The Victim

9

IN the thronged zoo, Leventhal kept an eye out for Allbee. Defiant and alert at first, he soon became depressed. For if Allbee wanted to trail him how could he prevent it? Among so many people he could come close without being seen. Frequently Leventhal felt that he was watched and he endured it passively. Half out of fear of being mistaken, he made no effort to catch Allbee. He tried to put him out of his thoughts and give all his attention to Philip, forcing himself to behave naturally. But now and then, moving from cage to cage, gazing at the animals, Leventhal, in speaking to Philip, or smoking, or smiling, was so conscious of Allbee, so certain he was being scrutinized, that he was able to see himself as if through a strange pair of eyes: the side of his face, the palpitation in his throat, the seams of his skin, the shape of his body and of his feet in their white shoes. Changed in this way into his own observer, he was able to see Allbee, too, and imagined himself standing so near behind him that he could see the weave of his coat, his raggedly overgrown neck, the bulge of his cheek, the color of the blood in his ear; he could even evoke the odor of his hair and skin. The acuteness and intimacy of it astounded him, oppressed and intoxicated him. The heat was climbing again, and the pungency of the animals and the dry hay, dust, and manure filled his head; the sun, overflowing above the topmost twigs and bent back from bars and cages, white and glowing in long shapes, deprived him for a moment of his sense of the usual look of things, and he was afraid, too, that his strength was leaving him. But he felt normal again when he forced himself to walk on.

Leaving the zoo, he and Philip went into the park. Philip wanted to rest and went toward a bench. But Leventhal said, “We’ll find a place with more shade,” because this was at a crossing of two paths and exposed to all directions. They sat down on a slope where no one could approach unseen. At the crossing, about fifty yards distant, there was a knot of people, one of whom might have been Allbee. Evening was coming on, and a new tide of heat with it, thickening the air, sinking grass and bushes under its weight. Leventhal watched. He even thought of turning the tables on Allbee, lying in wait for him somewhere. But what if he did trap him, what use was it? Would he embarrass him? He was beyond being embarrassed. Beat him? With pleasure. But he felt that he ought to beware, for his own sake, of countering absurdity with absurdity and madness with madness. And of course he did not want to make another scene while Philip was with him. He did not know what effect Allbee had had on him in the restaurant. He believed that Philip realized how much the incident had disconcerted him and therefore tactfully hid his feelings. He had a mind to talk to him about it. But he did not want to betray his anxiety; furthermore, he was afraid to begin a conversation without knowing in advance where it would lead. And maybe he was giving the boy credit for too much discernment. But the mood of the outing had changed. Philip looked pensive; he had nothing to say; and it would have been natural for him to mention the incident once, at least. Certainly he hadn’t forgotten it.

“What’s up, Phil,” he said.

“Nothing. My feet are tired,” he answered, and Leventhal remained in the dark as to what Philip really felt.

He decided to take a taxi to the ferry and he stood up, saying, “Let’s go, Phil. Time to get you back.” He set a rapid pace toward Fifth Avenue. Philip appeared to be somewhat puzzled by his haste but he enjoyed the ride in the open-roofed cab. Leventhal accompanied him to Staten Island and put him on the bus. Then he returned to Manhattan.

About nine o’clock, after a seafood dinner he barely tasted, he was on his way home without a thought of going elsewhere. He wandered into a cigar store, glanced round at the shelves beyond the flame on the counter, and bought a package of cigarettes. He took the change absent-mindedly, but, instead of putting it in his pocket, he began to look through it to find a nickel with which to phone Williston. For all at once he had a consuming need to get an explanation from him, tonight, immediately. He could not understand why he had put it off all week. He leafed through the directory quickly, copied the number out, and went into the booth.

Phoebe Williston answered, and the sound of her voice gave him an unexpected stab; he was reminded of the many times he had called to ask a favor of Williston, to get advice from him, or an introduction. The Willistons had been patient with him, usually, and he had often rather helplessly and dumbly put his difficulties in their hands and waited, sat in their parlor or hung on the telephone, waiting while his problems were weighed, conscious that he was contributing nothing to their solution, wishing he could withdraw them but powerless to do so. Inevitably there had been times when his calls were unwelcome and the Willistons’ patience overdrawn. Whenever he rang their bell, or dropped a nickel in the slot and heard the dial tone, the question in his heart was, “How will it be this time?” And now, too, it was present, despite the fact that the circumstances were altogether different.

