Two Morning
M~onologues
Saul Bellow
9 A.M.
Without Work
It's my father's fault that I'm driven from the house all morn–
ing and most of the afternoon. I'm supposed to he looking for a
job. I don't exaggerate when I say driven. That's what it
is.
He's
created an atmosphere in which if he found me at home, say at
eleven in the morning, I'd feel intensely wrong and guilty. Even
my mother has absorbed it from him, although she's much gentler,
the old woman, and doesn't realize what's happening and how I'm
being forced.
Pride and Investment: I take those words to supply the whole
meaning of his attitude. "A good boy, a smart boy, American, as
good as anybody else-but he hasn't got a job." One. Two: "Look
at the money I spent on him." His idea is that anyone who has had
so much money invested in him should not only have no difficulty
finding work but should actually be sought by employers. "Hun–
dreds people are looking for such educated boys. He should adver–
tise in the paper. You'd see," he argues with my mother.
As a matter of record he has advertised twice already. The
first time he didn't tell us, he wanted to surprise us. But he never
got any replies, of course. In an evening's desperation, after sup–
per on some evening, it
will
once or twice occur to him that it's my
fault. I can tell. And he will look me up, whether in the parlor or
on the porch, in the dark. But he never says a single word. He
goes away, wondering about it I'm certain.
I'd just as soon stay home in the morning and read Dick
Tracy, though I'm not in love with the house and I don't like to have
the
neighbors see me during the day. I often find myself wishing
that mine had been one of the first draft numbers sp that I'd be
parted from both of them, especially from him, on official grounds.
Perhaps I should become a volunteer. I needn't tell you how much
I'd like to get away. But there, too, I'm too wise and too principled,
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