’t go to her room. She lived with her sister and the two were engaged to a pair of brothers. They were going to be married in June, six weeks’ time. I saw the photo of her fiancé; he was a calm, responsible-looking gink. She thought she was being sensible, storing up pleasure so she wouldn’t have any unfaithful craving once married. She was made very finely, all her little formations intricate and close and everything smooth. That was the happiness Einhorn took notice of, that I enjoyed in Sophie.
Kayo Obermark had too much masculine respect to ask me about her utterances and noises, laughing and otherwise. But Mimi said, “What kind of dame do you have who carries on like that?” She took a kidding tone, but I felt her nose was somewhat out of joint. “She brings her own cheering section.”
I had no answer ready because I had never expected to be asked.
“There was someone else looking for you the other day,” she went on. “I forgot to tell you. It’s getting to be like a shrine up here.”
“Who was it?”
“A young lady and a very pretty one, prettier than the noisy girl.”
I wondered if it could be that Lucy had changed her mind. “She didn’t leave a note?”
“No, she said she had to talk to you, and I thought she was very agitated, but maybe she wasn’t used to climbing stairs and was winded.”
It didn’t especially stir me to think that it had been Lucy. I had no further interest in her; I was only rather curious about her visit.
I took up Einhorn’s suggestion about Arthur with Mimi. If Einhorn had found fault with her, she was violent against him.
“Why, that old stinker!” she said. “As soon as I was close to him for a minute he had his hand on my leg. I don’t like these old men who think they’re all sex.”
“Oh, you have to understand him,” I said. “That’s just his form of salute or chivalry.”
“Hell! Who says an old cripple has to be so randy?”
“He’s really a grand old guy. I’ve known him from a kid, and he means a lot to me.”
“To me he means exactly nothing, and he’s terrible to Arthur.”
“Why, I think he loves Arthur more than anything in the world.”
“That’s how much you know! He takes it out on him all the time. In fact I have to help him get out of there because the old man is riding him to death on account of the kid.”
“Isn’t the mother coming back for it?”
“I can’t make out from Arthur whether she’s a nice girl or a tramp. He’s terribly vague unless discussing ideas. What kind of bitch would ditch a kid—when she’s already had it? Unless she’s sick. In the head, you understand.”
“Doesn’t Arthur tell you what she’s like?”
“You can’t keep Arthur on a subject like this. His mind won’t stick to it.”
I said, “I wonder if you’ve got him straight about what his father does to him. This has been hard for Einhorn to take. He banked on Arthur. So did Tillie. Now it’s just part of the Depression picture. Children coming back with their kids to live with the old folks in their flat.”
“Why should it be any different for Einhorn than for the Poles or sausage-eaters on his street? It would be bad if it were different and helped the old fool to put it over that he was entitled to a better fate than anybody around. But when the things that happen pour over everyone alike, then we can really see who is better and who’s worse. And then what’s so awful about what happened to Arthur? Anyhow, he’s better than Frazer. Frazer’s back with his wife, they tell me, and he probably won’t pay me the money I lent him because he would be admitting that he once nearly did wrong, and he’s not the guy to admit that anything past, present, or future could be wrong. A girl was laughing over something in a book yesterday and showed me—you know, I hardly even read novels. It said, ‘Error has never approached my mind.’ That was Prince Metternich. Well, it could be Frazer. I don’t think he would ever in his life forget himself. He’d never miss a train. Jesus, your Mr. Einhorn would love a son like that who always keeps his head and has a word ready to say and would never miss a train. But Arthur is a poet, and that old romancer really didn’t want that to happen to him and be the father of a Villon or a Rimbaud.”
“Oh, is that it!” I said. “Well, what is Einhorn doing to Arthur that makes him so cruel?”
“He nags him night and day and looks for chances to insult him. Yesterday it was that the old man was feeding the baby candy and when Arthur said it wasn’t good for it he told him, ‘This is my house, he’s my grandson, and you can get the hell out if you don’t like it.’”
“Oh, that’s rough. He ought to blow then. Why does he take that?”
“He can’t leave. He hasn’t got any money. And besides he’s sick. He’s got a dose.”
“Holy smokes! He’s got everything. Did he tell you?”
“Well, don’t be stupid. How do you think I found out? Of course he told me.”
She smiled, and it was with the shine of real excitement. If I hadn’t known it before I would now have realized that she had decided about him. She was for him.
“I’ll see him out of the woods,” she said. “He’s going to a doctor now, and when this thing is dried up he’s going to leave his father’s house.”
“With the kid?”
“No. Somebody will take care of the kid. What do you think! Should he become a housewife because of that crazy girl?”
“If he had given her some money maybe she’d have kept the baby.”
