The Victim

11

“I SAW Williston last night,” Leventhal mentioned to Harkavy outside.

“How is Stan? Oh, yes, about that thing you were telling me.” Harkavy would perhaps have said more, but the others were waiting for him. “Say, one of these days let me know how you’re making out with it, will you?”

“Sure,” Leventhal said. And Harkavy loitered off eastward on Fourteenth Street with Goldstone and his friends. He was the tallest among them. His yellow hair drifted flimsily, silkily over his bald spot. Leventhal watched him go. He would not admit to himself that he felt deserted. “Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t interested,” he thought. “I don’t know if I could explain it anyhow. It’s getting too complicated. And he’d give me all kinds of useless advice — the usual. Anyhow I’m glad. I don’t think I really wanted to talk about it.” He remained aimlessly in the same place for a while and then walked off, pressing the bulky Sunday paper under his arm. He did not have a conscious destination and was distantly under the dread of being the only person in the city without one.

In the next block he remembered that he had neglected to call Elena to make sure Philip had gotten home safely and to ask about Mickey. He stopped at a cigar store and dialed Villani’s number. He sat in the booth, one leg stretched out of the door. No one answered. Leaning out, he looked at the clock cut squarely into the patterned tin of the wall. It was half-past two, and Elena had probably left to visit Mickey. He phoned the hospital, though he understood well enough that the information given about patients wasn’t reliable. He heard that Mickey was doing nicely, which was what he had expected to hear. There were upward of three thousand beds in the hospital. How could the girls at the switchboard be expected to know anything but the bare facts about each patient — whether he was alive or dead, that is? The word “dead,” dissociated from what he had thought, accompanied him ominously out of the store, and he made haste to get rid of it, simultaneously realizing, in another part of his mind, how superstitious he was becoming. All he had meant was that the hospital was too vast, and suddenly he had to erase an incidental word. Why, everyone born was sick at one time or another. Nobody grew up without sickness. He had had pneumonia himself and an ear infection, and Max had been down, too — he couldn’t recall with what.

He began to wonder how long Max was going to put off coming home. “Maybe he’s afraid of being tricked into returning,” he thought. “I’ll have a thing or two to say to him when I see him. For once in our lives. It’s time somebody called him down. Elena won’t, so he’s used to doing whatever he wants.” And what would Max have to say for himself? Something simple minded and foolish, he was certain. Because he was foolish. Philip already had more common sense than his father. Leventhal visualized his brother’s strongly excited face and imagined his incoherencies. “He sends them money and that makes him a father. That’s the end of his responsibilities. That’s fatherhood,” he repeated to himself. “That’s his idea of duty.”

From the dark staircase and hall, he entered the brilliantly sunlit front room. He sat on the edge of the bed and pushed off his shoes. The sheets were warm to his touch. The heavy folds of the curtain, the brown door, the fine red flowers in the carpet slowly consumed into a light smoke of dust, gave him a feeling of suspension and quietness. There was a long spider’s thread on the screen, quivering red, blue, and deeper blue against the wires like the last pliant, changeable thing in the stiffening, fixative heat. With one stockinged foot set on the other, his shoulders drooping, Leventhal sat watching, his face somnolent, his hands looking as if it would require a great effort to unclasp them.

Presently he went into the kitchen. He absent-mindedly rinsed a few dishes under the rumbling tap and, returning to the front room, unbuckled his belt, drew the curtains, and, with the Sunday paper unheeded under his legs, went to sleep.

A deep rolling noise awakened him. He thought at first that it came from below, out of the subway. But there was no accompanying tremor through the building. He soon placed the sound outside and above him. It was thunder. He looked out. There had been a storm. The screen was still clogged with raindrops. The street was softly darkened by the clouds and the wet brownstone. In one of the rooms across the way a two-branched green lamp was shining. A woman lay on a sofa, one arm bent over her eyes. At the next sound of the retreating thunder she moved her legs.

Leventhal glanced again into the mist and water of the street and then went to the phone and tried Villani’s number. There was still no answer. Apparently they were out somewhere, making a day of it. He poised the receiver over the hook, aimed it, and let it fall into place.

