The Victim

8

BUT the week passed and Leventhal made no move to get in touch with Williston, though he promised himself every day to clear up the whole business. Allbee did not appear, and Leventhal hoped that he had seen the last of him without really believing that he had. But at least matters in Staten Island were going better. Mickey was by no means out of danger; still he was improving, and Leventhal felt less worried about him. Max had wired back that he was ready to leave as soon as the doctor gave the word, and Leventhal wrote to say that while he thought Max ought to come home where he was needed, the decision was his own to make.

On Friday night Leventhal felt Mary’s absence keenly. Before going to bed, he was tempted to put in a call to Charleston. He even went to the telephone, lifted it, and turned it, untangling the cord, but he set it down and went on undressing. He put on a white cotton robe she had given him on his last birthday, smoothing the lapels lightly and glancing down. She would be sure to feel if he called her now, at the beginning of the week-end, that he found being alone unendurable and was appealing to her to come home. And that would be unfair, since she could not come as long as her mother needed her. Also, when he hung up and she was inaccessible again, he would miss her even more than he did now. And she him.

There were several glasses on the sink. He washed them and turned them upside down to dry. Then he went into the dining-room which had been shut since her departure. He left all the doors in the flat standing open; it made him feel easier.

He did not sleep well. Most of the night he could hear the motor of the refrigerator shuddering and rocking as it started and stopped. Several times he opened his eyes because of it. The light was burning in the bathroom. There was a short downpour and mist floated at the window. Toward morning he was aware that someone was speaking loudly in the street and he listened, breathing heavily. There was enough light to see by. He had gone to bed in the cotton robe and he lay, both pillows under his head, his hands joined on his chest; his feet and outspread legs were visible beside the deep shadow of the wall. The air was gray and soft in the long defile of the street.

A woman’s voice cried out, and he flung himself up, brushing aside the curtains with a clatter of rings. There was a commotion at the corner. He saw a man start a crazy rush at one of two women; another threw himself in his way, shrieking, and held him off. Across the street two soldiers stood watching. They had been with the women, it was clear enough, and then the man had caught them — perhaps a husband, a brother, probably the former — and they drew off. The man circled with short, sidling steps, and the woman hung back dumbly, with horrible attentiveness, ready to run. Her high heels knocked on the pavement. He had reached her once, her dress was ripped from neck to waist. She shook her head and pulled back her hair. He darted in again, grabbing at her, and the friend, uttering her begging, agonized cries, caught his arms and was swung round by him. The soldiers had an air of being present at an entertainment especially arranged for them, and seemed to laugh to themselves from time to time. The husband’s soles scraped on the pavement as he pushed toward his wife, and this time she ran away. She ran up the street awkwardly but swiftly, her soft figure shaking, and the soldiers started off at once in the same direction. The husband did not chase her; he stood still. The other woman with her hands on his arm spoke to him urgently, thrusting forward her face. The rain was rapidly, unevenly drying from the street. Leventhal growled under his breath and wound the robe around himself more tightly. There was a gleam, as if a naked copper cable was lifted from the water and rose quickly, passing over masonry and windows. The sun was forcing its way through a corner of the gray air. The woman was still speaking to the man, imploring, pulling him the other way. She wanted him to go with her. Leventhal drew the shade and dropped into bed.

He was up at ten o’clock with a free week-end before him. The day had changed its look since dawn; it was warm, singularly beautiful. The color of the sky was strong; the clouds were as white as leghorn feathers rolling before a breeze that blew into the curtains and hauled at the strings of Mrs Nunez’ flower boxes. Leventhal bathed, dressed, and went down for breakfast. In the restaurant he took a booth instead of sitting at the counter as he did on weekdays. He found a copy of the Tribune on the seat and read, propping the paper on the sugar shaker while he drank his coffee. Afterward he took a walk uptown, enjoying the weather and looking into shopwindows.

