The Victim

13

THE week that followed was a miserable one for him. Dr Denisart was not optimistic on Monday, and, since he had proved before that he was anything but an alarmist, Leven-thal saw that in his professional way he was giving notice that there was very little hope. On Tuesday he said he thought it advisable that Max should come home. Leventhal cried into the phone, “What do you mean? Is this it?” The doctor answered, “The father ought to be on hand.” “It’s the showdown, in other words,” Leventhal said. He sent the wire, and that evening and the next he went out to the hospital, making every effort to avoid meeting Elena. Mickey was now unconscious, and they fed him intravenously. Hot and grimy after his long trip, Leventhal bent over the bed. The boy’s face was darkened with fever; the needle was taped to his arm with strips broad enough for a grown man. The level of the liquid in the flask held by a clamp on the long stand did not seem to change. Leventhal moved to the window and lifted the edge of the shade an inch or two with his forefinger, peering down at the stone jars of vines and geraniums, too massive for the small sunken court. Then he went out, with a hesitation at the foot of the bed. He traveled two hours in order to spend ten minutes in Mickey’s room.

He kept telling himself, “The showdown is coming” — guiltily, for at heart he had no hope. The word itself was an evasion, and he, not the doctor, had introduced it. But it was a comprehensive word; it embraced more than Mickey’s crisis, or Elena”s, or his own trouble with Allbee. These were included; what had been going on with Allbee, for example, could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. But what he meant by this preoccupying “showdown” was a crisis which would bring an end of his resistance to something he had no right to resist. Illness, madness, and death were forcing him to confront his fault. He had used every means, and principally indifference and neglect, to avoid acknowledging it and he still did not know what it was. But that was owing to the way he had arranged not to know. He had done a great deal to make things easier for himself, toning down, softening, looking aside. But the more he tried to subdue whatever it was that he resisted, the more it raged, and the moment was coming when his strength to resist would be at an end. He was nearly exhausted now.

It was nearly midnight when he came home on Wednesday. Even before he unlocked the door, he heard the refrigerator panting as though it were trying to keep up a charge of energy in the air of the empty flat. He turned on the lights in the front room and in the bathroom where he undressed and put on pajamas. Opening the medicine chest, he stared like someone who has forgotten what he is looking for; in reality, his mind was empty. His hand touched his razor and, unthinkingly, he changed the blade and set it back in the red velvet groove of the case. Barefooted he walked into the front room. There was paper on the desk, and it occurred to him to send a note to Mary. He sat down, twisting his legs around the legs of the chair, wrote a few words, and stopped to consider what he ought or ought not to say. There was plenty to choose from. That he missed her? That it was still hot? He put down the pen and leaned on the desk, pressing his chest against the edge of the leaf. Dumb and motionless in the silent room, he heard the slamming of car doors and the racing of motors outside. Suddenly there was a prolonged, tearing peal of the bell. A finger screwed the pusher mercilessly in the socket. Hurrying to the door he shouted, “Yes?” He heard his name pronounced several times and called back, “Who is it?” Stooping over the banister, he caught sight of Allbee on the landing below and he withdrew into the vestibule and shut the door. Presently the handle was turned, turned again quietly, and then shaken.

“Yes, yes, what do you want now? What do you want?” he said.

Allbee knocked. Leventhal jerked the door open and saw him with his knuckles raised, ready to knock again.

“Well?”

“I want to see you,” said Allbee.

“Well, you’re seeing me.” He made as if to close the door, and Allbee brought his head forward quickly in a movement of melancholy protest, looking at Leventhal without rancor, however.

“That isn’t fair,” he said. “I work up my courage to come and see you. It takes me nearly a day to do it.”

“To cook up something new.”

Allbee’s expression was serious. The insane element usually manifested in his smiles was absent.

“The other night-last week-I was getting around to something,” he said. “There was something I wanted to say to you.”

“I don’t want any more discussions. I won’t stand for any. Anyhow, it’s after midnight.”

“Yes, I know it’s late,” Allbee conceded. “But there was something important to say. We were sidetracked.”

“You were,” Leventhal said heavily. “I wasn’t even in it.”

“I guess I know what you’re referring to. But whatever I did say, I didn’t intend to be personal. You shouldn’t consider…”

“What? It was all theory, theoretical?” he said sarcastically.

“Well, partly. It was partly joking,” Allbee explained painfully. “That’s an ingrained habit with me. I know it’s bad.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you. Maybe I don’t understand Emerson either. It goes together.”

“Please…” he said despondently.

There was a hush in the hall under the dull spokes of the skylight and the filmy glass.

“You take it all in the wrong spirit,” he went on.

“How should I take it?”

