632
PARTISAN REVIEW
help him be a beggar in front of a church, the next thing to a
memento mori
or, more awful, a reminder of what difficulties there
were before you could even become dead. Whereas now- well, it was
probably no accident that it was the cripple Hephaestus who made
ingenious machines; a normal man didn't have to hoist or jack him–
self over hindrances by means of cranks, chains and metal parts.
Then it was in the line of human advance, that Einhorn could do
so much; especially since the whole race was so hopped-up about
appliances, he was not a hell of a lot more dependent than others
who couldn't make do without this or that commodity, engine,
gizmo, sliding door, public service. He said that this being relieved of
small toils made mind the chief center of trial, as it should be. Find
Einhorn in a serious mood when his fatty, beaky, noble Bourbon face
was thoughtful, and he'd give you the lowdown on the mechanical
age, and on strength and frailty, and piece it out with little digressions
on the history of cripples- the dumbness of the Spartans, the fact that
Oedipus was lame, that gods were often maimed, that Moses had
faltering speech and Dmitri the Sorcerer a withered arm, Caesar
and Mahomet epilepsy, Lord Nelson a pinned sleeve- but especially
on the machine age and the kind of advantage that had to be taken
of it; with me like a man-at-arms receiving a lecture from the
learned
signor
who felt like passing out discourse.
I was a listener by upbringing. And Einhorn with his graces,
learning, oratory and register of effects was not after influencing
me practically. He was not like Grandma, with her educational sev–
enty-fives trained on us. He wanted to flow along, be admirable and
eloquent. Not fatherly. I wasn't ever to get it into my head that I
was part of the family. There wasn't much chance that I would,
the way Arthur, the only son, figured in their references, and I was
sent out when any big family deal began to throb around. To make
absolutely sure I wouldn't have any such notions, Einhorn would
now and then ask me some question about my people, as if he hadn't
informed himself through Coblin, Kreines, Clem and Jimmy. Pretty
clever, he was, to place me this way.
If
Grandma had had ideas
about a wealthy man who might take a fancy to us and make our
fortune, Simon's and mine, Einhorn had corresponding ideas. I
wasn't to think because we were intimately connected and because
he liked me that I was going to get into the will. The things that
