The Victim

17

LABOR DAY was approaching; the coming week was shortened. Press time had been moved back and all copy had to be ready by Friday. Beard called a meeting of the editors to announce this. He was in a talkative mood and he swiveled back and forth, catching the red threads of the carpet in the casters of his chair. At every other sentence he lifted his hand and let it fall slackly. He made it an official occasion because of the holiday. He wouldn’t keep them long. They had their work and brevity was the soul of wit. But this had been a good year for the firm, and he wanted the personnel to know how much he appreciated their loyalty and hard work. When you said work you said decency. They went together. So he wasn’t thanking his people so much as complimenting them. It was better to wear out than to rust out, as was often quoted. He was a hard worker himself. He lived five miles as the crow flies from the office and he always allowed himself enough time so that if the subway broke down he could still walk the distance before nine o’clock. If a job was worth holding it was worth being loyal to. Life without loyalty was like — Shakespeare said it — a flat tamed piece. Leventhal in his white shirt, his face concealing his somber, weary annoyance, knew this was aimed at him. He kept his eyes on the image of the light striped window shade filling like a sail in the glass of the desk which was already cleared for the holiday.

“Grosser philosoph.” Leventhal, walking through the office, repeated his father’s phrase with all his father’s satire. Of all days to waste time. He got back to work even before the lamp over his papers had come to its full blue radiance. He had promised himself to take a breather today in order to think things over. But he was not really sorry to be too busy.

Mr Millikan, his face pale and his nostrils widened, strode through the office carrying galley sheets in each hand. Mr Fay stopped by to remind Leventhal about his manufacturer who wanted a spread.

“First thing next week, I’ll take care of it,” Leventhal said. “On Tuesday.”

“Say, I’m sorry to hear you had such bad luck in your family — bereavement.” Mr Fay’s lips thinned, his tone was formal, and the skin began to gather on his forehead. “Who was it?”

“My brother’s kid.”

“Oh, a child.”

“A little boy.”

“That’s awfully tough. Beard mentioned it to me.” The severity of his lips gave him a look of coldness bordering on suffering. Leventhal understood what caused it.

“Any other children?”

“They have another son.”

“That makes it a little easier.”

“Yes,” Leventhal said.

He let his work drift briefly while he gazed after Mr Fay. He at least was decent. Beard might have taken a moment off to say something. And Millikan rushed by and didn’t even have time to nod. It showed the low quality of the people, their inferiority and meanness. Not that it made any difference to him. This Millikan, when he finally did get around to ask a personal question, never listened to the answer, only seemed to. He was like a shellfish down in the wet sand, and you were the noise of the water to him. Leventhal glanced over his desk — the papers, the glassful of colored pencils, the thick inkstand, the wire letter tray. There were several messages on his spindle and he tore them off. One, dated yesterday, was from Williston; he wanted him to call. Leventhal held the slip of paper in his palm, against his chest, and looked down at it. He thought, “I’ll call him when the pressure’s off me. It couldn’t be so urgent or he would have tried to reach me at the shop or at home, last night.”

At noon the receptionist rang to say that there was a man in the waiting-room looking for him.

“What’s his name?”

“He didn’t give any.”

“Well, ask him, will you?” The phone went silent. There was no response when he tried to signal her a few minutes later. He walked into the aisle to look at the switchboard. Her place was vacant. He took his straw hat from the hook and put it on. It had been his first guess that the visitor was Max. Max, however, would have given his name. It was probably Allbee. So much for his promise not to bother him at work. The waiting-room was deserted. Leventhal, trying to force open the opaque glass slide to see whether she had returned to her switchboard by another entrance, heard her behind him. She was coming through the office door.

“Well, did you locate him?”

“Yes, he’s in the corridor, but he doesn’t want to give his name or come in.” She was laughing, perplexed, and her small eyes seemed to ask Leventhal what was up. He stepped into the corridor.

