The victim (8 page)

and death matter? I happen to have found out that a young lady I always liked said I was conceited. Perhaps she didn't think it would get to me, but it did. Too bad people everywhere don't know what I'm really like. Or you. It would be a different universe. Things are too subtle for me; I have to knock along on common sense. What about this girl? I know she has reasons that she doesn't understand herself. All I can say is, 'Lady, God bless you, we all have our faults and are what we are. I have to take myself as I am or push off. I am all I have in this world. And with all my shortcomings my life is precious to me.' My heart doesn't sink. Experience has taught me to expect this once in a while. But you're so upset when somebody doesn't like you, or says this or that about you. A little independence, boy; it's a weakness, positively." "I want you to tell me," Leventhal persisted. "I'll stick to you till you do. Considering what I'm being blamed for, it's natural that I should want to find out." Harkavy gave in to him. "Williston thought you made trouble for this fellow when you went to Dill's and you acted up. He kind of hinted that it was intentional." "What? Williston says that? Did he say that?" "Well, something like it." "How could he? Is he such an idiot?" Pale, his lips tight, making a great effort to hold back his anger and the unaccountable fear that filled him, Leventhal put his hand to his throat and stared frowningly at Harkavy. He said loudly, "And did you stand up for me?" "Naturally I said he was mistaken and did all I could. I told him he was wrong." "You ought to have said that I came to you immediately with the whole story about Rudiger. You even thought that it might be rigged up, that Allbee and Rudiger wanted to make a fool of me and it was hatched out by the two of them. Did you bring that up?" "No, I didn't take the trouble." "Why not!" He swiftly clenched his fist as though catching at something in the air. "Why not!" he demanded. "It was your duty if you're a friend of mine. Even if you didn't know the facts you should have defended me. And you did know the facts. I told them to you. You should have said it was a slander and a lie. If anybody repeated such a lie to me about you, you'd see how fast I'd take him up on it. It's not only loyalty but fairness. And how did he know what I did at Dill's? Why were you such a stick? Were you afraid to hurt his feelings by contradicting him?" "I was not," said Harkavy. His marveling eyes took Leventhal in, but he answered quietly. "I didn't think it would benefit you if I argued with Williston. I just said that he was wrong." "My friend!" "Yes, if you ever had one. I am your friend." "He might have asked me, before he said a thing like that, given me a chance to defend myself. He'd rather take that drunk Allbee's word for it. Where's their Anglo-Saxon fairness... fair play?" "It's hard for me to understand Williston's side of it. I had an idea he was pretty level." "Is it so hard?" Leventhal said bitterly. "I told you why Allbee said I was out for revenge. And if Williston believes that I went to Dill's to make trouble, he must think what Allbee does, all around." "Who, Williston? Oh, you're way off, boy, way off." "Oh, am I? Well, you don't know what it's all about, I can see that. Williston is too nice a fellow, you mean. Talk about being innocent! Talk about a man of the world! Any child knows more about these things than you do, Dan. If he has it in him to think it was that insult... the insult to you, too, Dan, come to think of it. If that's what he believes..." "Williston is a nice fellow," said Harkavy. "Remember, he was nice to you." "I do remember. What makes you think I don't? That's exactly it. That's what makes it so bad, horrible. That's the evil part of it. Of course he helped me. So now if he wants to believe this about me he has the right? Can't you see how it stacks up?" He groped. "Certainly he helped me." "You can be sure he doesn't know what your Mr Allbee is up to and wouldn't like it if he did. Regardless. I mean that he couldn't believe that he says... that you ruined him. The man is off his trolley, sleuthing after you like that. He's disturbed in his mind. Haven't you ever seen such a case before? It's very pitiful. It happened in the family. My father's sister got strange during the change of life--said all the clocks were warning her to look out, look out, look out. Oh, she was just off. It was a calamity. She claimed that somebody was stealing out of her mailbox, taking letters. Oh, all kinds of things. I couldn't begin to tell you. Well, obviously that's the kind of case you're up against. It's disagreeable, but it's nothing to be alarmed about. She started telling people that she was Krueger the match king's widow, though my uncle was still living. Sometimes she said Cecil Rhodes, not Krueger. My grandfather fought in the Boer War. Where else could she have gotten that? She went to an institution, poor thing. How those ideas get into their heads only Heaven knows." Leventhal nodded inattentively. He could only brood over Williston. How could Williston believe that of him? Was it possible to know him and yet think him capable of deliberately injuring someone? For a reason like that? For any reason, even strict self-defense? He could not have imagined and carried out such a plan. Leventhal was deeply roused. He turned away from Harkavy, wrinkling up his eyes. Willis-ton had helped him. He was indebted to him. Would he deny it? Harkavy had in his way rebuked him for seeming to forget it. He had not forgotten. But it was only natural to ask how much he owed Williston and how far gratitude should be expected to stretch. He had used the word "evil" a while ago, and what had given rise to it was a feeling that Williston had made the accusation under an influence against which he could not help himself. If he was ready to believe that he was such and such a person--why avoid saying it?--that he would carry out a scheme like that because he was a Jew, then the turn he always feared had come and all good luck was canceled and all favors melted away. He looked hopelessly before him. Williston, like himself, like everybody else, was carried on currents, this way and that. The currents had taken a new twist, and he was being hurried, hurried. His heart shrank and he felt faint for a moment and shut his eyes. "I'll get it from him straight," he muttered, recovering himself a little. "I won't take somebody else's word for it. That would be doing what he did." He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his face.

