by Saul Bellow
Near the end of the holiday Simon wrote that he was coming to St. Joe with a girl friend, and he had luck with the weather. I was on the pier when the white steamer tied up. All the blue and green was fresher from the rains, and the cold of the wet days was down to a pin core. As for the people debarking, the hard use of the city was on them; it had come off only a little during this four-hour excursion on the water. Families, single men, working girls in pairs bringing their beach and summer things, some not so visibly encumbered but heavily loaded all the same. Tough or injured, according to their lot or nature. Off the ship they tramped, over the motor-driven edge of water and into the peaceful swale of brightness, and here and there the light picked out a specialized or warily happy face; and also illuminated were silks, hairs, brows, straws, breasts come to breathe out charges of nerves or let rise the driven-down simplicities, bearers of things as old as the most ancient of cities and older; desires and avoidances bred into bellies, shoulders, legs, as long ago as Eden and the Fall.
Taller than most, blond and brown, there was my Germanic-looking brother. He was dolled up like a Fourth of July sport, and a little like a smart gypsy, smiling, his chipped tooth foremost, his double-breasted plaid jacket open wide, knuckles down on the handles of two grips. He gave off his fairness with a kind of heat in the blue color of his eyes, terrifically; it was also in his cheeks, down into his neck, rich and animal. He walked heavy in balance, in his pointed shoes over the gangplank, arms drawn down by the weight of the valises, searching for me in the shade of the pier. I never saw him looking better than there, in the sun, rolling in with the crowd in his glad rags. When he clapped his arm around me I was happy to feel and smell him, and we grinned, mugged, pushed faces, with man’s bristles under each other’s fingers, and went through a rough, teasing grip.
“Well, you jerk?”
“And you, money-man?”
There wasn’t any sting in this, though Simon had for a while been acting quiet toward me because I was earning more than he and cruising in luxury.
“How’s everybody—Mama?”
“Well, the eyes, you know. But she’s okay.”
And then he fetched up his girl—a big dark girl named Cissy Flexner. I had known her at school; she was from the neighborhood. Her father, before he went bust, had owned a drygoods store—overalls, laborers’ canvas gloves and longjohns, galoshes, things like that; and he was a fleshy, diffident, pale, inside sort of man, back in his boxes. But she, although in a self-solicitous way, was a beautiful piece of tall work, on colossal but careful legs, hips forward; her mouth was big and would have been perfect if there hadn’t been something self-tasting in it, eyes with complicated lids but magnificent in their slow heaviness, an erotic development. So that she had to cast down these eyes a little to be decent with her endowment, that height of the bosom and form of hips and other generic riches, smooth and soft, that may take the early person, the little girl, by surprise in their ampleness when they come on. She accused me somewhat of examining her too much, but could anybody help that? And it was excusable on the further score that she might become my sister-in-law, for Simon was powerfully in love. He already was husbandly toward her, and they hung on each other with fondling and kissing and intimacy, strolling by the steep colors of water and air, while I swam by myself in the lake a little distance away. Also on the sand, when Simon, after he had rubbed his fine shield of chest hair, dried her back, he kissed it, and it gave me a moment’s ache in the roof of the mouth, as if I had got the warm odor and touch of skin myself. She had so much, gave out so much splendor. As stupendous quiff.
But personally I didn’t care too much for her. Partly because I was gone on Esther. But also because what came across as her own, that is, apart from female brilliance, was slow. Maybe she herself was stupefied by what she had, her slaying weight. It must have pressed down on her thoughts, like any great vitality in nature. Like the aims that live in the blood of grizzly or tiger, bearing down on the mind of such beasts with square weight, a manifestation of one thing carried out completely, to the very stripes and claws. But what about the privilege over that of being in the clasp of nature, and in on the mission of a species? The ingredient of thought was weaker in Cissy’s mixture than the other elements. But she was a sly girl, soft though she seemed.
And as she lay stretched on the sand, and the hot oil of popcorn and sharpness of mustard came in puffs, with crackling, from the stands of Silver Beach, she kept answering Simon, whom I couldn’t hear—he was on his side next to her in his red trunks—“Oh, fooey, no. What bushwah! Love, shmuv!” But her pleasure was high. “I’m so glad you brought me, dear. So clean. It’s heavenly here.”
I didn’t like Simon’s struggle with her—for that was what it was—to convince her, sway her, work her around. Nearly everything he proposed she refused. “Let’s not and say we did,” and similar denials. It led him into crudenesses I hadn’t ever seen him in before, the way he laid himself out, dug, campaigned, swashed, flattered her, was gross. His tongue hung out with the heat of work and infatuation; and there was a bottom ground where he was angry, his anger rising straight into his face in two flaming centers, under his eyes, on either side of his nose. I understood this, as we were covering the same field of difficulty and struggle in front of the identical Troy. This that happened to us would have given Grandma Lausch the satisfaction of a prophetess—the spirit, anyhow, of her; the actual was covered up in the dust of the Home, in the band of finalists for whom there was the little guessing game of which would next be taken out of play. So I recorded this seeming success of prediction for her. And as for Simon, all the places where he and I had once been joined while still young brothers, before there were differences and distances between us—these places began to act up, feeling attachment near again. The reattachment didn’t actually take place, but I loved him nevertheless. When he was on his feet with the flowered cloth of her beach dress on his shoulders, it made something crass but brave, his standing up raw and sunburned, by the pure streak of the water, as if he were being playful about the wearing of this girl’s favor.