Allbee was watching the cables and the rising weight at the back of the elevator shaft. He was carrying his jacket wrapped around his arm; his face was yellow and unshaven, his soiled shirt open; he stood loose-hipped, one hand bent against his chest. His shoes were untied. He appeared to have dragged on his clothes as soon as he got out of bed and set out, without losing a second, to see him. No wonder the girl had laughed. But Leventhal was not really disturbed either by her laughing or by Allbee himself. The lower half of the red globe above the doors lit up and the elevator sprang to a soft stop. He and Allbee crowded in among the girls from the commercial school upstairs.

“Nice,” Allbee whispered. They were forced to stand close. Leventhal could scarcely move his arms. “Nice little tender things. Soon you and I, we’ll be too old to take notice.” Leventhal was silent. “Last night he was crying for his wife,” he was thinking as they sank slowly along the wall.

Allbee followed him through the lobby and into the street.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to come around?” said Leventhal.

“You’ll notice that I waited outside.”

“Well, I don’t want you around. I told you that.”

Allbee’s eyes shone at him with reproachful irony. They were quite clear, considering how drunk he had been. His voice was thick, however. “I promised you I wasn’t going to make trouble for you here. Since things are like this between us, you ought to have a little faith in me.”

“Yes?” said Leventhal. “How are things between us?”

“Besides, I had a look at the goings-on inside. That’s not for me.”

“Well, what’s on your mind? Make it quick. I have to have lunch and get right back.”

Allbee was slow to begin. Could it be, Leventhal wondered, that he was unprepared and improvising something? Or was it part of his game to appear awkward, like this?

“I know you’re suspicious of me,” he finally said.

“Come on, let’s have it.”

He wiped his hand over his eyes. There were lines of strain about the root of his nose.

“I’ve got to get myself in motion.”

“What, are you going away?”

“No, I didn’t say I was. Well, yes, as soon as I can. That’s understand. I mostly wanted to say…” He reflected. “I was in dead earnest last night; I want to do something about myself. But before I can start there are certain things I’ll have to have… clean up, make myself look a little more. respectable. I can’t approach anybody this way.”

Leventhal agreed.

“I should get a haircut. And this shirt,” he plucked at it. “My suit should be cleaned. Pressed, at least. I need some money.”

“You find money for whisky. You don’t have any trouble about that.”

Allbee’s look was earnest and even somewhat impressive, despite the sullen sickliness of his face.

“I suppose you weren’t drunk last night. What did you do it on, sink water?”

“That was absolutely the last of Flora’s money, the last few dollars. The last connection with her,” he uttered the words slowly, “in something tangible.”

Leventhal raised his eyes to him skeptically. His gaze contained all the comment he thought necessary. He shrugged and turned his face away.

“I didn’t expect you to approve of that or even sympathize. You people, by and large — and this is only an observation, nothing else, take it for what it’s worth — you can only tolerate feelings like your own. But this was good-by to my wife. That wasn’t sentimental. Just the opposite. To get a haircut or a new shirt with those last few dollars of hers would have been sentimental. Worse. That would have been hypocrisy.” His large lips made a burst of disgust. “Hypocritical! The money had to go the way the rest did. It would have been cheap and dishonest to use the last dime differently from the first.”

“In other words, it was all for your wife.”

“It was. I wasn’t going to use a single cent of it to advance myself with. I felt bound to do it that way no matter how much it hurt me. And it did hurt me.” He put his hand to his breast. “But this way I’ve been decent, at least. I didn’t become a success at her expense. I didn’t become what I wasn’t before she died. And consequently I can face myself today.” He stood swaying over him, ungainly, his mouth beginning to swell out derisively. “You wouldn’t have done that, Leventhal.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to,” Leventhal said disgustedly.

“It’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been touched. Wait till you’re touched.”

“Pardon?”

“Wait till something happens to your wife.”

Leventhal blazed up. “You stop that harping on something happening… and that hinting. You’ve done it before. Damn you, you stop!”

“I don’t want anything to happen,” Allbee said. “All I’ve been trying to show is that you’ve been luckier than I. But you shouldn’t forget that luck cuts both ways and be prepared, and when you’re in my position—if you ever are. That’s the whole thing, that if.” He had recovered his favorite key and he brightened. “If swings us around by the ears like rabbits. But if…! And you have to square it with yourself, every mistake you ever made, all your sins against her, then maybe you’ll admit it isn’t so simple. That’s all I want to say.”

