by Saul Bellow
So I went to County Hospital to have this done. I didn’t mention it to Mama, never telling her of such things. Sophie said, “You’re absolutely nuts, going under the knife while well and having an out from the draft.” She took it personally. Her husband was being inducted, which was all the more reason for me to stick around, and if I was going to the hospital that meant I didn’t want her. However, she saw me through. Clem also dropped around to see me in the ward, and so did Simon, but Sophie was there every visiting hour.
The operation was rough on me, and when it was done I couldn’t stand straight for a long time and went slightly bent over.
The hospital was mobbed and was like Lent and Carnival battling. This was Harrison Street, where Mama and I used to come for her specs, and not far from where I had to go once to identify that dead coal heaver, the thundery gloom, bare stone brown, while the red cars lumbered and clanged. Every bed, window, separate frame of accommodation, every corner was filled, like the walls of Troy or the streets of Clermont when Peter the Hermit was preaching. Shruggers, hobblers, truss and harness wearers, crutch-dancers, wall inspectors, wheelchair people in bandage helmets, wound smells and drug flowers blossoming from gauze, from colorful horrors and out of the deep sinks. Not far the booby-hatch voices would scream, sing, and chirp and sound like the tropical bird collection of Lincoln Park. On warm days I went up to the roof and had a look at the city. Around was Chicago. In its repetition it exhausted your imagination of details and units, more units than the cells of the brain and bricks of Babel. The Ezekiel caldron of wrath, stoked with bones. In time the caldron too would melt. A mysterious tremor, dust, vapor, emanation of stupendous effort traveled with the air, over me on top of the great establishment, so full as it was, and over the clinics, clinks, factories, flophouses, morgue, skid row. As before the work of Egypt and Assyria, as before a sea, you’re nothing here. Nothing.
Simon came to see me and threw a bag of oranges on the bed. He bawled me out that I hadn’t gone to a private hospital. His temper was bad and nothing and nobody was spared in his glare.
But they were letting me out, so why fuss? I was still stooped, as if stitched in the wrong places, but they said it was just temporary.
Well and good, I got back to the South Side and found that Padilla had a girl staying in my room, his guest, and he moved me into his own place. This was just a formality that the young lady occupied my room, and sheer etiquette, because he did too. He was never at home. Over at the university he was working in the uranium project.
Where he lived was a little stale-air flat in a tenement. The plaster stuck on the laths mostly by the force of the paint. The neighbors were relief families, night owls who walked to the window at 4 p.m. in their skivvies curiously to greet the day, chicks, Filipinos neat and sharp, drunk old women and gloomy guys. After a descent of many flights you came out of this structure and crossed an entry of unusual architectural fantasy, horizontally long, a Chinese hothouse where nothing grew beneath the vermilion frames but sundry sticks, old Tribunes of the cats and dogs, trash. In the street, by cylinders of garbage cans, you were just a step from a place of worship for Buddhists that was formerly a church. Then a chop-suey joint. Then a handbook behind, as usual, a dummy cigar store where the shoppers were with racing forms, and the retired, or precinct leaders, and heavy on their feet cigar chewers, and cops. I wasn’t feeling very keen while in this tenement. It took me many long months to get better, and I was doing very poorly. And about this time I got a letter from Thea, APO San Francisco, telling me that she had married an Air Force captain. She felt she should tell me, but she maybe shouldn’t have, because the grief of it laid me up. My eyes sunk even deeper than before, and my hands and feet were cold, and I lay in Padilla’s dirty bed, feeling sick and broken up.
Naturally I couldn’t be comforted by Sophie. It wasn’t even the right thing to do, to accept comfort from her and not tell her the trouble. It was Clem I told how broken up I was.
“I know how it is. I had an affair with a copper’s daughter and she did the same to me last year,” he said. “She married some gambler and went to Florida. Anyway, you told me long ago it was over.”
“It was,” I said.
