The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)

by Saul Bellow

  Mimi got a big laugh out of my Mexican experiences. “What a ball you’ve been having,” she said. She made me feel unpleasant about Thea; and about Stella she said, “Guys like you make life easy for some women.”

  There hadn’t been anything easy for anyone, but you couldn’t tell Mimi that. Having gotten the story as she wanted it, she didn’t listen to more, but with her push-faced vigor, her broad red mouth stretching and giving out with her helicon or hunting-horn voice, she let me have it almost the same as Clem. I’d better be cured of my attitudes. The reason why I didn’t see things as they were was that I didn’t want to; because I couldn’t love them as they were. But the challenge was not to better them in your mind but to put every human weakness into the picture—the bad, the criminal, sick, envious, scavenging, wolfish, the living-on-the-dying. Start with that. Take the fact that people generally were full of loathing and it cost them an effort to look at one another. Mostly they wanted to be let alone. And they dug for unreality more than for treasure, unreality being their last great hope because then they could doubt that what they knew about themselves was true. Maybe she exaggerated her rake-the-heavens wrath and went beyond how she truly felt. However, there were blue marks of worry beneath her eyes these days.

  When Arthur came around she talked about money and jobs. Four times out of five she changed the subject to that as soon as he showed up.

  There was a certain job she kept after him to take. But he said, “Why, it’s a farce!” And gently began to laugh in his dark way, crowfooted.

  “The money’s no farce.”

  “Oh, please, Mimi. Don’t be absurd.”

  “There’d be practically no work connected with it.”

  However, he made it seem absolutely impossible. I began to think it was a job I might put in for myself, if qualified.

  I met Arthur out walking and I asked him why he didn’t want it.

  It was a cool afternoon, and he was wearing cap and coat. He had lost much weight and was very bony, his shoulders up sharp, so that I was impressed with his resemblance to his uncle Dingbat and how he had subdued the same inheritance by a different life. He was of that same sharp skinny-chested build, with long face and a quick walk of inward-pointed toes. His shoes were tapered, as elegant as chivalry in the stirrups or the end of a lizard entering a crevice. But Arthur’s health was poorer than Dingbat’s and he had a swarthier color; his breath was strong with coffee and tobacco. He owned up to inferior teeth with his smile. Nevertheless he had all the charm of the Einhorns when he wanted to turn it on.

  There was great style in his thinking. Sometimes I believed he was ready to say or consider anything. My personal preference was for useful thoughts. I mean thoughts that answered questions that moved you. Arthur said this was wrong; truth was truer when it had less to do with your needs. What personal need, for instance, is there in the investigation of the creep of light from the outermost stars which even at that unimaginable speed decays and breaks down because it grows so ancient in its travel? It fascinated me, this question.

  However, about the job: there was a millionaire engaged in writing a book and he was looking for a research assistant.

  “Do you think I’d fill the bill?”

  “Of course you would, Augie. Are you interested?”

  “Well, I need a job. Something that’ll leave me the free time I want.”

  “I like the way you arrange your life. What do you intend to do with this free time?”

  “I intend to use it.” I didn’t like the implication of this. Why should he need his time free and I be questioned?

  “I’m just curious. Some people always appear to know what they’re going to do, and others never. Of course I’m a poet, and relatively lucky. I’ve often thought, If I weren’t a poet, what would I be? A politician? But just see how Lenin’s life work turned out. A professor? That’s much too tame. A painter? But nobody knows what painting’s about any more. Whenever I write a dramatic poem I can’t understand why the characters should ever want to be anything but poets themselves.”

  Well, this is how it was in Chicago when I came back. I stayed on the South Side. I got my case of books back from Arthur and I read in my room. The heat of June grew until the shady yards gave up the smell of the damp soil, of underground, and the city-Pluto kingdom of sewers and drains, and the mortar and roaring tar pots of roofers, the geraniums, lilies-of-the-valley, climbing roses, and sometimes the fiery devastation of the stockyards stink when the wind was strong. I read my books and almost each day wrote to Thea in care of Wells Fargo, but no answer came. One letter was forwarded from Mexico, and that one was from Stella. She was in New York. I never expected her to write such a good letter; I decided that I had underrated her. She said she couldn’t pay me yet; she had to square herself with her union. But as soon as she landed a job she’d settle her debt.

  Simon had given me some money so that I could take summer courses at the university. Now I thought I might like to be a schoolteacher and I was registered in several Education courses. I found it hard to sit in classes and read the textbooks. Simon was always ready to stand by me if I wanted to, though he himself didn’t have much use for universities.

  I was still after the job Arthur refused to take with the millionaire who wanted to write a book. This millionaire’s name was Robey. He had studied with Frazer when Frazer was an instructor, and that was why Mimi knew him. He was tall and bent, he had a bad stammer, he wore a beard, he had been married four or five times—Mimi told me these facts. Arthur said the book was to be a survey or history of human happiness from the standpoint of the rich. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to do this but I didn’t want Simon to keep on supporting me. I tried to fish a loan from Einhorn but he held it against me that I was an old friend of Mimi. He said, “I can’t lend you anything. You realize that I have to support my grandchild. The extra burden is tough. And what if Arthur decides to bless my last years with another?” He was p.o.

