The victim (21 page)

insect from one's face. And Allbee might think, because he had not slept at home last night -what might he think, that he was afraid of him? It would give him the confidence to make new demands. He could have the introduction to Shifcart. More than that, no. And he would have to get out of the house. "Enough!" he silently decided. "Enough, enough!" He dropped his fork noisily. Under Har-kavy's questioning eyes he looked, as usual, unperturbed; moping somewhat, but steady and calm. He recovered the fork and touched his food with it. But he was unable to swallow another bite.

23

HE started home at half-past four. The wind had dropped, the sky was cold and darkening rapidly. In the little park the turned-up rusty shells of leaves scraped in the path and cracked underfoot. Very little green remained in those that streamed raggedly in the trees. A damp warmth, smelling of stone, rose from the subway, and through the gratings Leven-thal caught a glimpse of the inert light on the roadbed and of the rails, hard and gray in their simultaneous strike. The close brownstone houses looked autumnal and so did the foot-burnished, steel manhole lids; they were glinting sharply. Summer seemed to have ended prematurely in chill and darkness. The people who had gone out of town for the holiday would be building fires on the beaches, those who were not already crowding the trains into the city. Leventhal halted on the sidewalk opposite his flat. All the windows in the building were dark. The tiny red lamp in the foyer appeared to be embedded in the fanlight and sent its bloody color into the corners and as far as the polished, florid head of the banister at the rear. Mrs Nunez' vines, spreading thickly upwards, swayed in a mass on the taut strings. "He's out," said Leventhal to himself. He was exasperated, almost as if Allbee had gone away to thwart him. But actually it was to his advantage to be the first one home, for so far he had not decided how to deal with Allbee. And now, while going up the stairs, he occasionally touched the dust-hung concave of the wall and thought, "What will I do?" He was, however, far too agitated to make any plans. He climbed rapidly, rather struck by the number of landings and, until he recognized a fire bucket with cigarettes buried in the sand, wondering why the place did not look more familiar. Reaching the fourth floor, he put his back against the wall while he felt in both pockets for his key. He brought out a handful of change and keys, and began to pick it over under the weak light. Then it seemed to him that someone was moving in the flat. It could be that Allbee had been sleeping and had just gotten up. That would explain the dark windows. He rapped and put his ear to the panel. He was sure that he heard steps. He was far from calm when he turned the key in the lock. The door yielded a few inches, and then bumped and held with a rattle. He thrust his hand into the opening and felt the chain. Were there thieves in the house? He was on the point of running down to fetch Nunez or to phone the police when he heard Allbee say, "Is that you?" "What's the chain up for?" he demanded. "I'll explain to you later." "No, you won't, you'll explain it right now." But the chain remained in place. Leventhal urged himself not to lose his head and an instant later he punched at the door so that it shook and waited, staring at its ancient black trickles and tears of enamel. Then he began to pound again, enraged, shouting, "You! Open!" When he stopped he heard a low sound and, peering into the crack, he saw Allbee's face or rather a segment of his face, his nose, his full lip, and, with the lingering effect of a trance, his eye and the familiar stain beneath it. "Come on!" he said to him. "I can't," Allbee whispered. "Come back a little later, will you? Give me about fifteen minutes." "I'll give you nothing." "Ten minutes. Be decent." Leventhal threw himself at the door, whirling around and striking it with the side of his body and his lowered shoulder, his feet gritting on the tiles. He gripped the door posts and pushed. He now heard two voices inside. Again, more desperately, he lunged. The chain broke and he was thrown against the wall of the vestibule. He recovered and rushed into the front room. There Allbee, naked and ungainly, stood beside a woman who was dressing in great haste. He was helping her, handing her stockings and underwear from the heap on the chair beside the bed. She had on her skirt but from the waist up she was bare. Brushing aside his hand with the proffered stockings, she bent to squeeze her foot into a shoe, digging her finger in beside the heel. Her hair covered her face; nevertheless Leventhal thought he recognized her. Mrs Nunez! Was it Mrs Nunez? The horror of it bristled on him, and the outcry he had been about to make was choked down. She stooped toward the light--only the bed lamp was lit and it cast a limited circle over the twisted sheets and the rug--and turned her blouse right side out. Her scared eyes glimmered at him and her breasts hung down heavily as she thrust her arm through the sleeve. Meanwhile, Allbee had hurried to the door and closed