The victim (4 page)

4

HE fell asleep without difficulty and slept deeply. The alarm clock on the night table awoke him, and he seized it and clapped down the catch. Then he crouched down at the window--he was naked--and looked over the sill. Already, at half-past seven, the street looked deadened with heat and light. The clouds were heavily suspended and slow. To the south and east, the air was brassy, the factories were beginning to smolder and faced massively, India red, brown, into the sun and across the hot green netting of the bridges. There was a hard encircling rumble of trucks and subterranean trains. Nunez was out in front, cleaning the sidewalk with a bucket of water and the stub of a broom. His wife was busy at the window boxes. New white strings stretched up to the lintel; she was leaning out, training vines on them. Leventhal washed and shaved. Allbee's note was lying on the kitchen table. He reread it and threw it into the pail beside the sink. He was about to slam down the lid but checked himself -he was behaving as he would have yesterday when he was at the end of his patience--and, almost smiling at himself, he set it in place lightly and pushed the pail toward the wall with his foot. Well, he could have been forgiven yesterday for losing his patience or even his head. What a day! With all that he had weighing on him already, this Allbee shows up to add his little bit. He must have brooded over the affair for years, until he convinced himself that Rudiger had fired him because of that interview. Of course, it was true enough that Rudiger had a rotten bad temper, probably was born bad-tempered, but not even he would fire an employee, not for what the man himself had done but because of someone he had recommended. "How could he?" Leventhal asked himself. "Not a good worker; never." It was absurd. Allbee must have been fired for drunkenness. When could you get a drinking man to acknowledge that he had gotten into trouble through drinking? Especially when he was far gone? And this Allbee was far gone. He put on the wrinkled brown summer flannels he had thrown over the foot of the bed last night, and a pair of white shoes. He remembered to shut the windows and draw the drapes. The room was darkened. He took a handkerchief from the dresser and came across a statement on tax deductions for the year, a gloomy reminder of Mr Beard and the office. Instead of keeping such things in the desk where they belonged, Mary had the habit of putting them under the linens. Irritated, he buried the paper deeper and roughly shoved the drawer shut. He went out with a frown. Beard would probably send for him and call him down, ostensibly for some mistake which he would dig up. Or he would delegate someone--he had done that before; perhaps that pinch-nosed, knob-faced little Mil-likan, his son-in-law. "If he sicks him on me..." he thought. But he did not know what threat to make. And now it seemed to him that he had rested badly. His legs were tired, his head ached, and his eyes--he examined them in the long mirror in the pillar before the coffeeshop--were bloodshot; he looked drawn. He shook his head in concern. The corners of the glass were flaming with the blue and red of the spectrum. For a while he was so preoccupied with what awaited him at the office that he forgot about Allbee. He did not think of him again until he was on the subway. He was even less amused than before. From a sober person--that is, from a normal person, someone you would have to reckon with--such an accusation would be no trifle. With Allbee it came out like a stunt: the note, the bell ringing, the acting. And not quite a stunt, for a stunt was done deliberately, whereas it was questionable whether this queer, beaten, probably suffering Allbee was in control of his actions. Suffering? Of course, suffering, Leventhal told himself gravely: down and out, living in a moldy hotel somewhere, hanging out in bars, sleeping whole days, picked up off the streets by the paddywagon or the ambulance, haunted in his mind by wrongs or faults of his own which he turned into wrongs against himself; and that stirring around of the thoughts and feelings, that churning--everybody experienced it, but for a man like that it must be ugly, terrible, those thoughts wheeling around. It was something like this that Leventhal was thinking of when he occasionally said that he had gotten away with it. But (without taking credit for it; he might have fallen in another way) his character was different. Some men behaved as though they had a horse under them and went through life at a gallop. Or thought they could, at any rate. He was not that way. He had met Allbee several times at Williston's house. In those unsettled days when he was jobhunting, the Willistons used to give parties frequently. Perhaps they still did; he had not seen them in several years. Because they were room-mates, he