“This is Leventhal,” he said. “How are you?”

“Leventhal? Oh, Asa Leventhal. How are you, Asa?” He thought she didn’t sound unfriendly. It was too much to ask that she should be positively cordial, considering that this was his first call in three or four years.

“I’m good enough.”

“You want to talk to Stan, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

He heard the instrument being laid on the table with a knock and then, for several minutes, the sound of a conversation carried on at a distance. “He doesn’t want to talk to me,” thought Leventhal. “He must be telling her that she should have said he was out.” Presently the phone was picked up.

“Hello, there.”

“Yes, hello. Is that you, Asa?”

Leventhal said without preliminaries, “Say, Stan, I want to see you. Can you give me a little time tonight?”

“Oh, tonight? That’s pretty short notice.”

“Yes, I know it is. I should have asked if you were going out.”

“Well, we were planning to later, as a matter of fact.”

“I won’t stay. About fifteen minutes is all I want.”

“Where are you now?”

“Not far. I’ll grab a taxi.”

It seemed to him that Williston did not conceal his reluctance. But when he said, “All right,” Leventhal did not even bother to say good-by. He did not care how Williston consented to see him, just so he consented. He went into the middle of the street and flagged a cab. Of course, he observed to himself getting in, Williston was displeased by his phoning and blurting out his request, dispensing with the usual formalities. But there was much more than that to be concerned about, assuming that Williston really did side with Allbee, There was fairness, a man’s reputation, honor. And there were other considerations as well.

The cab raced uptown, and Leventhal suddenly felt his face burning, for he had just recalled a verse his father had liked to repeat:

Ruf mir Yoshke, ruf mir Moshke,

Aber gib mir die groschke.

“Call me Ikey, call me Moe, but give me the dough. What’s it to me if you despise me? What do you think equality with you means to me? What do you have that I care about except the groschen?” That was his father’s view. But not his. He rejected it and recoiled from it. Anyway, his father had lived poor and died poor, that stern, proud old fool with his savage looks, to whom nothing mattered save his advantage and to be freed by money from the power of his enemies. And who were the enemies? The world, everyone. They were imaginary. There was no advantage. He carried on like a merchant prince among his bolts and remnants, and was willing to be a pack rat in order to become a lion. There was no advantage; he never became a lion. It gave Leventhal pain to think about his father’s sense of these things. He roused himself to tell the driver to hurry. But the cab was already in Williston’s block, and he grasped the handle of the door.

He recognized the elderly Negro who took him up in the elevator. Short, broad-shouldered, and slow, he stooped over the lever, handling it with the utmost deliberateness. They rose and stopped smoothly on the fourth floor. The knocker on Williston’s door was also familiar — a woman’s head cast in copper that surprised you by its heaviness.

Phoebe Williston let him in. Leventhal shook hands with her and she preceded him along the high-walled gray corridor into the living-room. Williston stood up from his chair in the bay window, a newspaper falling from his lap and spreading around the base of the lamp. He was in his shirt sleeves, the cuffs turned back on his smooth, reddish forearms. He hadn’t lost any of his ruddy color. His brown hair was brushed sideways and his dark green satin tie hung unknotted from his buttoned collar.

“Pretty much the same, eh?” he said in his pleasant, deep voice.

“Yes, just about. You, too, I see.”

“A couple of years older all around,” Phoebe remarked.

“Well, it goes without saying.”

Williston brought another chair forward in the bay window and the two men sat down. Phoebe remained standing, resting her weight on one foot, her arms folded, and Leventhal thought that her look was fixed on him longer than it need have been. He submitted to this prolonged look with an air of allowing her the right, under the circumstances, to inspect him.

“You seem to be all right, filled out,” she said. “How’s your wife?”

“Oh, she’s out of town for a while, down South with her mother and family. She’s fine.”

“Lord! South in this weather? And are you still in the same place?”

“Address or job? Both the same. The same job, Burke and Beard; same people. I guess Stan knows.”