8

BUT the week passed and Leventhal made no move to get in touch with Williston, though he promised himself every day to clear up the whole business. Allbee did not appear, and Leventhal hoped that he had seen the last of him without really believing that he had. But at least matters in Staten Island were going better. Mickey was by no means out of danger; still he was improving, and Leventhal felt less worried about him. Max had wired back that he was ready to leave as soon as the doctor gave the word, and Leventhal wrote to say that while he thought Max ought to come home where he was needed, the decision was his own to make. On Friday night Leventhal felt Mary's absence keenly. Before going to bed, he was tempted to put in a call to Charleston. He even went to the telephone, lifted it, and turned it, untangling the cord, but he set it down and went on undressing. He put on a white cotton robe she had given him on his last birthday, smoothing the lapels lightly and glancing down. She would be sure to feel if he called her now, at the beginning of the week-end, that he found being alone unendurable and was appealing to her to come home. And that would be unfair, since she could not come as long as her mother needed her. Also, when he hung up and she was inaccessible again, he would miss her even more than he did now. And she him. There were several glasses on the sink. He washed them and turned them upside down to dry. Then he went into the dining-room which had been shut since her departure. He left all the doors in the flat standing open; it made him feel easier. He did not sleep well. Most of the night he could hear the motor of the refrigerator shuddering and rocking as it started and stopped. Several times he opened his eyes because of it. The light was burning in the bathroom. There was a short downpour and mist floated at the window. Toward morning he was aware that someone was speaking loudly in the street and he listened, breathing heavily. There was enough light to see by. He had gone to bed in the cotton robe and he lay, both pillows under his head, his hands joined on his chest; his feet and outspread legs were visible beside the deep shadow of the wall. The air was gray and soft in the long defile of the street. A woman's voice cried out, and he flung himself up, brushing aside the curtains with a clatter of rings. There was a commotion at the corner. He saw a man start a crazy rush at one of two women; another threw himself in his way, shrieking, and held him off. Across the street two soldiers stood watching. They had been with the women, it was clear enough, and then the man had caught them--perhaps a husband, a brother, probably the former--and they drew off. The man circled with short, sidling steps, and the woman hung back dumbly, with horrible attentiveness, ready to run. Her high heels knocked on the pavement. He had reached her once, her dress was ripped from neck to waist. She shook her head and pulled back her hair. He darted in again, grabbing at her, and the friend, uttering her begging, agonized cries, caught his arms and was swung round by him. The soldiers had an air of being present at an entertainment especially arranged for them, and seemed to laugh to themselves from time to time. The husband's soles scraped on the pavement as he pushed toward his wife, and this time she ran away. She ran up the street awkwardly but swiftly, her soft figure shaking, and the soldiers started off at once in the same direction. The husband did not chase her; he stood still. The other woman with her hands on his arm spoke to him urgently, thrusting forward her face. The rain was rapidly, unevenly drying from the street. Leventhal growled under his breath and wound the robe around himself more tightly. There was a gleam, as if a naked copper cable was lifted from the water and rose quickly, passing over masonry and windows. The sun was forcing its way through a corner of the gray air. The woman was still speaking to the man, imploring, pulling him the other way. She wanted him to go with her. Leventhal drew the shade and dropped into bed. He was up at ten o'clock with a free week-end before him. The day had changed its look since dawn; it was warm, singularly beautiful. The color of the sky was strong; the clouds were as white as leghorn feathers rolling before a breeze that blew into the curtains and hauled at the strings of Mrs Nunez' flower boxes. Leventhal bathed, dressed, and went down for breakfast. In the restaurant he took a booth instead of sitting at the counter as he did on weekdays. He found a copy of the Tribune on the seat and read, propping the paper on the sugar shaker while he drank his coffee. Afterward he took a walk uptown, enjoying the weather and looking into shopwindows. The scene on the corner remained with him, however, and he returned to it every now and then with the feeling that he really did not know what went on about him, what strange things, savage things. They