“You ought to realize that I’m not entirely…” he stumbled, “that I’m not entirely under control.” The slant of the shadows on his pale, fleshy face made it look infirm. The marks beneath his eyes brought to Leventhal’s mind the bruises under the skin of an apple. “Things get away from me. I’m not trying to excuse myself. But you wouldn’t believe how much…”

“Say, nowadays you can believe almost anything,” Leven-thal said, and he laughed a little but without relish.

With a grave look, Allbee appealed to him not to persist in this. His brows went up, he pushed his fingers through his dirtyish blond hair, and Leventhal remarked to himself that there was an element of performance in all that he was doing. But suddenly he had a strange, close consciousness of Allbee, of his face and body, a feeling of intimate nearness such as he had experienced in the zoo when he had imagined himself at Allbee’s back, seeing with microscopic fineness the lines in his skin, and the smallest of his hairs, and breathing in his odor. The same sensations were repeated; he could nearly feel the weight of his body and the contact of his clothes. Even more, the actuality of his face, loose in the cheeks, firm in the forehead and jaws, struck him, the distinctness of it; and the look of recognition. Allbee bent on him duplicated the look in his own. He was sure of that. Nevertheless he kept alive in his mind the thought that Allbee hated him, and his judgment, although it was numbed by his curious emotion of closeness — for it was an emotion — did not desert him. His burly, keen-set figure did not budge from the doorway any more than the spokes in the skylight moved.

“Will you let me in?” Allbee said at last.

“What for?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I told you, it’s late.”

“It’s late for you, but it’s all the same to me what time it is. You said you’d help me.”

“I don’t want to start discussing your future now. Go away.”

“It’s the present, not the future.”

Leventhal felt inexplicably weak against him. “Am I forgetting all the things he said to me, how mad I was, all that ugly stuff?” he asked himself. And it was true that his sense of injury had not remained sharp; his self-reproach did not make it any sharper. The hall was airless, just as Mickey’s room had been. He was starved for a free breath of air. His eyes were hot and tired, and the feeling of closeness seemed to have superseded and made faint all other feelings.

“What, the present?” he said.

“Well, you can go in, turn off the lights, and go to sleep,” said Allbee. “It’s nothing you have to think about. But I have nowhere to go. Not for the last few nights. I was put out.”

Leventhal studied him silently. Then he moved aside and said, “All right. Come on.” He let Allbee precede him into the front room and pointed to a chair. He himself went to the window and put his head out, getting a glimpse of the reddened and darkened heavy forms of the street as he drew a long breath. He sat down on the creaking bed. It had not been made for a week, and papers and cardboard crescents the laundry put inside his collars were scattered over it. In crossing his legs, Allbee gave a twitch to his stained, loose-hanging trousers. His manner in some things was persistently gentlemanly. He knit his fingers around his knee.

“Now let’s have it again. What happened, you were thrown out? Where were you, in a hotel, a room?”

“A furnished room. My landlord confiscated my stuff. Not that there was much of it.” Allbee’s smile crept for a moment into the corners of his mouth and then was gone. “But such as there was.”

“For back rent?”

“Yes.”

“Was it much?”

“I have no idea what I owed him. Or them. There’s a landlady, too. In fact she’s the whole works. The Punts. They’re a couple of Germans. She’s a fat old woman with snag teeth. The nephew’s a longshoreman. He’s not so bad. It’s that smelly old woman’s fault. She kept after him. Old people, especially old women, are the hardest customers. They’ve made it, so to hell with everybody.”

“Made what? What are you talking about?”

“Lived so long. Pulled through. A long life,” said Allbee. “All the hardships. The rich are rough on the poor for the same reason. The veteran is rough on the tenderfoot. All the way down the line. You know that yourself. .”

“How much do you owe them? Ten dollars, twenty…?” said Leventhal stopping him impatiently.

“More like forty or fifty. To be honest with you, I can’t even make an estimate. I gave them a little on account, now and then. I don’t know. Less than they say, you can be sure ol that.”

“Didn’t they say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Don’t tell me!”

Allbee did not speak.

“Don’t you want to go back there, pay them a little? If it’s forty dollars, I haven’t got that kind of money on hand, but if you give them something..?”

“No, thanks, the whole house smells. Pardon me, but that old Mrs Punt — I can’t stand uncleanliness like that.”

“I’ll bet you’re a model roomer, too.”

“I’m not the worst.”

“Excuse me, but I forgot you were an aristocrat,” Leventhal muttered with a short laugh, Allbee looked at him simply, without a touch of reproof.

“Well, where have you been staying?”

“Fortunately the weather’s been nice. I slept out. In the open. I could have gone to a shelter or a mission. I thought if the weather turned bad that I would. I’d go religious for a while. But it’s been beautiful.”

“I don’t know how you could let things get that bad. If you’re telling me the truth.”

