Saul Bellow - The Victim

And he uttered a low, unwilling laugh when he recalled how he had stood, just stood, without the presence of mind to realize that he was being insulted. It did have to do with presence of mind, exactly as in the case of Dunhill, the linotyper who sold him the unwanted ticket. With Allbee there was the added confusion that he brought off his insults with an air of discussion. When he started out, even though he made a crooked joke here and there, he seemed to be speaking impersonally. But all at once he said something in earnest that was terrible. Of course, he was sick. He himself had brought up the subject of disease, so he must be aware of it. But did his sickness, whatever it was, account for what he said, or would good health only have given him the strength to keep it to himself? Some people, gentle to begin with, were kind when they were sick. Leventhal said to himself, impatiently, “There are two billion people or so in the world and he’s miserable. What’s he so special?”

Mrs Nunez was standing on the brownstone stoop. She and her husband had just returned from a Sunday outing. She carried gloves and a red patent-leather bag. Her hat was a white straw with cherries on the brim. Her Indian face was small, but she had an ungainly, full-hipped figure. She wore a close-fitting striped suit, her shoulders were raised, her bosom was high, and her lips were parted as if at the end of a long breath. Mary, whom nothing escaped, had once said about Mrs Nunez’ suits, “I don’t see why she wears them. She could look very pretty in silk prints.” Till then Leventhal had scarcely noticed her. Now, when she said good evening and he nodded to her, he remembered this and had a moment of intense longing for his wife.

“Were you caught in the rain?” said Mrs Nunez.

“No, I slept through the whole storm.”

“We were in Prospect Park to see the flowers. My brother works in the hothouse. My, it was terrible. A tree fell down. The lightning hit it.”

“That must have been frightening.”

“Terrible. We were inside. But I was scared. Oh, awful,” she said with a release of breath. “Your missis coming back already?”

“Not yet.”

She drew the gloves out and worked them with her long brown fingers whose size and strength he noted in absent-minded surprise.

“Coming soon?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, too bad, too bad,” she said in her light, flat, rapid way. Leventhal had often paused at the Nunez’ door to listen, entertained, to their quick-running Spanish, not a word of which he understood. “Too bad,” she repeated, and Leventhal, with a glance of surmise at her small face under the white brim, wondered what hint her sympathy might contain. There was a burst of music above them; a window was thrown open.

“I’ll be a bachelor for a month or so yet,” he said.

“Oh, maybe you enjoy yourself anyhow; makes you a change for a while.”

“No,” he said bluntly.

He went into the foyer where Nunez’ dog scampered at him, jumping up. He bent and clasped the animal, and rubbed its head. It licked his face and pushed its muzzle into his coat under his sleeve.

“She’s crazy about you,” said Nunez from the doorway. “I think she smells you coming.” He was polishing his glasses with a flowered handkerchief of his wife’s. Beside the bed, in his room, there were beer cans and newspapers.

“That’s a friendly dog. I have a soft spot for dogs myself.”

“Up, Smoke,” said Nunez. “Do hounds ever faint, Mr Leventhal? Sometimes I think this one is going to faint when you rub her belly.”

“I don’t know. Do animals faint? Does anyone faint from pleasure?”

“Somebody,” Nunez joked. {A lady with a weak heart, maybe. Look a” that, on her back. Look a” that chest on her.”. He put on his glasses and held the edge of the door. The red of the foyer and the yellow of his flat were drawn on its black panels. His sport shirt was open, and a religious medal swung over the twist of hair between the muscles of his dark, reddish breast.

“Come in and have a beer,” he said.

“I can’t, thanks, I have something to do.” Leventhal remembered that he had not yet reached Elena. It occurred to him, moreover, that Nunez had been a witness to his scuffle with Allbee in the hall. He looked at him uncomfortably and moved toward the stairs.