He worked his feet into his shoes, treading down the heels, and went down to the restaurant for an early dinner. The waiter, the same bald, lean man who last week had anticipated his protest about the bad table with a gesture of insincere helplessness, appeared to be occupied with thoughts of his own. His black suit looked damp, and his leather bow tie was not fastened but hung on its elastic from a buttonhole. He brought Leventhal a veal cutlet and a bottle of beer and hurried away with a muscular swing, softly — his soles were padded with sawdust — to wait on a long table of boccie players whose game had been rained out and who were drinking wine and coffee. The odor of wet wood was very noticeable. Leventhal did not linger over his meal. He was soon outside again. The air was dimmer than before, and hotter. He turned west on Eighteenth Street and saw Allbee waiting for him on the corner. He had to look twice in the wavering, longitudinal grays and shadows of the watery street to identify him.

Leventhal did not halt until Allbee detained him, stepping in his way. He dropped his head diffidently and clumsily, as though asking Leventhal to understand that he was compelled to do this.

“Well?” Leventhal said after a moment’s silence.

“Why didn’t you stop? You saw me…”

“And if I did? I’m not looking for you. You’re the one. You follow me around.”

“You’re mad about yesterday, aren’t you? That was a coincidence.”

“Oh, it was for sure.”

“I wanted to talk to you yesterday, it so happens. You won’t hunt me up. If I want to talk to you, I have to find opportunities.”

“Is that the way you describe it?”

“But when I remembered it was Saturday-you people don’t do business on Saturday — I postponed it.” The saying of this appeared to delight him. But then his expression changed. He seemed to recognize and even to be depressed by the poorness of his joke. He looked somberly and earnestly at Leventhal, who understood that Allbee wanted him to know of the feelings that gave rise to it, and to know also that since those feelings were dire and powerful the joke dissembling them was actually a courtesy.

“I don’t observe the holiday,” said Leventhal deliberately and dryly.

“Oh, of course not,” said Allbee, and he again began to smile. He added, a second later, “As far as ‘following’ is concerned, that’s not the way to put it. I have a perfect right to see you. You act as if I had some kind of game, whereas you’re the one that’s playing a game.”

“How do you figure that?”

Allbee raised his hand. “You pretend that I haven’t got a grievance against you. That’s playing.” His fingers brushed over his chest, and then he covered his mouth and cleared his throat.

“Say… with the kid — stuff like that has got to stop.”

“I didn’t know he was with you.”

“Not much! Well, I’m telling you. Besides, I told you the first time, I never wanted to do you any harm.”

“We differ about that. And there was a second time, too.” He gave an illustrative push that stopped short of Leventhal’s shoulders. “That was a little too much game for me. Or were you trying to scare me off?”

“If I was, you mean that I can’t, huh?”

“Well,” Allbee suggested, “you might have sent me to the hospital and gotten rid of me that way for a while.” He grinned. “You said you should have broken my neck.”

Leventhal said contemptuously, “But otherwise… to scare you? It’s impossible to scare you, isn’t it?”

“A year ago I couldn’t have come to you. But now that I’ve done it, made up my mind, it is impossible.”

“What was different a year ago?” asked Leventhal.

“Then I was getting by, somehow, and I wouldn’t have thought of coming near you,” he said quite seriously.

“And now?”

“My wife left me some money. It wasn’t a lot, but I stretched it. As long as it lasted — why, if I were still getting by you’d never hear from me. I’ll say it again. But maybe I don’t have a real sense of honor or I wouldn’t put myself in such a position. I mean real honor. There’s no getting away from it, I suppose, honor is honor. Either you’ve got it up to here,” he drew a line across his throat, “or you haven’t got it. It doesn’t make you any happier to tell yourself you ought to have it. It’s like anything else that counts. You have to make sacrifices to it. You know, I’m from an old New England family. As far as honor’s concerned, I’m not keeping up standards very well, I admit. Still, if I was born with my full share of it, in New York I’d have an even worse handicap. Oh, boy! — New York. Honor sure got started before New York did. You won’t see it at night, hereabouts, in letters of fire up in the sky. You’ll see other words. Such things just get swallowed up in these conditions — modern life. So I’m lucky I didn’t inherit more of a sense of it. I’d be competing with Don Quixote. Now with you it’s different, altogether. You’re right at home in this, like those what-do-you-call “ems that live in the flames — salamanders. If somebody hurts you, you hit back in any way and anything goes. That’s how it is here. It’s rugged. And I can appreciate it. Of course, the kind of honor I’m familiar with doesn’t allow that. Mine tells me not to ask for damages, and so on. But I have it in diluted form; that’s obvious.”

