The Adventures of Augie March

Grandma Lausch was our boarder, not a relation at all. She was supported by two sons, one from Cincinnati an done from Racine, Wisconsin. The daughters-in-law did not want her, and she, the widow of a powerful Odessa businessman […] preferred to live with us, because for so many years she was used to direct a house, to command, to govern, to manage, scheme, devise, and intrigue in all her languages. She boasted French and German besides Russian, Polish, and Yiddish; and who but Mr. Lulov, the retouch artist from Division Street, could have tested her claim to French?

There was always much money in sight, in cups, glasses, jars and spread on Coblin’s desk. They seemed sure I wouldn’t take any, and probably everything was so lavish I never did. I was easily appealed to in this way, provided that I was given credit for understanding what the setup was, as when Grandma sent me on a mission. I could put my heart into a counterfeit too, just as easily. So don’t think I’m trying to put over that, if handled right, a Cato could have been made of me, or a young Lincoln who tramped four miles in a frontier zero gale to refund three cents to a customer. I don’t want to pass for having such legendary presidential stuff. Only those four miles wouldn’t have been a hinderance if the right feelings were kindled. It depended on which way I was drawn.

Passing then into the hall to wash, there, often, we saw the old woman’s small figure and her eyes whitely contemptuous, with a terrible little naked yawn of her gums, suck-cheeked with unspoken comment. But power-robbed. Simon would say sometimes, “Wha’che know, Gram?”—even, occasionally, “Mrs. Lausch.” I never repudiated her that much or tried to strike the old influence, such as it had become, out of her hands. […]

The house was changed also for us; dinkier, darker, smaller; once shiny and venerated things losing their attraction and richness and importance. Tin showed, cracks, black spots where enamel was hit off, threadbarer, design scuffed out of the center of the rug, all the glamour, lacquer, massiveness, florescence, wiped out. […]

Winnie died in May of that year, and I laid her in a shoe box and buried her in the yard.

It sometimes got my goat, he and Mrs. Einhorn made so sure I knew my place. But maybe they were right; the old woman had implanted the thought, though I never entertained it in earnest. However, there was such a thought, and it bulged somewhat into my indignation. Einhorn and his wife were selfish. They weren’t mean, I admitted in fairness, and generally I could be fair about it; merely selfish, like two people enjoying their lunch on the grass and not asking you to join them. If you weren’t dying for a sandwich yourself it could even make a pleasant picture, smacking on the mustard, cutting cake, peeling eggs and cucumbers. Selfish Einhorn was, nevertheless; his nose in constant action smelled, and smelled out everything, sometimes austerely, or again without manners, covert, half an eye out for observers but not to be deterred if there were any, either.

“Or were you looking for a thrill? […] Go to Riverview Park. But wait. All of a sudden I catch on to something about you. You’ve got opposition in you. You don’t slide through everything. You just make it look so.”

This was the first time that anyone had told me anything like the truth about myself. I felt it powerfully. That, as he said, I did have opposition in me, and great desire to offer resistance and to say “No!” which was as clear as could be, as definite a feeling as a pang of hunger.

The discoverer of this, who had taken pains to think of me—to think of me—I as full of love for him for it. But I was also wearing the discovered attribute, my opposition. I was clothed in it. So I couldn’t make any sign of argument or indicate how I felt.

The Fenchels had checked out. There was a note at the desk for me from Thea. “Esther told uncle about you, and we are going to Waukesha for a few days and then East. You were foolish last night. Think about it. It’s true I love you. You’ll see me again.”

Then I had a few rough days and got stretched out in melancholy. I thought, where did I get that way, putting in for the best there was in the departments of beauty and joy as if I were a count of happy youth, and like born to elegance and sweet love, with bones made of candy? And had to remember what very seldom mattered with me, namely, where I came from, parentage,

I was never before so taken up with a single human being. […]

What I did at times realize was how I was abandoning some mighty old protections which now stood empty. Hadn’t I been warned enough because of my mother, and on my own account? With terrible warnings? Look out! Oh, you chump and weak fool, you are one of a humanity that can’t be numbered and not more than the dust of metals scattered in a magnetic field and clinging to the lines of force, determined by laws, eating, sleeping, employed, conveyed, obedient, and subject. So why hunt for still more ways to lose liberty? Why go toward, and not instead run from, the huge drag that threatens to wear out your ribs, rub away your face, splinter your teeth? No, stay away!

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. […] That’s the real 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 flowers of a version.