“But I see you Marches are a romantic family. I keep running into your brother with a blond doll. Even Einhorn has seen them. He was being carried piggyback from the Oriental Theatre, from Lou Holtz over to see Juno and the Paycock—he doesn’t go out often, and when he does, as you know, he likes a full day. And while he was riding in his black cape on Louie Elimelek, the ex-welter, whom should he bump into but Simon and this broad. By his description the same broad. A zaftige piece too, in a mink stole.”
“Poor Charlotte,” I said, thinking at once of my sister-in-law.
“What’s the matter with Charlotte? You mean that Charlotte doesn’t understand about leading a double life? A woman with money and not know that? Double if not more? When it’s practically the law of the land?”
So I had something more to think about during my convalescence, when I wanted to be gone from Chicago anyhow, to where world events were thick.
One day I was on the West Side. I had gone to take Mama for a walk in Douglas Park. It was good for us both, as I still dragged somewhat. Douglas Park in a cold sunlight, mossy, benches not well kept up in wartime, with elderly folks on them, newspapers, furs, stucco walls—paper sailing wild over the lagoon. Mama was beginning to have the aging stiffness and was somewhat bowlegged; she enjoyed the cold air though, and still had her calm smooth color of health.
I was taking her back to the Home when Simon’s car drew up beside us. A woman, not Charlotte, was with him. I saw the fur stole and golden hair. Right away Simon, with smiles, wigwagged that Mama wasn’t to be aware of her. Then he came out on the sidewalk and it seemed just plain not good enough for him, this West Side concrete so powerfully cracked and with grocers’ and butchers’ sawdust. He looked very good. From the shell cordovans to the ruby points of his cufflinks, the shirt white on white, most likely a Sulka tie, a Strook coat, everything handstitched and not intended just for cover like a Crusoe goat-skin. I have to confess that, arriving like this, he was enviable to see.
Was he here to visit Mama? Or to point her out to the girl? To identify me for her he said, with pleasure, “Well, my brother! Isn’t this a swell surprise! Why don’t I ever see you? And, Mama, how are you?” An arm around each of us, he turned us to face the car, where the girl acknowledged us, friendly. “It’s great the family’s together,” he said.
I wondered whether Mama felt him acting toward someone; maybe she did. But how would she in her innocence have known what to think about these two specially treated or gardened, enveloped in finery, pampered bodies that traveled on the Cadillac chassis and high cushions like a pair of carnival Romans cruising the Corso, this high-breasted girl and Simon?
He was making real dough now. A company he had invested in was manufacturing a gimmick for the Army. When he told me how the money poured in he always laughed, as if astonished himself, and said he hoped to catch up with my millionaire, Robey, and write a book himself. Then I’d be his helper. A crack I didn’t like. Robey, by the way, was getting ready to go to Washington. He didn’t seem able to explain why but just had to go.
Simon said, “I just stopped to find out if you were all right, Ma. I can’t stay. And I’m taking Augie with me.”
“Go, boys,” she said. She wanted us to have business together.
We took her up the stone stairs and let her into the Home. When we were alone Simon said, and meant every word of it, “Before you start to think any different, I love this girl.”
“You do? Since when?”
“Quite a while now.”
“But who is she? Where does she come from?”
Smiling, he told me, “She left her husband the same night we met. It was at a night club in Detroit. I was there just two days on business. I danced with her and she said she’d never stay another day with this guy. I
said, ‘Come along,’ and she’s been with me ever since.”
“Here, in Chicago?”
“Of course here—where do you think! Augie, I want you to know her. It’s time you knew each other. She’s alone a lot because—you can understand why. She knows all about you. Don’t worry, I told her nothing but good things. All right!” he said, standing up straight over me with his advantage in height of an inch or two; the red was in his cheeks like a polish, or the color of effrontery. He answered my thought about Charlotte by saying, “I didn’t think it would be so hard for you to understand how this is.”
“No, it’s not so hard.”
