The victim (7 page)

It's a serious look. You see it in Asiatic sculpture." "Oh--Asiatic!" said Leventhal scoffing. "Certainly, Asiatic. Look at the eyes, and those cheekbones. You're married to a woman and don't know she has slant eyes?" He made a descriptive turn of his thumb. "She's positively Asiatic." "She comes from Baltimore." "First generation?" "Her mother is native-born, too. Further back than that I don't know." "I'm willing to bet they came from Eastern Europe, originally," said Allbee. "Why, that's not so stupendous. You wouldn't get any takers." "I know I wouldn't get any takers in your case." "No? Maybe since you investigated me and found out so much about me, you took the trouble to find out what part of Europe my parents came from." "It's apparent enough; it doesn't need any investigating. Russia, Poland... I can see at a glance." "You can, ah?" "Well, of course. I've lived in New York for a long time. It's a very Jewish city, and a person would have to be a pretty sloppy observer not to learn a lot about Jews here. You know yourself how many Jewish dishes there are in the cafeterias, how much of the stage--how many Jewish comedians and jokes, and stores, and so on, and Jews in public life, and so on. You know that. It's no revelation." Leventhal refrained from answering. It was, after all, no revelation. Allbee once more turned his attention to Mary's picture. As he studied it and nodded, his eyes, to Leventhal's amazement, filled with tears, and he took on an expression of suppressed grief and injury. "Your wife...?" Leventhal ventured in a low voice. "She's dead," replied Allbee. Leventhal's tone fell even lower as he said, with a resonance of horror, "Dead? Oh, too bad. I'm sorry..." "So you should be. So you should." The words seemed to have been brought up from Allbee's chest as if they had been stored there and were now dislodged and uttered irregularly before he could hold them back. Leventhal concentrated on them, averting his face--a characteristic of his when he was puzzling something out. He did not understand what Allbee meant. "Of course I should be," he murmured, not quite aware that he was acknowledging a charge. The things that had happened to him in the last two days had made him acutely responsive, quick to feel. "What a shame!" he said in deep emotion, recalling the woman's face. "She was much too good for him, much too good," he thought. "But why should I say that? He was her husband, so that doesn't enter in now. He has to be considered. She's dead, but he's alive and feels. That's what brought him down. He wouldn't be like this otherwise." "So you're alone, now," he said. "Yes, I'm a widower, have been for over four years. Four years and about three weeks." "And how did it happen?" "I don't know exactly. I wasn't with her. Her family wrote the news. She was hurt in an automobile accident. They thought she would recover, but she died suddenly. That's all I know. She was buried before I had a chance to get to Louisville." "They didn't wait till you came?" "Well, to tell you the truth I didn't want to be there. It would have been a terrible business. The family would have relieved itself by being angry with me. I would have tried to relieve myself by sneaking out to a bar, probably sat in the bar and missed the whole thing. That would have made it ten times worse for everybody. I was in that condition. And it was hot then. Louisville in hot weather. For that! Oh no, brother, I holed up where I was. It would have been brutal. She was dead. I wouldn't have been going to see her but them, her people. Dead is dead. Finished. No more. You long for your wife when she goes, if you love her. And maybe sometimes if you don't love her so much. I wouldn't know. But you're together, she bends to you and you bend to her in everything, and when she dies there you stand, bent, and look senseless, fit nothing. That's my personal feeling. Of course, I'm the first kind. I loved her. Well, I say, you long for her... but everything inanimate is the same to me. I'm not sentimental." He was acting, lying, Leventhal decided. His moment of genuineness had passed and once more he had taken up his poise, mystifyingly off center and precarious. When he had announced his wife's death, he had sounded wrathful, but Leventhal had felt himself come nearer to him or to something clear, familiar, and truthful in him. Now he was repelled again. He wondered whether Allbee was not actually a little drunk. "But," said Allbee, "that's not all there is to it." "No? There's more, eh?" "Somewhat. We were separated before she died. That's why my relations with her family weren't good. Naturally, from their standpoint..." He paused to rub his eyelid and when he stopped it was red and appeared to have gone lower than the other. "They were prejudiced against me, wanted to shove the whole blame on me. I could blame them, if I wanted to. Her brother was driving the car; got off with scratches and a few bangs. The way those Southerners drive. Pickett's charge over and over again. Well... we were separated. Do you know why?" "Why?" "Because after Rudiger fired me, I couldn't get a job." "What do you mean? You couldn't find any