I took them to the evening steamer, for she refused to stay overnight, and was on deck with them through the long working out of sunset, down to the last blue, devoid of other lights; fall weight and furrows in the clouds set cityward, let go from the power of the sun to sink down on the moundings and pilings of the water, gray and powerful.
“Well, sport, we may be married in the next few months,” he said. “You envy me? I bet you do.”
And he covered her up with his hands and arms, his chin on her shoulder and kissing her on the neck. The flamboyant way he had of making love to her was curious to me—his leg advanced between her legs and his fingers spread on her face. She didn’t refuse anything he did, although in words never agreed; she had no kindness in speaking. With her hands up the sleeves of her white coat, hugging out the chill, she stood by a davit. He was still in his shirt, owing to sunburn, but wore his panama, the breeze molding the brim around.
Chapter 9
JUST WHEN Mrs. Renling’s construction around me was nearly complete I shoved off. The leading and precipitating reason was that she proposed to adopt me. I was supposed to become Augie Renling, live with them, and inherit all their dough. To see what there was behind this more light is needed than probably I can turn on. But first of all there was something adoptional about me. No doubt this had something to do with the fact that we were in a fashion adopted by Grandma Lausch in our earliest days; to please and reward whom I had been pliable and grateful-seeming, an adoptee. If not really so docile and pliable, this was the hidden ball and surprise about me. Why had the Einhorns, protecting their son Arthur, had to underscore it that they didn’t intend to take me into their family? Because something about me suggested adoption. And then there were some people who were especially adoption-minded. Some maybe wishing to complete their earthly work. Thus Mrs. Renling in her strenuous and hacked-up way, and the whiteness that came fr
om her compression into her intense purposes. She too had her mission on earth.
There’s one thing you couldn’t easily find out from Mrs. Renling; I never knew what was her most deep desire, owing to her cranky manners and swift conversation. But she wanted to try being a mother. However, I was in a state of removal from all her intentions for me. Why should I turn into one of these people who didn’t know who they themselves were? And the unvarnished truth is that it wasn’t a fate good enough for me, because that was what came out clearly when it became a question of my joining up. As son. Otherwise I had nothing against them; just the opposite, I had a lot to thank them for. But all the same I was not going to be built into Mrs. Renling’s world, to consolidate what she affirmed she was. And it isn’t only she but a class of people who trust they will be justified, that their thoughts will be as substantial as the seven hills to build on, and by spreading their power they will have an eternal city for vindication on the day when other founders have gone down, bricks and planks, whose thoughts were not real and who built on soft swamp. What this means is not a single Tower of Babel plotted in common, but hundreds of thousands of separate beginnings, the length and breadth of America. Energetic people who build against pains and uncertainties, as weaker ones merely hope against them. And, even literally, Mrs. Renling was very strong, and as she didn’t do any visible work it must have come, the development in her muscles, from her covert labor.
Mr. Renling also was willing to adopt me and said he would be happy to be my father. I knew it was more than he would say to anyone else. From his standpoint, for me, reared by poor women, it was a big break to be rescued from the rat race and saved by affection. God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few.
When I told Mrs. Renling that Simon was going to get married and that Cissie was the daughter of a busted drygoods man, she began to work it out and do the sociology of it for me. She showed me the small flat and the diapers hanging in the kitchen, the installment troubles about furniture and clothes and my brother an old man at thirty from anxiety and cut-off spirit, the captive of the girl and babies. “While you at thirty, Augie, will just start thinking about getting married. You’ll have money and culture and your pick of women. Even a girl like Thea Fenchel. An educated man with a business is a lord. Renling is very clever and has come far, but with science, literature, and history he would have been a real prince and not just average prosperous—”
She pressed in the right place when she mentioned the Fenchels. It opened up a temptation. But it was only one temptation and that was not enough. I didn’t believe Esther Fenchel ever would have me. And, moreover, though I was still in love with her, my attitude toward her wasn’t what it had been. I more and more believed what her sister had said. And then, when I told myself absolutely the truth, I conceded that I didn’t have a chance.
Anyway, Mrs. Renling put tender weights on me. She called me “son,” and she would introduce me to people as “our youngster,” and she petted me on the head and so forth. And I was robust and in possession of my sex; I mean by that that it wasn’t stroking a boy of eight on his new glossy hair, and there was something more to be assumed than that I was a child.
That I didn’t want to be adopted never spontaneously occurred to her, and she assumed, as if it were normal but not to be mentioned, something else: that, like everyone, I was self-seeking. So that if I had any objections in reserve, they’d be minor ones, and I’d keep them covered. Or if I had thoughts of helping my brothers or Mama, those thoughts would be bound up and kept in the back. She had never seen Mama and didn’t intend to; and when I told her in St. Joe that Simon was coming she didn’t ask to meet him. There was a little in it of Moses and the Pharaoh’s daughter; only I wasn’t a bulrush-hidden infant by any means. I had family enough to suit me and history to be loyal to, not as though I had been gotten off of a stockpile.
