The Victim

6

THE doctor told Leventhal on the way back to Manhattan that he thought — though he needed more evidence to confirm the diagnosis — Mickey had a bronchial infection of a rare kind. He named it two or three times, and Leventhal tried to fix it in his mind but failed. Such cases were serious; not necessarily fatal, however. “You think you’ll be able to help him, doctor?” he asked in great eagerness, and the doctor’s word of hope raised his spirits. The boat moved out; the immense golden crowns of light above the sheds now had space to play on the water between the stern and the shore. “I was going to wire my brother to come,” said Leventhal — he had already explained that he was not the father. The doctor answered that he didn’t think it was necessary at present. It was enough to tell him to stand by. Leventhal accepted this as sensible advice. Why create a scare now? It wasn’t so critical after all. He would send Max a night letter and let him decide for himself whether to come or wait. The ferry crawled in the heat and blackness of the harbor. The mass of passengers on the open deck was still, like a crowd of souls, each concentrating on its destination. The thin discs of the doctor’s spectacles were turned to the sky, both illumined in the same degree by the bulb over his head. Leventhal wanted to ask him more about the disease. It was rare. Well, did medicine have any idea how a thing like that singled out a child in Staten Island rather than, say, St Louis or Denver? One child in thousands. How did they account for it? Did everyone have it dormant? Could it be hereditary? Or, on the other hand, was it even more strange that people, so different, no two with the same fingerprints, did not have more individual diseases? Freed from his depression by the doctor’s encouragement, he had a great desire to talk. He would have liked to discuss this but he had already asked the name of the disease several times and failed to retain it, and so the doctor must have a poor opinion of him. And maybe he would be condescending to a layman. Accordingly, Leven-thal was silent and thought, “Well, let it ride.” But he continued to wonder about it. They said that God was no respecter of persons, meaning that there were the same rules for everybody. Where was that? He tried to remember.

They were in the middle of the harbor when the heat was suddenly lifted by a breeze. High and low between the shores, the lights of ships, signals, and bridges drifted and ran, curved, and stood riding on the swell, and the sonorous, rather desolate bells rang from the water when the buoys were stirred. The breeze blew a spray to the deck, and the boat now and then seemed to tremble to the pull of the ocean beyond the islands. As they neared the Manhattan side, people began to get up from the benches in the salon; there was a great press when the chains were dropped. Leventhal was separated from the doctor.

He went home on the subway, pushing through the revolving steel gate at his station and breathing the cooler air of the street with deep relief.

He was expecting a letter from Mary — one was about due — and he opened the mailbox swiftly while Nunez’ dog sniffed at his legs. Instead of a letter, Mary had sent two post cards closely covered with writing. She and her mother were starting for Charleston on Friday. The house was sold. They were both well and she hoped he was, too, in spite of the heat. It was fine old Baltimore summer weather — it simply drugged you. The second card was different; there were intimate references on it. Only Mary could write such things on cards for everybody in the world to read. Amused, proud, pleased with her, pleased rather than embarrassed at the possibility that postal clerks had read the cards, he put them in his pocket. “Do I pass inspection?” he demanded of Nunez’ dog. “Blow now.” Stooping he caught the dog’s head and rubbed it. He started up stairs and the animal came after him. “Blow now, I say.” He barred the way with his leg, then whirled inside and slammed the hall-door. “Go home!” he yelled, and laughed uproariously. “Go on home!” He pounded the glass, and the dog barked raucously and leaped at the pane. Leven-thal told one of the neighbors, whom he hardly knew, “The super’s dog is having a fit. Hear him?” An elderly, guarded, pale face gave him an uncertain smile and seemed to listen in awe to the racket in the foyer. Leventhal hurried up with thumping steps, whipping his hat on the banister and entering his flat with a commotion. Dear Mary! If she were only here now to put his arms around and kiss. He flung away his hat and his jacket, pulled off his shoes, and went to open the windows and push aside the curtains. It had turned into a beautiful night. The air was trembling and splendid. The moon had come out; there were wide-spaced stars, and small clouds pausing and then spinning as the cool gusts broke through the heat.