“Oh, now we’re on my sins.”

“I’m not talking about cheating on your wife. I don’t know how it stands, but that’s a very unimportant part of it — your cheating on her, or her cheating on you. What I’m talking about holds good regardless. You mustn’t forget you’re an animal. There’s where a lot of unnecessary trouble begins. Not that I’m in favor of infidelity. You know how I feel about marriage. But you see a lot of marriages where one partner takes too much from the other. When a woman takes too much from a man, he tries to recover what he can from another woman. Likewise the wife. Everybody tries to work out a balance. Nature is too violent for human ideals, sometimes, and ideals ought to leave it plenty of room. However, we’re not monkeys, either, and it’s the ideals we ought to live for, not nature. That brings us back to sins and mistakes. I heard of a case…”

Leventhal cried, “Do you think I’m going to stand here and listen to your cases?”

“I thought you might be interested,” Allbee said pacifyingly.

“Well, I’m not.”

“All right.”

Leventhal started toward the restaurant and Allbee walked beside him. The slanting parallels of shadow from the elevated tracks passed over them. The windows and window metals trembled and flashed.

“Where do you eat around here?”

“Down a way.”

They came to a corner. “No use going on with you,” said Allbee. “I had my coffee before getting on the subway.”

“Good-by,” Leventhal said indifferently, hardly pausing; he glanced at the traffic light. Allbee hung on, a little to the rear.

“I wanted to ask you — will you lend me a few dollars? Five or so…?”

“To start life over?” said Leventhal, still looking away.

“You offered me some, awhile back.”

“Tell me why I should give you anything.” Leventhal turned squarely to him.

Allbee met this with an uncertain, puzzled smile while Leventhal, on the other hand, felt more steadily balanced and confident.

“You tell me,” he said again.

“You offered it. You’ll get it back.” Allbee dropped his glance, and there was a curious flicker not only in his lowered lids, over the fullness of his eyeballs, but over his temples.

“Yes, naturally I will,” Leventhal said. “You’re a man of honor.”

“I want to borrow ten bucks or so.”

“You raised it. You said five, before, and five is what I’ll let you have. But I’ll give you notice now that if you show up drunk. .”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Worry? It’s not my lookout.”

“I’m not a drunkard. Not a real one.”

Leventhal had half a mind to ask what he was, really, what he genuinely thought he was. But he said instead, with casual irony, “And here I believed you when you said you were so reckless.” He opened his wallet and took out five singles.

“I appreciate it,” said Allbee, folding the money and buttoning it up in his shirt pocket. “You’ll get every penny back.”

“Okay,” Leventhal replied dryly.

Allbee turned away, and Leventhal thought, “If he takes one shot — and he probably thinks he’ll have one and quit — he’ll take two and then a dozen. That’s the way they are.”

There was a letter from Mary waiting for him that evening. He pulled it out of the mailbox thankfully. Allbee’s hints had bothered him more than he knew. He had brushed them aside. What reason did he have to be anxious about her? Nevertheless there were coincidences; things were mentioned and then they occurred. He worked his finger under the flap and tore open the envelope. The letter was thick. He sat down on the stairs and read it in absorption and deep pleasure. It was dated Tuesday night; she had just come back from dinner at her uncle’s. She asked for news of Mickey — Leventhal had put off writing about him — and she complained mildly about her mother. It was comical and strange that her mother treated her like a child. She didn’t make coffee enough for two in the morning, assuming that her daughter still drank milk, unable to grasp the fact that she was not merely a grown woman but a woman no longer so young. This morning a few gray hairs had showed up. Old! Leventhal smiled, but his smile was touched with solicitude. He turned the page. She had so much time on her hands and so little to do that she had bought yardgoods and was sewing herself some slips, trimming them with lace from old blouses of her mother”s, “still in good condition and very pretty as you’ll see when I get home.” The rest of the letter was about her brother’s children. He put it to his mouth as though to cover a cough and touched the paper with his lips.