jobs? No jobs at all?" "Not in my line. What could I have earned at any job? Not enough to keep going. After a man spends years in one line he doesn't want to change. He isn't in a position to do much. In something else he has to start at the bottom. What was I going to do, become a peddler? Salesman? Besides, I'd have to stop looking for what I wanted by taking any job." "I would have taken anything before I let my wife go." "We're made of different stuff, you and I." Allbee grinned. "And I didn't let her go. She left me. I didn't want her to go. She was the one." "You're not telling me all there is to tell." "No, no," he said, almost delightedly. "I'm not. And what's the rest? You tell me." "Didn't your boozing have something to do with it?" "Oh, there you go, there you go," said Allbee, smiling at the floor and swaying his large frame slightly. "My vice, my terrible vice. She left me because of my drinking. That's the ticket." "A woman doesn't leave her husband for anything--just for a trifle." "That's perfectly true, she doesn't. You're a true Jew, Leventhal. You have the true horror of drink. We're the sons of Belial to you, we smell of whisky worse than of sulphur. When Noah lies drunk--you remember that story?--his gentile-minded sons have a laugh at the old man, but his Jewish son is horrified. There's truth in that story. It's a true story." "Watch your talk," said Leventhal stiffly. "You sound like a fool. I don't know what you're after, but you're not doing yourself any good with talk like that. I tell you that straight." "Well..." he began; but he arrested himself. "All right, never mind. But it's unfair to try to put the blame for my wife's death on me. It's worse than unfair; it's cruel when you consider what she was to me and what I've been through. I don't know how you look at it, but I take it for granted that we're not gods, we're only creatures, and the things we sometimes think are permanent, they aren't permanent. So one day we're like full bundles and the next we're wrapping-paper, blowing around the streets." "But I warn you I won't stand for such talk. Get that!" Leventhal spoke curtly, and Allbee seemed to lose his presence of mind and lowered his head, grieved and incapable of answering. It was hard to tell whether he was looking for the strength to continue, conniving something new, or disclosing his true state without pretense. Leventhal saw the side of his face, deeply indented at the lid and mouth, his cheek and chin covered with golden bristles, the blue of his eye fixed in brooding. The skin of his forehead, even-grained by the light of the lamp, was wet, and that of his jaw and throat was creased in a way that made Leventhal think of gills. Allbee's remark about creatures had touched his imagination in a singular way, and for an instant he was no more human to him than a fish or crab or any fleshy thing in the water. But only for an instant, fleetingly, until Allbee moved and looked at him. He appeared discouraged and tired. "You'll excuse me," said Leventhal with somewhat provocative politeness, "but I have a wire to send. I was about to go send it when you came." Did that sound like an invention? Allbee might think so and interpret it as a maneuver to get rid of him. However, he had seen him writing when he entered, so why shouldn't it be true? He might have been drafting the message. Anyhow, why should he care? And besides, it was absolutely a fact that he was going to wire Max. Allbee could come along and check up on him if he wanted to. He studied his face to see how he was taking it. Allbee had risen. Suddenly Leventhal twisted about and his heart sprang. He thought he had seen a mouse dart into the corner and he hurried after it, lit a match, and examined the molding. There was no hole. "Ran away!" he thought. Or was it his fancy? "We have mice here," he explained to Allbee, who was at the door in the dark vestibule. He seemed to turn his head away, unresponding. When they reached the lower hall, Allbee stopped and said, "You try to put all the blame on me, but you know it's true that you're to blame. You and you only. For everything. You ruined me. Ruined! Because that's what I am, ruined! You're the one that's responsible. You did it to me deliberately, out of hate. Out of pure hate!" He had clutched Leventhal's shirt and he twisted it as he spoke. "You're crazy!" Leventhal shouted in his face. "You're a crazy stumblebum, that's what you are. The booze is eating your brain up. Take your hands off me. Off, I say!" He pushed Allbee with all the force of his powerful arms. He fell against the wall with an impact that sickened Leventhal. Allbee stood up, wiped his mouth, and stared at his hand. "No blood. Too bad. Then you could say I spilled your blood, too," Leventhal cried. Allbee answered nothing. He dusted his clothes unskillfully, stiff-handedly, as though beating his arms. Then he went. Leventhal watched his hasty, unsteady progress down the street. Mr Nunez, who had seen the incident, started up astride the striped canvas of his beach chair, and his wife, who lay on the bed near the window in a white slip, whispered, "Que pasa?" Leventhal looked at her in bewilderment.