  So reluctantly I went to Arthur to ask him to phone Robey for me.

  “This is a very strange fellow, Augie, he ought to amuse you.”

  “Oh hell, I don’t want him to amuse me. I just want a job.”

  “Well, you’ll have to try to understand him. He’s very peculiar. He partly gets it from his mother. She thought she was the queen of Rockford, Illinois. She wore a crown. She had a throne. She expected everyone in town to bow to her.”

  “Does he live in Rockford now?”

  “No, he has a mansion here on the South Side. When he was a student a chauffeur used to drive him to campus. For a long time he was mad on Great Books and he used to buy space in the want ads and put in quotations from Plato or Locke. Like, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ He has a sister who’s wacky too—Caroline. She thinks she’s a Spaniard. But you have a gift of getting along with these temperaments. You were a jewel with my dad.”

  “I was kind of in love with him.”

  “Maybe you’ll love Robey too.”

  “He sounds to me like another crank. I can’t always be connected with ridiculous people. It’s wrong.”

  But not long afterward, on a drizzly afternoon, I found myself face to face with this man Robey in his house on the lakefront. And what a face it was—what an appearance! Big, inflamed, reticent eyes, a reddish beard, red sullen lips, and across his nose a blotch; the night before, when he was drunk or sleepy, he had walked into the door of a taxi. His stutter was bad; when it really caught him he made a great effort, fixed his soul, and twisted his head while his eyes took on this discipline and almost hatred. At first I was astonished, and I was sorry for his sake when his teeth clicked or a snarl escaped. But I soon found out how fluent he could be in spite of it.

  With those reticent, blood-flickered eyes of his he looked at me like someone who had to explain he was born to difficulty and hard luck, and he opened his lips before starting to speak, as if to separate the upper and lower hairs of the beard.

  He said, “Wh
at about l-l-lunch?”

  We had a rotten lunch—thin clam chowder, a smoked ham which he sliced himself, boiled potatoes, wax beans, and twice-heated coffee. It made me kind of sore that a millionaire should invite you to lunch and put on such a lousy feed.

  He did the talking. Background first, he said. As his collaborator I’d have to have some personal knowledge of him. He started to tell me of his five marriages, taking his share of the blame for each divorce. But the marriages formed part of his education; therefore he had to evaluate them. I was disgusted. I took a sip of the coffee and let it flow back into the cup through my teeth, and made a face. But he didn’t notice. He was on his third wife, terribly boring. The fourth gave him real insight into his character. I think he still carried the torch for her. As he was vibrating his neck over a troublesome word I interrupted. I was about to say, “What about some fresh coffee at least?” but I didn’t have the heart. Instead I asked, “But can you give me an idea as to what my work will be?”

  He became more tongue-free then. “I need advice,” he said. “Help. I need to clear up some of my concepts, m-my thinking, n-n-need cl-clarity. This is s-something, this book.”

  “But what’s it about?”

  “It’s not j-just a book—it’s a guide, a p-p-program. I originated the idea b-but now it’s too much for me. I need help.” As he spoke of help he sounded frightened. “I discovered much too m-much. It was just an accident that it happened to be me, and now I’m stu-stuck with the responsibility.”

  We went into the salon to continue the conversation. His walk was belly-heavy, dragging, as if he had to remind himself not to step on his own dong.

  It kept on drizzling; the lake looked like milk. Indoors, moony lamps glowed on the plush and Far East crimson and mahogany. There were Persian screens and Invalides horsehair helmets, busts of Pericles and Cicero and Athena, and who-else-not. And there was a portrait of his mother. Sure enough, she looked demented and wore a crown, a scepter in one hand and a rose in the other. The fog-cradled ore-boats from Duluth to Gary were moaning. Robey sat under a light, which showed the acne-exploded follicles under his beard.

  He mightn’t be very bright, Robey humbly started, but what could he do? he couldn’t escape ideas. None of us could escape ideas, and everybody was up against the same thing, namely, that there were hundreds of things to think about and to know. He had a duty to do his best at it. This was how he covered up his zeal, which I felt, however, powerfully trembling in the back.

  This book, he went on, he wanted to call The Needle’s Eye. Because there never had been a spiritual life for the rich if they didn’t give up everything. But it wasn’t any longer merely the rich who were headed for trouble. In the near future technology was going to create abundance and everyone would have enough of everything. There’d be inequality but not starvation or great need. People would eat. Well, when they ate, what then? The Eden of liberty, plenty, and love, the dream of the French Revolution coming to pass. But the French had been too optimistic and thought that when the decrepit old civilizations were busted nothing could stop us from entering the earthly paradise. But it wasn’t so simple. We were facing the greatest crisis in history. And he didn’t mean the war, then coming on. No, we’d find out if there was going to be this earthly paradise or not.