“This has nothing to do with Charlotte. I don’t tell Charlotte what to do. Let her go and do the same.”
“Would she? Can she?”
“That’s her problem if she can’t. My problem—my problem is Renée here. And myself.” For a second, as he said “myself,” he looked grim and somehow in thought followed his soul past lots of dangers, downward. I couldn’t see what there could be of such danger. I didn’t yet understand. However, I was fascinated by him, by them both. “Renée, this is Augie,” he said, turning me down the steps. It was a hard thing for me to get through my head, after I came to know her, that she could be so important to him.
Though slight, she certainly was stacked. You could see how her breasts went on with great richness under her clothes—du monde au balcon is the way they say it in the capital of sex—and her endowments went down into, and were visible through, her silk stockings. Extremely young, her face was made up to some thickness of gold tone, lips drawn to a forward point by thick rouge; her lashes and brows seemed to have gold dust sprinkled and rubbed into them; her hair, golden, appeared added to, like the hair of Versailles; her combs were gold, her glasses gold-trimmed, and she wore golden jewelry. I was about to say that she looked immature, but maybe that means that she didn’t bear this gold freight with the fullest confidence; perhaps only some big woman could have done that. Not necessarily a physical giantess but a person whose capacity for adornment was really very great. One of that old sister-society whose pins and barrettes and little jars and combs from Assyria or Crete lie so curious with the wavy prongs and stained gold and green-gnawed bronze in museum cases—those sacred girls laid in the bed by the priests to wait for the secret night visit of Attis or whoever, the maidens who took part in the hot annual battles of gardens, amorous ditty singers, Syrians, Amorites, Moabites, and so on. The line continuing through femmes galantes, courts of love, Aquitaines, infantas, Medicis, courtesans, wild ladies, down to modern night clubs or first-class salons of luxury liners and the glamorous passengers for whom chefs plot their biggest souffle, pastry-fish, and other surprises. This was what Renée was supposed to be, and in my opinion she wasn’t entirely. You may think that for this all you have to do is surrender to instinct. As if that were so easy! For start that and how do you know which instincts are going to come out on top?
Renée seemed like a very suspicious girl to me. Along her nose, like a light, there was sort of a suspicion and uncertainness.
As soon as Simon had to step out of the car for a few minutes her first remark was, “I love your brother. The first minute I saw him I fell in love, and I’ll love him till I die.” She gave me her hand, in the glove, to take. “Believe me, Augie.”
As this may have been true it was kind of a pity that she had to throw suspicion on it by extra effort. Games and games. Games within games. Even though, despite the games, somehow there remain things meant in earnest.
“I want us to know each other,” she went on. “Maybe you don’t realize it but Simon watches over you; you mean the world and all to him. You should hear how he talks about you! He says as soon as you really settle down to something you’ll become a great man. And I only want you to consider me as a person who loves Simon and not judge me harshly.”
“Why should I do that? Because of my sister-in-law?”
It made her stiffen, when I mentioned Charlotte. But then she saw I meant no harm.
Simon would speak of Charlotte all the time. It surprised me. He said to his girl friend, “I want no trouble out of you about her. I respect her. I’ll never leave her under any circumstances. In her way she’s as close to me as anybody in the world.” He was romantic about Charlotte too. And Renée had to bear it and know she could never have any exclusive claim on him. It didn’t fail to occur to me that I had once done the same thing after my own style with Thea and Stella, covered myself from one by putting one in the way of the other, so I wouldn’t be at the mercy of either. So neither one could do harm. Oh, I caught wise to this. You bet I knew it. It wasn’t as Simon said. It wasn’t even the common-sense consideration that he and Charlotte owned property jointly. I tried to explain this and warn him, but I only astonished him. However, before I tried I waited till I knew the situation well.