The maid came in to ask Phoebe a question. She was a pale, slow-spoken girl. Phoebe listened, inclining her head and twisting her necklace in her fingers. She went back with her to the kitchen. Williston explained, “That’s a new girl learning her way around.” Leventhal, as in the past, felt conscious of a household that had more of the atmosphere of established habit than any he had ever known. Williston lay loosely in his chair, crossing his feet, his fingers pushed under his belt. Within the metal guard of the semicircular window were several flowerpots with blossoms coarse as bits of red ore. Looking at them, Leventhal considered how he should begin. He was unprepared. It had seemed simple enough; he came with a grievance and he wanted an explanation. Perhaps he had counted on finding Williston roused against him; he certainly had not expected him to sit back and wait while minute after minute of the time he had requested ran out. He had not foreseen the effect Williston was having on him; he had forgotten what he was like. More than once, in the old days, he had mistrusted him. He had been full of rancor toward him when he thought Williston was uneasy about the reference letter. But on that occasion and others he had changed his opinion; he invariably did when he was face to face with Williston. He came to him complaining, but soon, without quite knowing how it happened, he began to feel unsure of his ground. So it was now, and he was unable to start. He sat in the bay window looking down, over the heads of the flowers, at the sprinting headlights in the depth of the park below the net of trees, as they turned on a curve and illuminated the boulders and trailing bushes of a steep hillside, one beam after another passing through an immobility of black and green.

“I wanted to talk to you about your friend Allbee,” he said at last. “Maybe you understand what he’s up to.”

Williston was immediately interested; he lifted himself up in his chair. “Allbee? Have you seen him?”

“I sure have.”

“I lost track of him years ago. What’s he doing? Where did you see him?”

But Leventhal would answer no questions till he knew where he stood with Williston. “What was he doing last time you saw him?” he said.

“Nothing. He was living on insurance money. His wife was killed, you know.”

“I heard.”

“It hit him hard. He loved her.”

“All right, he loved her. He didn’t go to her funeral. And why did she leave him?”

Williston raised his eyes to him curiously. “Why,” he said with a certain reserve, “I can’t say for sure. That was something between them.”

Leventhal was quick to feel the rebuke in this and he changed his tone somewhat. “Yes, I guess a third party never really gets the true story. I thought maybe you knew.” He sensed that he ought to explain himself further. “I’m not trying to find out something that’s none of my business. I have a good reason. Maybe you have an idea what it is…?”

“Well, I think I do,” Williston replied.

Leventhal’s heart ran hot. “I understand that you take his side,” he said. “You know what about. You think I’m responsible for everything, just as he does.”

“Everything takes in a lot of territory,” said Williston. “What are you driving at? I’d be more specific about something I was going to land on a man for.” He was not quite so composed and genial, now; his voice was beginning to sound taut, and Leventhal thought, “Better, much better. Maybe we’ll get somewhere.” He bent his heavy, dark face forward.

“I didn’t come to accuse you of anything, Stan. I’m not landing on you. I came to ask why you said certain things about me without hearing my side of the case?”

“Unless you tell me exactly what you’re talking about, I can’t answer.”

“You want me to believe that you don’t know? You know…” he made an ill-defined pushing gesture. “I want you to tell me right out if you think it’s my fault that Allbee was fired from Dill’s Weekly.”

“You do? You want to?” Williston asked this grimly, as if offering him the opportunity to reconsider or withdraw the question.

“Yes.”

“Well, I think it is.”

A hard stroke of disappointment and anger went through Leventhal and drove the breath from his body. His limbs were empty; his thighs felt hollow and rigid as brass, and he could not stir his hands from them. He hardly knew what expressions were crossing his face.

“It is… It is?” he said, struggling. “I don’t see why.”

“For definite reasons.”

Leventhal, his glance bitter and uncertain, said stum-blingly, “I wanted to know…”

Williston did not treat this as needing an answer.

Leventhal continued more surely, “I asked you, so you were bound to give me your opinion. If it’s right, fair enough. But what if it’s wrong? It might be wrong.”

“I’m not infallible.”