He lit the lamp on the secretary and began to write to his wife. Gnats fell and rose again from the illuminated green blotter. He gave her an account of himself, forgetting that he had felt nervous, restive, and unwell. He said nothing about what had happened at the office. It did not seem worth saying. He wrote swiftly and exuberantly; he discussed the weather, he mentioned that Wilma had drunk the beer, that the parks were terribly crowded. Then he found himself telling her about his nephew, writing with sudden emotion, the words beginning to sprawl as his hand raced. In a changed tone he described Elena. He had been afraid to look at her, he confessed, when she got into the cab and he laid the bundled-up child — she had him in two blankets although the temperature must have been over ninety-on her lap. All the impressions of the moment returned to him — the boy’s eyes with the light of the meter on them, the leathery closeness of the back seat, the driver’s undershot jaw and the long peak of his black cap, Philip’s crying, Villani keeping back the children on the sidewalk. The beating of Leventhal’s heart rose and his tongue became dry. As for his brother… But when he had written Max’s name he stood up and leaned over the paper. He had meant to send the night letter before coming up. The pen was staining his fingers. He dropped it and began looking for his shoes outside the circle of lamplight. He had just found them and was forcing his feet into them without bothering about the laces when his bell rang, piercingly and long. Leventhal straightened up with a grunt of annoyance and surprise. “Now who in the name of hell would ring like that?” he said. But he already knew who it was. It was Allbee. It must be. He opened the door and listened to the regular sibilance and knocking of the footsteps in the hollow stair well. It occurred to him that he could escape Allbee by going to the roof. If he went out stealthily he could still get away. And if he were followed, the next rooftop was only a matter of six inches away, an easy step over. Then he could get into the street and good-by. He could go even now. Even now. Yet he stood firm and strangely enough he felt that he had proved something by doing so. “I won’t give ground,” he thought. “Let him. Why should I?” He promptly went back to his letter, leaving the door open. He finished it abruptly with a few perfunctory sentences and read it over. He wrote “All my love,” signed his name, addressed the envelope, and by that time Allbee was in the room. He knew that he had come in; nevertheless he controlled his desire to turn. He stamped the envelope first, sealed it, momentarily guessed at its weight, and only then did he appear to take notice of his visitor, who smiled at him without parting his lips. To enter without a knock or invitation was an intrusion. Of course the door was open, but it was taking too much for granted all the same not to knock. Leventhal thought there was a trace of delight in the defiance of Allbee’s look. “I owe him hospitality, that’s how he behaves,” passed through his mind.

“Yes,” he said tonelessly, indifferently polite.

“You’re well fixed up here,” said Allbee taking in the room. He might have been comparing it with his own place. Leven-thal could imagine what that was like.

“As long as you’re here, sit down,” Leventhal said. “What’s the use of standing?” He would not get rid of him without hearing him out, and it might as well be now as another time.

“Much obliged,” said Allbee. His head came forward courteously and he seemed to read Leventhal’s face. “It’s a long pull up those stairs. I’m not used to these high walkups.” He drew a chair close to the desk, crossed his legs, and clasped his knee with somewhat rigid fingers. His cuffs were frayed, the threads raveled on the blond hairs of his wrist. His hands were dirty. His fair hair, unevenly divided on his scalp, was damp. It was apparently true that the climb had been hard for him. “It’s quite a height, this,” he smiled. “And for me, well…” he caught his breath, “I’m used to low places.” He pointed his finger at the floor and worked it as though pulling a trigger.

“Are you here to give me the same song and dance as the last time? Because if you are let me tell you once and for all…”

“Oh, hold on,” said Allbee. “Let’s be sensible and open. I didn’t come to complain to you. Why should I? I only said what’s obvious. Nothing to wrangle about. I’m on the bottom. You don’t want to deny that, do you?” He extended his arms as if to offer himself for examination, and although he did it wryly Leventhal saw that he was really in earnest. “Whereas you…”

He indicated the flat. Leventhal said, “Oh, please,” and shook his head. “Don’t give me that stuff.”

“It’s a fact, a hard fact,” said Allbee. “I’m the best judge of the facts. I know them intimately. This isn’t just theoretical with me. The distance between you and me is greater than between you and the greatest millionaire in America. When I compare myself with you, why you’re in the empyrean, as they used to say at school, and I’m in the pit. And I have been in your position but you have never been in mine.”

“What do you mean? I’ve been down and out.”

Allbee gave him a tolerant smile.

“Stony broke, without a nickel for the automat,” Leventhal said.