7

"THE nerve of him, that damned clown!" said Leventhal fiercely. His high, thick chest felt intolerably bound and compressed, and he lifted his shoulders in an effort to ease his breathing. "Ruined! I'll ruin him if he comes near me. What a gall!" The letter to Mary was crumpled in his hand. It was impossible to send it like this. He would have to get another envelope and stamp, and for a moment this inconvenience grew overwhelmingly into the worst consequence of the scuffle. He tore the letter open, crushed the envelope, and threw it over the balustrade. Nunez had gone into the house and he was alone on the stoop. His glance seemed to cover the street; in reality he saw almost nothing but was only aware of the featureless darkness and the equally featureless shine of bulbs the length of the block. Then his anger began to sink. He drew in his cheeks, somberly enlarging his eyes. The skin about them felt dry and tight. To think up such a thing! The senselessness of it perturbed him most of all. "Why me?" he thought, frowning. "Of course, he has to have someone to blame; that's how it starts. But when he goes over everybody he knows, in that brain of his, how does he wind up with me?" That was what was puzzling. No doubt the Rudiger business had a bearing on it; for some reason it caught on, and worked on a deeper cause. But that alone, out of hundreds of alternatives, had snagged. In a general way, anyone could see that there was great unfairness in one man's having all the comforts of life while another had nothing. But between man and man, how was this to be dealt with? Any derelict panhandler or bum might buttonhole you on the street and say, "The world wasn't made for you any more than it was for me, was it?" The error in this was to forget that neither man had made the arrangements, and so it was perfectly right to say, "Why pick on me? I didn't set this up any more than you did." Admittedly there was a wrong, a general wrong. Allbee, on the other hand, came along and said "You!" and that was what was so meaningless. For you might feel that something was owing to the panhandler, but to be directly blamed was entirely different. People met you once or twice and they hated you. What was the reason; what inspired it? This Allbee illustrated it well because he was too degenerate a drunk to hide his feelings. You had only to be yourself to provoke them. Why? A sigh of helplessness escaped Leventhal. If they still believed it would work, they would make little dolls of wax and stick pins into them. And why do they pick out this, that, or the other person to hate--Tom, Dick or Harry? No one can say. They hate your smile or the way you blow your nose or use a napkin. Anything will do for an excuse. And meanwhile this Harry, the object of it, doesn't even suspect. How should he know someone is carrying around an image of him (just as a woman may paste a lover's picture on the mirror of her vanity case or a man his wife's snapshot in his wallet), carrying it around to look at and hate? It doesn't even have to be a reproduction of poor Harry. It might as well be the king of diamonds with his embroidery, his whiskers, his sword, and all. It doesn't make a bit of difference. Leventhal had to confess that he himself had occasionally sinned in this respect, and he was not ordinarily a malicious person. But certain people did call out this feeling. He saw Cohen, let us say, once or twice, and then, when his name was mentioned in company, let fall an uncomplimentary remark about him. Not that this Cohen had ever offended him. But what were all the codes and rules, Leventhal reflected, except an answer to our own nature. Would we have to be told " Love!" if we loved as we breathed? No, obviously. Which was not to say that we didn't love but had to be assisted whenever the motor started missing. The peculiar thing struck him that everything else in nature was bounded; trees, dogs, and ants didn't grow beyond a certain size. "But we," lie thought, "we go in all directions without any limit." He had put the letter in his pocket and he now took it out and debated whether to climb up to the flat for a stamp and envelope, or to try to buy them in a drugstore. He might not be able to obtain a single envelope. He did not want to buy a box of stationery. Then he heard his name called and recognized Harkavy's voice. "Is that you, Dan?" he said looking down the stairs at the dim, tall figure on the sidewalk. The shifting of the theater lights across the way made his vision uncertain. It was Har-kavy. There were two women with him, one holding a child by the hand. "Come down out of the clouds," said Harkavy. "Are you asleep, or something, on your feet?" Nunez returned to his deck chair. His wife was in the window, resting her head on the sash. "Do you go into a trance when the little woman is away?" Harkavy's companions laughed. "Dan, how are you?" said Leventhal, descending. "Oh, Mrs Harkavy, so that's you?" "Julia, Julia, too." Harkavy