by Saul Bellow
She said fiercely, “Where were you!”
“I got in very late.”
She was hot, shaky, and hasty, and heavy clear tears gave her eyes that crazy largeness of grievance that sometimes they would get. I thought she would sob, but she only shook.
“I kind of expected you, the night before last,” I said, and she didn’t answer me. We were both sore but not prepared really to fight. What she shook with was breaking and not increasing anger.
“What do you see in those people down there?” she demanded. “I think they must make you feel ashamed of me, ever since Caligula. They make fun of me.”
“You think I’d let them do that?”
“I know them better than you do. That Moulton stinks.”
She lit into Wiley Moulton and other residents. I listened, and in this way we ignored our real differences. We couldn’t yet stand a fight.
Sometimes I almost convinced myself that I was ready to bat around the mountains with the snake nooses and cameras and guns. I could have used some action, because I was nervous and overcharged and because I longed that she and I should be back as we had been in Chicago. But I never could quite bring myself to go.
It seemed to me that I had to continue playing poker. I was ahead and couldn’t quit. Moulton kept yelling how I had drawn blood on everybody; I had to give people their chance for revenge. So I had a deck of cards between my fingers as their most familiar object, and actually I became a very dexterous and fancy dealer. Soon people were looking for me who didn’t even know me, and I seemed to be running a game at the Chinese restaurant. Louie Fu in his coat sweater was of that opinion even. I was Bolingbroke or the Eagle Man to tourist strangers who sat in the game, world-tour bums, Moulton called them. My pockets were full of different foreign currencies. I didn’t know exactly what I had. But I did have money. It was mine, not Smitty’s. There was no longer any refrigerator with bills in the greens and dishes; Thea never seemed to think to offer me an allowance. If I hadn’t been sick I’d have felt well-off, prosperous, with my pounds, dollars, pesos, and Swiss francs. But it was only my superficial luck that was good; I was rattled, I was bandaged in an unclean bandage, gaunt, the town seemed to want to blow its silly self to pieces, Thea was collecting coral snakes and rattlers, I had to win a fight of patience with my anxious backside to sit at Louie’s, or in somebody’s hotel room, or even at the foco rojo where the game sometimes moved. There the whores were in the rear; in front there was a little bar which was a soldiers’ hangout, before the tourists took over. The soldiers read comic books, ate beans, and drank pulque. Rats walked on the beams. The girls cooked, swept, or read too, or washed their hair in the yard. One half-naked kid with a garrison cap clonked on the marimba; the little black rubber balls on his sticks struck fast. I felt I had to do something well, so it shouldn’t all be a total loss, and so I watched the cards.
I didn’t convince Thea when I said that I’d go along with her just as soon as I felt up to it, nor did she convince me by her gestures toward me. She consented to keep me company in town some evenings, and it was good to see her legs in skirts, not covered by trousers. But it burned me up on the day her divorce papers came and I said, as I had figured to do, “Let’s get married,” and she simply shook her head. Then I remembered how once when afraid of pregnancy she let escape the fear of explaining to her family that I was the father. Where at first it had disappointed me, and later graveled me more, this now gave me a harsh sting. For sure enough I had a glimmer of things from her standpoint, of how it is one thing to have a young man for your happy friend in the rosy days of love, and quite different the faulty creature to face in practical weather. I knew how I’d seem to her uncle, the powerful millionaire with his squash white-haired nose and his tailor-made Havanas. It was true that Thea defied him and aimed to become financially independent; but as she couldn’t count on me she wouldn’t cut herself off from her family for my sake. Had I been as enthusiastic on birds, snakes, horses, guns, and photography as she we might have made the grade. But I wouldn’t have read a light meter for gold, I didn’t want to capture snakes, and I felt ornery about it all. I hoped Thea would tire of it; while she, I suppose, waited for me to get tired of Moulton and Co.