hung near him all the time in trembling drops, invisible, usually, or seen from a distance. But that did not mean that there was always to be a distance, or that sooner or later one or two of the drops might not fall on him. As a matter of fact he was thinking of Allbee--he was not sure that he had stopped spying on him--and with the thought came a faint sick qualm. Once more he reminded himself that he had to call Williston. But gradually the qualm passed, and his intention slipped to the back of his mind. And later, when he took some nickels out of his pocket to pay for a drink and saw an empty phone booth at the rear of the store, he reconsidered and decided, for the time being, not to make the call. He had not seen Williston for three years or more, and to ask him, out of a clear sky, about something so difficult and obscure, perhaps forgotten, might appear strange. Besides, if Williston was capable of believing he had injured Allbee on purpose, he would be cold to him. And perhaps Harkavy was right. Perhaps he would be trying to get Willis-ton to assure him that he still liked him, to demand that assurance of him more than fairness. He pictured Williston sitting before him in a habitual pose, at ease in his chair, his fingers in the pockets of his vest, red-cheeked, his blue eyes seeming to say, "So much frankness and no more," the exact amount remaining in doubt. In all likelihood Williston had made up his mind that he was responsible for what had happened to Allbee and while he would listen--if Leventhal knew him--with an appearance of courtesy and willingness to suspend judgment, he would already be convinced. To imagine himself pleading with him filled Leventhal with shame. Didn't he know, he himself, that he had never consciously wanted to harm Allbee? Of course he did. It was for Williston, even if he was his benefactor, to explain why he was ready to believe such a thing. And when you said that someone was your benefactor, what did it actually mean? You might help a man because he was a bother to you and you wanted to get rid of him. You might do it because you disliked him unfairly and wanted to pay for your prejudice and then, feeling that you had paid, you were free and even entitled to detest him. He did not say that it was so in Willis-ton's case, but in a question like this you couldn't be blamed for examining every possibility, or accused of being coldblooded or heartless. It was better to think well of people -there was a kind of command that you should. And on the whole it was Leventhal's opinion that he had an unsuspicious character and preferred to be taken advantage of rather than regard everyone with distrust. It was better to be genuinely unsuspicious; it was what they called Christian. But it was foolish and miserable to refuse to acknowledge the suspicions that came into your mind in an affair like this. Because if you had them you should not put on an innocent front with your-self and deny that you did. At the same time Leventhal was reasonable enough to admit that he might be trying to release himself from a sense of obligation to Williston by finding fault with him. He had never been able to repay him. Was he looking for a chance to cancel the debt? He did not think so. He wished he could be sure. Ah, he told himself, he was sure. He had never felt anything but gratitude. Again and again he had said--Mary could testify--that Williston had saved him. But then, as he dwelt on it, the whole affair began to lose much of its importance. It was, after all, something he could either take seriously or dismiss as an annoyance. It was up to him. He had only to insist that he wasn't responsible and it disappeared altogether. It was his conviction against an accusation nobody could expect him to take at face value. And what more was there for him to say than that his part in it was accidental? At worst, an accident, unintentional. The morning, with its brilliance and its simple contrasts, white and blue, shining and darkened, had a balancing effect on him of which he was conscious. He looked up, and a slight smile appeared on his face, swarthy in the sunlight. His clean white shirt was crookedly buttoned and tight at the neck; he put his fingers inside the band and tugged at it, drawing his chin up, and he straightened his shirt front clumsily, his gold wedding ring clicking on the buttons. At noon he was in the west Forties. He ate a bowl of chili in a place opposite a music shop where a man in shirt sleeves, standing at one of the broad-swung windows on the second floor, blurted out an occasional note, testing a horn, one arm embracing the shining roundness of the brass. He was blowing erratically rich impatient notes and deep snores whose resonance Leventhal felt somehow entering his very blood as he gazed into the sun and dust of the peaceful street. He broke a cigar out of its wrapper, making a ball of the cellophane small enough to squeeze into the band. He felt along his thigh for