Allbee said this conversationally, in a factual manner; nevertheless Leventhal heard the spiteful ring in it. But he evinced no feeling and made no comment.

“I have an idea that it’s one of those things that’s bound to go-”

“You went through the money,” Leventhal said, disregarding the rest. “Why didn’t you get a job?”

“What did I want to work for? What sort of a job could I get anyhow? Nobody would give me what I wanted. And do you think I could take a leg job, like a high-school kid? An errand boy? Besides, I was in no hurry. Why should I be?”

“Were you black-listed?” Leventhal was unable to conceal his concern. “Is that the reason?”

Allbee did not reply to this directly. “Why, Rudiger wouldn’t have taken me back even to empty his ash trays.”

After this they were both silent for a while. Under its flat rim the ball of the lamp nearby began to shine in the gray and blue depth of the air, revealing suddenly the perspiration on Allbee’s face. The rings under his eyes gave him an aspect of suffering anger and hate. Yet he seemed unaware of any exposure and spoke evenly.

“No, I didn’t want to work,” he said. “I had a hell of a time after my wife was killed and I decided to take myself off the market for a while. I lived like a gentleman.”

Leventhal said grimly to himself, “Oh, gentleman. It looks like it. A marvelous gentleman.”

“Well, what do you want from me?” he asked Allbee. “You lived like a gentleman. I guess that means getting up at eleven or twelve every day. I get up at seven and go to my job. You’ve had a long vacation. Still you want me to do something for you. I don’t know what you want. What do you want?”

“I could use some help. The vacation’s lasted a little too long.”

“What sort of help?”

“I don’t know what sort. I wanted to take that up with you. You could help me if you wanted to. You must have connections. I’d like to get away from my old line, something new, a complete change.”

“For example?”

“Do you think you can get something for me in a bank?”

“Oh, you want to go straight where they keep it, where the money is,” said Leventhal.

“Or a brokerage firm?”

“Stop your joking,” Leventhal said somewhat sharply. “I don’t care for the sort of jokes you make. I’m not under an obligation to you. I’ll do something for you if I can. And just remember, it doesn’t mean I admit anything. I think you’re crazy. But Stan Williston thinks I ought to help you, and out of respect for him I’ll try.”

“What!” exclaimed Allbee. “You discussed me with Williston? What did you tell him about me?”

“Qh, you don’t like that? No, I see you don’t,” said Leventhal. I didn’t make anything up.”

“What did you tell him?” he said again, in agitation.

“What do you think I could tell him? Are you afraid I blackened your character? Are you touchy about your reputation? I thought you had lost your sense of honor?”

“You had no business-no damned business!” Allbee cried out in a flash of hatred and with an intensity of shame that disturbed Leventhal in spite of himself.

“Well, you’re a crazy, queer bastard,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? You come to me with this hokum about being too down and out to have any pride left — you can even come to me, and this and that. I knew it was all fake. One minute you’re on the bottom, couldn’t be any lower, and the next you’re a regular Lord Byron.”

There was an interval of silence during which Allbee appeared to be struggling for control over himself. Then he said in a low voice, “Williston is an old friend of mine. I just happen to have special feelings about him and Phoebe. But I guess it really doesn’t make much difference.” He gradually recovered his smile and he remarked, withdrawing his eyes from Leventhal and beginning a protracted, glittering study of the street behind him, “I should have expected you not to miss still another chance to get at me.”

“Are you in your right mind?” Leventhal demanded. “Are you straight in the head? Is it the booze or what? God almighty! Every day I see new twists.” He looked heavenward and gave way to a short laugh. “So help me, it’s like a menagerie. They say you go to the zoo to see yourself in the animals. There aren’t enough animals in the world to see ourselves in. There would have to be a million new feathers and tails. There’s no end to the twists.”