it. He came back and put on his shirt, the new shirt he had bought on Second Avenue. The stiff loop of the collar stood off from his neck. Next he drew on his pants, nearly losing his balance as he shifted from foot to foot. Breathing heavily, he looked down and, while he buttoned himself, he said quietly to Leventhal, "At least, go into another room for a while, till she leaves." "You get out, too." He dropped his head, and Leventhal could not tell from his expression whether he was entreating or ordering him. He looked at him with anger and contempt, and began to walk toward the kitchen. The woman turned and he saw her plainly. She was straightening her hair, her elbows working quickly above her head. She was a stranger, not Mrs Nunez; simply a woman. He felt enormously lightened, but at the same time it gave him a pang to think of his suspicion. She was a big woman, large hipped; her shoulders were high and the straight lines of her blouse made them appear square. She was tall and her hair was black, and that was all there was to the resemblance. There was an irregularity in the shape of her eyes; one was smaller than the other. It was with the larger, more brilliant eye that she returned his stare. Her smile was unsteady and resentful. He hovered near her a moment, inhaling the strong odor of powder or perfume that emanated from her in the heat of the room. She pushed a white comb into her hair and moved away from him. He banged the kitchen door and, in the dark, beside the throbbing refrigerator, he waited and heard the low sounds of a conversation. He did not try to follow it. There were footsteps; the tread was the woman"s, she was going toward the door. It was for her sake primarily that he had withdrawn, in order to spare her. It wasn't her fault. Probably Allbee had not told her the flat was someone else's. The nerve of him, the nerve! Leventhal nearly cried aloud in revulsion. He distorted his face wildly, stretching his mouth. The nastiness of it! The refrigerator faltered and quivered but always recovered and ran, chaotically and interminably, ran and ran. Its white crown was on a level with his eyes; he could see blue sparks within. The only other thing visible in the room was the pilot light, also blue, a much deeper blue, in the black hollows and spidery bars of the gas range. The woman's look remained with him. So did her scent; it seemed to cling to the rooms. The voices continued in the vestibule. Leventhal went into the dining-room. On the day-bed's crumpled sheets, the pillow gray, almost black, there were newspapers, underclothes, and socks. Between the curtains, on the sill, he discovered a cup of coffee in which drops of mold floated, and crumbs and scraps of food. The outer door shut and he strode into the front room. "Look here," said Allbee, as soon as he came through the kitchen door. "I thought you were out of town for the week end. You didn't come home last night. I thought..." "You thought you'd bring a tramp in from the street." "No... now wait." He gave a hasty, somewhat breathless laugh. "I know I have a fallen nature. I never pretended to be anything I wasn't. Why all the excitement? You might have given me a few minutes." He spoke placatingly, with humorous chagrin. He looked sallow and his lips were dry. His smile persisted at the corners covertly, it was boastful. Leventhal flushed thickly. "In my bed!" "Well, the day bed is so narrow. No place to take a lady... I wanted a little more space..." He was by no means sure of himself and his voice wavered as he made the joke. "I fail to see what there is to fuss about." "Oh, you don't see! It gave you a bang to put your whore where I sleep." The vehemence of his loathing gave a different turn to Allbee's smile; it became jeering, and a yellowish hot tinge came over his bloodshot eyes. Leventhal heard him murmur something about "fastidiousness." "You hypocrite! I thought you couldn't get over your wife." "Don't you mention my wife!" Allbee cried. "Why not, you're always crying about her, aren't you?" "I say don't! Leave things alone that you can't understand." "What can't I understand?" "Not that, for sure!" Allbee said harshly. His face was inflamed; his cheekbones looked as if they had been branded. But he checked himself and slowly the color retreated. Only a few refractory spots remained. He seemed to force himself to make a gesture of retraction. "I mean," he said, "she's dead. What does she have to do with it? I have needs, naturally, the same as anybody else." "What did she have to do with the other things? You mealy-mouth, you were using her to work on my feelings. All right, what do I care? Go to hell. But you weren't satisfied that you made this place so filthy I can't stand to come in; you had to bring this woman into my bed." "But what's there to be so upset about? Where else, if not in bed...?" He looked amused again and blinked his bloodshot eyes. "What do you do? Maybe you have some other way, more refined, different? Don't you people claim that you're the same as everybody else? That's your way of saying that you're above everybody else. I know." "Go get your stuff in the dining-room and clear out. I don't