by Saul Bellow
I’d try again and say, “Iggy, what can I do to prove I love her?”
“I don’t know what. Maybe you couldn’t prove it because you don’t.”
“No, Iggy, how can you say that! Can’t you see how it is?”
“Why did you go away with that broad then?”
“That was kind of a revolt or something. How should I know why! I didn’t invent human beings, Iggy.”
“You don’t know the score yet, Boling. I’m sorry for you,” he said from his wall, “honest I am. But this has got to happen to you before you get anywheres. You always had it too good. You got to get knocked over and crushed like this. If you don’t you’ll never understand how much you hurt her. You’ve got to find out about this and not be so larky.”
“She’s too angry. If she loved me she wouldn’t be so angry. She needs some reason to be so angry.”
“Well, you gave her it.”
It was no use trying to argue with Iggy, so I lay silent and argued and pleaded in my mind with Thea instead, but I only kept losing more and more. Why had I done it? I had wounded her badly, I knew it. I could see it as clearly as I could see her saying, white, with a strained throat, “I am disappointed!” “Well, honey, listen,” I wanted to tell her, “of course everybody is disappointed sometime or another. Why, you know that. Everybody gets damaged, and everybody does some damage. Especially in love. And I’ve done you this damage. But I love you, and you should forgive me so we can continue.”
I ought to have taken my chances with the snakes in the hot mountains, creeping after them with nooses on the brown soil up there, instead of hanging around the dizzy town where things were even more dangerous.
It had hit her hard when I revealed what I thought of her hunting. But hadn’t she also tried to carry me to the ground and crush me with the attack she made on me, saying how vain I was, how unreliable, how I was always looking at other women and had no conscience? And was it true, as she said, that love would appear strange to me no matter what form it took, even if there were no eagles and snakes?
I thought about it and was astonished at how much truth there actually was in this. Why, it was so! And I had always believed that where love was concerned I was on my mother’s side, against the Grandma Lausches, the Mrs. Renlings, and the Lucy Magnuses.
If I didn’t have money or profession or duties, wasn’t it so that I could be free, and a sincere follower of love?
Me, love’s servant? I wasn’t at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn’t a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and lizards.
Now I had started, and this terrible investigation had to go on. If this was how I was, it was certainly not how I appeared but must be my secret. So if I wanted to please, it was in order to mislead or show everyone, wasn’t it, now? And this must be because I had an idea everyone was my better and had something I didn’t have. But what did people seem to me anyhow, something fantastic? I didn’t want to be what they made of me but wanted to please them. Kindly explain! An independent fate, and love too—what confusion!
I must be a monster to make such confusion.
But no, I couldn’t be a monster and suffer both. That would be too unjust. I didn’t believe it.
It wasn’t right to think everyone else had more power of being. Why, look now, it was clear as anything that it wasn’t so but merely imagination, exaggerating how you’re regarded, misunderstanding how you’re liked for what you’re not, disliked for what you’re not, both from error and laziness. The way must be not to care, but in that case you must know how really to care and understand what’s pleasing or displeasing in yourself. But do you think every newcomer is concerned and is watching? No. And do you care that anyone should care in return? Not by a long shot. Because nobody anyhow can show what he is without a sense of exposure and shame, and can’t care while preoccupied with this but must appear better and stronger than anyone else, mad! And meantime feels no real strength in himself, cheats and gets cheated, relies on cheating but believes abnormally in the strength of the strong. All this time nothing genuine is allowed to appear and nobody knows what’s real. And that’s disfigured, degenerate, dark mankind—mere humanity.
But then with everyone going around so capable and purposeful in his strong handsome case, can you let yourself limp in feeble and poor, some silly creature, laughing and harmless? No, you have to plot in your heart to come out differently. External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can’t get justice and he can’t give justice, but he can live. And this is what mere humanity always does. It’s made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that’s what their power is. There’s one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention, which is the invention maybe of the world itself, and of nature, becomes the actual world—with cities, factories, public buildings, railroads, armies, dams, prisons, and movies—becomes the actuality That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version.
I certainly looked like an ideal recruit. But the invented things never became real for me no matter how I urged myself to think they were.
My real fault was that I couldn’t stay with my purest feelings. This was what tore the greatest hole in me. Maybe Thea couldn’t stand many happy days in a row either, that did occur to me as a reason for her cooling off. Perhaps she had this trouble too, with her chosen thing. The year before, when Mimi was in trouble, Kayo Obermark had said to me that this happened to everyone. Everyone got bitterness in his chosen thing. It might be in the end that the chosen thing in itself is bitterness, because to arrive at the chosen thing needs courage, because it’s intense, and intensity is what the feeble humanity of us can’t take for long. And also the chosen thing can’t be one that we already have, since what we already have there isn’t much use or respect for. Oh, this made me feel terrible contempt, the way I felt, riled and savage. The fucking slaves! I thought. The lousy cowards!