“If I told you the whole truth, it wouldn’t sound plausible, so I’m only telling you part of it. I’m cutting it short. I suppose I shouldn’t have let things get out of hand like this. Last week I kept warning myself to hurry up and do something, but I didn’t pull myself together for some reason, and then Punt threw me out and there I was.” He turned his hand inward in a gesture of self-presentation. “The way I look, pearl diving is about the only work I could get.”

“How much money did your wife leave you?” Leventhal asked suddenly.

Allbee colored. “What business is it of yours?” he said.

“Why, man, you should have done something with it instead of just living it up.”

“You can’t bring the world to its knees with a little insurance money. .” He hesitated and added, “I don’t owe you any explanation, do I?”

“You don’t owe me anything. I don’t owe you anything, either.”

Allbee did not accept this, but he confined his disagreement to a shrug. Then he examined Leventhal at length. “I had my reasons for doing what I did,” he said. “I was in a peculiar state of mind and I wanted to get off the merry-go-round. Your wife is away, now. What if she were killed in an accident? Then you’d have the right to ask me such a question.”

“You’re an idiot!” said Leventhal.

“I’m only saying that we’re not in the same boat. Wait till we’re in the same boat.”

“God forbid!”

“Of course. Who wants to see harm come to anyone? But accidents happen. You ought to realize that.”

“Look,” said Leventhal, “it’s as I say. I don’t owe you anything. But I’ll give you a few bucks. Go to your rooming house or to a hotel.”

“I can’t go back. It’s impossible. I can’t ring Punt’s bell at this time of the night. Besides, they have somebody else in the room. That’s why they threw me out. And what sort of hotel would take me in? Like this? Without a bag? Unless you’re suggesting a flophouse?”

“Well,” said Leventhal. “Why beat around the bush? I see you’ve got your heart set on sleeping here tonight. I could see that all along.”

“Can you suggest a place for me to go?”

“You’re just inviting yourself in. It’s after one, do you know that?”

Allbee did not answer.

“After the way you’ve acted I should throw you out. And if you really believe half the things you said to me, you shouldn’t want to stay under the same roof. You’re a lousy counterfeit.”

“Why, you have the whole place to yourself. You can put me up,” Allbee said quietly smiling. “I wouldn’t be inconveniencing you. But if you want me to do this in the right spirit… “ And to Leventhal’s astonishment — he was too confounded when it happened to utter a sound — Allbee sank out of his chair and went to his knees.

Then he shouted, “Get up!”

Allbee pulled himself to his feet.

“For Christ’s sake, stop this damned clowning! What do you think this is?”

With a look of amusement, his eyes appearing fixed and large, Allbee seemed to taste first one lip and then the other.

“I warn you,” said Leventhal, “I won’t stand for your monkeyshines. Your jokes!” His disgust was passionate. “You know they’re not jokes; they’re not supposed to be funny. You’re trying to work something on me. You think you’ll throw me off and I won’t know what’s happening.”

“You don’t understand. I only wanted to do what was appropriate.”

“That’s all right,” said Leventhal grimly, refusing to hear. “I want you to get this — as far as I’m concerned, I’m letting you sleep here tonight to return a favor, and that’s all. Do you hear me?”

“Oh, you do owe me something.”

“Am I the only one that does? Haven’t you ever done anybody else a favor? It looks as if I’m the only one. And what do I owe you? You’ve pestered enough out of me already. I could shove you out in the hall and shut the door in your face with a clear conscience.”

“In your position-if I were in it, and I don’t say that I could be — my conscience wouldn’t be clear.”

“All right, conscience! I don’t want to discuss my conscience with you,” said Leventhal. “It’s late.”

He took some bedding from the cupboard and, going into the dining-room, flung it onto the day bed.

“It’s soft,” Allbee remarked feeling the mattress.

“Now what else do you need-you want to wash? There’s the bathroom.”

“I’d like a shower,” said Allbee. “It’s been a long time since I had one.”

Leventhal gave him a towel and found an old bathrobe for him in the closet. He sat down on the bed in his crumpled pajamas and listened disquieted to the water pelting the shower curtain and streaming in the tub. Soon Allbee came out, carrying his clothes. Wet and combed, his yellow hair gave him quite a different look. Leventhal observed his feet with a queer feeling of aversion. The insteps were red, coarse, and swollen, his toes long and misshapen, with heavy nails.

“Amazing, what a shower can do for you,” said Allbee.

“I’m going to sleep,” Leventhal said. He switched off the bed lamp.

“Good night,” said Allbee. “I’m really grateful for this hospitality.”

“Okay. There’s milk in the refrigerator, if you want something.”

“Thanks, I may have a glass.” He went toward the dining-room. Leventhal covered himself and pulled the pillow into position. The door of the refrigerator clicked open and he thought, “He is taking some.” He was already falling asleep when he heard it shut.