It was one fiesta after another meantime. The band plunged in the zócalo, clashed, drummed, and brayed; the fireworks bristled and ran off in strings, the processions swayed around with images. A woman died of a heart attack at a five-day drunk party, and there were scandals. Two young men, lovers, had an argument about a dog and one of them took an overdose of sleeping pills. Jepson forgot his jacket in the foco rojo; the madame herself, Negra, brought it to the house. Iggy’s ex-wife locked Jepson out, so he begged to sleep on Moulton’s porch. Moulton wouldn’t let him stay because he tried to borrow money, he drank his whisky. Now Jepson was living in the street, but as the town was foaming his sorrow wasn’t particularly noticeable in it. Wolves or wild swine or the giant iguanas themselves or stags wouldn’t have been either if they had slipped in from the mountains.
A bright dust blew around and whitened the nights. The hotels and shops wanted there should be a hullabaloo and paid money for the music and shots and tolling, but to keep up these long fiestas cash wouldn’t have been enough, and the energy for them must have come from the olden-time worship of those fire snakes and smoke mirrors and gruesome monster gods. Even the dogs ran and mumbled as if fresh back from their errand in the land of death, Mictlan. The old belief of the Indians was that dogs carried the souls of the dead there. There was an intestinal-amoeba epidemic which was hushed up, but funerals tangled with the other processions. There were big entertainments. A Cossack chorus sang in the cathedral; the priest had never had such a crowd inside, and it made him frantic; he scolded and clapped his hands at everyone, crying we were in la casa de Dios. It didn’t do a bit of good with that crowd. I can’t say those Russians looked out of place in the zócalo in their tunics, boots, and tucked-in pants, musing around at night, burning their long cigarettes. A Brazilian-Italian opera company did La Forza del Destino. They sang and throbbed powerfully, but as though they didn’t believe any of it themselves. Therefore I was skeptical too. Thea didn’t come back for the second act. Then there was an Indian circus that gave a grim performance. The equipment of the acrobats was as if ripped out of an old foundry; the horses were shabby; the performers were solemn Michoacán Indians, and they stunted without nets or any safety devices. The savage little girls who came out in their soiled trousers to juggle and walk the wires and perform other tasks never smiled or bowed.
Thus in this town I didn’t see anything familiar, except in reminiscence—as when those Russians made me remember Grandma Lausch.
Until one day when it was fairly quiet and I was sitting on a bench in the zócalo petting a kitten that tried to get into my armpit, and several large cars drove up to the cathedral. They were old cars but powerful, with something cast-iron about them, the long hoods, the low sling of expensive European automobiles. Immediately I knew there was a personage in the middle car, for bodyguards emerged from the two others, and I wondered who it was that could be so important and yet so run-down. Among the rest were two Mexican policemen, grouchy and proud of their tunics, which they smoothed straight right away; but the guards were Europeans or Americans, in leather jackets and leggings. Their hands were on their holsters and they were jittery; it seemed to me they didn’t know the first thing about their job. So I judged, having now and again, in Chicago, seen the real thing.