matches and, when he had blown out his first puff, he walked into a booth and phoned Elena. One of the Villani children was sent to fetch her. Leventhal's eyes remained fixed on the horn player during the conversation. Elena sounded quieter than usual. She was going to visit Mickey at three o'clock. He asked her about Philip and while Elena, after she had said, "Oh, Phillie? He's upstairs," went on talking about the hospital, Leventhal conceived the idea of spending the day with him and interrupted her to propose that Philip come over to Manhattan. "I'll meet him at South Ferry. If you want me to, I'll come for him." "Oh, I'll send him," said Elena. "That's fine. He'll like it. No, he can go on the ferry himself. What's there to it?" Already full of plans, Leventhal hurried into the street. They would take a ride along the Drive on an open bus. The boy might enjoy that. Perhaps he would prefer Times Square, the shooting galleries, the penny arcades and pinball games. He congratulated himself on having thought of Philip; he was delighted. He would have passed the time tolerably well, he reflected, until some time toward evening when he realized he had not spoken three words to a living soul and the blues descended on him. And Philip, too, would have been left alone when his mother went to the hospital. Leventhal took the train downtown and sat in the small square on a bench commanding the ferry gates. He kept his swarthy, unimpassioned face turned to the exit. The strain of waiting made him almost tremble, yet it was pleasurable, a pleasurable excitement. He wondered why it was that lately he was more susceptible than he had ever been before to certain kinds of feeling. With everybody except Mary he was inclined to be short and neutral, outwardly a little like his father, and this shortness of his was, when you came right down to it, merely neglectfulness. When you didn't want to take trouble with people, you found the means to turn them aside. Well, the world was a busy place--he scanned the buildings, the banks and offices in their Saturday stillness, the pillars ribbed with soot, and the changeable color of the windows in which the more absolute color of the sky was darkened, dilated, and darkened again. You couldn't find a place in your feelings for everything, or give at every touch like a swinging door, the same for everyone, with people going in and out as they pleased. On the other hand, if you shut yourself up, not wanting to be bothered, then you were like a bear in a winter hole, or like a mirror wrapped in a piece of flannel. And like such a mirror you were in less danger of being broken, but you didn't flash, either. But you had to flash. That was the peculiar thing. Everybody wanted to be what he was to the limit. When you looked around, that was what you saw most distinctly. In great achievements as well as in crimes and vices. When that woman faced her husband this morning after he had most likely tracked her all night from joint to joint and finally caught her catting, too red-handed to defend herself; when she faced him, wasn't she saying, silently, "I'm being up to the limit just what I am"? In this case, a whore. She may have been mistaken in herself. You couldn't expect people to be right, but only try to do what they must. Therefore hideous things were done, cannibalistic things. Good things as well, of course. But even there, nothing really good was safe. There was something in people against sleep and dullness, together with the caution that led to sleep and dullness. Both were there, Leventhal thought. We were all the time taking care of ourselves, laying up, storing up, watching out on this side and on that side, and at the same time running, running desperately, running as if in an egg race with the egg in a spoon. And sometimes we were fed up with the egg, sick of it, and at such a time would rather sign on with the devil and what they called the powers of darkness that run with the spoon, watching the egg, fearing for the egg. Man is weak and breakable, has to have just the right amounts of everything--water, air, food; can't eat twigs and stones; has to keep his bones from breaking and his fat from melting. This and that. Hoards sugar and potatoes, hides money in his mattress, spares his feelings whenever he can, and takes pains and precautions. That, you might say, was for the sake of the egg. Dying is spoiling, then? Addling? And the last judgment, candling? Leventhal chuckled and rubbed his cheek. There was also the opposite, playing catch with the egg, threatening the egg. Boats from the island were arriving every few minutes, and, after the crowds had several times poured out and dispersed, Leventhal saw Philip standing at the gates. He got up and beckoned him, grunting, "Here, this way," and, waving his arm, advanced to the curb. The noise of the busses made shouting useless. "Here, here!" He motioned, and at last the boy saw him and came over. "Well, was it nice crossing?"