If she were still in Baltimore, he would have gone down for the holiday. But unless he flew, he could not get back from Charleston by Tuesday. And besides there was her mother in Charleston, recently widowed and no doubt difficult. He would wait and have Mary to himself in a few weeks, when things were quieter. She would make them quieter. He had great faith in her ability to restore normalcy.

The thought of reunion made entering the house all the harder. He listened at the door before going in. He wanted to avoid being taken by surprise again. There were no sounds. “Let him just come back drunk,” Leventhal said to himself. “That’s all I ask.”

Within a few days the flat had become dirty. The sink was full of dishes and garbage, newspapers were scattered over the front-room floor, the ash trays were spilling over, and the air stank. Depressed, Leventhal opened the windows. Where was Wilma? Didn’t she generally come on Wednesdays? Perhaps Mary had forgotten to ask her to continue in her absence. He decided to ask Mrs Nunez tomorrow to clean the place. Picking up an ash tray, he took it to the toilet to empty. The tiles were slippery. He grasped the shower curtains for support; they were wet. In the dark his foot encountered something sodden and, setting the ash tray in the sink, he bent to the floor and picked up his cotton bathrobe. He took a quick, angry step into the front room and spread the dripping robe to the light. There were shoeprints on it and, around the pocket, pale blue stains that looked like inkstains. He emptied it and found several ads torn from the paper, Jack Shifcart’s business card, the one jokingly intended for Schlossberg, and, bent and smeared, the two postcards he had received from Mary a few weeks ago. He hurled the robe furiously into the tub. His face was drawn, his mouth gaping with rage. “The… sucking bitch!” he brought out, almost inarticulate and struggling ferociously against a stifling pressure in his throat. He flung aside the chair before his desk, threw the writing leaf down, tore papers out of the pigeonholes and drawers, and began to go through them — as if, in his numbness and blindness, he could tell what was missing. Awkwardly, his hands stiff, he spread them out: letters, bills, certificates, bundles of canceled checks, old bankbooks, recipes that Mary had pasted on cards and put away. Heaping them together again he picked up the blotter, banged up the leaf with his knee, and pushed them, blotter and all, into a drawer. He locked it, put the key in his watch pocket, and sat down on the bed. He still retained the cards and the clippings he had taken from the pocket of the robe. “I’ll kill him!” he cried, bringing his fist down heavily on the mattress between his knees; and then he was silent and his large eyes stared as though he were trying to force open an inward blindness with the sharp edge of something actual. He rubbed his fingers thickly on his forehead. Presently he began to read Mary’s cards, the words of intimacy meant only for him. There were a few private references and abbreviations that no one else could understand; the drift of the rest was hard to miss. “To carry them around like that, to keep them to look at!” he thought. He felt a drench of shame like a hot liquid over his neck and shoulders. “If that isn’t nasty, twisted, bitching dirty!” It sickened him. If Allbee had seen them accidentally… that too would have been hateful to him. But it was not accidental; Allbee had gone into his things, his desk — Shifcart’s card proved that, for Leventhal was certain he had put it away — and snooped over his correspondence and kept these cards to amuse himself with. And perhaps he had seen Mary’s earliest letters, the letters of reconciliation after the engagement was broken. They were in the desk, somewhere. Was that the reason he had made those remarks today about marriage and the rest? He might have made them without knowing, on the chance that he was susceptible. Nearly everyone was. Leventhal thought with a stab of that incident before his marriage and Mary’s behavior, which he still did not understand. How could she have done that? But he had long ago decided to accept the fact and stop puzzling about the cause. To Allbee, who might have read the letters, it must have seemed a wonderful opportunity: Mary away, and so why not drop a hint? What he did not know was that Leventhal’s old rival was dead. He had died of heart-failure two years ago. Mary’s brother had brought the news on his last visit North. It wasn’t to be found in a letter.

To himself he said, “A lot a dirty drunk like that would know about a woman like Mary.”