It was a cool day. I wore the thick jacket with many pockets that Thea had bought for me on Wabash Avenue, the one that could save you in the wilderness. But it was zipped open, as I sat in the sun. The kitty was nuzzling and kneading under my arm with her paws—I felt her little spine with satisfied amusement and I watched to see who would come out of the center limousine now that the arrangements were complete. An aide gave the nod and a guard started to work the handle of the door, who obviously didn’t have the hang of it,
and all stood helpless during this embarrassment till the opposite door impatiently was thrown back with iron bump from the extreme wads of old upholstery, and heads of a foreign comb, specs, beards bent forward within the beautifully polished glass. Here and there was a briefcase; I thought I recognized something political about these briefcases. One person was saying something, smiling and chatty, into the chauffeur’s phone. And then the principal figure came out with a spring; he was very gingery and energetic, debonair, sharp, acute in the beard. He addressed himself without waste of attention to the study of the front of the cathedral. He wore a short coat with fur collar, large glasses, his cheek was somewhat soft but that didn’t take away from an ascetic impression he gave. As I looked at him I decided with a real jolt that this must be Trotsky, down from Mexico City, the great Russian exile, and my eyes grew big. I always knew my entire life would not go by without my having seen a great man; and strangely enough my thought was of Einhorn, condemned to sit in a chair and study faces in the papers and limited to seeing only the people who chanced to come by. I was very enthusiastic and right away stood up. The beggars and loafers were already collecting in their Middle Ages style, the touts and schnorrers and the others uncovering their damages and stock-in-trade woes from bandages and rags. Head thrown back, Trotsky regarded and estimated the vast church, and with a jump in which hardly anything elderly appeared he went up the stairs and hastened in. There was a surge after him; the people with the briefcases—members of radical organizations I used to know in Chicago always had briefcases like those—and also a huge man with hair like a woman’s, and some of those queer bodyguards, and quite a few crutch-hoppers and singsong limosnita beggars who true enough were near dead, as they claimed, went through the dark gap of the church door.
I too wanted to go in; I was excited by this famous figure, and I believe what it was about him that stirred me up was the instant impression he gave—no matter about the old heap he rode in or the peculiarity of his retinue—of navigation by the great stars, of the highest considerations, of being fit to speak the most important human words and universal terms. When you are as reduced to a different kind of navigation from this high starry kind as I was and are only sculling on the shallow bay, crawling from one clam-rake to the next, it’s stirring to have a glimpse of deep-water greatness. And, even more than an established, an exiled greatness, because the exile was a sign to me of persistence at the highest things. So I was wild with enthusiasm; it bumped up inside my skull like the handle of a broom and made me recall that my head still was bandaged and I should go easy. I stood watching till he came out again.
But the reason for telling you all this is that one of the bodyguards turned out to be my old friend Sylvester, the onetime owner of the Star Theater, the engineering student from Armour Tech, the ex-husband of Mimi Villars’ sister, the former subway employee. I recognized him in his Western-style rig. Ye gods! How severe, melancholy, duty-charged, and baffled he looked! Same as the others, he packed a pistol; the spread of his pants was wide at the back and his belly hung over the belt. I hollered at him, “Sylvester! You, Sylvester!” He looked sharply at me, as if I took a dangerous liberty; yet he was curious. I was full of glee, and my head was pounding. My face got very red with laughter and excitement, because I was so extremely happy to see him. “You damned fool, Sylvester, don’t you know who it is? It’s Augie March. You mean to stand there and not recognize me? I haven’t changed that much, have I?”
“Augie?” he asked and smiled a little with dark bitter lips, incredulous. His question made an uncertain creak in his throat.
“Of course! It’s me, you dope! Jesus, how did you get here? What are you doing with that hardware?”
“How did you land down here? Gosh, we sure get around. What’s wrong with your head?”
“I fell off a horse,” I said, and in spite of my joy at seeing him I quickly ran through in my mind a variety of reasonable, and not especially true, accounts. But he didn’t ask, which astonished me. It now astonishes me less, for I know more about how people get preoccupied.
“Gee, it’s swell to see you, Sylvester. How come you’re doing this?”
“I got assigned to it—what do you mean? They wanted somebody with a technological background.”
Technological background! As I was laughing still from pleasure at meeting him I could get away with a laugh over this too. Poor Sylvester, with this story about being a technician. Well, well, whatever we got out of this meeting it sure wasn’t going to be the truth. I had prepared a story myself, should he ask me what I was up to. That’s how it is. One day’s ordinary falsehood if you could convert it into silt would choke the Amazon back a hundred miles over the banks. However, it never appears in this form but is distributed all over like the nitrogen in potatoes.
“So?” I said. “You’re with Trotsky all the time, you know him well, I guess? It must be marvelous. I wish I could know him!”
“You?”
“Gosh, I suppose I wouldn’t fit in. What’s he like? Do you think I could at least meet him, Sylvester? You could introduce me.”