The scene on the corner remained with him, however, and he returned to it every now and then with the feeling that he really did not know what went on about him, what strange things, savage things. They hung near him all the time in trembling drops, invisible, usually, or seen from a distance. But that did not mean that there was always to be a distance, or that sooner or later one or two of the drops might not fall on him. As a matter of fact he was thinking of Allbee — he was not sure that he had stopped spying on him — and with the thought came a faint sick qualm. Once more he reminded himself that he had to call Williston. But gradually the qualm passed, and his intention slipped to the back of his mind. And later, when he took some nickels out of his pocket to pay for a drink and saw an empty phone booth at the rear of the store, he reconsidered and decided, for the time being, not to make the call. He had not seen Williston for three years or more, and to ask him, out of a clear sky, about something so difficult and obscure, perhaps forgotten, might appear strange. Besides, if Williston was capable of believing he had injured Allbee on purpose, he would be cold to him. And perhaps Harkavy was right. Perhaps he would be trying to get Willis-ton to assure him that he still liked him, to demand that assurance of him more than fairness. He pictured Williston sitting before him in a habitual pose, at ease in his chair, his fingers in the pockets of his vest, red-cheeked, his blue eyes seeming to say, “So much frankness and no more,” the exact amount remaining in doubt. In all likelihood Williston had made up his mind that he was responsible for what had happened to Allbee and while he would listen — if Leventhal knew him — with an appearance of courtesy and willingness to suspend judgment, he would already be convinced. To imagine himself pleading with him filled Leventhal with shame. Didn’t he know, he himself, that he had never consciously wanted to harm Allbee? Of course he did. It was for Williston, even if he was his benefactor, to explain why he was ready to believe such a thing. And when you said that someone was your benefactor, what did it actually mean? You might help a man because he was a bother to you and you wanted to get rid of him. You might do it because you disliked him unfairly and wanted to pay for your prejudice and then, feeling that you had paid, you were free and even entitled to detest him. He did not say that it was so in Willis-ton’s case, but in a question like this you couldn’t be blamed for examining every possibility, or accused of being coldblooded or heartless. It was better to think well of people — there was a kind of command that you should. And on the whole it was Leventhal’s opinion that he had an unsuspicious character and preferred to be taken advantage of rather than regard everyone with distrust. It was better to be genuinely unsuspicious; it was what they called Christian. But it was foolish and miserable to refuse to acknowledge the suspicions that came into your mind in an affair like this. Because if you had them you should not put on an innocent front with your-self and deny that you did.

At the same time Leventhal was reasonable enough to admit that he might be trying to release himself from a sense of obligation to Williston by finding fault with him. He had never been able to repay him. Was he looking for a chance to cancel the debt? He did not think so. He wished he could be sure. Ah, he told himself, he was sure. He had never felt anything but gratitude. Again and again he had said — Mary could testify — that Williston had saved him.

But then, as he dwelt on it, the whole affair began to lose much of its importance. It was, after all, something he could either take seriously or dismiss as an annoyance. It was up to him. He had only to insist that he wasn’t responsible and it disappeared altogether. It was his conviction against an accusation nobody could expect him to take at face value. And what more was there for him to say than that his part in it was accidental? At worst, an accident, unintentional.

The morning, with its brilliance and its simple contrasts, white and blue, shining and darkened, had a balancing effect on him of which he was conscious. He looked up, and a slight smile appeared on his face, swarthy in the sunlight. His clean white shirt was crookedly buttoned and tight at the neck; he put his fingers inside the band and tugged at it, drawing his chin up, and he straightened his shirt front clumsily, his gold wedding ring clicking on the buttons.

At noon he was in the west Forties. He ate a bowl of chili in a place opposite a music shop where a man in shirt sleeves, standing at one of the broad-swung windows on the second floor, blurted out an occasional note, testing a horn, one arm embracing the shining roundness of the brass. He was blowing erratically rich impatient notes and deep snores whose resonance Leventhal felt somehow entering his very blood as he gazed into the sun and dust of the peaceful street. He broke a cigar out of its wrapper, making a ball of the cellophane small enough to squeeze into the band. He felt along his thigh for matches and, when he had blown out his first puff, he walked into a booth and phoned Elena. One of the Villani children was sent to fetch her. Leventhal’s eyes remained fixed on the horn player during the conversation.

Elena sounded quieter than usual. She was going to visit Mickey at three o’clock. He asked her about Philip and while Elena, after she had said, “Oh, Phillie? He’s upstairs,” went on talking about the hospital, Leventhal conceived the idea of spending the day with him and interrupted her to propose that Philip come over to Manhattan.

