by Saul Bellow
He left me with this Paslavitch, then, and for some reason I felt I was put in deposit or reserve, but I was tired and didn’t much care what he had in mind. Paslavitch showed me the rooms and the garden. I gazed at the birds, caged and free, the hummingbirds in the flowers and the spiny applauding of the cactuses. Lying in the grass or standing along the path were Mexican gods who gripped and clutched on themselves and cooled their hot teeth and tongues in the blue air.
Paslavitch was a kind, worried, meek, stubborn man who covered Mexico for the Yugoslav press. He considered himself a Bolshevik and old revolutionary but he was a lacrimae rerum type if I ever saw one; everything was forever touching him, and he had tears the way a pine has gum to give. He played Chopin on the piano, and when he executed a particular march he’d say to me, “Frederic Chopin wrote this during a storm when he was in Mallorca with George Sand. She was sailing on the Mediterranean. When she arrived he said, ‘I thought you were drowned!’” Pressing on the pedals in his Mexican shoes, he made you think of Nero acting in a tragedy. Most of all this Paslavitch was in love with French culture and had a keen wish to teach me. In fact he had an obsession about teaching and was always saying, “Teach me about Chicago,” “Teach me about General Ulysses S. Grant. I will teach you. I will tell you about Fontenelle’s ham omelette. We will exchange.”
He was very eager. “Fontenelle wanted to eat a ham omelette on a Friday but a terrible storm started, with thunder. So finally he threw the omelette out of the window and said to God, ‘Seigneur! Tant de bruit pour une omelette.’” It could be illuminating. He’d sway, with closed eyes and tight pronunciation. Or else he’d tell me, “Louis Thirteenth loved to play barber and would shave his gentlemen whether they wanted it or not. Also he enjoyed to imitate dying agonies, so he would make faces, and furthermore he would spend the wedding night in the same bed with young couples and was the last expression of feudal degeneracy.”
Maybe he was, but Paslavitch loved him because he was French. He’d keep me after supper and repeat these conversations of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, de la Rochefoucauld and the Duchesse de Longueville, Diderot and a young actress, Chamfort and somebody else. I liked Paslavitch but sometimes it was heavy going, being his guest. I also had to go and play billiards with him at a club on the Calle de Uruguay. And to drink with him, when he felt like drinking. I did not want to do it in the afternoon because it reminded me too much of the tequila drinking I did in Acatla. But we’d sit and kill a few bottles of wine. Thousand soft moose-lashes of the copper forest sun passed through the trees; the garden was green while the woman’s form of the volcano slept in the snow. I was a guest and guests have to go along with hosts. I paid my way by teaching him about the major leagues, etcetera.
Meanwhile I was building up my health somewhat, and then Frazer came around and sprung what he had been saving me for.
“You know that the GPU wants the Old Man’s life,” said Frazer.
I knew it. I had read in the papers about the machine-gun attack on his villa and Paslavitch had told me many other details.
“Well,” said Frazer, “a man named Mink who is the chief of the Russian police has arrived in Mexico to take over the campaign against the Old Man.”
“What a terrible thing! What can you do to protect him?”
“Well, the villa is being fortified, and we have a bodyguard. But the fortification isn’t ready yet. The cops aren’t enough to do the job. Stalin is out to get him because he’s the conscience of the revolutionary world.”
“Why are you telling me this, Frazer?”
“Here’s the thing. There’s a scheme being discussed. Maybe the Old Man will shake the GPU by traveling incognito around the country.”
“What do you mean, incognito?”
“This is confidential, March. I mean that he should take off his beard and mustache, cut his hair, and pass as a tourist.”
Well, I thought this mighty queer. As if Gandhi should go dressed in a Prince Albert. That this formerly so mighty and commanding man should have to alter and humble himself. Somehow, though I had seen and known lots of trouble, this struck me very hard.
I said, “Whose idea is this?”
“Why it’s been discussed,” said Frazer in his professional revolutionary way, meaning it wasn’t any of my business. “I trust you, March, or I wouldn’t have suggested you for a part in this.”
“Why, where do I come in?” I said.
He said, “If the Old Man is going to travel incognito as a visitor to Mexico he’s going to need a nephew from the States.”
“Me, you mean?”
“You and a girl comrade as husband and wife. Would you do it?”
I saw myself driving around Mexico with this great person, tracked by secret agents. I felt too worn out to take it on.
“There wouldn’t be any hanky-panky with the girl,” said Frazer.
“I don’t even understand what you mean. I’m trying to recover from the injury of a love affair.”
Please God! I thought, keep me from being sucked into another one of those great currents where I can’t be myself. Naturally I wanted to be of help, and rescue and peril attracted me. But I wasn’t up to it at all, going up and down the mountains of Mexico through the bazaar of red nature and dizzy with deaths and noises.
“I’m telling you this because the Old Man is very moral.”
Frazer spoke as though he too were very moral. Tell it to the marines! I thought.
“He won’t do it anyhow,” I said. “It’s a loony idea.”
“That’s for the people who’re protecting him to decide.”