So I drew back; I turned down the hints, and when they became open offers I declined them. I said to Mr. Renling, “I appreciate your kindness, and you two are swell. I’ll be grateful to you as long as I live. But I have folks, and I just have a feeling—”
“You fool!” said Mrs. Renling. “What folks? What folks?”
“Why, my mother, my brothers.”
“What have they got to do with it? Baloney! Where’s your father—tell me!”
I couldn’t say.
“You don’t know even who he is. Now, Augie, don’t be a fool. A real family is somebody, and offers you something. Renling and I will be your parents because we will give you, and all the rest is bunk.”
“Well, let him think about it,” said Renling.
I think that Renling was out of sorts that day; he had a cowlick at the back of his hair and the loops of his suspenders showed from his vest. Which indicated that he suffered some, with a despair of his own, nothing to do with me, for as a usual thing he presented himself perfect.
“Oh, what’s to think!” Mrs. Renling cried. “You see how he thinks! He has to learn how to think first, if he wants to be a dumbbell and work for other people all his life. If I let him, he’d be married already to the waitress next door, that Indian with the squashed nose, and waiting for a baby, so in two years he’d be ready to take gas. Offer him gold and he says, no, he chooses shit!”
She went on like that and worked ugly terror on me. Renling was disturbed. Not terribly disturbed, but in the manner a nightbird, that knows all about daylight, will beat through it if he must, a crude, big, brown-barred shape, but only if he must, and then he will fly toward the thick of the woods and get back to the darkness.
And I—I always heard from women that I didn’t have the pro-founder knowledge of life, that I didn’t know its damage or its suffering or its stupendous ecstasies and glories. Being not weak, nor with breasts where its dreads could hit me. Looking not so strong as to be capable of a superior match with it. Other people showed me their achievements, claims and patents, paradise and hell-evidence, their prospectors’ samples—often in their faces, in lumps—and, especially women, told me of my ignorance. Here Mrs. Renling was menacing me, crying out that I was the child of fools, dead sure that I would be crushed in the gate, stamped out in the life struggle. For, listen to her, and I was made for easy conditions, and to rise from a good bed to the comfort of a plentiful breakfast, to dip my roll in yolk and smoke a cigar with coffee, in sunshine and comfort, free from melancholy or stains. Such the kind faction of the world wanted for me, and if I refused my chance there was oblivion waiting for me instead; the wicked would get hold of me. I tried not to reject the truth in what I was told, and I had a lot of regard for the power of women to know it.
But I asked for time to think the matter over, and I could have thought very successfully, for the weather favored it—the first and best of autumn, football weather, cold yellow asters in the fine air, and the full sounds of punting and horses stamping on the bridle path.
I took an afternoon off to consult Einhorn.
Einhorn’s luck had begun to turn again and he had opened a new office, moving from the poolroom to a flat across the street where he could continue to keep an eye on it. The change made him somewhat egotistical, as also the fact that there was a woman in love with him. It gave him a big boost. He had been putting out his paper for shut-ins again, on the mimeograph machine, and one of his readers, a crippled girl named Mildred Stark, had fallen for him. She wasn’t in first youth any more; she was aged about thirty and heavy, but she had a vital if somewhat struggle-weakened head, hair and brows strong and black. She wrote answers in verse to his inspirational poems and at last she had her sister bring her to the office, where she made a scene and wouldn’t go away until Einhorn had promised to let her work for him. She didn’t ask for any salary, only that he should rescue her from home-boredom. Mildred’s trouble was with her feet, and she wore orthopedic shoes. They made slow going, and, as I later had the chance to learn, Mildred was somebody for whom impulses came fast and in force, and these impulses ran onto non-c
onductors and were turned back, stored up until she got dark in the face. In her person, as I say, she was heavy, and her eyes were black, her skin was not well lit. To develop from crippled girl into crippled woman, in the family, in the house, such staleness and hardship—that’s what it makes for, darkness, saturninity, oversat grievance. Being without what’s needed to put a satisfied, not dissatisfied, face at the window.
But Mildred wouldn’t accept lying down and dying, though she never recovered from looking near middle-aged and dark and sore, as-a woman forced to sit, or someone who has missed out on children, or whom men have swindled. It could not be rubbed out, though it was arrested by her love for Einhorn, who permitted her to love him. In the beginning she came only two or three times a week to type some letters for him, and ended by becoming his full-time secretary, as well as other things—his servant and confidante. Someone who could literally say, biblically, “Thy handmaiden.” Pushing his rolling chair for him, she needed its support in her limping and foot-dragging. He sat, well satisfied, well served. He looked severe and even impatient, but the truth was otherwise. The spirit I found him in was the Chanticleer spirit, by which I refer to male piercingness, sharpness, knotted hard muscle and blood in the comb, jerky, flaunty, haughty and bright, with luxurious slither of feathers.