And how he and Renée did was as follows: Nearly every morning he picked her up at her apartment; she was waiting outside or in a restaurant nearby. She then drove him to his office, which she didn’t enter though most of his employees knew her. Afterward she went off by herself to shop or to do his errands; or she read a magazine and waited till he’d be free. All day long she was with him or not far off, and then in the evening she drove him almost to his door and she went back home in a taxi. And during the day, every hour nearly, there were crises when they shouted and screamed at each other—she enlarged her eyes and arched and hardened her neck and he lost his head and sometimes tried to swat her while his skin wrinkled and teeth set with fury. He never had done anything about that broken front tooth, by which I saw in him still, this blond Germanic-looking ruddy businessman and investor, the schoolboy Grandma Lausch had sent to wait on tables in the resort hotel. The things he and Renée fought about were usually such as clothes, some gloves, a bottle of Chanel perfume, or the servant. She didn’t need a servant was what he said, since she was never at home and could make the bed herself. What was the good of a woman sitting there? But Renée had to have whatever Charlotte had. She was completely posted on Charlotte, better than a sister, and often turned up at the same night club or had tickets to the same musical. Thus she knew how she looked and what she wore, and studied her. She demanded the same at least, and as long as it was for items like bags, dresses, lizard shoes, harlequin glasses, Ronson lighter, the demands could be pretty well satisfied. But the worst fight took place when she wanted a car of her own, like Charlotte’s.
“Why, you beggar!” he said. “Charlotte has her own money, don’t you realize that?”
“But not what you want. I’ve got that.”
He roared, “Not you only! Don’t fool yourself. Lots of women have it.” And this was one of the few times when he minded my seeing him. Usually he didn’t seem to care. And she, after her speech about wanting us to know each other better, assumed she had covered the ground by so saying and hardly ever spoke to me. “You see how your brother is?” she cried.
No, I didn’t see how he was. Mainly what I saw was that he was all the time in a rage, open or disguised.
He’d break out and yell, “Why didn’t you go to the doctor yesterday? How long are you going to neglect that cough? How do you know what you’ve got in your chest?” (Which made me glance toward that chest, approximately—like any living creature’s, under the furs and the silk, under the brassiere, under the breasts, it was there.) “No, sir, you did not go. I checked on you. I phoned there, you liar! I bet you thought I feel too important to phone him about you or am afraid of it getting back to Charlotte.” (She went to Charlotte’s doctor; but he was the best doctor.) “Well, I did it. You never showed up there. You can’t tell the truth. Never! I doubt if even in bed you ever do. Even when you say you love me you’re conniving.”
Well, this is an example of his rage in the form of solicitude.
I couldn’t wait to recover from the hernia and go to the war. Let me get going! I thought. But I wasn’t fit yet, and meantime I had a stopgap posit
ion with a business-machine company. This was a fancy, select job. I could only get into it on account of the manpower shortage. If I had stayed with the company I might have turned into a salesman-prince, traveling parlor car to St. Paul twice a month, seven good cigars to the trip and a dignified descent at the station, breathing winter steam and holding a portfolio. But no, I had to get into the service.
“Well, you horse’s foot,” said Simon, “I expected you to live to see middle age, but I guess you’re too dumb to make it and want to get yourself wiped out. If you have to go and get shot up, and be in a cast and vomit blood, and lie in mud and eat potato peel, go! If you get on the casualty list it will do my business good. What a hell of a deal for Ma it is to have only one normal son! And me? It leaves me alone in the world. The idea of making a buck is my intelligent companion, my brother not.”
But I went ahead anyway. Only I still wasn’t acceptable to the Army or the Navy and so I signed with the Merchant Marine and was scheduled to leave for Sheepshead Bay to go into training there.
Next time I saw Simon I ran into him on Randolph Street and he didn’t behave as usual. “Let’s go in and have a bite,” he said, for we were in front of Henrici’s and they had a vat of out-of-season strawberries in the window. The waiters knew him but he hardly even answered when they spoke to him, instead of being proud, as would have been normal. When we sat down and he lifted off his hat, the whiteness of his face gave me a start.