“Ah, go on. You don’t know anything about it, I can tell by your talk. You’ve never been in my place. Nickels for the automat… temporary embarrassment. That…” and he ended with his head to one side nearly touching his shoulder, and with his outstretched arm and open hand he made a gesture of passing the comparison away. There rose immediately to Leventhal’s mind the most horrible images of men wearily sitting on mission benches waiting for their coffee in a smeared and bleary winter sun; of flophouse sheets and filthy pillows; hideous cardboard cubicles painted to resemble wood, even the tungsten in the bulb like little burning worms that seemed to eat up rather than give light. Better to be in the dark. He had seen such places. He could still smell the carbolic disinfectant. And if it were his flesh on those sheets, his lips drinking that coffee, his back and thighs in that winter sun, his eyes looking at the boards of the floor…? Allbee was right to smile at him; he had never been in such a plight. “So I’m mistaken,” he reflected. “Why do I have to match him in that? Is it necessary? Anyway, what does he want?” For a time he forgot about the night letter. He waited for Allbee to reveal what he had come for. He did not know just what to expect, but he considered it very likely that he would repeat his charge despite his saying that he was not here to complain.

“Well,” he said, prefacing his remark with a short laugh. “It’s a peculiar statement to begin a visit with.”

“Why, no. What could be better. It’s the height of politeness to admire your host’s house. And the contrast between us should please you very much. It should give you a lot of satisfaction to have done it all yourself.”

“Done what myself?” said Leventhal suspiciously.

“Raised yourself up, I mean,” said Allbee quickly. “You were just telling me you were once broke, which is to say that you’re a self-made man. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that, isn’t there? And when you see somebody that hasn’t made out so well it adds something to your satisfaction. It’s only human. Even if you know better.”

“I didn’t say I was a self-made man or any such thing. That’s a lot of nonsense.”

“I’m glad to be corrected then,” Allbee replied. “I must have had the wrong impression. Because, you know, the more I think about it the more I feel it’s bunk, this self-made business. The day of succeeding by your own efforts is past. Now it’s all blind movement, vast movement, and the individual is shuttled back and forth. He only thinks he’s the works. But that isn’t the way it is. Groups, organizations succeed or fail, but not individuals any longer. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, it’s not that way, exactly,” Leventhal said. “No, I don’t.”

“You don’t agree that people have a destiny forced on them? Well, that’s ridiculous, because they do. And that’s all the destiny they get, so they’d better not assume they’re running their own show. That’s the kind of mistake I wouldn’t care to make. There’s nothing worse than being confused, too, in addition to being unlucky. But you find people who have their luck and take the credit for it, too — all brains and personality, when all that happened was that they were handed a bucket when it rained.”

“Let’s have this cleared up right now, if you please,” said Leventhal coldly. “We might as well be open and above-board. What does all this lead up to?”

“Oh, it doesn’t lead to anything. It’s just discussion, talk. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk!” he exclaimed grinning, flinging up his hands. His eyes began to shine.

Leventhal impassively looked at him. “And what’s that for?” he asked.

Allbee now appeared to be very depressed, perhaps at his own unsteadiness, and Leventhal was a little sorry for him. His alternation of moods, however, affected him unpleasantly. It was clear that the man was no fool. But what was the use of not being a fool if you acted like this? For instance, there was his language, did he have to speak like that, make himself sound so grand? Because he needed something to brace himself on? Oh, there was a smashup somewhere, certainly, a smashup and a tragic one, you could be sure of that. Something crushing, a real smash. But the question that remained uppermost with Leventhal was, “What does he want?” And notwithstanding his insistence on being above-board, he was unable to ask it.

“Is that your wife?” Allbee looked over Leventhal’s head at a framed photograph on the secretary.

“Yes, that’s Mary.”

“Oh, say, she’s charming. Ah, you’re lucky, you know?” He stood up and bent over him, turning the photograph to the light. “She is charming.”

“It’s a good picture of her,” said Leventhal, not liking his enthusiasm.

“She has that proud look that’s proud without being hard. You know what I mean. It’s a serious look. You see it in Asiatic sculpture.”

“Oh — Asiatic!” said Leventhal scoffing.

“Certainly, Asiatic. Look at the eyes, and those cheekbones. You’re married to a woman and don’t know she has slant eyes?” He made a descriptive turn of his thumb. “She’s positively Asiatic.”

“She comes from Baltimore.”

“First generation?”

“Her mother is native-born, too. Further back than that I don’t know.”

“I’m willing to bet they came from Eastern Europe, originally,” said Allbee.