As for me personally, not much better than some of the worst, my invention and special thing was simplicity. I wanted simplicity and denied complexity, and in this I was guileful and suppressed many patents in my secret heart, and was as devising as anybody else. Or why would I long for simplicity?
Personality is unsafe in the first place. It’s the types that are safe. So almost all make deformations on themselves so that the great terror will let them be. It isn’t new. The timid tribespeople, they flatten down heads or pierce lips or noses, or hack off thumbs, or make themselves masks as terrible as the terror itself, or paint or tattoo. It’s all to anticipate the terror which does not welcome your being.
Tell me, how many Jacobs are there who sleep on the stone and force it to be their pillow, or go to the mat with angels and wrestle the great fear to win a right to exist? These brave are so few that they are made the fathers of a whole people.
While as for me, whoever would give me cover from this mighty free-running terror and wild cold of chaos I went to, and therefore to temporary embraces. It wasn’t very courageous. That I was like many others in this was no consolation. If there were so many they must all suffer the same way I did.
Well, now that I knew of this I wanted another chance. I thought I must try to b
e brave again. So I decided I’d go and plead with her in Chilpanzingo, and say that though I was a weak man I could little by little alter if she’d bear with me.
As soon as I had decided this I felt much better. I went to the peluquería and had myself shaved. Then I ate lunch at Louie Fu’s and one of his daughters pressed my pants for me. I was overwrought but primed with hopes too. I already saw how she’d whiten in the face as she denounced me, and her eyes darken and flash out at me. But also she’d throw her arms around me. Because she also needed me. And all her eccentric force, which came from doubt as to whether her desire could ever trust someone again, would stop and rest on me.
Imagining how this would be, I melted, my chest got hot, soft, sore, and yearning. I saw it already happening. It’s always been like that with me, that fantasy went ahead of me and prepared the way. Or else, as it seems, the big heavy personal van, dark and cumbersome, can’t start into strange terrain. But this imagination of mine, like the Roman army out in Spain or Gaul, makes streets and walls even if it’s only camping, for the night.
While I sat in my shorts and waited for my pants, Louie’s dog came out. Listless and fat, she smelled like old Winnie. She stood square before me and gazed. Not wanting to be stroked, she backed away with clicking claws when I reached out, and she showed little old teeth. Not that she was sore, but wanted to go back to her isolation. So she did, under the curtain with an extreme sigh. She was very old.
The bus, an old rural schoolbus from the States, arrived like the buckboard of olden times. I was already inside, holding my ticket, when Moulton came up and said through the window, “Come out, I want to talk to you.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Come,” he said earnestly. “It’s important. You’d better.”
Iggy said, “Whyn’t you mind your own business, Wiley?”
Moulton’s big brow and squash nose were covered with a white sweat. “Will it be better if he walks into something and gets knocked over?” he said.
I got out. “What do you mean, knocked over?” I asked.
Before Iggy could interfere, if he was about to try, Moulton clasped my hand next to his hard belly, drew my arm taut under his, and with burly haste he made me walk a few fast steps on the stones and rosy garbage, on my turned-over heels.
“Get onto yourself,” he said. “Talavera was Thea’s friend, old man. He’s there with her in Chilpanzingo.”
I tore loose. I was going to get my fingers into his neck and choke him to death.
“Ig,” he yelled, “you better hold on to him!”
Iggy who was just behind us took hold of me.
“Let go!”
“Wait, you’re not going to kill him right here with cops and everybody around, You better beat it, Wiley. He’s pulling like a bull.”
I wanted to smash Iggy to the ground too as he held my arm.
“Now wait, Boling. Find out first if it’s true. Chrissake, use your head!”
Moulton was going backwards while I dragged Iggy on my arm.
“Don’t be a foolish bastard, Boling,” said Moulton. “It’s true all right. You think I want trouble with you? I only did it to help, so you wouldn’t get hurt. It’s dangerous down there. Talavera will kill you.”
“Look what a favor you done him!” said Iggy. “Look at his face!”
“Is it true he went down there with her, Iggy?” I said, stopping. I was so clawed and bit inside I could hardly get out this question.
“He was her boy friend here before,” Iggy said. “A guy told me yesterday that Talavera took off for Chilpanzingo right after Thea.”
“When was he—?”
“A few years ago. Why, he was living at Casa Descuitada, just about,” said Moulton.