and Harkavy were usually invited together. Allbee had shown an antipathy toward Harkavy, and Leventhal recalled that he, as a matter of fact, had been offended by several of Allbee's remarks and by his attitude generally. Mrs Allbee was a quiet blonde. He wondered what had become of her; had she left him, divorced him? He found that he retained a distinct image of her, of the firmness of her face and the form of her eyes, gray eyes. He had thought her much too good for the husband lounging beside her with a glass, staring at the other guests and smiling. He might have been asked by Williston to classify them, he eyed them so, spread out there on the sofa, large-limbed, his face swelling with smiles. From time to time he made a comment to his wife, fixing his look on someone so that it was uncomfortably evident whom he was talking about. He frequently picked out Harkavy, which Leventhal resented, Harkavy himself seemingly unaware that he was being stared at. It had to be admitted that Harkavy attracted stares. He liked to talk and at these parties he was easily kindled, for some reason. Any trifle made him enthusiastic, and when he spoke his hands flew and his brows slanted up, sharpening the line of his nose. His eyes were light, round, and depthless, his fair hair was fading back, the curls thinning. Allbee studied him, grinning and curious; Harkavy appeared to delight him. He must have had some witty things to say about him for he sometimes made his wife smile, and as a rule she did not respond to his remarks. Harkavy may have noticed this. Leven-thal had never asked him about it, but perhaps it did light on his consciousness, for all his traits, the Jewish especially, became accentuated. He carried on, giving imitations of auctioneers, in reality burlesquing his father. Leventhal watched, unsmiling and even forbidding. The laughter and the somewhat ambiguous applause, sometimes led by Allbee, seemed to excite Harkavy, and he would start again, working up the bid. The Willistons laughed with the guests, though more moderately and with a trace of anxiety about Allbee. Leventhal himself, at times, could not help joining in. But he was annoyed. The incident Allbee had referred to occurred one night when Harkavy and a girl he had brought to the party were singing spirituals and old ballads. It was late, and everyone else was silent, rather tired. That evening Harkavy had been a little more restrained than usual. He sang poorly, but at least he did not provoke laughter and was not trying to. Nor did the girl sing well; she hesitated over words. It was pleasant, however. Halfway through a ballad Allbee interrupted; regardless of his denial, he was drunk. "Why do you sing such songs?" he said. "You can't sing them." "Why not, I'd like to know?" said the girl. "Oh, you, too," said Allbee with his one-cornered smile. "It isn't right for you to sing them. You have to be born to them. If you're not born to them, it's no use trying to sing them." His wife spoke up. "Don't pay any attention to him," she said. "You sing it very nicely." "Aaah, yes he does," he said contemptuously. "Why, thank you, Mrs Allbee," said Harkavy. "It's a lovely song." "Go on, Dan, go on with it," Phoebe Williston urged him. And Leventhal said, "Sing the rest of it. "I'm going to," Harkavy replied, and began over. "No, no, no!" Allbee broke in again. "You shouldn't sing those old songs. You have to be bred to them." His wife colored and said, "Kirby, don't be like that." "Oh, I don't mind, ma"am." Harkavy drew in his chin and crossed his arms, his round eyes glimmering. "Sing, Dan," said Leventhal. "Sing a psalm. I don't object to your singing. Sing one of the psalms. I'd love to hear it. Go ahead. I would," said Allbee. "I don't know any psalms." "Then any Jewish song. Something you've really got feeling for. Sing us the one about the mother." And with a drunken look of expectancy he bent forward, leaning on his knees, and pretended to prepare to listen. It was apparent to everyone that he was deeply pleased; he smiled at Harkavy and the girl, and he had a glance for Leventhal, too. His wife seemed quietly to dissociate herself from him. The Willistons were embarrassed. Allbee was not merely an acquaintance but a friend, and Williston later tried to make excuses for him and explain away the insult. That was what had happened. Leventhal had naturally been angry, but not for long. He had shrugged it off. Did Allbee think something like that would make him go to such lengths for revenge? He was an idiot if he did. He overestimated the magnitude of the insult and his power to be insulting. Or did he think that on that night he had revealed something that was not plain before? Then he was twice as idiotic. "And if I were mad, is that what I would do?" thought Leventhal. "He gives himself an awful lot of credit for nothing. Who does he think he is?" That he had