“Why, that’s not so stupendous. You wouldn’t get any takers.”

“I know I wouldn’t get any takers in your case.”

“No? Maybe since you investigated me and found out so much about me, you took the trouble to find out what part of Europe my parents came from.”

“It’s apparent enough; it doesn’t need any investigating. Russia, Poland… I can see at a glance.”

“You can, ah?”

“Well, of course. I’ve lived in New York for a long time. It’s a very Jewish city, and a person would have to be a pretty sloppy observer not to learn a lot about Jews here. You know yourself how many Jewish dishes there are in the cafeterias, how much of the stage — how many Jewish comedians and jokes, and stores, and so on, and Jews in public life, and so on. You know that. It’s no revelation.”

Leventhal refrained from answering. It was, after all, no revelation.

Allbee once more turned his attention to Mary’s picture. As he studied it and nodded, his eyes, to Leventhal’s amazement, filled with tears, and he took on an expression of suppressed grief and injury.

“Your wife…?” Leventhal ventured in a low voice.

“She’s dead,” replied Allbee.

Leventhal’s tone fell even lower as he said, with a resonance of horror, “Dead? Oh, too bad. I’m sorry. .”

“So you should be. So you should.” The words seemed to have been brought up from Allbee’s chest as if they had been stored there and were now dislodged and uttered irregularly before he could hold them back.

Leventhal concentrated on them, averting his face — a characteristic of his when he was puzzling something out. He did not understand what Allbee meant.

“Of course I should be,” he murmured, not quite aware that he was acknowledging a charge. The things that had happened to him in the last two days had made him acutely responsive, quick to feel. “What a shame!” he said in deep emotion, recalling the woman’s face. “She was much too good for him, much too good,” he thought. “But why should I say that? He was her husband, so that doesn’t enter in now. He has to be considered. She’s dead, but he’s alive and feels. That’s what brought him down. He wouldn’t be like this otherwise.”

“So you’re alone, now,” he said.

“Yes, I’m a widower, have been for over four years. Four years and about three weeks.”

“And how did it happen?”

“I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t with her. Her family wrote the news. She was hurt in an automobile accident. They thought she would recover, but she died suddenly. That’s all I know. She was buried before I had a chance to get to Louisville.”

“They didn’t wait till you came?”

“Well, to tell you the truth I didn’t want to be there. It would have been a terrible business. The family would have relieved itself by being angry with me. I would have tried to relieve myself by sneaking out to a bar, probably sat in the bar and missed the whole thing. That would have made it ten times worse for everybody. I was in that condition. And it was hot then. Louisville in hot weather. For that! Oh no, brother, I holed up where I was. It would have been brutal. She was dead. I wouldn’t have been going to see her but them, her people. Dead is dead. Finished. No more. You long for your wife when she goes, if you love her. And maybe sometimes if you don’t love her so much. I wouldn’t know. But you’re together, she bends to you and you bend to her in everything, and when she dies there you stand, bent, and look senseless, fit nothing. That’s my personal feeling. Of course, I’m the first kind. I loved her. Well, I say, you long for her… but everything inanimate is the same to me. I’m not sentimental.”

He was acting, lying, Leventhal decided. His moment of genuineness had passed and once more he had taken up his poise, mystifyingly off center and precarious. When he had announced his wife’s death, he had sounded wrathful, but Leventhal had felt himself come nearer to him or to something clear, familiar, and truthful in him. Now he was repelled again. He wondered whether Allbee was not actually a little drunk.

“But,” said Allbee, “that’s not all there is to it.”

“No? There’s more, eh?”

“Somewhat. We were separated before she died. That’s why my relations with her family weren’t good. Naturally, from their standpoint…” He paused to rub his eyelid and when he stopped it was red and appeared to have gone lower than the other. “They were prejudiced against me, wanted to shove the whole blame on me. I could blame them, if I wanted to. Her brother was driving the car; got off with scratches and a few bangs. The way those Southerners drive. Pickett’s charge over and over again. Well… we were separated. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because after Rudiger fired me, I couldn’t get a job.”

“What do you mean? You couldn’t find any jobs? No jobs at all?”

“Not in my line. What could I have earned at any job? Not enough to keep going. After a man spends years in one line he doesn’t want to change. He isn’t in a position to do much. In something else he has to start at the bottom. What was I going to do, become a peddler? Salesman? Besides, I’d have to stop looking for what I wanted by taking any job.”