“I’ll meet him at South Ferry. If you want me to, I’ll come for him.”

“Oh, I’ll send him,” said Elena. “That’s fine. He’ll like it. No, he can go on the ferry himself. What’s there to it?”

Already full of plans, Leventhal hurried into the street. They would take a ride along the Drive on an open bus. The boy might enjoy that. Perhaps he would prefer Times Square, the shooting galleries, the penny arcades and pinball games. He congratulated himself on having thought of Philip; he was delighted. He would have passed the time tolerably well, he reflected, until some time toward evening when he realized he had not spoken three words to a living soul and the blues descended on him. And Philip, too, would have been left alone when his mother went to the hospital. Leventhal took the train downtown and sat in the small square on a bench commanding the ferry gates.

He kept his swarthy, unimpassioned face turned to the exit. The strain of waiting made him almost tremble, yet it was pleasurable, a pleasurable excitement. He wondered why it was that lately he was more susceptible than he had ever been before to certain kinds of feeling. With everybody except Mary he was inclined to be short and neutral, outwardly a little like his father, and this shortness of his was, when you came right down to it, merely neglectfulness. When you didn’t want to take trouble with people, you found the means to turn them aside. Well, the world was a busy place — he scanned the buildings, the banks and offices in their Saturday stillness, the pillars ribbed with soot, and the changeable color of the windows in which the more absolute color of the sky was darkened, dilated, and darkened again. You couldn’t find a place in your feelings for everything, or give at every touch like a swinging door, the same for everyone, with people going in and out as they pleased. On the other hand, if you shut yourself up, not wanting to be bothered, then you were like a bear in a winter hole, or like a mirror wrapped in a piece of flannel. And like such a mirror you were in less danger of being broken, but you didn’t flash, either. But you had to flash. That was the peculiar thing. Everybody wanted to be what he was to the limit. When you looked around, that was what you saw most distinctly. In great achievements as well as in crimes and vices. When that woman faced her husband this morning after he had most likely tracked her all night from joint to joint and finally caught her catting, too red-handed to defend herself; when she faced him, wasn’t she saying, silently, “I’m being up to the limit just what I am”? In this case, a whore. She may have been mistaken in herself. You couldn’t expect people to be right, but only try to do what they must. Therefore hideous things were done, cannibalistic things. Good things as well, of course. But even there, nothing really good was safe.

There was something in people against sleep and dullness, together with the caution that led to sleep and dullness. Both were there, Leventhal thought. We were all the time taking care of ourselves, laying up, storing up, watching out on this side and on that side, and at the same time running, running desperately, running as if in an egg race with the egg in a spoon. And sometimes we were fed up with the egg, sick of it, and at such a time would rather sign on with the devil and what they called the powers of darkness that run with the spoon, watching the egg, fearing for the egg. Man is weak and breakable, has to have just the right amounts of everything — water, air, food; can’t eat twigs and stones; has to keep his bones from breaking and his fat from melting. This and that. Hoards sugar and potatoes, hides money in his mattress, spares his feelings whenever he can, and takes pains and precautions. That, you might say, was for the sake of the egg. Dying is spoiling, then? Addling? And the last judgment, candling? Leventhal chuckled and rubbed his cheek. There was also the opposite, playing catch with the egg, threatening the egg.

Boats from the island were arriving every few minutes, and, after the crowds had several times poured out and dispersed, Leventhal saw Philip standing at the gates. He got up and beckoned him, grunting, “Here, this way,” and, waving his arm, advanced to the curb. The noise of the busses made shouting useless. “Here, here!” He motioned, and at last the boy saw him and came over.

“Well, was it nice crossing?” were Leventhal’s first words. “It’s a swell day. You can smell the sea here.” He breathed deeply. “Fish and clams.”

He observed approvingly that Philip’s short hair was wetted and brushed, and that his shirt collar, which lay over the collar of his coat, was fresh and clean. He himself was wearing a seersucker suit that had just come back from the laundry; it made him feel set for the holiday.

“Now, how will we go uptown? On the bus?” He touched the boy on the shoulder. “There isn’t much to look at on a Saturday from the Broadway bus.”

“Oh, I get over to Manhattan,” said Philip. “I know what it looks like. Let’s take the subway.”