afterwards asked Allbee for an introduction to Rudiger should have shown how much importance he attached to the incident. At that time, Williston's man had returned from Arizona and Leventhal was looking for another place. Williston gave him a very good reference letter which made it easier to get interviews. However, several months went by before Leventhal was hired by Burke-Beard and Company, and during those months he was despondent and became quarrelsome once again, difficult, touchy, exaggerating, illogical, overly familiar. Reports of this reached Willis-ton, who called him in and lectured him. Leventhal was bitter and suspicious of him and he offered to return the letter -foolishly, he now realized. But he thought that Williston regretted writing it. It was his own idea to approach Allbee about a job at Dill's. Williston endorsed it and may have been instrumental in getting Allbee to introduce him to Rudiger. Or perhaps Allbee agreed in order to make up for his unpleasantness. Williston tried continually to explain it away. You had to know Allbee when he was sober, he said; he was intelligent and decent. His New England upbringing was behind his drinking; there were ministers in his family, influences to throw off, and once he threw them off he would be another man. Leventhal indifferently acknowledged that that might be so; he had no particular grudge against him. "I'll be much obliged to him if he gets me the introduction. What a break if I could land a job with an outfit like that." The interview at Dill's still troubled him. Rudiger kept him waiting for nearly an hour in the reception room and for a few minutes more in his office. He was watching several tugs shouldering a huge liner up the river and his back was turned. But as soon as he faced about, Leventhal knew at once that he had nothing to hope for; he saw even before Rudiger uttered his first word that he did not want him. He was a short man, broad featured and red; his hair was intensely red. He had a mustache of short golden hairs overspread by a powerful nose with the cartilages widely separated at the tip. He spoke energetically, peremptorily, quickly, in a husky tone. At the outset Leventhal thought, "I've hit him at a bad time." Later he could not decide whether he had come upon him in an unusual mood of great stress and aroused cruelty or whether Rudiger had only treated him as he generally did people whom he didn't want to hire and who were wasting his time. In telling Harkavy about it that same afternoon, Leventhal said, "He was burning like a boiler. I never saw anything like it." "Well?" Rudiger said, putting his hands on the desk. He might have been arresting momentarily a swing back to the window. Leventhal began to speak, and he cut him off with, "No vacancies, no vacancies here. We're filled. Go somewhere else." Leventhal said stumblingly, "I thought there might be an opening here. I didn't know... Didn't Mr Allbee say what I wanted?" Rudiger looked at him awhile. They were on the sixtieth floor of the Dill Building. The sun was far behind the dull, black, tarnished spikes and pinnacles of the skyscrapers below. "What's your experience?" he said. Leventhal told him. "No, never mind that stuff. What newspapers have you been on?" "No papers," Leventhal said rather nervously. Rudiger burst out, inflamed, "Then what in the name of hell are you taking up my time for? What are you doing here? Get out. By Jesus, you come pestering around here when I'm busy without a goddam thing to offer." "I'm sorry to bother you." Leventhal spoke stiffly, not to reveal his alarm. "This is a news magazine. If you have no news experience, you've got no business here. Do you think we run a vocational school?" "I thought I could do the work. I've read your magazine, and I thought I could." He labored at the words, stalling, and bent his head. "Oh, did you? Did you?" "Yes..." He was beginning to recover his presence of mind. "I didn't know my experience wasn't the right kind for you. I have a letter from Mr Williston. He says he knows you." Leventhal reached into his pocket. But Rudiger exclaimed, "I don't want to see it." "Well, Mr Williston said he didn't see why I shouldn't be able to handle a job here..." "Nobody asked him. I don't care what he said." "I think he knows what he's talking about. I respect his opinion." "I know my own business. Never mind about Williston. I ought to know what I need here. You're not it." "You probably know your business," Leventhal said stolidly, evenly, hunching his head forward. "I'm not saying you don't. But there's nothing so special about your magazine. I've read it, as I said." He put a cigarette in his mouth and, without asking Rudiger's permission, reached for a packet of matches on his desk, tore out one, struck it, and threw it into a tray. Angry and tense, he managed to present a surface of dry, uncaring calm. "Anybody who can write English can write for it. If you gave a man a try and then thought he couldn't make the grade, I'd say you knew your business a lot better. That's a prejudice, Mr Rudiger, about newspaper experience." Rudiger shouted, "Oh, is it?" Leventhal saw that he was not
