The victim (20 page)

have to pay for regulation and for order. It's one kind of harness or another. Men need a harness. This is light harness compared to some." "Oh, my dear man, you're as reactionary as they come," said Harkavy. "Are you against all banks and business?" asked Benjamin. "Damn it, certainly I am." Harkavy's voice rose. " Let's hear what kind of a system you're thinking about?" Mr Benjamin's acerbity almost wiped out his smile. "Stop the wrangling, Dan, for God's sake," said Goldstone. "I'll make it easier for you," said Benjamin. "Don't you want to provide for the people you love? Let's not argue about the best system. This one is standing yet." "It may not be for long. You never know when everything will be swept away overnight." "But meantime..." Mrs Harkavy interrupted. "Daniel, you're just being sensational. I don't like to hear such talk from you." "Mamma, what I say is perfectly true. There have been big organizations before and people who thought they would last forever." "You mean Insull?" said the man on his left. "I mean Rome, Persia, the great Chinese empires!" Mr Benjamin shrugged his shoulders. "We have to live today," he said. "If you had a son, Harkavy, you'd want him to have a college education. Who's going to wait for the Messiah? They tell a story about a little town in the old country. It was out of the way, in a valley, so the Jews were afraid the Messiah would come and miss them, and they built a high tower and hired one of the town beggars to sit in it all day long. A friend of his meets this beggar and he says, 'How do you like your job, Baruch?' So he says, 'It doesn't pay much, but I think it's steady work.'" There was an uproar at the table. "There's a moral, for you!" cried Benjamin in a suddenly strengthened voice. Leventhal felt himself beginning to smile. "It is!" shouted Mr Kaplan, laying his hand on Benjamin's shoulder. Mrs Harkavy, flushing, raised her delighted brows and covered her mouth with her handkerchief. "Anyway, I don't think it's right," said Harkavy, "to go frightening people the way you do." "Oh? What now?" Harkavy knitted his brows. "I know how you insurance gentlemen work," he said. "You go in to see a prospect. There he is, behind his desk or his counter, still in pretty fair shape, you may say. He has his aches and his troubles, but in general everything is satisfactory. Suddenly you're there to say, 'Have you considered your family's future?' Well and good, every man dies, but you're playing it unfair and hitting where you know it hurts. He thinks about these things alone at night. Most of us do. But now you're undermining him in the daytime. When you've frightened him good he says, 'What'll I do?' And you're ready with the contract and the fountain pen." "Now, Dan," said Goldstone restrainingly. Benjamin glanced at him with his yellow and black eyes as though to say that he needed no defender. "So what," he said. "I do them a favor. Shouldn't they be prepared?" "Oh, Death!" someone quoted at the far end of the table. "Thou comest when I had thee least in mind." "Yes, that's the thing," Benjamin said lifting himself with a scuff of his heel and pointing. "That's it." "My heavens," said Mrs Harkavy. "What a morbid thing for a birthday party. With all this food on the table. Can't we find something lighter to talk about?" "The funeral baked meats did furnish forth the marriage feast." "Where the blazes is this poetry coming from?" said Goldstone. "It's Brimberg. His father died and he was able to go to college." Goldstone smiled. "Be serious, down there," he said. "Cousins of mine," he explained to Leventhal, happening to catch his glance. "My mother sewed her own shroud," said Kaplan, raising his distorted shining blue eyes to them. "That's right, it was the custom," said Benjamin. "All the old people used to do it. And a good custom, too, don't you think so, Mr Schlossberg?" "There's a lot to say for it," Schlossberg replied. "At least they knew where they stood and who they were, in those days. Now they don't know who they are but they don't want to give themselves up. The last funeral I went to, they had paper grass in the grave to cover up the dirt." "So you're on Benjamin's side?" said Harkavy. "No, not exactly," said the old man. "Sure, Benjamin's business is to scare people." "So you're on my side, then?" Mr Schlossberg looked impatient. "It's not a question of people's feelings," he said. "You don't have to remind them of anything. They don't forget. But they're too busy and too smart to die. It's easy to understand. Here I'm sitting here, and my mind can go around the world. Is there any limit to what I can think? But in another minute I can be dead, on this spot. There's a limit to me. But I have to be myself in full. Which is somebody who dies, isn't it? That's what I was from the beginning. I'm not three people, four people. I was born once and I will die once. You want to be two people? More than human? Maybe it's because you don't know how to be one. Everybody is busy. Every man turns himself into a whole corporation to handle the business. So one stockholder is riding in the elevator, and another one is on the roof looking through a telescope, one is eating candy, and one is in the movies looking at a pretty face. Who is left? And how can a corporation die? One stockholder dies. The corporation lives and goes on eating and riding in the elevator and looking at the pretty face. But it stands to reason, paper grass in the grave makes all the grass paper..." "There's always something new with Schlossberg," said Kaplan. He strangely altered his squint by raising his brows. "What's on his lung is on his tongue." "Really," Julia broke in. "Mamma is right. What kind of talk is this for a birthday?" "Never out of place," said Benjamin. "Out of place?" said Brimberg at the foot of the table. "It depends on your taste. I heard about a French lady of easy virtue who dressed in a bridal veil for her clients." "Sammy!" came Mrs Harkavy's scolding scream. And there was more laughter and a hubbub out of which grew a new conversation to which Leventhal, however, did not listen. Harkavy was not watching and he poured himself another glass of wine.

