Saul Bellow - The Victim

“Some really are. And if the rest take you in, that’s what they’re supposed to do.”

“It must be quite a knack to pick them,” Goldstone remarked.

“It isn’t all guesswork. You can’t go and run a screen test for every girl you see. But I myself, personally, don’t care for some of the best successes I sent into Hollywood.”

“Which do you like?” asked Goldstone.

“Oh,” he said slowly, thinking, “there’s Nola Hook.”

“You don’t mean it,” said Schlossberg. “A little cactus plant… skinny, dry…”

“I think she has a kind of charm. Or what’s the matter with Livia Hall?”

“Such a discovery!”

“She is. I’ll stand up for her.”

“Oh, a firebrand.” The old man’s countenance was too large for fine degrees of irony. Only Shifcart, his lips open to begin his reply, did not join in the laughter.

“What’s the matter; hasn’t she got anything?”

“She’s got!” Schlossberg waved him down. “God made her a woman, so who are we to say? But she isn’t an actress. I saw your firebrand last week in a picture. What is it? She poisons her husband.”

“In The Tigress .”

“What a lameness!”

“I don’t know what your standards are. A perfect piece of casting. Who else could have done it?”

“Wood, so help me. She poisons her husband and she watches him die. She wants the insurance money. He loses his voice and he tries to appeal to her she should help him. You don’t hear any words. What is she supposed to show in her face? Fear, hate, a hard heart, cruelness, fascination.” He shut his eyes tightly and proudly for a moment, and they saw the veins in his lids. Then he slowly raised them, turning his face away, and a tremor went through his cheeks as he posed.

“Oh, say, that’s fine!” Harkavy cried, smiling.

“That’s the old Russian style,” said Shifcart. “That doesn’t go any more.”

“No? Where’s the improvement? What does she do? She sucks in her cheeks and stares. A man is dying at her feet and all she can do is pop out her eyes.”

“I think she was marvelous in that show,” said Shifcart. “Nobody could have been better.”

“She is not an actress because she is not a woman, and she is not a woman because a man doesn’t mean anything to her. I don’t know what she is. Don’t ask me. I saw once Nazimova in The Three Sisters . She’s the one whose soldier gets killed in a duel over a nothing, foolishness. They tell her about it. She looks away from the audience and just with her head and neck — what a force! But this girl..!”

“Terrible, ah?” Shifcart said sardonically.

“No, isn’t it? And this is a success? This is your success, these days. You said you could pass this Waters on the street and not recognize her. Imagine!” the old man said, making them all feel his weighty astonishment. “Not to recognize an actress, or that a man shouldn’t notice a beautiful woman. It used to be an actress was a woman. She had a mouth, she had flesh on her, she carried herself. When she whispered tears came in your eyes, and when she said a word your legs melted. And it didn’t make any difference; on the stage or off the stage you knew she was an actress.”

He stopped. They considered his words gravely.

“Say,” began Harkavy. “My father used to tell a story about Lily Langtry, the English actress, when she was presented at court by Edward the Seventh. Old Victoria was still alive, and he was the Prince of Wales.”

“That’s the one they call the Jersey Lily, isn’t it?” said Shifcart.

“I’ve heard this.” Goldstone got up and took Leventhal’s tray. “Does anyone want coffee? I’m going to the counter.”

“Is it good, Monty?”

“My late father-in-law’s favorite.” He strode off to the steam table.

“Pop told me this one after I was old enough to vote. He saved up all his best stories till I was of age. Before that… But of course you pick up everything yourself and they know it. It’s only off the record. Well, you know that Edward was a sport. And when he fell in love with Langtry he wanted to present her at court. They say people in love want to be seen together in public. Proud to have it known. I suppose it has a dangerous outcome, sometimes. Well, he wanted to present her. Everybody was scandalized. What was Lily going to say to the old woman, and wouldn’t Victoria be angry at having her son’s mistress in St James or Windsor or wherever? All the reporters were waiting after the ceremony. She came out, and they asked her, ‘ Lily, what did you say to Her Majesty?’ ‘I was worried that I would say the wrong thing,’ said Lily. ‘But the last moment the right one came to me. I kissed the hem of her dress and said, “ Ich dien” !’“

A smile went around the table. Goldstone, carrying the tray, pulled his chair aside with his foot.

“The motto of the King of Bohemia in the Hundred Years War,” Harkavy explained, his round eyes shining at them. “They found it on his helmet after the Battle of Poitiers.”

“I doubt very much if she would kiss the queen’s dress,” said Leventhal. “Is that a part of the ceremony?”

“Curtsy,” Goldstone laughed, pulling his napkin open to demonstrate.”

“All right, I tell it as my father did. I haven’t changed a word.”

“The old woman being a German, she figured she’d understand her,” Schlossberg said.

“What? No, that’s the Hanoverian motto,” Goldstone said.

“That was a deal. A German queen, a British Empire, and an Italian Jew for prime minister.”

“Disraeli an Italian?” said Goldstone. “Wasn’t he English born?”

“But his father.”

“Not even his father. His grandfather. He was an authentic Englishman, if citizenship stands for anything.”

“He wasn’t an Englishman to the English,” Leventhal said,

“Why, they loved him,” said Goldstone.

“Then who said he was the monkey on John Bull’s chest?”

“He had enemies, naturally.”

“I understand they never took him in,” Leventhal declared.

“Wrong!” Harkavy cried. “He was a credit to them and to us.”

“I don’t see that,” Leventhal slowly shook his head. “It didn’t make any difference to them that Victoria was a German. But Disraeli…?”

“He showed Europe that a Jew could be a national leader,” said Goldstone.

“That’s Leventhal all over for you,” exclaimed Harkavy. “That shows you where he stands.”

“Jews and empires? Suez and India and so on? It never seemed right to me.”

“To teach the world a lesson with empty hands — I know that stuff by heart.” Harkavy stared at him with shocked, reprimanding eyes. “The Empire was certainly his business. He was an Englishman and a great one. Bismarck admired him. Der alter Jude, das ist der Mann !”

“Is there such a difference between an empire and a department store?” asked Shifcart. “You’re managing a business.”

“And he was managing the firm?” said Goldstone. “Bull and Company. The sun never sets on our stores. B. Disraeli, chief buyer.”

Leventhal at the outset had been a little reluctant to speak and had a fleeting feeling that it was a mistake to be drawn or lured out of his taciturnity. Nor had he thought, with his first remark, that he had much to say on this subject. But now, to his surprise, he was unable to hold back his opinions — they were his, of course, but he had never before expressed them, and they sounded queer to him.

“You bring up Bismarck,” he said. “Why did he say Jude instead of Englishman? Disraeli was a bargainer, so he was a Jew to him, naturally.”

“Don’t misrepresent Bismarck on the Jews,” warned Harkavy. “Be careful, boy. He lightened their load.”