Saul Bellow - The Victim

“Yes, he had something to say about making a great race. What was it, now? ‘A German stallion and a Jewish mare.”‘

“A regular Kentucky Derby,” said Schlossberg. “Hay for everybody.”

“Don’t be down on a man for a figure of speech,” said Gold-stone. “He was an old cavalryman. That was just his way of talking about the best qualities of both.”

“Who needs his compliments?” Schlossberg said. “Who wants them?”

“Does it sound like flattery to you?” Leventhal raised his hand from the top of his head questioningly.

“I see what’s on your mind,” Goldstone answered. “You’re blaming him for the Germans of today.”

“I don’t,” cried Leventhal. “But why are you so glad to have one word of praise from Bismarck, and cockeyed praise too?”

“Why do you have it in for Disraeli?” demanded Harkavy.

“I don’t have it in for him. But he wanted to lead England. In spite of the fact that he was a Jew, not because he cared about empires so much. People laughed at his nose, so he took up boxing; they laughed at his poetic silk clothes, so he put on black; and they laughed at his books, so he showed them. He got into politics and became the prime minister. He did it all on nerve.”

“Oh, come on,” Harkavy said.

“On nerve,” Leventhal insisted. “That’s great, I’ll give you that. But I don’t admire it. It’s all right to overcome a weakness, but it depends how and it depends what you call a weakness… Julius Caesar was sick with epilepsy. He learned to ride with his hands behind his back and slept on the bare ground like a common soldier. What was the reason? His disease. Why should we admire people like that? Things that are life and death to others are only a test to them. What’s the good of such greatness?”

“Why, you’re succumbing yourself to all the things that are said against us,” Harkavy began in an upbraiding tone.

“No, I don’t think I am,” said Leventhal. He declined to argue further. He had already said too much and he gave notice by the drop of his voice that he intended to say no more.

A Filipino busboy came to clear the table. He was an old man and frail looking, and his hands and forearms were whitened by immersions in hot water. The cart loaded, he bent his back low over it, receiving the handlebar in his chest, and pushed away slowly. Behind the steam tables, one set of white-lettered menu boards was hauled down and another sent up in the steel frame with a clash.

“I have seen only one actor do Disraeli,” said Goldstone. “That was George Arliss.”

“Made for the part, that man,” Shifcart asserted.

“Him I liked in that,” said Schlossberg. “You’re right, Jack, he was made for it. He had the right face to play it, with his thin lips and long nose.”

“Somehow I’ve passed up all the Victorias,” remarked Gold-stone. “I haven’t seen a single one.”

“So what have you missed?” said Schlossberg. “A successful Victoria I have yet to see.”

It was a slow hour in the restaurant. On all sides there were long perspectives of black-topped tables turned on an angle to appear diamond-shaped, each with its symmetrical cluster of sugar, salt, pepper, and napkin box. From end to end their symmetry put a kind of motion into the almost empty place. At the rear, under the scene of groves painted on the wall, some of the employees sat smoking, looking toward the sunlight and the street.

“I have seen good ones,” Shifcart contended. “Don’t you like any of them?”

“No. One thing is why there should be so many Victorias. Maybe it’s because she was so plain. An ordinary-looking queen has a lot of appeal these days. Everything has to be pulled down a little. Isn’t it so? Why is she so popular?” He held out his hands to them as though soliciting a better answer. “She loved Albert; she was stubborn; she was a good housekeeper. It goes over.”

“I thought Eunice Sherbarth was a good Victoria,” said Harkavy.

“She’s a healthy, beautiful lady; it’s a pleasure to look at her,” said Schlossberg.

“So what’s the matter?” asked Shifcart. “She can’t act? You only wish you had her contract, Schlossberg.”

“Why not?” Schlossberg admitted. “As long as I’m wishing, I’d like to be thirty years old today with death a little farther off than it is. Besides, my pants are shiny. And who can’t use money? She must make plenty, I can imagine. And partly she has it coming because she’s good to look at. But act? I could play a better Victoria myself.” And indeed he could, thought Leventhal with more respect than amusement, if his voice weren’t so deep.