“How do you know? Well, perhaps that would have been best. Old people shouldn’t bring up a child.”
“Einhorn wanted me to get Arthur an organizer’s job.”
She was too astonished at this even to smile but stared at me firmly, as if she wanted me to admit there was no limit to how grotesque people could make themselves, and then she went about her business, washing out stockings and underwear. She wouldn’t answer.
Of course Arthur couldn’t anyway try to work while he had the clap, and I reckoned it was best to invent a pleasant reason for Einhorn, and I did, saying there was no opening just then on Arthur’s level. Even though it mustn’t have been so pleasant for the old man to be referred back to his onetime vanity about Arthur’s superiority. But it did sound reasonable that they couldn’t offer someone like Arthur simply any old job that happened to be lying around.
As for Lucy Magnus, and I couldn’t imagine who else it might be, I was merely, in the flattest way, curious, but I didn’t give her supposed call much thought until a few nights later when there was a feminine knock at the door. It came at an awkward time, when Sophie Geratis was sitting on the bed in her slip and we were talking away. Seeing her startled, I said, “Don’t worry, honey, nobody’s going to bother us.” She liked my saying this, so that it led to our starting to kiss, and the hooked links of the spring made that sound which goes in such a queer way with love, and which would have sent away anyone but this particular knocker. She said, “Augie—Mr. March!” and not in the voice of Lucy Magnus but that of Thea Fenchel. For some reason I remembered it and placed it immediately. I got out of bed.
“H
ey, put on a robe,” said Sophie. She was disappointed at the kissing ending when another woman spoke at the door.
I put my head out and blocked the door with my shoulder and naked foot. It was Thea. She had said in that note I hadn’t seen the last of her, and here she was.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ve already come a couple of times and I want to see you.”
“Only once, I thought. How did you find me?”
“I hired a detective. Then that girl didn’t tell you about both times. Is she in there with you? Ask her.”
“No, that’s not the same one. You actually went to a detective agency?”
“I’m glad it’s not that girl,” she said.
I didn’t answer, only looked.
She wasn’t keeping her composure very well. That prompt face, different from what I remembered, delicate but not so firm in nerve, wide-cheeked and pale, her nostrils open wide. I recalled that Mimi had told me she was breathing heavily from the climb, but it must also have been from determination not to give in to disappointment at not finding me alone. She was dressed in a brown silk suit, kind of strikingly watermarked; in spite of all, she wanted me to notice it. But at the same time, by her gloved hands and the unsteadiness of her hat of flowers, I was aware she was trembling; and as the rustling in mid-ocean against the bulwarks is the slight sign of very great miles of depth and extent, the stiffness of the silk gave a small sound of continual tremor.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “How could you tell that I was coming? I don’t expect …”
I felt no need to be pardoned, as if I should have been waiting for her, and would have been within my rights in smiling but I wasn’t able to do that. I had thought back on her as an erratic rich girl with whom the main thing was to be rivals with her sister; I couldn’t continue to think so, for no matter how it had started it was now clearly something else. What sets you off not being good enough, you find the better reason once you have got going. This might have happened to her; but I couldn’t tell which was uppermost, nobility or illness, whether she was struggling with personal objections of pride or the social ones about what is due a young woman from herself—those spiked things that press with such ugly sharpness on the greater social weakness of women. Whether she fought against or went out to look for a torturing occasion, I mean. But that was not all I thought of or felt by any means. Otherwise I’d have shooed her away, for I liked Sophie Geratis too well to give her up because I was merely interested or flattered. Or because I saw a chance to get back at Esther Fenchel through her sister, for, as I’ve said before, I haven’t any grudge-bearing ability to speak of. But all at once Sophie wasn’t even in it.
“What are you doing?” I said, turning to her. She had put on her shoes. I saw her hold up her arms and the black dress fell on her shoulders. She softly battled her body into it, pulled it into place across her breasts and over her hips, and shook her face free of her hair.
“Honey, if this is somebody you want to see …”
“But, Sophie, I’m with you tonight.”
“You and me are just having a fling before I’m married, aren’t we? Maybe you want to get married too. It’s just an affair, isn’t it?”
“You’re not going,” I said. But she didn’t listen, and when she went on to tie her laces covered the underside of her thigh from me as she lifted her knee. Because I didn’t sound firm enough. And through this act of covering her bare leg—not sore, but with a resigned sort of drop of her head—she drew back those vital degrees from lover’s heat. To have her again I realized I’d have to pass a large number of tests and perhaps last of all I’d have to ask her to marry me. So I admitted in my private mind she was right to go since I couldn’t any longer honestly furnish that gay interest that had brought us together.
A piece of paper slid under the door, and we heard Thea going away.