22

BEFORE he was fully awake, Leventhal, on Harkavy's couch where he had spent the night, realized that his head was aching, and, when he opened his eyes, even the gray light of the overcast day was too strong for him and he turned his face to the cushions and hitched the quilt over his shoulder. He was in his undershirt and his feet were bare but he had not taken off his trousers. His belt was tight and he loosened it, and brought his hand out, pressing and kneading the skin of his forehead. Over the arm of the couch he gazed at the period furniture, the ferns, the looped and gathered silk of the un-modish lamps, and the dragons, flowers, and eyes of the rug. He knew the rug. Old Harkavy had gotten it from the estate of a broker who committed suicide on Black Friday. Occasionally the windows were slammed by a high wind, and when this occurred the curtained French doors shook a little. Steam hissed in the pipes and there was a fall smell of heating radiators. Leventhal's nose was dry. The mohair was rough against his cheek. He did not change his position. Shutting his eyes, he tried to doze away the oppressiveness of his headache. At a stir behind the French doors he said loudly, "Come!" No one entered, however, and he pushed away the covers. The strap of his watch was loose and it had worked round to the wrong side of his wrist. The lateness of the hour made him frown--it was nearly half-past one. He sat up and leaned forward, his undershirt hanging shapeless over his fat chest. He was about to reach for his shoes and stockings, but his hands remained on his knees and he was suddenly powerless to move and fearfully hampered in his breathing. He had the strange feeling that there was not a single part of him on which the whole world did not press with full weight, on his body, on his soul, pushing upward in his breast and downward in his bowels. He concentrated, moving his lips like someone about to speak, and blew a tormented breath through his nose. What he meanwhile sensed was that this interruption of the customary motions he went through unthinkingly on rising, despite the pain it was causing, was a disguised opportunity to discover something of great importance. He tried to seize the opportunity. He put out all his strength to collect himself, beginning with the primary certainty that the world pressed on him and passed through him. Beyond this he could not go, hard though he drove himself. He was bewilderingly moved. He sat in the same posture, massively, his murky face trained on the ferns standing softly against the gray glass. His nostrils twitched. It came into his head that he was like a man in a mine who could smell smoke and feel heat but never see the flames. And then the cramp and the enigmatic opportunity ended together. His legs quivered as he worked his feet back and forth on the carpet. He walked over to the window and he heard the loud crack of the wind. It was pumping the trees in the small wedge of park six stories below, tearing at the wires on rooftops, fanning the smoke out under the clouds, scattering it like soot on paraffin. He dressed, feeling a little easier. His shirt cuffs were soiled; he turned them underside up and transferred the links. He stuffed his tie into his pocket; he would put it on after washing. Stripping the couch, he folded up the sheets and the silk quilt and laid them on a chair. When he opened the French doors, he expected to meet Mrs Harkavy or one of the family in the hall and he wondered why the house was so silent. Harkavy's dark room was open, the bed empty. Leventhal switched on the light and saw trousers hung neatly from the top drawer of the dresser and the suspenders coiled on the floor. An open magazine covered the lamp. Harkavy was sitting alone in the kitchen. At his elbow the toaster was ticking, and a pot of coffee was warming on the electric heater. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over his pajamas, a belted jacket with large leather buttons. His bare feet were crossed on a chair. His green slippers had fallen to the floor. "Good morning," Harkavy's look was amused. "The reveler." "Good morning. Where's the family?" "Gone to Shifcart senior's for the birthday dinner." "Why didn't you go?" "To Long Island City when I have a chance to sleep late? They left at nine." "I hope you didn't stay here because of me." "You? No, I wanted to sleep. Holidays are poison if I have to get up early." He stroked the golden-green jacket. "I like a late, peaceful breakfast. Bachelor habits. As long as I'm not married, I've got to stand pat on my advantages." The kitchen light, reflecting from the tiles and the white refrigerator, was too sharp for Leventhal. He winced away from it slightly. "How do you feel--not very well?" "Headache." "You're not used to drinking." "No," said Leventhal. The banter annoyed him. "You were bright-eyed, last night." He looked rather sullenly at him. "What if I was?" "Nothing. I'm not blaming you, you understand, for