“Yeah? Just like that?” said Sylvester, amused, with his heavy eyes. “It couldn’t be more complicated than you think, could it? You’re a funny guy. But look, I have to go. When you get up to the city phone me. I’d like to see you; we’ll have a beer. You remember Frazer from Chicago? He’s one of the old man’s secretaries. Don’t forget now.” Another guard was calling him, and he trotted away to the cars.
Oliver cursed the Japanese for the delay about the villa, but finally the Japanese sailed for Japan and Oliver moved in and prepared to throw a huge party and have the best society in town. That would poison his enemies at the Carlos Quinto. Moulton helped him make up a guest list and invitations were sent out to the old residents. Mostly a lot of riffraff turned up, however, in observance of his troubles, which were by then public and had been for some time. A Treasury agent came to town, and he didn’t hide his identity but told everyone, with swell humor, what he was. He sat spread on one of Hilario’s wire-harp chairs and drank beer as if on a holiday, or fed peanuts to the kinkajou. Oliver managed to look indifferent when he went through the square, he and Stella as usual dressed up to the eyes. The more he looked self-possessed, the more it was a disaster, and I was sorry for him. Stella was scared. She sometimes tried to make me understand that she’d like to talk to me about this. I never thought it unnatural that I should be the one she wanted to discuss her troubles with. However, there was no chance to do it. Oliver watched her very closely.
I said to Moulton, “What do they want Oliver for? It must be serious or they wouldn’t have sent a man from Washington.”
“The guy says income-tax evasion, but it must be worse than that. Oliver’s a vain, silly type, but he wouldn’t be so dumb as to get in that sort of trouble. It’s worse.”
“Poor Oliver!”
“He’s a jerk.”
“Maybe so. But fundamentally—I mean, as a man.”
“Oh, fundamentally,” he said thoughtfully. But then he seemed to shake himself out of it and said, “Maybe fundamentally too he’s a jerk.”
Meanwhile it was in a terrible way instructive to see how Oliver behaved, how unruffled he tried to appear. But he was always in small ways losing control. One afternoon he got into a fight with old Louie Fu. Louie, he was queer enough, with his Spanish-Chinese cackles, and in addition he was also a terribly economizing old man, and I suppose in famine China he may have known what it was to pick grains out of manure; so it was nothing much to him now to pour the drinks people didn’t finish into a single pop bottle. With his unassertive chest covered with gray knots of a loopy sweater, at the zinc counter, he poured together what was left of orange pop one day and put it in the icebox; Oliver caught him and punched him in the face. This was terrible. Louie screamed. His family was infuriated and started to yell. All we foreigners started up from the card game. The police appeared and closed in from the front door. I took Stella by t
he hand through the curtain of beads into the other half of the shop, where they sold dry-goods, and as we came into the street we saw a gang swirl out and follow the arrestees to city hall and the magistrate’s court. Louie’s eye was already covered by a large stain and his throat was full of cords as he shouted. Oliver got one of the Mexican guitar-playing fancy-boys to interpret for him. And the defense he made was that what Louie had done was very dangerous because of the amoeba. Oliver couldn’t have done worse than to claim he was protecting public health. The magistrate slapped his hand down en seguida on this irresponsible rumor of dysentery. He was large and squat, a man who raised bulls for the ring, and he wore his hat in the court like a businessman-prince, this dark powerful person. He named a whopping fine which Oliver paid on the spot, looking sporting, if grim, and also entertained. Money was one thing he didn’t seem to lack. And how did Stella take this—in her sleeveless lace dress and wearing a hat? She appealed to me with her large disturbed eyes to see for myself what she was up against. With so much going on in the town I hadn’t given it the consideration it called for. Why, even, did she need to wear such an elegant dress to Louie Fu’s afternoon poker game? It must have been that she had no dresses except elegant ones, and no places to visit except those Oliver took her to. It was very odd. She said, “I have to talk to you one of these days. Soon.”