  “B-bread’s almost free now in America. What’ll hap-happen when the struggle for bread is o-o. … Will goods free man or enslave him?”

  You almost forgot to think about his goofy looks and about the lavish collection of screens, antiques, irons, Russian sleighs, hanks and tails of helmets, and mother-of-pearl boxes. All the same, even when he was in the top spheres he looked miserable, ready to weep tears. In the meantime the moldy ham taste kept coming up on me.

  “M-machinery’ll make an ocean of commodities. Dictators can’t stop it. Man will accept death. Live without God. That’s a b-brave project. End of an illusion. But with what values instead?”

  “That’s quite a deal,” I said.

  “But,” he said, “that’s toward the end of the b-book. I think we should start with Aristotle discussing how much of worldly goods you need before you can practice virtue.”

  “I haven’t read much Aristotle.”

  “Well, that’s one of the th-things you have to do. You’ll be paid for it, never you worry. But I want this to be a solid piece of work and real scholarly. We’re going to cover the Greeks and Romans, Middle Ages, Renaissance Italy, and I’m p-planning a chart, the Min-Minoans way high, Calvin down low, Sir Walter Raleigh, up; Carlyle, stinks; modern science, stand-still. Not even interested.”

  In the next half-hour he made sense only now and then; he seemed to tire, and he rambled, he blinked his fire-streaked eyes and coughed in his fist.

  “N-now-now you tell me about yourself,” he said. I didn’t know where to begin and I damned him for asking me. But he wasn’t listening. By the way he looked at his wristwatch I could tell he was wondering how soon he could be by himself again.

  So I asked to be shown the can, and he pointed it out. When I came back he appeared to have recovered his interest in the book and wanted to discuss it some more. He said he was sure I was the man to help him. And he started to outline the whole thing for me. Part one, general statement. Part two, pagans. Three, Christians and so forth. Four, practical examples of the highest happiness. His excitement again rose. He took off a house slipper and laid it on a book or album that was on the coffee table and every now and then he put it on again. He was saying that Christianity originally was aimed at the lowly and slaves, and that was why crucifixion and nailing and all such punitive grandeur of martyrdom were necessary. But at the pole opposite, the happy pole, there ought to be an equal thickness. Joy without sin, love without darkness, gay prosperity. Not to be always spoiling things. O great age of generous love and time of a new man! Not the poor, dark, disfigured creature cramped by his falsehood, a liar from the cradle, flogged by poverty, smelling bad from cowardice, deeper than a latrine in jealousy, dead as a cabbage to feeling, a maggot to beauty, a shrimp to duty, spinning the same thread of cocoon preoccupation from his mouth. Without tears to weep or enough expendable breath to laugh; cruel, frigging, parasitic, sneaking, grousing, anxious, and sluggardly. Drilled like a Prussian by the coarse hollering of sergeant fears. Robey poured it on me; he let it come down.

  I thought, Oh, what a crazy bastard! What kind of screwloose millionaire have they sent me to? All the same my heart responded to this and these things went home. My bottommost thought was, God have mercy on us poor human saps! And this bottommost thought budded out with another: Even if God did have mercy, this was what He’d have mercy on.

  Then Robey switched on me. He was a quick changer of mood.

  The damn bourgeoisie, he said, should have been leaders and offered practical examples of happiness. But they were a historic failure. They fumbled it. A weak dominant class, because all they had known how to do was to imitate the flow of money around the world, fill in all the opportunities for profit, like water seeking its own level, and to imitate the machine. Robey didn’t sound like himself now, not, that is, as earnest as before, but bookish. He scratched his foot and went on like a lecturer, and with his beard, which looked straw-stuck, he was just one more oddity of this room.

  But I was still enough of an Einhorn worshiper to be taken with him. And I set aside some of my criticisms and said, “You were talking about the salary before. Could you be more definite?”

  This made an unpleasant impression. “How m-much do you expect? Till I tell how you pan out, I c-can start you at a reasonable figure.”

  “What’s reasonable?”

  “Fifteen a week?”

  “You must be making a mistake in your figure. Fifteen? I can get that much on relief and never lift a finger.” It made me indignant.

  “Eighteen then,” he followed up fast.

  “You try to get a plumber to fix your washbasin for less than half a buck an hour. Are you trying to hoax me or s
omething? I don’t think you’re being serious.”

  “You ought to th-think of the ed-ed-ucation you’ll be getting. And it isn’t just a job but a cau-cau-cause.” He was very disturbed. “Well, twenty bu-bucks and you can live upstairs rent free.”

  So he could lay hold of me and chew my ear whenever he felt like it, night and day? Not on his life. “No,” I said, “thirty a week for thirty hours.”

  It hurt him to put out dough. I could see what a labor it was for his soul just to think about it.

  Finally he said, “Okay, when you work out. Twenty-five to start.”

  “No, thirty, I told you.”

  He cried, “Why do you put me through this t-terrible haggle? It’s really t-terrible. What the devil! It defeats the whole purpose.” His look was positively full of hatred. But he hired me anyway.