getting a little tight. You probably have good reasons." "Where's your aspirin?" "In the bathroom. I'll bring you some." Harkavy started to rise. "Stay put; I'll find it." "Have a cup of coffee. It'll do you more good." He removed his feet from the chair. They were very long and white, with toes as slender as fingers. Leventhal poured himself a cup of black coffee. It was bitter and coated his tongue with a sediment, but he felt it would do him good. Harkavy sighed. "I'm a little under the weather myself. Not from drinking; the excitement, the arguing, and such. Mamma, though, she was up at seven and got everything in order. What vitality she's got! Her mother--there was another dry old fire for you. She lived to be ninety-four. Do you remember her? Down on Joralemon Street?" "No." Leventhal, trying to recapture the feeling that had interrupted his dressing, found he retained almost nothing of it. "I'm a different type," Harkavy said. "The sword that wears out the sheath. But some of these old people.... Take Schloss-berg, for example, still supporting his family, his good-for-nothing son and his daughters. The old man is a blowhard, sometimes, but you have to hand it to him. With him it's a case of 'touch me and you touch a man,' and these days you can't always be sure what you're touching. I set myself up against him, now and then, because I like a good argument. I don't trust people who won't argue." Gradually Harkavy's manner underwent a change. He was slouching in his chair, his heels were set wide apart on the linoleum and his arms were hanging over the back of the chair; his hands with their whitish hairs were full veined. Beneath the clear water lines, his lids suddenly appeared flushed and irritated, and when he began again to speak it was with a nervous dodge of the head, as if he were already putting aside an objection. "Why don't you come clean now on this business we were talking about last night?" he said. "What's there to come clean about?" "It baffles me. I've been giving it some thought. After what you said about him, that you should be trying to arrange this..." Leventhal did not stir his face from the cup. "We went over that yesterday. I told you about Dill's." "He must have you by the tail." Leventhal reflected, "This is just curiosity on his part. Why should I satisfy it? That Sunday when he could have helped me out he went away with Goldstone and his friends, and now, because he's itching to know, I should talk." He resolved to give him no satisfaction. Nevertheless, the saucer shook in his hand and he held it against his chest, bending his head until folds of skin appeared under his chin and along his jaw. He meditated on his weakness. How weak he was becoming. Even Harkavy could make him tremble. "How come you changed your mind about him? You said he was loony." "No, you did." "On your information. What you told me was all I had to go by. It looks as if he really did a job on you, sold you a bill of goods." Leventhal doggedly refrained from answering. He kept his head down with a look of worn endurance. Harkavy persisted. "Didn't he?" Leventhal drew his lips against his teeth as he wiped his mouth. "I must have wanted to buy," he said. "It's beyond me. When you came to talk to me about him, you were mad enough to hang him. He was accusing you of some crime and blaming you for what happened to his wife and what not. Now you want to send him to Shifcart with a reference. And unless I'm mistaken you were fishing for me to help you. I couldn't believe my ears when you asked me about Shifcart. What kind of impression will a man like that make on him? And why do you let him hang around? Didn't you tell me he picked up Shifcart's card at your house? Besides, you know Shifcart can't do anything for him." "I suppose not." "And where does he get the idea that Shifcart can help him?" Though he knew he was making a mistake, Leventhal said, and to some extent it was involuntary, "I think he believes it's all a Jewish setup and Shifcart can pull strings for him... Jews have influence with other Jews." "No!" Harkavy cried. "No!" His hands flew to his head. "And you're trying to do something for him? You're willing, regardless? Boy, do you know what this does to my opinion of you? Are you in your right mind?" His horror shook Leventhal. "Look, Dan, I don't want to go into this any further. Don't push me. I asked you about Shifcart. You told me what you think... Let that be the end of it." "But how does he do it?" Harkavy's voice rang. "What's he got on you? Is it blackmail? Have you done something?" "No, nothing... I've been having a lot of trouble. My family--you heard about that. And Mary's away, that's been hard on me, too. My nerves aren't in very good shape. I feel I've been trying to throw something off. You aren't being very helpful. Just let me alone to handle this in my own way." This was a great deal for him to say; it was exorbitant, like a plea. His hands were less steady than ever. He set down