The victim (12 page)

with darkness. And that's how I often think of this. When I was born, when I was a boy, everything was different. We thought it would be daylight forever. Do you know, one of my ancestors was Governor Winthrop. Governor Winthrop!" His voice vibrated fiercely; there was a repressed laugh in it. "I'm a fine one to be talking about tradition, you must be saying. But still I was born into it. And try to imagine how New York affects me. Isn't it preposterous? It's really as if the children of Caliban were running everything. You go down in the subway and Caliban gives you two nickels for your dime. You go home and he has a candy store in the street where you were born. The old breeds are out. The streets are named after them. But what are they themselves? Just remnants." "I see how it is; you're actually an aristocrat," said Leven-thal. "It may not strike you as it struck me," said Allbee. "But I go into the library once in a while, to look around, and last week I saw a book about Thoreau and Emerson by a man named Lipschitz..." "What of it?" "A name like that?" Allbee said this with great earnestness. "After all, it seems to me that people of such background simply couldn't understand..." "Of all the goddamned nonsense!" shouted Leventhal. "Look, I've got things to attend to. I have a phone call to make. It's important. Tell me what in the name of hell you want and make it snappy." "I assure you, I wasn't trying to be malicious. I was only discussing this..." "I assure you, you were trying, I assure you!" Leventhal flung out. "Now what are you after? Probably a few bucks for whisky." Allbee laughed aloud. "They say drinking is only another kind of disease," he said. "Like heart disease or syphilis. You wouldn't be so hard on anyone with heart disease, would you? You'd be more sympathetic. They even say crime is only a sort of disease and if you had more hospitals you'd need fewer prisons. Look how many murderers are let off and get treatment instead of execution. If they're sick it's not their fault. Why can't you take that attitude?" "Why?" Leventhal involuntarily repeated. He was bewildered. "Because you've got to blame me, that's why," said Allbee. "You won't assume that it isn't entirely my fault. It's necessary for you to believe that I deserve what I get. It doesn't enter your mind, does it--that a man might not be able to help being hammered down? What do you say? Maybe he can't help himself? No, if a man is down, a man like me, it's his fault. If he suffers, he's being punished. There's no evil in life itself. And do you know what? It's a Jewish point of view. You'll find it all over the Bible. God doesn't make mistakes. He's the department of weights and measures. If you're okay, he's okay, too. That's what Job's friends come and say to him. But I'll tell you something. We do get it in the neck for nothing and suffer for nothing, and there's no denying that evil is as real as sunshine. Take it from me, I know what I'm talking about. To you the whole thing is that I must deserve what I get. That leaves your hands clean and it's unnecessary for you to bother yourself. Not that I'm asking you to feel sorry for me, but you sure can't understand what makes a man drink." "All right, so I can't. What then? What did you stop me for, to tell me that?" "No, you never could and I'll tell you why. Because you people take care of yourselves before everything. You keep your spirit under lock and key. That's the way you're brought up. You make it your business assistant, and it's safe and tame and never leads you toward anything risky. Nothing dangerous and nothing glorious. Nothing ever tempts you to dissolve yourself. What for? What's in it? No percentage." Leventhal's expression was uncomprehending and horrified. His forehead was wrinkled. His heart beat agonizingly, and he faltered out, "I don't see how you can talk that way. That's just talk. Millions of us have been killed. What about that?" He seemed to be waiting for a reply, but before it could be given he turned and walked away rapidly, leaving Allbee alone under the lamp.

12

LEVENTHAL strode home blindly and rapidly, his stout body shaken by the unaccustomed gait. Perspiration ran from his bushy, lusterless hair over his dark skin. He was thinking that he should have done something, slammed Allbee on the head, not let him off. He felt he had answered stupidly, although he did not know what he should have told him; he was unable to remember all that had been said. But as the first throbs of anger began to pass into soreness, it began to appear to him that he had known all along, all through the conversation, what to do and had failed to do it, that he had been unequal to what was plain, clear, and necessary. "I ought to have done it," he thought, "even if it meant murdering him." Just then, the blink of a yellow light in the middle of the street started him into a trot. An eddy of exhaust gas caught him in the face. He was behind a bus. A tearing of gears carried it forward, and he came up on the curb, breathless. He rested a moment and then went on, gradually slowing to his ordinary pace. His head ached. There was a spot between his eyes that was particularly painful; the skin itself was tender. He pressed it. It seemed to have been the dead center of all his staring and concentration. He felt that his nerves were worse than ever and that his rage had done him harm, affected his very blood. He had an impression of bad blood as something black, thick, briny, caused by sickness or lust or excessive anger. His heart quickened again. He cast a glance behind. Several people were going in the other direction. "Let him better not come near me," he muttered. His brain was clearer, and the single thought of murder that had risen in it was gone. However, he regretted not having hit Allbee and would almost have welcomed another chance. What was the use of wasting words on such people? Hit them! That was all they understood. A woman in the movies whom Mary had asked to remove her hat, two or three years ago, had turned around and uttered some insult about the "gall of Jews." Woman or no, Leventhal had had a powerful desire to drive his fist into her head, tear the hat off. He had afterwards argued with Mary that there were times when that should be done. "Where would it get you?" was Mary's answer. Practically, she was right, no doubt; she knew the value of staying cool. But he regretted it. Oh, how he sometimes regretted not slapping off that hat. With his father it had at least been "gib mir die groschke," a potentially real compensation. "But what about me?" Leventhal asked with an arrested upward glance of his large meditative eyes. There was a murky redness in the clouds, absorbed from the neon lights and the clock tower on Fifth Avenue. His father had believed in getting his due, at any rate. And there was a certain wisdom in that. You couldn't say you were master of yourself when there were so many people by whom you could be humiliated. As for Mary, she must have been thinking, in answering, of the night he had pushed her, years ago in Baltimore. Perhaps she wanted to remind him of it. Of course, there was no excuse for that. But he still felt that the woman's hat should have been snatched off and hurled away. And he uttered a low, unwilling laugh when he recalled how he had stood, just stood, without the presence of mind to realize that he was being insulted. It did have to do with presence of mind, exactly as in the case of Dunhill, the linotyper who sold him the unwanted ticket. With Allbee there was the added confusion that he brought off his insults with an air of discussion. When he started out, even though he made a crooked joke here and there, he seemed to be speaking impersonally. But all at once he said something in earnest that was terrible. Of course, he was sick. He himself had brought up the subject of disease, so he must be aware of it. But did his sickness, whatever it was, account for what he said, or would good health only have given him the strength to keep it to himself? Some people, gentle to begin with, were kind when they were sick. Leventhal said to himself, impatiently, "There are two billion people or so in the world and he's miserable. What's he so special?" Mrs Nunez was standing on the brownstone stoop. She and her husband had just returned from a Sunday outing. She carried gloves and a red patent-leather bag. Her hat was a white straw with cherries on the brim. Her Indian face was small, but she had an ungainly, full-hipped figure. She wore a close-fitting striped suit, her shoulders were raised, her bosom was high, and her lips were parted as if at the end of a long breath. Mary, whom nothing escaped, had once said about Mrs Nunez' suits, "I don't see why she wears them. She could look very pretty in silk prints." Till then Leventhal had scarcely noticed her. Now, when she said good evening and he nodded to her, he remembered this and had a moment of intense longing for his wife. "Were you caught in the rain?" said Mrs Nunez. "No, I slept through the whole storm." "We were in Prospect Park to see the flowers. My brother works in the hothouse. My, it was terrible. A tree fell down. The lightning hit it." "That must have been frightening." "Terrible. We were inside. But I was scared. Oh, awful," she said with a release of breath. "Your missis coming back already?" "Not yet." She drew the gloves out and worked them with her long brown fingers whose size and strength he noted in absent-minded surprise. "Coming soon?" "I don't think so." "Oh, too bad, too bad," she said in her light, flat, rapid way. Leventhal had often paused at the Nunez' door to listen, entertained, to their quick-running Spanish, not a word of which he understood. "Too bad," she repeated, and Leventhal, with a glance of surmise at her small face under the white brim, wondered what hint her sympathy might contain. There was a burst of music above them; a window was thrown open. "I'll be a bachelor for a month or so yet," he said. "Oh, maybe you enjoy yourself anyhow; makes you a change for a while." "No," he said bluntly. He went into the foyer where Nunez' dog scampered at him, jumping up. He bent and clasped the animal, and rubbed its head. It licked his face and pushed its muzzle into his coat under his sleeve. "She's crazy about you," said Nunez from the doorway. "I think she smells you coming." He was polishing his glasses with a flowered handkerchief of his wife's. Beside the bed, in his room, there were beer cans and newspapers. "That's a friendly dog. I have a soft spot for dogs myself." "Up, Smoke," said Nunez. "Do hounds ever faint, Mr Leventhal? Sometimes I think this one is going to faint when you rub her belly." "I don't know. Do animals faint? Does anyone faint from pleasure?" "Somebody," Nunez joked. {A lady with a weak heart, maybe. Look a" that, on her back. Look a" that chest on her.". He put on his glasses and held the edge of the door. The red of the foyer and the yellow of his flat were drawn on its black panels. His sport shirt was open, and a religious medal swung over the twist of hair between the muscles of his dark, reddish breast. "Come in and have a beer," he said. "I can't, thanks, I have something to do." Leventhal remembered that he had not yet reached Elena. It occurred to him, moreover, that Nunez had been a witness to his scuffle with Allbee in the hall. He looked at him uncomfortably and moved toward the stairs. For the third time he got no answer at Villani's and he began to be anxious. The Villanis had young children, and young children had to be put to bed. It was already after eight. "Maybe I'd better go out and see Elena and Phil," he said to himself. "I don't have anything to do tonight." But his concealed thought was that Villani's absence was a bad sign. He set out again, nodding to Mrs Nunez on the stoop as though he saw her for the first time. He found Villani and the old woman sitting with Philip and Elena in the parlor. They had just returned from the hospital, and he gathered that Mickey was worse. He appeared to be losing weight. Villani betrayed his misgivings by the pitch of his optimism. He cried, "Don't worry about them, out