“At least she’s not so brassy as to stand and look at me come out,” said Sophie. “Anyway, she had plenty of brass to knock when she could tell you had company. Are you engaged to her or something? Go ahead and read your note.”
Sophie took her congé and kissed me on the face but wouldn’t let me return the kiss or accompany her down to the door. So, undressed still, I sat on the cot in the May night air of the high window and opened the piece of paper. It gave her address and number and said, “Please call me tomorrow, and don’t be angry because of what I can’t help.”
When I thought how she had been ashamed for the jealousy rising to her face, and how rich in trouble the moment had been for her to hold fast while I came to the door naked and talked to her, I wasn’t inclined to feel angry at all. In fact I couldn’t help but be glad. Even though it was high-handed to go and proceed against Sophie as she did and assume that only she had the right grade of love. And then I had a lot of other notions, such as whether I was in danger of falling in love to oblige. Why? Because love was so rare that if one had it the other should capitulate to it? If, for the time, he had nothing more important on? In this thought there was a good measure of poking fun, with, however, the fact that I was stirred in all kinds of ways, including the soft shuffle in the treetop of leaves just broken out of the thick red beaks. I thought the business of a woman must be only love. Or, at another time, only a child. And I let this be an amusement and an objection in my light mind. And this lightness of mind—I could have benefited from the wisdom about it that the heavy is the root of the light. First, that is, that the graceful comes out of what is buried at great depth. But as wisdom has to spread and knot out in all directions, this can also refer to the slight laugh which is only a little of what is sent upward by great heaviness of heart, or also to the gravity which passes off by performer’s flutter or pitch for laughs. Even the man who wants to believe, you sometimes note kidding his way to Jesus.
That night I fell deeply asleep, any old way, in and out of the sheets. They still smelled of Sophie’s powder, or whatever she had imparted to them, so I slept wrapped in her banners, after a fashion. When I waked I thought it had been a peaceful sleep, and the early day was radiant. But I was mistaken. I remembered nightmares I had had of the jackals trying to get over the walls of Harar, Abyssinia, to eat the plague dead—from a book Arthur had left lying around, about one of his favorite poets. I heard Mimi below bitching and yelling at the telephone, though it was just some ordinary conversation. It was a fresh day, of beauty nearly material enough to pick up, with corners of the yard full of the heat of flowers grown in old iron and adapted cast-off boilers. That red which in the greater strength of the day would make you giddy and attack your heart with a power almost like a sickness, some sickness causing spat blood, spasm, and rot just as much and as rich as pleasure. My face prickled as if I had been hit sharp enough to cause nosebleed. I looked and felt puffy and sullen, and as if I had a surplus of blood and foresaw trouble from it, that it would have to be let. Also my hands and feet were that ominous way. I went out half stone, but even the pavement chafed me through the leather; my veins seemed slowed up with lead. I couldn’t bear being in the confinement of the drugstore even for the minute of time it took to swallow a cup of coffee. I dragged myself to the office in the poky cars, and when I had fallen into my chair with my legs spread out, I felt the toil of all my processes, down to the arteries of the feet as they sprung and shot with regularity, and I prayed I wouldn’t have to get up. The door and window were open, the fustiness of the hard-trod place having its brief chance to clear out in the courthouse-hung tranquility before the resumption of hostilities, the meadow hour before the ashcan barrage of Flanders tears the skies. And the lark, who doesn’t need to spit or clear his throat, goes up.
But then the business of the day got under way, and in my harassed inability to keep up, it was like a double-quick-time stamping or dancing; angry grim waltz in which the clutched partners were out to wear one another down; or solo clog or tarantella of the hopping mad; or the limper sway of the almost gone from consciousness; the decorous sevillanas of
the stiff whose faces didn’t betray how their heels were slamming; the epidemic kick of German serfdom; the squatting kazatsky; the hesitation-step of adolescence; the Charleston. I confronted all the varieties, and as far as I could I avoided rising. Except when I had to go to the biffy to take a leak, or when I thought I was hungry and ducked below to the billiard room and lunch counter, where the green of the felt went to my head. However, I had no appetite. It was another kind of gnawing, not emptiness of gut that was the matter.
When I went back there was a fresh crowd waiting to do their stuff. Me the weary booking agent or impresario, watched by them with wrath and avidity, with tics, with dignity by some and booby-hatch glares by others. And what was I going to accomplish for them in the way of redress and throwing open princedoms by explaining how they must fill out a card? Holy Lord and God! I know man’s labor must be one of those deals figured out by Providence that saves him by preserving him, or he would be hungry, he would freeze, or his brittle neck would be broke. But what curious and strange forms he ends up surviving in, becoming them in the process.
