Saul Bellow - The Victim

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.”