Allbee, preoccupied with the dwindling violets and grays of twilight and the swarms of light, seemed also to find this comical.

“Well, you’ve got nothing on me,” he said.

“You think not?”

“You’re just as much of a monster to me.”

“I am?”

“Hell, yes. Well, you look like Caliban in the first place,” Allbee said, more serious than not. “But that’s not all I mean. You personally, you’re just one out of many. Many kinds. You wouldn’t be able to see that. Sometimes I feel — and I’m saying this seriously — I feel as if I were in a sort of Egyptian darkness. You know, Moses punished the Egyptians with darkness. And that’s how I often think of this. When I was born, when I was a boy, everything was different. We thought it would be daylight forever. Do you know, one of my ancestors was Governor Winthrop. Governor Winthrop!” His voice vibrated fiercely; there was a repressed laugh in it. “I’m a fine one to be talking about tradition, you must be saying. But still I was born into it. And try to imagine how New York affects me. Isn’t it preposterous? It’s really as if the children of Caliban were running everything. You go down in the subway and Caliban gives you two nickels for your dime. You go home and he has a candy store in the street where you were born. The old breeds are out. The streets are named after them. But what are they themselves? Just remnants.”

“I see how it is; you’re actually an aristocrat,” said Leven-thal.

“It may not strike you as it struck me,” said Allbee. “But I go into the library once in a while, to look around, and last week I saw a book about Thoreau and Emerson by a man named Lipschitz…”

“What of it?”

“A name like that?” Allbee said this with great earnestness. “After all, it seems to me that people of such background simply couldn’t understand…”

“Of all the goddamned nonsense!” shouted Leventhal. “Look, I’ve got things to attend to. I have a phone call to make. It’s important. Tell me what in the name of hell you want and make it snappy.”

“I assure you, I wasn’t trying to be malicious. I was only discussing this…”

“I assure you, you were trying, I assure you!” Leventhal flung out. “Now what are you after? Probably a few bucks for whisky.”

Allbee laughed aloud. “They say drinking is only another kind of disease,” he said. “Like heart disease or syphilis. You wouldn’t be so hard on anyone with heart disease, would you? You’d be more sympathetic. They even say crime is only a sort of disease and if you had more hospitals you’d need fewer prisons. Look how many murderers are let off and get treatment instead of execution. If they’re sick it’s not their fault. Why can’t you take that attitude?”

“Why?” Leventhal involuntarily repeated. He was bewildered.

“Because you’ve got to blame me, that’s why,” said Allbee. “You won’t assume that it isn’t entirely my fault. It’s necessary for you to believe that I deserve what I get. It doesn’t enter your mind, does it — that a man might not be able to help being hammered down? What do you say? Maybe he can’t help himself? No, if a man is down, a man like me, it’s his fault. If he suffers, he’s being punished. There’s no evil in life itself. And do you know what? It’s a Jewish point of view. You’ll find it all over the Bible. God doesn’t make mistakes. He’s the department of weights and measures. If you’re okay, he’s okay, too. That’s what Job’s friends come and say to him. But I’ll tell you something. We do get it in the neck for nothing and suffer for nothing, and there’s no denying that evil is as real as sunshine. Take it from me, I know what I’m talking about. To you the whole thing is that I must deserve what I get. That leaves your hands clean and it’s unnecessary for you to bother yourself. Not that I’m asking you to feel sorry for me, but you sure can’t understand what makes a man drink.”

“All right, so I can’t. What then? What did you stop me for, to tell me that?”

“No, you never could and I’ll tell you why. Because you people take care of yourselves before everything. You keep your spirit under lock and key. That’s the way you’re brought up. You make it your business assistant, and it’s safe and tame and never leads you toward anything risky. Nothing dangerous and nothing glorious. Nothing ever tempts you to dissolve yourself. What for? What’s in it? No percentage.”

Leventhal’s expression was uncomprehending and horrified. His forehead was wrinkled. His heart beat agonizingly, and he faltered out, “I don’t see how you can talk that way. That’s just talk. Millions of us have been killed. What about that?”

He seemed to be waiting for a reply, but before it could be given he turned and walked away rapidly, leaving Allbee alone under the lamp.