the coffee, splashing some of it into the saucer. "What's between you? How does he work you? First you come to complain about him. Next thing I know he sounds like the Protocols, but it's all right with you." He furiously pounded the metal table, his face and his elongated throat flaming. "Influence with Jews!" he shouted. Leventhal silently reproached himself. "That was a real mistake. I shouldn't have said that. Why did I let it slip out? I'm not even sure Allbee means that." To Harkavy, he said, "Don't fly off the handle. I realize it seems bad, but you don't know the facts. I can judge this better than you." He kept his voice low in order to control it. "The facts? What are you letting this man do to you? Are you going off your rocker?" "Don't be foolish, Dan," he cried. "I know you mean well, but you're being carried away. And please remember my mother before you say a thing like that. You know about my mother. I told you about her as friend to friend. The meaning of it hasn't sunk in." This silenced Harkavy briefly. He seemed to scowl. In reality he was clearing his throat. After considering him for a while he said, "Well, you are a privileged character. You're the only man living whose mother lost her mind and died." Immediately he changed his tone, clapping his hands sharply. "As friend to friend, what are the facts? This thing about Shifcart is such nonsense it isn't even worth talking about. But you, you must be in a trance. Tell me, what's going on. Just look at you!" "What's the matter?" "You look like the devil." "Do I? Well, I told you. There was the kid's death, first of all." "You were more honest when you were drunk, last night. You admitted that you wanted to get the man off your neck. Don't hide behind the child. That's not good. It's dishonest. Wake up! What's life? Metabolism? That's what it is for the bugs. Jesus Christ, no! What's life? Consciousness, that's what it is. That's what you're short on. For God's sake, give yourself a push and a shake. It's dangerous stuff, Asa, this stuff." Leventhal looked at Harkavy in blank perplexity. "Well, I'm damned if I can see it," he finally said. "In the first place, when I came to you, you were the one who told me about Williston..." "And?" But Leventhal would not continue. "And? What next?" said Harkavy, sitting forward. There was a short pause and then Leventhal said, "Say, I've got to have that aspirin." He rose. "All right, you don't want my help. I can't make you take it. God bless you. You had a chance to unburden yourself and get some advice. How many friends have you got?" He put a slice of bread in the toaster and rammed down the lever. Among the bottles of lotion and cologne and the powder boxes in Mrs Harkavy's medicine chest, Leventhal found the aspirin and swallowed a tablet with a sip from the tap. He filled the sink with warm water and pushed back his sleeves; the light green color gave him a kind of pleasure. He dipped in his hands and then glanced at the tub with its thick nickled spout. The linen closet stood open, giving out a dry perfume of soap. Leventhal took a towel and let the metal stopper fall. "I'm going to take a bath, if you don't mind," he called to Harkavy. "Go ahead." The faucet ran loudly and Leventhal shut the door and began to undress. The room grew hot. He sat on the edge of the tub in the roar of the steaming water and lathered his hairy dark body, energetic and all absorbed. The tumult of the faucet relieved him, for some reason. As he lay back in the charge and sway of the water, he observed to himself, as if in compliment, "He didn't get anything out of me." He stroked his chest, releasing tiny bubbles from the hairs. "I'll be better off taking care of things by myself," he thought. He turned off the cold tap and the hot water ran on, green with a white inner shape and a thread of vapor. He wondered what success Max was having with Elena. He was concerned for him, of course, but he worried mainly about Philip whom, if it turned out that Max was wrong about Elena, he would go to any lengths to save. He postponed thinking about himself. Eventually he would have to -provided that Max was right about Elena and he wrong. The reason for a mistake like that could not be neglected; it had to be dug out. But dug out when he had the strength for the operation, not now. A ring of soap, melting from the bar in his hand, spread over the water. While he dried himself, his heart beat rapidly. However, his headache was almost gone, and he felt freshened and almost cheerful. He went into the kitchen. Harkavy had set out plates and was scrambling some eggs. It was not until the meal was nearly over that he suffered a recoil, a raw, painful current through his overtried nerves. He could not continue this way with Allbee. It was enough. It had to be ended. Any day he expected to hear that Mary was coming back. What if she should come back before it was ended? He freed himself from this fear much as one might brush away a clinging