invulnerable, and by now a spell had been created, an atmosphere of infliction and injury from which neither could withdraw. "Sure it is," said Leventhal rather easily. "It's a guild. Any outsider hasn't got a chance. But as a matter of fact you ought to think of your paper first and hire people because they can do the work. It wouldn't hurt." "You think you could improve the paper?" Leventhal replied that not his only but any fresh point of view wouldn't hurt. His confidence was enormous, so radically unusual that, despite his calm, it was like a seizure or possession, and he said things which his memory, limited by what was habitual, could not retain. So he did not know now exactly what followed. He recalled something like, "Well, you buy an article in the grocery and you know what you're getting when you buy a standard brand. You open up the can and the product is inside. You're not disappointed and you're not overjoyed. It's standard." He shrank from the recollection as from a moment of insanity and he flushed roughly; he surmised that lie might be making it worse than it had been, but even one tenth of the reality was calamitous. Then, glaring at him crazily, Rudiger said, "What did you want to be here for if it's so bad!" And he answered, "I need a job, it so happens." The air between them must have shaken, it was so charged with insult and rage. Under no circumstances could he imagine doing now what he had done then. But he had determined not to let his nose be pulled. That was what he told himself. "He thinks everybody who comes to him will let his nose be pulled." Too many people looking for work were ready to allow anything. The habit of agreement was strong, terribly strong. Say anything you like to them, call them fools and they smiled, turn their beliefs inside out and they smiled, despise them and they might grow red, but they went on smiling because they could not let themselves disagree. And that was what Rudiger was used to. "Get out!" Rudiger cried. His face was aflame. He rose with a thrust of his stocky arm while Leventhal, evincing neither anger nor satisfaction, though he felt both, rose, smoothed the groove of his green velours hat, and said, "I guess you can't take it when people stand up to you, Mr Rudiger." "Out, out, out!" Rudiger repeated, pushing over his desk with both arms. "Out, you case, you nut, you belong in the asylum! Out! You ought to be committed!" And Leventhal, sauntering toward the door, turned and retorted, made a remark about two-bit big shots and empty wagons. He didn't believe he had said more than that--notwithstanding Allbee's charge that he swore. He had said something about empty wagons being noisy. His present mortification would not be greater if he had sworn. He did remember, and very clearly, too, that he was elated. He congratulated himself. Rudiger had not pulled his nose. He went at once to see Harkavy and, over a cup of coffee in a corner cafeteria, told him the whole story. It delighted him. "You said that to Rudiger? Oh, golly, that must have been something. Really something, Asa my boy. He's a bull, that man. I've heard stories about him. A regular bull!" "Yes. Well, you've got to remember one thing, Dan." Leventhal's spirits dropped suddenly. "Someone like that can make trouble for me. He can have me black-listed. You've got to realize... Eh, can he?" "Never, Asa," Harkavy said. "You don't think so?" "Never. Who do you think he is?" Harkavy looked at him severely with his round, clear eyes. "He's a big shot." "There isn't a thing he can do to you. Whatever you do, don't get ideas like that into your head. He can't persecute you. Now be careful. You have that tendency, boy, do you know that? He got what was coming to him and he can't do anything. Maybe that Allabee, what-do-you-call-him, put him up to it, wanted to play you a dirty trick. You know how it goes: 'There's a fellow bothering me. Do me a favor and give him the works when he comes around.' So he does it. Well, he fouled his own nest. You follow me, boy? He fouled his own nest. So by now he realizes it was his own fault and he had it coming. How do you know it wasn't rimmed?" "You really think they did? I don't know. And I didn't bother that Allbee. I only asked him once." "Maybe he didn't put him up to it. But he might have. It's a possibility. Something like that happened to another friend of mine--Fabin. You know him. They gave him the works, and it was a put-up job. Only he didn't talk back the way you did. He just let them fling it at him. No, you did right and you haven't got a thing to worry about." Nevertheless, Leventhal was