“I would have taken anything before I let my wife go.”

“We’re made of different stuff, you and I.” Allbee grinned. “And I didn’t let her go. She left me. I didn’t want her to go. She was the one.”

“You’re not telling me all there is to tell.”

“No, no,” he said, almost delightedly. “I’m not. And what’s the rest? You tell me.”

“Didn’t your boozing have something to do with it?”

“Oh, there you go, there you go,” said Allbee, smiling at the floor and swaying his large frame slightly. “My vice, my terrible vice. She left me because of my drinking. That’s the ticket.”

“A woman doesn’t leave her husband for anything — just for a trifle.”

“That’s perfectly true, she doesn’t. You’re a true Jew, Leventhal. You have the true horror of drink. We’re the sons of Belial to you, we smell of whisky worse than of sulphur. When Noah lies drunk — you remember that story? — his gentile-minded sons have a laugh at the old man, but his Jewish son is horrified. There’s truth in that story. It’s a true story.”

“Watch your talk,” said Leventhal stiffly. “You sound like a fool. I don’t know what you’re after, but you’re not doing yourself any good with talk like that. I tell you that straight.”

“Well…” he began; but he arrested himself. “All right, never mind. But it’s unfair to try to put the blame for my wife’s death on me. It’s worse than unfair; it’s cruel when you consider what she was to me and what I’ve been through. I don’t know how you look at it, but I take it for granted that we’re not gods, we’re only creatures, and the things we sometimes think are permanent, they aren’t permanent. So one day we’re like full bundles and the next we’re wrapping-paper, blowing around the streets.”

“But I warn you I won’t stand for such talk. Get that!” Leventhal spoke curtly, and Allbee seemed to lose his presence of mind and lowered his head, grieved and incapable of answering. It was hard to tell whether he was looking for the strength to continue, conniving something new, or disclosing his true state without pretense. Leventhal saw the side of his face, deeply indented at the lid and mouth, his cheek and chin covered with golden bristles, the blue of his eye fixed in brooding. The skin of his forehead, even-grained by the light of the lamp, was wet, and that of his jaw and throat was creased in a way that made Leventhal think of gills. Allbee’s remark about creatures had touched his imagination in a singular way, and for an instant he was no more human to him than a fish or crab or any fleshy thing in the water. But only for an instant, fleetingly, until Allbee moved and looked at him. He appeared discouraged and tired.

“You’ll excuse me,” said Leventhal with somewhat provocative politeness, “but I have a wire to send. I was about to go send it when you came.” Did that sound like an invention? Allbee might think so and interpret it as a maneuver to get rid of him. However, he had seen him writing when he entered, so why shouldn’t it be true? He might have been drafting the message. Anyhow, why should he care? And besides, it was absolutely a fact that he was going to wire Max. Allbee could come along and check up on him if he wanted to. He studied his face to see how he was taking it. Allbee had risen. Suddenly Leventhal twisted about and his heart sprang. He thought he had seen a mouse dart into the corner and he hurried after it, lit a match, and examined the molding. There was no hole. “Ran away!” he thought. Or was it his fancy? “We have mice here,” he explained to Allbee, who was at the door in the dark vestibule. He seemed to turn his head away, unresponding.

When they reached the lower hall, Allbee stopped and said, “You try to put all the blame on me, but you know it’s true that you’re to blame. You and you only. For everything. You ruined me. Ruined! Because that’s what I am, ruined! You’re the one that’s responsible. You did it to me deliberately, out of hate. Out of pure hate!”

He had clutched Leventhal’s shirt and he twisted it as he spoke.

“You’re crazy!” Leventhal shouted in his face. “You’re a crazy stumblebum, that’s what you are. The booze is eating your brain up. Take your hands off me. Off, I say!” He pushed Allbee with all the force of his powerful arms. He fell against the wall with an impact that sickened Leventhal. Allbee stood up, wiped his mouth, and stared at his hand.

“No blood. Too bad. Then you could say I spilled your blood, too,” Leventhal cried.

Allbee answered nothing. He dusted his clothes unskillfully, stiff-handedly, as though beating his arms. Then he went. Leventhal watched his hasty, unsteady progress down the street.

Mr Nunez, who had seen the incident, started up astride the striped canvas of his beach chair, and his wife, who lay on the bed near the window in a white slip, whispered, “Que pasa?” Leventhal looked at her in bewilderment.