They walked down, Leventhal guiding him through the turnstile and the gloom of the curved platform. A distant, rapid concussion of cars, like hammer blows, came to them in the tunnel.

It was fortunate that Philip was talkative, for, if he had been shy, Leventhal would have thought he was being reproached for his past neglect, not to be made up for in a single afternoon. He had read such a reproach into his silence last week, when he gave him the quarter. But there was no cause for misgiving. Philip talked on fluently, and Leventhal, though his mind sometimes appeared to be elsewhere, was secretly minutely attentive. The emotions Philip raised in him deepened his ordinary stolidity. But he glanced frequently at the slope of his cropped, handsome long head and into his face, and he thought that Elena’s blood might show in his features but not in his nature. There they had something in common. The boy seemed to see it, too, Leventhal told himself.

Philip put his hand on a chocolate slot machine on one of the pillars, and Leventhal hastily went through his pockets for pennies and put in five or six, turning the knobs. The train rolled in while he was getting the chocolate out of the metal trough, and they abandoned the machine and ran.

“What do you say we walk a little?” Leventhal suggested at Pennsylvania Station. They got out and started up toward Times Square.

The air was stiller here in midtown, and they walked, Leventhal listening to Philip’s chatter, often a little puzzled by it. Philip was curious about the foundations of the skyscrapers. Was it true that they had to have shock absorbers? They must have something to ride out the vibrations of the subway and to take in the play at the top, the swaying. They all swayed. Max had told him that in a ship the plates were arranged in parts of the deck to give when there was bad weather to ride out.

“It sounds reasonable,” said Leventhal. “Of course, I’m no engineer.”

Philip went on, speculating about what there was under the street in addition to foundations: the pipes, water pipes and sewage, gas mains, the electrical system for the subway, telephone and telegraph wires, and the cable for the Broadway trolley.

“I suppose they have maps and charts at City Hall.” Leventhal stopped. “What about a drink?”

They had a glass of orangeade at a bamboo stand where the paper grass bristled on the walls. The woman at the tank clapped down the pull with her wrist, holding her fingers with their cameo rings rigid. The drink was slightly bitter with ground rinds.

Coming out of the stand they walked into a crowd that had formed around a man selling toy dogs that skittered and barked. The peddler, in a flecked sweat shirt and broken shoes, a band with Indian figures on his forehead, pushed them with his wide toe whenever they slowed down. “Run three minutes, guarantee,” he said. To wind them he clasped them by the head; his fingers were too big to get at the key easily. “Three minutes. Two bits. They cost me eighteen. That’s the con.” He made his joke sullenly. His cheeks were heavy, his gaze unconciliating. “Three minutes. Don’t pester, don’t shtup. Buy or beat it.”

There was laughter among the bystanders. “What’s he saying?” Philip wanted to know.

“He’s telling them in Yiddish not to push,” Leventhal replied. He was reminded of what Allbee had said about Jews and New York. “Come on, Phil,” he said.

On Forty-second Street the boy stopped often to look at the stills outside theaters, and Leventhal reluctantly — he did not care for movies — asked whether he wanted to take in a show. “I’d certainly like to,” Philip said. Leventhal surmised that Mickey’s illness had probably interfered with his Saturday movie-going.

“Any one you want,” he said.

Philip chose a horror picture, and they bought tickets and passed over the brown rugs of the sunless lobby, between the nebulous lamps in their shattered, dust-eaten silk shades, and the long brocaded chairs, into the stifling darkness. They sat down in the leather seats.

On the screen an old scientist was seen haunting the dressing room of a theater where he had murdered his mistress many years ago. He had hallucinations about a young star who resembled her and he attempted to strangle the girl. The flaring lights hurt Leventhal’s eyes, the music was strident, and, after half an hour of it, his nerves jarred, he went down to the lavatory. He found an old man there, leaning against a yellow sink, picking clean the end of a rolled cigarette.

“The stuff they put Karloff in,” he said. “A man of his ability.”

“You like him?” said Leventhal.

“In his line, he’s a genius.” He offered Leventhal a light, holding the match vertically pinched between limy white nails; his fingers were raw; he must be a dishwasher. “Here he’s horsing around. It’s an inferior vehicle. Even so, he shines. He really understands what a mastermind is, a law unto himself. That’s what he’s got my admiration for.”