pointed at his sister with his cigarette holder. "Julia, Mrs Harkavy, glad to see you both." "And my granddaughter Libbie," said Mrs Harkavy. "Oh, this is your girl, Julia?" "Yes." Leventhal tried to make out the child's features; he saw only the vivid pallor of her face and the reddish darkness of her hair. "Very active, Libbie," said Harkavy. "A little too energetic, at times." "Oh, she runs me ragged," Julia said. "I can't keep up with her." "It's the food you give her. No child should have so much protein," said Mrs Harkavy. "Mother, she doesn't get more than others do. It's just her nature." "We came to call on you," Harkavy said to Leventhal. "But it looks as if you're stepping out." "I have a couple of errands," said Leventhal. "I was going to send a wire." "We'll walk you to Western Union, then. Are you wiring Mary? I suppose you want her back already." Harkavy smiled. "Daniel, it's not a thing to joke about, if a couple is devoted," his mother said. "It's nothing to ridicule. These days when marriages are so flimsy it's a real pleasure to see devotion. Couples go to City Hall like I might go to the five-and-dime to buy a hinge. Two boards on a hinge, and clap, clap, clap, that's a marriage. Wire your wife, Asa, it's the right thing and it's sweet. Never mind." "It's my brother I've got to send the wire to, not Mary." "Libbie, come here to me, here!" Julia furiously exclaimed, pulling the child's arm. "I'll tie you in the middle with strings!" "Oh, your brother?" said Mrs Harkavy. Leventhal flushed, inexplicably. "Yes, it was his boy I called Julia about. My nephew." "Did you get hold of the doctor?" Julia asked. "Doctor Denisart, mother." "Oh, he's a fine doctor, Asa; his mother is a lodge sister of mine and I've known him since he was a boy. You can have confidence in him. They gave him the very best education. He studied in Holland." "Austria, mother." "Abroad, anyway. His uncle put him through. He was in jail afterwards, the uncle, for income taxes, but that wasn't the Denisarts' fault. They used to send him pheasant to Sing Sing and they say he was allowed to have card parties in his cell. But they really learn in Europe, you know. That's because their slums are worse; they get complicated cases in their clinics. Our standard of living is so high, it's bad for the education of our doctors." "Why, who says so?" said Harkavy, looking at his mother with interest. "Everybody. Why, all the medical books Papa used to bring home from the salesroom were full of European cases--Frâulein J. and Fraulein K. and Mademoiselle so and so. The best medical education is foreign." "And how is your nephew?" Harkavy said. "They took him to the hospital today." "Oh, very sick, does that mean? I'm sorry to hear it," said Julia. "Very." "But you can depend on Doctor Denisart. He's a fine young man--brilliant. I'll talk to his mother tomorrow. He'll take more interest in the case." "I'm sure he'd do his best without being spoken to," said Julia. They were walking, and she pressed her daughter's head to her side. "Influence is a good thing," Mrs Harkavy said. "You mustn't forget it. If you don't use it, you're left behind in the race of the swift. Everything depends on it. Of course, the doctor would do his best because of his ethics and so on, but if I talk to his mother he'll pay special attention to the case and do his very best. People are bound not to take things too much to heart, for their own protection. You've got to use influence on them." "Take it up with Mrs Denisart, then. It can't hurt," said Harkavy. "I will." "Dan," said Leventhal, drawing his friend behind, "do you remember a fellow called Allbee?" "Allbee? Who? What's his last name?" "Allbee is his last name. Kirby Allbee. We met him at Williston's. A big man. Blond." "I suppose I could remember him if I put my mind to it. I have a pretty good memory." They had come to the telegraph office, and Leventhal, standing at the yellow pine counter, wrote out a message to his brother entirely forgetting the sharp words he had intended to use. When he came out, he took Harkavy aside. "Dan, could we have a private conversation for a few minutes?" he said. "Why, I should say so. What's the matter, old fellow? Wait a minute. Let's ditch the women." Mrs Harkavy, Julia, and Libbie were waiting at the corner. "Ladies, excuse us," said Harkavy with a pleased smile, fitting a cigarette into his holder. "Asa wants to talk over something with me." "I'll see Mrs Denisart for you tomorrow. Don't you worry," Mrs Harkavy said. Leventhal thanked her, and he and Harkavy crossed the street. "Now what's the trouble, did you get into a scrape?" asked Harkavy. "You know you can trust me. It's safe to tell me anything. You can bank on it. Anything you confide in me will never come back to you through a third party, not any more than if you whispered it in the confession box. So let's have it." "There's no secret to keep. It's nothing like that." Glancing at his friend, he