not reassured. And on afterthought he had misgivings about Harkavy's reference to persecution. Harkavy used such words whether they fitted or not. Rudiger's anger was not imaginary, and he was a man to fear. There were black lists; that was well known. Of course, he had not actually worked for Rudiger and Rudiger could not black-list him as a former employee. In the nature of it, it must be a secret process, passing through many connections, private and professional. After all, Rudiger was influential, powerful. And who knew how these things were done, through what channels? It was downright silly of Harkavy to speak of imaginary persecution. Leventhal suspected, in the days that followed, that the black list was real enough, for firm after firm turned him down. It was only when he found his present job that his suspicions faded and he ceased to fear Rudiger. Beard did not send for him; Leventhal's apprehensions were unfounded. The old man, when they met in the lavatory in the afternoon, was not affable, but he was not so disagreeable as Leventhal had anticipated. He even asked about the family troubles. It was Leventhal himself that was distant. "Was it as urgent as you thought?" said Beard. "Oh, absolutely," Leventhal replied. "And my brother is away. I have to look out for his family." "Yes, I see. Naturally. Your brother is a family man, is he?" "He has two children. He's married to an Italian woman." Mr Beard said with a look of mild inquiry, "Oh, a mixed marriage." Leventhal nodded slightly. Mr Beard shook his dripping hands and dried them on the towel he carried over his shoulder. He did not use the paper towels in the tin box. In words hardly above a whisper, he made some comment about the heat, wiped his wan forehead, and went out, tightening his belt, pulling down his white vest, a round-shouldered figure with bald head and large elbows. The old man's mildness made him feel easier. They had met the deadline without him. It hadn't been so catastrophic; Fay and Millikan stayed an hour overtime. He would have done the same in a similar emergency. Had done it. And what if he himself had been sick? A man wasn't made of metal parts. Damn him, old Beard might have let him off a little more pleasantly. It gratified Leventhal, however, to have made that remark about Elena. Mixed marriage! It had come out instantaneously. He wondered how to hint to the old man that he had heard him yesterday, or that he was under no illusions, at any rate. He wanted him to know. On the way to his desk he met Millikan, nervous, narrow-faced, sallow, with his scrap of mustache. He carried a towel, too, and approached, signaling with it. How he aped his father-in-law! "Telephone, Leventhal. Miss Ashmun's been looking for you. Some party on your line." "Who?" Leventhal was filled with anxiety, suddenly. He went rapidly to his desk. "Asa?" It was Elena. "Yes, what's the matter? Anything wrong?" "The baby is worse. Mickey..." he heard her say. Her voice shot up and she became incoherent. "Slower, slower Elena, please. I can't follow you. What's happening over there?" He guessed, his heart sinking, that she, too, was growing worse. "Now tell me slowly what's the matter." "I want to get a specialist." "Why don't you send the boy to the hospital?" "I want a specialist to come to the house." "What does your doctor say?" "He didn't come today. Let him stay away. What good does he do him anyway? He doesn't do any good. He doesn't come even when he knows Mickey is so sick. Asa, do you hear me? I want a big man." "All right. But if you took my advice about the hospital..." Again she cried out incoherently, piercingly. He made out phrases of exclamation and question but scarcely any words except the persistent "No! No, no, no!" He attempted to interrupt. It was the operator, depositing the coin with a mechanical whirr, who put a stop to it. Elena, in fear, shrieked, "Asa!" "Here. We haven't been cut off yet. I'm still on the wire. Listen, I'll get another doctor and be out myself after work." "A specialist... I don't want anybody else." Twice the operator demanded another coin. "Shut up!" Leventhal at last said, exasperated. "Can't you wait another second." But he was already talking on a dead line. He banged the instrument and jolted it aside with his elbow. Miss Ashmun seemed astonished. He gazed at her gloomily and presently picked up the phone again. He called the Harkavys. Harkavy's sister Julia had a child and should be able to recommend a good doctor. Harkavy's mother answered the phone. She was extremely fond of Leventhal and spoke to him cordially, asking about his wife. "But I guess it's Dan"l you want to talk to. 'Dan"l!'" she called. "He's home today." Leventhal at once explained it was Julia he wanted. Afterward he regretted that he had not taken the opportunity to ask Harkavy about Kirby Allbee. But what a time it was to have thought of him!