there. They make them eat. There's no such thing in a hospital, not eating. They see to it. They can handle the kids; they got experience." Elena was coldly silent. Evidently she had accused the hospital of not feeding the child. Her look was waxen. Everything--her black hair, dark nostrils, and white lips; her lack of stir at his arrival; even the fact that she was dressed for the street and not in her gingham with the nightgown under it--made Leventhal uneasy. "Give them time," said Villani. "He ain't been there long. What do you say?" Leventhal gave out a sound of confirmation and glanced from Elena to the old woman in her dark colors. Her lean wrists, marked with raised, dull blue veins, rested in her lap. He observed that her ankles, above her unfashionable black shoes, were swollen--probably from walking the long hospital corridors. Her mouth was thin, the underlip not quite matching the expressionless upper because her chin was sunk. The tilt of her body in the Morris chair, her crossed feet, suggested rest, and yet rest was what she seemed to be resisting, drawing off her shoulders from the cushion behind her. Her eyes, whenever her lids went up, disclosed a fierceness as piercing as a rooster's. Leventhal, in spite of himself, was arrested by her face. Other people might change themselves still; it was hard, it might not work, but they could try. This woman, as she was, was finished forever. He took the first opportunity to whisper to Villani that perhaps Max ought to be sent for now, and Villani shut his eyes in agreement. It was serious, then. He would phone the doctor in the morning and get a report. Denisart had promised to tell him when to send for Max. He got away to the kitchen for a while, ostensibly for a glass of water. Actually he was afraid that if he sat opposite Elena much longer he might lose control of himself. His face might twitch, perhaps, or his voice crack. Worst of all, he might ask her why she thought he was to blame, and that would be utterly wrong and possibly dangerous. She did hold him responsible, plainly. He had urged her to send the boy to the hospital. But the doctor had done that, too. And what could he look for later, if she blamed him now? This was only the beginning, judging from the signs Villani gave; there was more to expect. They themselves, the parents, were responsible insofar as anyone was. Especially Max. Why did he postpone coming home? Because he thought he could get by? He could get by, though, only if Mickey, hanging on in the hospital, got by. Not that Max's being at home now could make a real difference to the child, but at all events he might not seem so given up to that enormous hospital, and on Max's side an acknowledgment would be made. After all, you married and had children and there was a chain of consequences. It was impossible to tell, in starting out, what was going to happen. And it was unfair, perhaps, to have to account at forty for what was done at twenty. But unless one was more than human or less than human, as Mr Schlossberg put it, the payments had to be met. Leventhal disagreed about "less than human." Since it was done by so many, what was it but human? "More than human" was for a much smaller number. But most people had fear in them--fear of life, fear of death, of life more than of death, perhaps. But it was a fact that they were afraid, and when the fear was uppermost they didn't want any more burdens. At twenty they had vigor and so were careless, and later they felt too weak to be accountable. They said, "Just let me alone, that's all I ask." But either they found the strength to meet the costs or they refused and gave way to dizziness--dizziness altogether, the dizziness of pleasures before catastrophes. Maybe you could call it "less than human" to refuse; he liked to think "human" meant accountable in spite of many weaknesses--at the last moment, tough enough to hold. But to go by what happened in the majority of cases, it was the last dizziness that was most typical and had the best claim to the name. He went back to the parlor for a while. When he announced that he was leaving, Elena looked at him but did not say good night. Philip, heavy eyed and dejected, sat outside the circle of adults, his arms wound around the back of the chair. His shirt was pulled out at the sides and his shoes untied. "Tired from trotting after them all day," Leventhal observed to himself. He was filled with tenderness toward him. "Go to sleep, Phil," he said. "I will." "Did you have a good time yesterday?" "Yes, swell." "When the kid gets out we'll take one of those boat excursions around the island. I understand they're really beautiful." Philip laid his cheek on the top rung of the chair in a way that fatigue alone could not have explained. Leventhal passed his hand over his short hair, saying, "All right, boy." But beyond that he could bring nothing out. He foundered, the thread of reassurance lost, the very breath with which to make reassurances driven out of him by his pity for the children. He hurried down the dirty tile stairs. A bus loomed up, half a block away, and he ran across the street. Though there were empty seats around him he stood up, supporting himself on the shining pole, hardly hearing the escape of air from the brakes and the pneumatic doors, and seeing only chaotically shapeless colors with his brimming eyes. Philip must have noticed him whispering to Villani. But probably he had begun to understand earlier. He knew, Leventhal was convinced. And perhaps even little Mickey in the hospital comprehended it all, after a fashion, affected as a candle flame is by varying amounts of air, as all that wants to be what it was made responds to whatever feeds or endangers it. Looping and swerving the bus reached the waterfront. The smell of the harbor and the flash of the arcades came to Leventhal. He made his way through the dim space of the shed to the bow of the boat and looked out on the water, the sharp stars, and the crimson and yellow spots hung from the cranes and hulls swinging between the slip and the incandescent low crust of the shore.