“No. When you say it’s my fault, you’re as good as telling me that I set out to make trouble for Allbee because of the way he acted toward Harkavy that night at your house, here. It must mean that I wanted to get even with him because of what he said about Jews.” Williston’s frown told him that this was something he didn’t want to hear. Ah, but he would hear it, Leventhal said to himself fiercely. “That’s what Allbee claims, that I wasn’t going to let him get away with it and I made a plan to get him kicked out of his job. So, now, do you think that too?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“But if you blame me you must have the same idea. I don’t see any difference. And what if it is wrong? Isn’t it awful if you’re wrong? Doesn’t it make me out to be terrible without giving me a chance to tell my side of it? Is that fair? You may think you have a different slant on it than Allbee has, but it comes out the same. If you believe I did it on purpose, to get even, then it’s not only because I’m terrible personally but because I’m a Jew.”

Williston’s face had flamed up harshly. At either corner of his mouth there was a white spot of compression. He looked at Leventhal as though to warn him of the dangerous strain on his self-control. “I shouldn’t have to tell you, Asa, that that wouldn’t enter into it with me,” he said. “You misunderstand me. I hope Allbee didn’t tell you that I agree with him about that. I don’t.”

“That sounds fine, Stan. But it adds up to the same thing, as far as I’m concerned. You think that he burned me up and I wanted to get him in bad. Why? Because I’m a Jew; Jews are touchy, and if you hurt them they won’t forgive you. That’s the pound of flesh. Oh, I know you think there isn’t any room in you for that; it’s superstition. But you don’t change anything by calling it superstition. Every once in a while you’ll hear people say, ‘That’s from the Middle Ages.’ My God! We have a name for everything except what we really think and feel.”

“Looks like you’re pretty sure of what I feel and think,” Williston said stingingly, and then he shut his teeth and seemed to fight off his exasperation. “The Jewish part of it is your own invention. You take it for granted that I think you got Allbee in trouble purposely. I didn’t say that. Maybe you aimed to hurt him and maybe you didn’t. My opinion is that you didn’t. But the effect was the same. You lost him his job. He might have lost it anyway, eventually. He was shaky at Dill’s; they had him on probation.”

“How do you know?”

“I knew it then and I had a talk with Rudiger about it later. He told me so himself.”

Leventhal’s black eyes went vacant. “Go on!” he said.

“That’s the story. I would have told you right away but you wanted to jump all over me first. Rudiger claimed that Allbee brought you up to Dill’s on purpose and that he either gave you instructions or knew you would act as you did. They had it in for each other. I guess Rudiger isn’t an easy person to please. He was giving Allbee a last chance but he was more than likely hankering for him to make a false step so that he could land on him. He must have been on his tail all the time and he knew best whether Allbee had reasons for wanting to get a lick in at him.”

“The whole thing is crazy. You can’t answer for everybody you recommend. You know that… But that’s what Rudiger told you?”

Williston nodded.

“And didn’t Allbee’s boozing have anything to do with it?”

“He lost quite a few jobs because he drank. I won’t deny it. His reputation wasn’t good.”

“Was he on a black list?” Leventhal said, intensely curious.

Williston was not looking at him. His face was directed reflectively toward the flowers, rough and crumbling in the warm night air.

“Well, as I say, he was on probation at Dill’s. I asked Rudiger about the drinking. He had to admit Allbee had stayed on the wagon. He wasn’t fired because he drank.”

“So…” Leventhal said blankly. “In a way it really seems to be my fault, doesn’t it?” He paused and gazed abstractedly at Williston, his hands still motionless on his knees. “In one way. Of course I didn’t mean to get him in trouble. I didn’t know what this man Rudiger was like…”

“No, you didn’t.”

There was something more than agreement in this reply. Leventhal waited for Williston to make it explicit but he waited in vain.

“How was I supposed to know what I was walking into?” he said. “This Rudiger… I don’t see how anybody works for him. He’s vicious. He started right away to tear at me like a dog.”

“Rudiger said that never in all his experience had he had such an interview.”

“Nobody ever talked back to him. He’s used to doing whatever he likes. He…”

Williston whose color had deepened again to a hard red interrupted. “Don’t let yourself off so easily. You were fighting everybody, those days. You were worst with Rudiger, but I heard of others. You came to ask him for a job and he wouldn’t give you one. He didn’t have to, did he? You should have had better judgment than to blow up.”

“What, wipe the spit off my face and leave like a gentleman? I wouldn’t think much of myself if I did.”

“That’s just it.”