want any more of you." "You don't care about the woman. You're just using her to make an issue and break your promise to me. Well, and I thought I had seen everything in the way of cynicism. By God, you could give lessons! I never met anyone who could touch you. I guess there's an example in the world of everything a man can imagine, no matter how great or how gruesome. You certainly are not the same as everybody else." He looked at him, keenly, brilliantly, triumphantly insolent. "What do you care about my wife! But your instinct told you where to jab, in the way that insects know where they'll find the most sap." "You dirty phoney!" Leventhal cried huskily. "You ugly bastard counterfeit. I said it because you're such a liar, with your phoney tears and your wife's name in your mouth, every second word. The poor woman, a fine life she must have had with you, a freak like you, out of a carnival. You don't care what you say. You'll say anything that comes into your head. You're not even human, if you ask me. No wonder she left you." "It's very interesting that you should take her part. She was like me. What do you think of that? We were alike," he shouted. "Well, get out! Beat it! I told you to leave when the woman did." "What about your promise?" Leventhal pushed him toward the door. Allbee fell back a few steps and, seizing a heavy glass ash tray, he aimed it menacingly and cried, "Keep off me!" Leventhal made a rush at him and knocked the ash tray down. Pinning his arms, he wheeled him around and ran him into the vestibule. "Let go, I'll leave," he panted. The door, as Leventhal jerked it open, hit Allbee in the face. He did not resist when Leventhal thrust him out on the landing and, without looking back, he started down the stairs. Winded, Leventhal stumbled into a chair, pulled at his collar. The sweat ran into his eyes and a pain, starting at his shoulders, passed downward through his chest. Suddenly he thought, "Maybe he's still hanging around. I'd better look." He forced himself up and went to the stairs. Holding the rail, he stared into the shaft. It was silent. He thought as he returned to the flat, "He didn't even have the courage to fight back. As much as he hates me. And he's bigger; he could have killed me." He wondered whether Allbee was stunned by the door when it struck him in the face. The sound of that did not leave him. He stopped to examine the chain. The staple was only loosened and might have been hammered in. But one of the links had given. He tossed the severed half away. Over the furrows of the rug in the front room there was a long, curving trail of ashes. He wiped his sweat with his sleeve and took in the room, angry, but exultant also; he felt dimly that this disorder and upheaval was part of the price he was obliged to pay for his release. The radiators were spitting and the room was unendurably hot. He flung up the window and bent out. Instantly he heard the tumultuous swoop of the Third Avenue train rising above the continuous, tidal noise of the street. People were walking among the stripes of light on the pavement, light that came from windows opening on carpeted floors and the shapes of furniture; they passed through the radiance of the glass cage that bulged before the theater and into shadows, tributaries that led into deeper shadows and led, still further on, into mighty holes filled with light and stifled roaring. "Is he around somewhere?" Leventhal asked himself. He doubted that Allbee was near. Certainly he knew he had nothing more to hope for here after tonight. And what he had hoped for in the first place remained a mystery. The idea of an introduction to Shifcart lost all its substance; it was a makeshift demand, improvised. That he was able to see this gave Leventhal the feeling that he was becoming himself again after a long lapse. The breeze was cooling him too rapidly. He drew his head in, shivering, and sat down, wiping the grit of the sill from his palms. His throat was bitter and raw, and there was a deadening weight in his side. But he sat and rested briefly and soon felt better. When he rose, he began unsystematically to set the flat in order, going slowly and desultorily from task to task. He stripped the linen from the beds and threw it in the laundry hamper. Then, without taking the trouble to clean out the scraps in the drain, he spilled soap powder over the dishes in the kitchen sink and let the hot water run until the foam boiled up and covered them. He made up his bed with clean sheets, awkwardly shaking the pillows into pillow cases and dragging the bed away from the wall in order to tuck in the blankets. In the dining-room, he turned over the mattress of the day bed and forced up the seldom-opened windows. On one of the chairs he found a glossy haberdasher's bag with a Second Avenue address. It contained Allbee's old shirt and a few other articles that he did not examine. He threw the bag into the dumb-waiter, together with the socks and undershirts and the newspapers Allbee had accumulated. Next, in the bathroom, he took down the towels, turned on the shower to rinse the tub, and made an effort to clean the basin. After a few strokes he gave this