I couldn’t any longer stay on my feet and slumped down against the bandstand. I covered my head with my hands and shivered, my face on my knees.
Moulton was severe toward me. “I’m surprised the way you take it, March,” he said.
“How do you want him to take it? Stop layin’ it on him,” said Iggy.
“He acts like a kid and you encourage him,” Moulton said. “This has happened to me, it’s happened to you. It happened to Talavera when she showed up with Smitty and then with him.”
“No, it didn’t. Talavera knew she was married.”
“What’s the difference? Even if Talavera is a chorus-boy horse-rider he has his feelings. Well, shouldn’t a man find out when this happens to him? Shouldn’t I have found out? Shouldn’t you have found out? This is one of those damn facts that have got to be known.”
“But the guy still loves her. You got mad when somebody put the blocks to your wife, but not because you loved her.”
“Well, does she love him?” said Moulton. “Then what was she doing in the mountains with Talavera after March got knocked on the dome and was laid up?”
“She was doing nothing in the mountains with him,” I cried out, raging again. “If he’s in Chilpanzingo now, he’s just in Chilpanzingo and not with Thea.”
He stared at me, acting full of curiosity. He said, “Brother, I bet you see exactly what everybody else sees, but you just stick by your opinions. Why didn’t she tell you he was her old boy friend? And what were they doing, just having a debate of yes or no, and she didn’t get off her horse for him?”
“Nothing went on. Nothing! If you don’t stop talking I’ll ram one of these stones down your throat!”
But he was terribly roused too and bound to go on; he wasn’t just trifling but intended something. His eyes were open large and fixed on me.
“Too bad, friend, but women have no judgment. They aren’t just for happy young fellows like you. What do you want to bet her britches came down for him, and she didn’t save all her sweet little things for you?”
I jumped at him. Iggy held me from the back, and I picked him off the ground and tried to get rid of him by dashing him against the bandstand, but he clung, and when I threw my weight backwards and crushed him so he’d let go, he gasped, “Christ, you lost your mind? I’m keepin’ you outa trouble.”
Moulton had already gotten away, down the busy street that led to the market. I yelled after him, “Okay, you filthy slob sonofabitch. You wait. I’ll kill you!”
“Quit that, Boling, there’s a cop with his eye on you.”
An Indian policeman sat on the running board of a nearby car. He probably was used to drunken gringos wrangling and scrapping.
Iggy had forced me down on my knee; he still clutched my arms. “Can I let you loose now? You won’t run after him?” I uttered a kind of sob and shook my head. He helped me to stand up. “Look at you, covered with muck. You’ll have to change your clothes.”
“No, I haven’t got time.”
“Come on to my room. I’ll get this stuff off you at least with a brush.”
“I’m not going to miss that bus.”
“You mean to say you’re going down there anyway? You must be cracked.”
But I had decided I’d go. I washed my face at Louie’s and got into the bus; my place was taken there, and all the early birds who had watched me by the bandstand appeared to have understood what it was about, that I was a poor cabrón who had lost his woman.
Iggy entered the bus with me. He said, “Never mind him. He tried to make her himself and propositioned her a dozen times. He was dying to get her. That’s why he was interested in you and would come up to the villa. At Oliver’s party he tried to make her again. It was why she left so fast.”
It didn’t matter so much; it was about like a burning match next to a four-alarm fire.
“Don’t go getting into a fight there. You’d be nuts. Talavera will kill you. Maybe I should come and keep you out of trouble. You want me to?”
“Thanks. Just let me alone.”
He didn’t really want to come with me.
The old bus made a sudden noise, as of sewing machines in a loft. Through the fumes the cathedral seemed as if reflected in a river.
“Shoving off,” said Iggy. “Remember,” he warned me again as he got to the ground, “you’re foolish to go. You’re just asking for it.”
As the bus rolled down from the town a peasant woman kindly shared her edge of the seat with me. When I sat down I felt it start to burst through me again. Oh, fire, fire! Spasms or cramps of jealous sickness, violent and burning. I held my face and felt that I might croak.
What did she do it for? Why did she take up with Talavera? To punish me? That was a way to punish somebody!
Why, she was guilty herself of what she accused me! Was I looking over her shoulder at Stella? Well, she was looking over mine at Talavera and had revenge ready right away.
Where was that little cat we used to have in Chicago? All at once I wondered. Because one time when we had been away in Wisconsin for two days and came back at night this little thing was crying from hunger. Then Thea started to weep over it and put it inside her dress while we drove to Fulton Street market to feed it a whole fish. And where was this cat now? Left behind somewhere, nowhere special, and that was how permanent Thea’s attachments were.