“What is? What I think of myself? Well…” He checked himself, sighed, and gave a slightly submissive shrug. “I don’t know. You go to see a man about work. It isn’t only the job but your right to live. Say it isn’t his lookout; he’s got his own interests. But you think you’ve got something he can use. You’re there to sell yourself to him. Well, he tells you you haven’t got a goddam thing. Not only what he wants, but nothing. Christ, nobody wants to be cut down like that.” He suddenly felt weak-headed and confused; his face was wet. He changed the position of his feet uneasily on the soft circle of the carpet.

“You were wrong.”

“Maybe,” Leventhal said, drooping. “My nerves were shot. And I never was any good at rubbing people the right way. I don’t know how to please them.”

“You’re not long on tact, that’s perfectly true,” said Willis-ton. He seemed somewhat appeased.

“I never intended to hurt Allbee. That’s my word of honor.”

“I believe you.”

“Do you? Thanks. You’d do me a favor if you’d tell Allbee that.”

“I don’t see him. I told you before that I haven’t seen him for years.”

Allbee was ashamed to show himself to his old friends, Leventhal thought. Of course it was only natural.

“He thinks I’m his worst enemy.”

“Where did you run into him? What’s he doing? I didn’t even know he was still in New York. He sank out of sight.”

“He’s been following me around,” Leventhal said. And he told Williston about his three encounters with Allbee. Willis-ton listened with a gravely examining expression and a modified but noticeable disapproving tightness at the corners of his mouth. Leventhal concluded, “I don’t see what he’s after. I can’t find out what he wants.”

“You ought to,” said Williston. “You certainly ought.”

“Does he mean that I ought to do something for him?” said Leventhal to himself. That, unmistakably, was what he implied. But what and how? It was not at all clear. He felt that he had not said everything he had come to say. The really important things, the deepest issues, had not been touched. But he saw that it was necessary for him to accept some of the blame for Allbee’s comedown. He had contributed to it, though he had yet to decide to what extent he was to blame. Allbee had been making a last great effort to hold on to his job… However, it was time to go. He had taken up much more than his fifteen minutes. He stood up.

Williston said at the door that he expected to hear from him about the matter; he was very much interested in what was happening to Allbee.

Leventhal pressed the button for the elevator. It started up with a subdued meshing and locking of the metal doors and rose with measured slowness.

In bed later, lying near the wall, his knees pulled up and his face resting on the striped ticking of the mattress, Leventhal went over his mistakes. Some of them made him wince; others caught at his heart too savagely for wincing, and he stifled his emotion altogether and all expression, merely moving his lids downward. He did not try to spare himself; he recalled them all, from his attack on Williston tonight to the original scene in Rudiger’s office. When he came to this, he turned on his back and crossed his bare arms over his eyes.

But even as he did so, he recognized one of those deeper issues that he had failed to reach before. He was ready to accept the blame for losing his head at Dill’s. But why had he lost it? Only because of Rudiger’s abuse? No, he, he himself had begun to fear that the lowest price he put on himself was too high and he could scarcely understand why anyone should want to pay for his services. And under Rudiger’s influence he had felt this. “He made me believe what I was afraid of,” Leventhal thought, and he doubted whether Williston could have understood this. For he belonged to the professional world and was loyal to it. There was always a place for someone like him, there or elsewhere. And another man’s words and looks could never convert him into his own worst enemy. He did not have to worry about that.

Williston had not tried to justify Rudiger, true, but to Leventhal it was apparent that he himself was considered the greater offender. And looking at the incident from Rudiger’s standpoint and taking Allbee’s character into account, too, it was, after all, plausible that he, Leventhal, had been sent with instructions to make a scene. Harkavy had suspected Allbee and Rudiger of rigging it up in the first place. It had seemed reasonable to him and it seemed reasonable also to Rudiger. Only to Rudiger the suspicion was instantly true, true because it occurred to him, probably. That was the kind of man he was.

There was still another consideration — he ran his hand down his throat and through the hair of his chest which began with the shaven line above his collarbone. Had he unknowingly, that is, unconsciously, wanted to get back at Allbee? He was sure he hadn’t. The night of the party he was angry, of course. But since then, no. Truthfully, no. Williston had said that he believed him; he wondered, however, whether he really did. It was hard to tell where you stood with Williston.