hesitated, dissatisfied. Would it be worthwhile to explain the whole matter to Harkavy? He was warmhearted and a sincere friend, but he frequently put emphasis on the wrong things. He was already on the wrong track, suspecting a scrape. He probably meant an intrigue, a scrape with a woman. "It's this Allbee," Leventhal said. "He's been giving me a headache. You must remember him. He made fun of your singing one night at Williston's. You and that girl. Sure you can recall him. He worked at Dill's..." "Oh, him. That bird." It seemed to Leventhal that Harkavy listened more gravely, though perhaps it was his own wish to have something so troubling to him taken seriously that was behind this impression. He described his first meeting with Allbee in the park. When he told him how amazed he was at Allbee's spying, Harkavy murmured, "Well, isn't that the limit? Isn't that disagreeable? Nervy. Disagreeable." "I thought you wouldn't forget how he went for you over that song." "Oh, no, I have him definitely placed now. So that's the man?" He drew his head back with a restrained rearing motion and, from the stretching of his clear eyes, Leventhal saw that a connection of the utmost importance had been established in his mind. "Dan, do you know any facts about him that I don't?" "What do you call facts? It depends. I think so. I mean, I've heard. But was he around again? Let's have the rest of it." "What have you heard?" "You tell me first. Let's see if it's all one piece. Maybe it isn't. It may not be worth bothering about--loony all of it, and we ought to tie a can to it?" He would not speak, and Leventhal hurriedly set forth all that Allbee had done and said, and, despite his haste and his eagerness to find out what Harkavy knew, he interrupted himself from time to time to make scornful, almost laughing comments which in his heart he recognized to be appeals to Harkavy to confirm the absurdity, the madness of the accusations. Harkavy, however, did not respond to these appeals. He was sober. He continued to say, "Disagreeable, disagreeable," but his manner did not give Leventhal much comfort. "He makes out a whole case that I'm responsible for his wife and everything...!" said Leventhal, his voice rising nearly to a cry. "His wife? That's far-fetched, far-fetched," said Harkavy. "I wouldn't listen to stuff like that." "You think I do? I'd have to be crazy too. How could anybody? Could you?" "No, no, I say it's far-fetched. He's overstraining the imagination. He must have a loose screw." Harkavy twisted a finger near his head and sighed. "But the story went round that he was canned, and then I heard that he couldn't get another job. They canned him at quite a few places before." "Because of drinking..." Harkavy shrugged. His face was wrinkled and he was half turned away from Leventhal. "Maybe. He wasn't in good anywhere, as I heard it, and he was just about running out of breaks when he got the job with Dill's." "Who told you that?" "Offhand I don't recollect." "Do you think there's a black list, Dan? When I talked over that Rudiger thing with you, you laughed at the idea." "Did I? Well, I don't believe in such stuff in general." "All right, here's proof. You see? There is a black list." "I'm not convinced. This man of yours wasn't steady, and the word got around. It just got to be known he wasn't reliable." "Why did he lose the job at Dill's? It was because he boozed, wasn't it?" "Why, I can't say," Harkavy replied, and Leventhal thought that he looked at him anxiously. "I haven't got the inside information on it. As it came to me, the reason was different. In these cases, though, you get all kinds of rumors. Who knows? The truth is hard to get at. If your life depended on getting it, you'd probably hang. I don't have to tell you how it is. This one says this, and that one says that. Y says oats, and Z says hay, and chances are... it's buckwheat. Nobody can tell you except the fellow that harvested it. To the rest it's all theory. Why? He was skating on thin ice and he had to skate fast, faster and faster. But he slowed up... and he fell through. As I see it..." Harkavy himself was discontented with this explanation; it was obviously makeshift. He faltered and his glance wandered. He had, unmistakably, information that he was trying to hold back. "Why did he lose the job? What do they say?" "There's no 'they'." "Dan, don't try to give me the runaround. This is something I won't rest easy about till I know. It's no trifle. You must tell me what they say." "If you don't mind, Asa, there's one thing I have to point out that you haven't learned. We're not children. We're men of the world. It's almost a sin to be so innocent. Get next to yourself, boy, will you? You want the whole world to like you. There're bound to be some people who don't think well of you. As I do, for instance. Why, isn't it enough for you that some do? Why can't you accept the fact that others never will? Figure it on a percentile basis. Is it a life