For the third time he got no answer at Villani’s and he began to be anxious. The Villanis had young children, and young children had to be put to bed. It was already after eight. “Maybe I’d better go out and see Elena and Phil,” he said to himself. “I don’t have anything to do tonight.” But his concealed thought was that Villani’s absence was a bad sign. He set out again, nodding to Mrs Nunez on the stoop as though he saw her for the first time.

He found Villani and the old woman sitting with Philip and Elena in the parlor. They had just returned from the hospital, and he gathered that Mickey was worse. He appeared to be losing weight. Villani betrayed his misgivings by the pitch of his optimism. He cried, “Don’t worry about them, out there. They make them eat. There’s no such thing in a hospital, not eating. They see to it. They can handle the kids; they got experience.” Elena was coldly silent. Evidently she had accused the hospital of not feeding the child. Her look was waxen. Everything — her black hair, dark nostrils, and white lips; her lack of stir at his arrival; even the fact that she was dressed for the street and not in her gingham with the nightgown under it — made Leventhal uneasy.

“Give them time,” said Villani. “He ain’t been there long. What do you say?”

Leventhal gave out a sound of confirmation and glanced from Elena to the old woman in her dark colors. Her lean wrists, marked with raised, dull blue veins, rested in her lap. He observed that her ankles, above her unfashionable black shoes, were swollen — probably from walking the long hospital corridors. Her mouth was thin, the underlip not quite matching the expressionless upper because her chin was sunk. The tilt of her body in the Morris chair, her crossed feet, suggested rest, and yet rest was what she seemed to be resisting, drawing off her shoulders from the cushion behind her. Her eyes, whenever her lids went up, disclosed a fierceness as piercing as a rooster’s. Leventhal, in spite of himself, was arrested by her face. Other people might change themselves still; it was hard, it might not work, but they could try. This woman, as she was, was finished forever.

He took the first opportunity to whisper to Villani that perhaps Max ought to be sent for now, and Villani shut his eyes in agreement. It was serious, then. He would phone the doctor in the morning and get a report. Denisart had promised to tell him when to send for Max.

He got away to the kitchen for a while, ostensibly for a glass of water. Actually he was afraid that if he sat opposite Elena much longer he might lose control of himself. His face might twitch, perhaps, or his voice crack. Worst of all, he might ask her why she thought he was to blame, and that would be utterly wrong and possibly dangerous. She did hold him responsible, plainly. He had urged her to send the boy to the hospital. But the doctor had done that, too. And what could he look for later, if she blamed him now? This was only the beginning, judging from the signs Villani gave; there was more to expect. They themselves, the parents, were responsible insofar as anyone was. Especially Max. Why did he postpone coming home? Because he thought he could get by? He could get by, though, only if Mickey, hanging on in the hospital, got by. Not that Max’s being at home now could make a real difference to the child, but at all events he might not seem so given up to that enormous hospital, and on Max’s side an acknowledgment would be made. After all, you married and had children and there was a chain of consequences. It was impossible to tell, in starting out, what was going to happen. And it was unfair, perhaps, to have to account at forty for what was done at twenty. But unless one was more than human or less than human, as Mr Schlossberg put it, the payments had to be met. Leventhal disagreed about “less than human.” Since it was done by so many, what was it but human? “More than human” was for a much smaller number. But most people had fear in them — fear of life, fear of death, of life more than of death, perhaps. But it was a fact that they were afraid, and when the fear was uppermost they didn’t want any more burdens. At twenty they had vigor and so were careless, and later they felt too weak to be accountable. They said, “Just let me alone, that’s all I ask.” But either they found the strength to meet the costs or they refused and gave way to dizziness — dizziness altogether, the dizziness of pleasures before catastrophes. Maybe you could call it “less than human” to refuse; he liked to think “human” meant accountable in spite of many weaknesses — at the last moment, tough enough to hold. But to go by what happened in the majority of cases, it was the last dizziness that was most typical and had the best claim to the name.