Saul Bellow - The Victim

“I don’t observe the holiday,” said Leventhal deliberately and dryly.

“Oh, of course not,” said Allbee, and he again began to smile. He added, a second later, “As far as ‘following’ is concerned, that’s not the way to put it. I have a perfect right to see you. You act as if I had some kind of game, whereas you’re the one that’s playing a game.”

“How do you figure that?”

Allbee raised his hand. “You pretend that I haven’t got a grievance against you. That’s playing.” His fingers brushed over his chest, and then he covered his mouth and cleared his throat.

“Say… with the kid — stuff like that has got to stop.”

“I didn’t know he was with you.”

“Not much! Well, I’m telling you. Besides, I told you the first time, I never wanted to do you any harm.”

“We differ about that. And there was a second time, too.” He gave an illustrative push that stopped short of Leventhal’s shoulders. “That was a little too much game for me. Or were you trying to scare me off?”

“If I was, you mean that I can’t, huh?”

“Well,” Allbee suggested, “you might have sent me to the hospital and gotten rid of me that way for a while.” He grinned. “You said you should have broken my neck.”

Leventhal said contemptuously, “But otherwise… to scare you? It’s impossible to scare you, isn’t it?”

“A year ago I couldn’t have come to you. But now that I’ve done it, made up my mind, it is impossible.”

“What was different a year ago?” asked Leventhal.

“Then I was getting by, somehow, and I wouldn’t have thought of coming near you,” he said quite seriously.

“And now?”

“My wife left me some money. It wasn’t a lot, but I stretched it. As long as it lasted — why, if I were still getting by you’d never hear from me. I’ll say it again. But maybe I don’t have a real sense of honor or I wouldn’t put myself in such a position. I mean real honor. There’s no getting away from it, I suppose, honor is honor. Either you’ve got it up to here,” he drew a line across his throat, “or you haven’t got it. It doesn’t make you any happier to tell yourself you ought to have it. It’s like anything else that counts. You have to make sacrifices to it. You know, I’m from an old New England family. As far as honor’s concerned, I’m not keeping up standards very well, I admit. Still, if I was born with my full share of it, in New York I’d have an even worse handicap. Oh, boy! — New York. Honor sure got started before New York did. You won’t see it at night, hereabouts, in letters of fire up in the sky. You’ll see other words. Such things just get swallowed up in these conditions — modern life. So I’m lucky I didn’t inherit more of a sense of it. I’d be competing with Don Quixote. Now with you it’s different, altogether. You’re right at home in this, like those what-do-you-call “ems that live in the flames — salamanders. If somebody hurts you, you hit back in any way and anything goes. That’s how it is here. It’s rugged. And I can appreciate it. Of course, the kind of honor I’m familiar with doesn’t allow that. Mine tells me not to ask for damages, and so on. But I have it in diluted form; that’s obvious.”

Allbee said this conversationally, in a factual manner; nevertheless Leventhal heard the spiteful ring in it. But he evinced no feeling and made no comment.

“I have an idea that it’s one of those things that’s bound to go-”

“You went through the money,” Leventhal said, disregarding the rest. “Why didn’t you get a job?”

“What did I want to work for? What sort of a job could I get anyhow? Nobody would give me what I wanted. And do you think I could take a leg job, like a high-school kid? An errand boy? Besides, I was in no hurry. Why should I be?”

“Were you black-listed?” Leventhal was unable to conceal his concern. “Is that the reason?”

Allbee did not reply to this directly. “Why, Rudiger wouldn’t have taken me back even to empty his ash trays.”

After this they were both silent for a while. Under its flat rim the ball of the lamp nearby began to shine in the gray and blue depth of the air, revealing suddenly the perspiration on Allbee’s face. The rings under his eyes gave him an aspect of suffering anger and hate. Yet he seemed unaware of any exposure and spoke evenly.

“No, I didn’t want to work,” he said. “I had a hell of a time after my wife was killed and I decided to take myself off the market for a while. I lived like a gentleman.”

Leventhal said grimly to himself, “Oh, gentleman. It looks like it. A marvelous gentleman.”

“Well, what do you want from me?” he asked Allbee. “You lived like a gentleman. I guess that means getting up at eleven or twelve every day. I get up at seven and go to my job. You’ve had a long vacation. Still you want me to do something for you. I don’t know what you want. What do you want?”

“I could use some help. The vacation’s lasted a little too long.”

“What sort of help?”

“I don’t know what sort. I wanted to take that up with you. You could help me if you wanted to. You must have connections. I’d like to get away from my old line, something new, a complete change.”

“For example?”

“Do you think you can get something for me in a bank?”

“Oh, you want to go straight where they keep it, where the money is,” said Leventhal.

“Or a brokerage firm?”

“Stop your joking,” Leventhal said somewhat sharply. “I don’t care for the sort of jokes you make. I’m not under an obligation to you. I’ll do something for you if I can. And just remember, it doesn’t mean I admit anything. I think you’re crazy. But Stan Williston thinks I ought to help you, and out of respect for him I’ll try.”

“What!” exclaimed Allbee. “You discussed me with Williston? What did you tell him about me?”

“Qh, you don’t like that? No, I see you don’t,” said Leventhal. I didn’t make anything up.”

“What did you tell him?” he said again, in agitation.

“What do you think I could tell him? Are you afraid I blackened your character? Are you touchy about your reputation? I thought you had lost your sense of honor?”

“You had no business-no damned business!” Allbee cried out in a flash of hatred and with an intensity of shame that disturbed Leventhal in spite of himself.

“Well, you’re a crazy, queer bastard,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? You come to me with this hokum about being too down and out to have any pride left — you can even come to me, and this and that. I knew it was all fake. One minute you’re on the bottom, couldn’t be any lower, and the next you’re a regular Lord Byron.”

There was an interval of silence during which Allbee appeared to be struggling for control over himself. Then he said in a low voice, “Williston is an old friend of mine. I just happen to have special feelings about him and Phoebe. But I guess it really doesn’t make much difference.” He gradually recovered his smile and he remarked, withdrawing his eyes from Leventhal and beginning a protracted, glittering study of the street behind him, “I should have expected you not to miss still another chance to get at me.”

“Are you in your right mind?” Leventhal demanded. “Are you straight in the head? Is it the booze or what? God almighty! Every day I see new twists.” He looked heavenward and gave way to a short laugh. “So help me, it’s like a menagerie. They say you go to the zoo to see yourself in the animals. There aren’t enough animals in the world to see ourselves in. There would have to be a million new feathers and tails. There’s no end to the twists.”