“Yes, in skirts you could be a hit,” said Shifcart.

“Anybody could be a hit today,” Schlossberg replied. “With the public so crazy to be pleased. It’s a regular carnival. Everybody is on the same side with illusion. Tell me, Jack, do you think you have ever discovered a good actress?”

“You mean an artist, I suppose, not a little type like Waters.”

“I mean an actress.”

“Then I say Livia Hall.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Impossible,” said Shifcart. “A pair of chopsticks.”

Shifcart’s stout neck grew red in patches and he said, a shade away from anger, “She is not a cheap success. Not everybody is so hard to satisfy, Schlossberg. It looks like it’s a big job to entertain you and maybe nobody does.”

“You are a tough critic, Marcus,” Goldstone said.

“Do I make up the specifications?” said Schlossberg. “ Narischer mensch ! I’m speaking for you, too. This is not the public. Between ourselves we can tell the truth, can’t we? What’s the matter with the truth? Everything comes in packages. If it’s in a package, you can bring the devil in the house. People rely on packages. If you will wrap it up, they will take it.”

“I didn’t claim the woman was Ellen Terry. I only said she was a good actress. You have to admit, Schlossberg, she’s got some ability.”

“For some things, maybe. Not too much.”

“But some?”

“Yes, some,” Schlossberg carelessly granted.

“ Something at last pleases him, thank God!” Shifcart said.

“I try to give everybody credit,” declared the old man. “I am not a knocker. I am not too good for this world.”

No one contradicted him.

“Well,” he said. “And what am I kicking for?” He checked their smiles, holding them all with his serious, worn, blue gaze. “I’ll tell you. It’s bad to be less than human and it’s bad to be more than human. What’s more than human? Our friend-” he meant Leventhal, “was talking about it before. Caesar, if you remember, in the play wanted to be like a god. Can a god have diseases? So this is a sick man’s idea of God. Does a statue have wax in its ears? Naturally not. It doesn’t sweat, either, except maybe blood on holidays. If I can talk myself into it that I never sweat and make everybody else act as if it was true, maybe I can fix it up about dying, too. We only know what it is to die because some people die and, if we make ourselves different from them, maybe we don’t have to? Less than human is the other side of it. I’ll come to it. So here is the whole thing, then. Good acting is what is exactly human. And if you say I am a tough critic, you mean I have a high opinion of what is human. This is my whole idea. More than human, can you have any use for life? Less than human, you don’t either.”

He made a pause — it was not one that invited interruption — and went on.

“This girl Livia in The Tigress . What’s the matter with her? She commits a murder. What are her feelings? No love, no hate, no fear, no lungs, no heart. I’m ashamed to mention what else is missing. Nothing! The poor husband. Nothing is killing him, less than human. A blank. And it should be so awful the whole audience should be afraid positively to look in her face. But I don’t know if she’s too pretty or what to have feelings. You see right away she has no idea what is human because her husband’s death doesn’t mean to her a thing. It’s all in packages, and first the package is breathing and then it isn’t breathing, and you insured the package so you can marry another package and go to Florida for the winter. Now maybe somebody will answer me, ‘This sounds very interesting. You say less than human, more than human. Tell me, please, what is human?’ And really we study people so much now that after we look and look at human nature — I write science articles myself — after you look at it and weigh it and turn it over and put it under a microscope, you might say, ‘What is all the shouting about? A man is nothing, his life is nothing. Or it is even lousy and cheap. But this your royal highness doesn’t like, so he hokes it up. With what? With greatness and beauty. Beauty and greatness? Black and white I know; I didn’t make it up. But greatness and beauty?’ But I say, ‘What do you know? No, tell me, what do you know? You shut one eye and look at a thing, and it is one way to you. You shut the other one and it is different. I am as sure about greatness and beauty as you are about black and white. If a human life is a great thing to me, it is a great thing. Do you know better? I’m entitled as much as you. And why be measly? Do you have to be? Is somebody holding you by the neck? Have dignity, you understand me? Choose dignity. Nobody knows enough to turn it down.’ Now to whom should this mean something if not to an actor? If he isn’t for dignity, then I tell you there is a great mistake somewhere.”