But to me it seemed his appearance was his trademark. His head was. Sooner than touch it he’d maybe let it be taken off him and kept just as it was for martyrdom. Kind of like St. John and Herod. And I had to stop and ask myself about martyrdom. Out in Russia was his enemy who didn’t mind obliging him. He’d kill him. Death discredits. Survival is the whole success. The voice of the dead goes away. There isn’t any memory. The power that’s established fills the earth and destiny is whatever survives, so whatever is is right. That’s what passed through my mind.
“You’d have to pack a gun. Does that scare you?”
“Me? Of course not,” I said. “Not that part of it.”
I reflected in my private mind that I must have holes in my head like a colander not to refuse. Was I so flattered by the chance to be with this giant historical personality, speeding around the mountains? The car would rush like mad. The wild beasts would flee. The terrible earth would turn around. And he would be silent to me on his thoughts of nations and destiny. The lost world would call after us with secret voice, and behind us there would be a team of international killers pursuing and waiting for their chance.
“Sometimes I wonder,” I said, “if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn’t make sure first that they can defend themselves.”
“That’s not a good point of view,” said Frazer.
“No? Maybe. It’s just a thought.”
“Will you do it?”
“You feel I’m the right sort of guy for it?”
“We need somebody who looks very American.”
“I guess I could spare some time,” I said, “if it doesn’t take too long.”
“A few weeks, just to shake off Mink and his men.”
He went away, and I was sitting in the garden where the lizards were tickling in the grass and there was a choke of gorgeous color by the birds along the hot walls. The gods stood or lay and persisted in their gray volcano illustrations of what the forces of life are. Paslavitch was playing Chopin upstairs. My next idea was how nothing was more dreadful than to be forced by another to feel his persuasion as to how horrible it is to exist, how deathly to hope, and taste the same despair. How of all the impositions this was the worst imposition. Not just to be as they make you but to feel as they dictate. If you didn’t have the strongest alliance you surely would despair at last and your mouth would drink blood.
Paslavitch came out on his balcony in his blue bathrobe and asked meekly if I wanted a drink.
“Okay,” I said. I was very worried about this whole scheme.
But it fell through, and when it did I was very glad. I had been in a clutch about it and lost sleep dreaming how we would chase from town to town all the way through Jalisco or out into the deserts. But the Old Man vetoed this. I wanted to send him a letter telling him how smart I thought he was, but then I thought it wouldn’t be right for me to discuss secrets of his political activity. He must certainly have given a scream when they propositioned him on it.
Anyhow, I felt now that there was something about the effect of Mexico on me, that I couldn’t hold my own against it any more and had better get back to the States. Paslavitch lent me two hundred pesos and I bought my ticket to Chicago. He was affected a lot by my going and told me many times in French that he would miss me. Likewise, I’m sure. He was a very decent guy. You don’t meet so many such.
Chapter 21
ON THE WAY BACK from Mexico to Chicago I took a side trip or pilgrimage out of East St. Louis and went toward Pinckneyville to see my brother George after many years. He was already a grown man, a large hulk insecure in his steps. Darkenings of brown in his fair skin under the eyes showed how after his own fashion he too made the struggle that we make if we consent to live. Just as though, the time for it coming round, we left what company we were in and went privately to take a few falls with our own select antagonist in his secret room, like inside a mountain or down in a huge root-cellar. This was how it was with George too.
Nevertheless he was a man of fine appearance, as he had been a beautiful child. Now as then his shirt still bagged out in that senseless style over his back, and his hair grew like chestnut burr the same as formerly, brown and gold, close bristles. I was kind of proud of him that he took his fate with dignity. They had made a shoemaker of him. He couldn’t run one of those machines you see thumping under their fender in a repair shop with the screaming disks and circular brushes, and he wasn’t equal to making shoes by hand, but he was good at heeling and soling. Down in the basement, under the veranda, was where he worked. It was a wide veranda, for the place was far enough down-state to be reckoned Southern, and the buildings were big, white, of wood. Vines gave green color to his dusty half-window below. I saw him bent over the last, taking nails out of his mouth and sending them through the leather.
“George!” I said, looking at the man he had grown to be. He knew me right away, and he stood up, happy, and exactly as in the old days said, “Hi, Aug! Hi, Aug!” in his nasal voice. This repetition of two words if it went on long enough led usually to howling. So I went up to him, as he didn’t move toward me. “Well, how is it, old man?” I said to him. I pulled him to me with one arm and put my head on his shoulder. He wore a blue work shirt; he was big, white, and clean, except his hands. Eyes, nose, and small mouth of his undeveloped face were as they had always been, simple. I was moved that he couldn’t know how much of a complaint he had against me for neglect, and no sooner saw me than was happy.
He hadn’t had a visitor in three or four years, so they let me see him by special permission for the whole day.
“What do you remember, Georgie?” I asked him. “Grandma, and Mama, Simon, Winnie?” With his small smile he said these names after me, as in the song he used to sing when he trotted with the dog along the curl-wired fence, singing how everybody loved Mama. Within his moist mouth his teeth were white and good, though his eye-teeth were very sharp. I took him by the hand, which now was bigger than mine, and we went walking in the grounds.