Leventhal threw away his cigarette; the smell of disinfectants interfered with the taste of it. He rejoined Philip, sliding into the seat. He shortly fell asleep. The efforts of the man next to him to push out of the row woke him up. He rose suddenly and heard the music of the newsreel.

“Phil, let’s go. There’s no air in the place,” said Leventhal. “It’s a wonder anybody stays awake.”

The street was glaring when they emerged. The lights in the marquee were wan. There was a hot, overrich smell of roasting peanuts and caramel corn. A metallic clapping sound came to them from a shooting gallery. And for a time Leventhal felt empty and unstable. The sun was too strong, the swirling traffic too loud, too swift.

“Well, where next?” he asked. “What about the park? We can take in the zoo. A little fresh air wouldn’t be bad, would it? Out in the open? We’ll have a sandwich first and then walk down.”

Philip agreed, and Leventhal could only guess whether the idea pleased him, or whether, having had his way about the movies, he felt obliged to acquiesce. “I’m out of touch with kids,” he thought. “Maybe he’s too sophisticated for the zoo. But I don’t know why he should be.” His earlier confidence in the understanding between them was fading.

“Is there anything you’d rather do instead?” he said to the boy. “You don’t have to be afraid to speak up.”

“The only thing I can think of is the Dodgers against Boston. But it must be about the fifth inning by now. I’m not afraid to speak up.”

“Good. We’ll get the ball game another time. When you’ve got something on your mind, I want you to tell me. Meanwhile let’s have a bite.”

The restaurant they went into was an immense place, choked with people. There were several lines before each counter. Leventhal sent Philip to buy soft drinks; he himself went for sandwiches. They found a table and Leventhal began to eat, but Philip went in search of a mustard jar. Leventhal sat sipping out of his bottle. Suddenly there was a stir in the crowd at the front of the restaurant; voices rose sharply. Several people stood up on chairs to see what was happening. Leventhal, too, lifted himself up and looked around for Philip, frowning, beginning to feel troubled. He entered the crowd and pushed forward.

“Here’s my uncle. Uncle!” shouted Philip, catching sight of him. His arm was held by a man whose back was turned but whose blond head and cotton jacket Leventhal immediately recognized.

“What are you doing?” he said. In his astonishment he spoke neither to Philip nor to Allbee, but, as it were, to them both.

“I took the mustard from the table and this man grabbed me,” Philip cried.

“That’s right, I did. You put it back.”

Leventhal flushed and pulled Philip away from Allbee.

“Oh, so this is your uncle?” Allbee smiled, but his eyes did not rest long on Leventhal. He was playing to the crowd and, standing there, his head hung awkwardly forward, he could hardly keep from laughing at the sensation he was making. And yet there was the usual false note, the note of impersona-tion in what he did.

“I asked if I could have the mustard. I asked a lady and she said it was all right,” said Philip. “Where is she?”

“That’s right, mister.” Leventhal met the distressed eyes of a young girl. White-faced, she pressed her pocketbook to her breast.

“What did I tell you?”

“You sneaked the mustard jar away. It doesn’t belong to this young woman. It belongs to the table.”

“I didn’t see you at the table,” she cried.

“You keep on following me around,” said Leventhal in a low voice, tensely, “you keep it up and see what happens. I’ll get out a warrant. I’m not joking.”

“Oh, I could get a warrant out for you on a battery charge. Very easily. There was a witness.”

“I should have broken your neck,” Leventhal muttered. His large head twitched. Because of the boy he dissembled his anger.

“Oh, you should have. I wish it was broken.” Allbee moistened his lips and stared at him.

“Come on, Phil.” Leventhal led him out of the crowd.

“Who is he?” asked Philip.

“He’s a nuisance. I used to know him years ago. Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s just a nuisance.”

They sat down. Philip smeared mustard on his sandwich and looked silently at his uncle.

“It didn’t upset you, did it?”

“Well, I jumped when he grabbed me, but I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“He’s nothing to be afraid of.” He pushed his plate across the table. “Here, eat this half of mine, Phil.” His heart was pounding. He gazed at the entrance. Allbee was out of sight for the moment.

“I won’t stand it,” he thought. “He’d better stay away from me.”