It was the beginning of May and the oak leaves were shot out full, dark and healthy; worked through just as richly were the big dandelion blades and warm bottom-land-smelling air surrounded us. We walked along the wall, which at first was simply a wall to me. But then suddenly I was disturbed to think that he was a prisoner and never got outside, poor George. So without asking permission I took him off the grounds. He looked at his feet in the unfamiliar road to watch where they were going, for he was frightened. In a crossroads store I bought him a package of chocolate marshmallow cookies. He took them but wouldn’t eat them, putting the package in his pocket. His eyes were now turning very uneasily, and I said, “Okay, George, we’re going back right away.” That calmed him.
When he heard the dinner bell go—which was like the clink of the church bell of mouse-town in a children’s zoo—trained to answer right away, he went to the rambly green cafeteria. He left me here. I had to follow him. He picked up his tray, and with those disconnected others who scraped their tinware and fed, wagging their weak noggins, without talk or observation, we sat down and ate.
It must be as simple as the blue and white of pillow-ticking to lay plans to take care of creatures so, clothe them, feed them, put them in their dormitory. There is probably just nothing to it.
The rest of the trip I kept thinking that something should be done for Georgie, not to let him spend his entire life like that; also I thought how quick we were to latch on to the excuse to deal practically with any element, like jailbirds, orphans, cripples, the weak-brained or the old. And I decided that after I had visited Mama I’d go and talk to Simon about Georgie. I didn’t have anything specific to propose. But I said to myself that Simon had money, therefore he ought to know what money could do. And anyway, as I was coming back to Chicago I thought of Simon. I wanted to see him.
I went from the one institution straight to the other in Chicago. But the two places were very different. Mama wasn’t any longer right off the kitchen but established in almost an apartment with a Gulistan on the floor and drapes on the window. I had phoned that I was coming, and she waited for me down in front and rested on her white cane. While still at a distance I spoke to her, so she wouldn’t be startled. She weaved her head to locate me and with her crying-out voice of painful joy called my name. From the top rims of her goggles, which were dull dark, the brows of her pink long face lifted as if she were trying to use her eyes too. She then kissed me and whispered to me. She felt my face and said, “You’re skinny. Augie, why you’re so skinny?” And then, a long figure herself, nearly as tall as I, she led me up to her room by the back entrance. An odor of boiling fish spouted up the stairs; that passed into my home-coming mood and made me feel the kitchen heat of old days, sitting with my mother.
On the dresser all my postcards from Mexico were set out, and there were photos of Simon and Charlotte also. To show the seeing people who came. But besides the supervisor and his wife, who hated Simon, who did come? Only once in a while Anna Coblin. Or Simon himself. He’d come in, see how fixed up she was in her bourgeois parlor, and be satisfied. She too realized that she was being treated in a satisfactory way. On her wrist was a silver bracelet, she wore high heels, she had a radio with a big chromium zigzag across the speaker. In fact when Grandma Lausch had put on her black Odessa best in the Nelson Home she was laying claim feebly to the style Mama here was living in. That was how the Lausch brothers had let the old lady down, failing to appreciate legitimacy and without any sense of standards. Yet it wasn’t a light duty for Mama that she had to live up to what Simon and Charlotte were doing for her. Simon was if anything even more difficult than Charlotte, I gathered. He was very fussy. He opened her closet and inspected all her clothes to see if they were cleaned or if any were missing from the rack. I knew how Simon could be when he was doing something for your good and welfare; he could make things hot.
But maybe that spicy, sumptuous fish-gravy odor that belonged to the past made me too much of a critic of the present moment, exaggerating Mama’s difficulties and imagining that the Gulistan and the drapes were the softenings of a cage. A blind woman, growing elderly, she had to live in a room, some room, and therefore why not a comfortable room? Moreover, it was perhaps my fault that I saw both Georgie and Mama as prisoners, and was unhappy that I was tooting freely around while they were confined.
“Augie, go see him,” she said. “D
on’t be mad on Simon. I told him he shouldn’t be.”
“I will, Ma, as soon as I find a room and begin to settle down.”
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“Oh—something. I hope something interesting.”
“What? Do you make a living, Augie?”
“Well, here I am. What do you mean, Ma? I am living.”
“Why are you so skinny? But the clothes are good—I felt the material.”
They ought to have been good. Thea had paid a fancy price for them.
“Augie, don’t wait too long to call Simon. He wants you to. He told me I should tell you. He talks about you all the time.”
Simon did want to see me. As soon as he heard my voice over the phone he said, “Augie! Where are you? Stay put. I’ll come and pick you up right away.”
I was calling from a booth near my new place, which wasn’t far from the old, on the South Side. He lived in the vicinity and was there within a few minutes in his black Cadillac, this beautiful enamel shell coming so softly to the curb, inside like jewelry. He beckoned and I got in. “I have to go right back,” he said. “I left without a shirt; I just put on this coat and hat. Well, let’s look at you.”