Saul Bellow - The Victim

At noon the receptionist rang to say that there was a man in the waiting-room looking for him.

“What’s his name?”

“He didn’t give any.”

“Well, ask him, will you?” The phone went silent. There was no response when he tried to signal her a few minutes later. He walked into the aisle to look at the switchboard. Her place was vacant. He took his straw hat from the hook and put it on. It had been his first guess that the visitor was Max. Max, however, would have given his name. It was probably Allbee. So much for his promise not to bother him at work. The waiting-room was deserted. Leventhal, trying to force open the opaque glass slide to see whether she had returned to her switchboard by another entrance, heard her behind him. She was coming through the office door.

“Well, did you locate him?”

“Yes, he’s in the corridor, but he doesn’t want to give his name or come in.” She was laughing, perplexed, and her small eyes seemed to ask Leventhal what was up. He stepped into the corridor.

Allbee was watching the cables and the rising weight at the back of the elevator shaft. He was carrying his jacket wrapped around his arm; his face was yellow and unshaven, his soiled shirt open; he stood loose-hipped, one hand bent against his chest. His shoes were untied. He appeared to have dragged on his clothes as soon as he got out of bed and set out, without losing a second, to see him. No wonder the girl had laughed. But Leventhal was not really disturbed either by her laughing or by Allbee himself. The lower half of the red globe above the doors lit up and the elevator sprang to a soft stop. He and Allbee crowded in among the girls from the commercial school upstairs.

“Nice,” Allbee whispered. They were forced to stand close. Leventhal could scarcely move his arms. “Nice little tender things. Soon you and I, we’ll be too old to take notice.” Leventhal was silent. “Last night he was crying for his wife,” he was thinking as they sank slowly along the wall.

Allbee followed him through the lobby and into the street.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to come around?” said Leventhal.

“You’ll notice that I waited outside.”

“Well, I don’t want you around. I told you that.”

Allbee’s eyes shone at him with reproachful irony. They were quite clear, considering how drunk he had been. His voice was thick, however. “I promised you I wasn’t going to make trouble for you here. Since things are like this between us, you ought to have a little faith in me.”

“Yes?” said Leventhal. “How are things between us?”

“Besides, I had a look at the goings-on inside. That’s not for me.”

“Well, what’s on your mind? Make it quick. I have to have lunch and get right back.”

Allbee was slow to begin. Could it be, Leventhal wondered, that he was unprepared and improvising something? Or was it part of his game to appear awkward, like this?

“I know you’re suspicious of me,” he finally said.

“Come on, let’s have it.”

He wiped his hand over his eyes. There were lines of strain about the root of his nose.

“I’ve got to get myself in motion.”

“What, are you going away?”

“No, I didn’t say I was. Well, yes, as soon as I can. That’s understand. I mostly wanted to say…” He reflected. “I was in dead earnest last night; I want to do something about myself. But before I can start there are certain things I’ll have to have… clean up, make myself look a little more. respectable. I can’t approach anybody this way.”

Leventhal agreed.

“I should get a haircut. And this shirt,” he plucked at it. “My suit should be cleaned. Pressed, at least. I need some money.”

“You find money for whisky. You don’t have any trouble about that.”

Allbee’s look was earnest and even somewhat impressive, despite the sullen sickliness of his face.

“I suppose you weren’t drunk last night. What did you do it on, sink water?”

“That was absolutely the last of Flora’s money, the last few dollars. The last connection with her,” he uttered the words slowly, “in something tangible.”

Leventhal raised his eyes to him skeptically. His gaze contained all the comment he thought necessary. He shrugged and turned his face away.

“I didn’t expect you to approve of that or even sympathize. You people, by and large — and this is only an observation, nothing else, take it for what it’s worth — you can only tolerate feelings like your own. But this was good-by to my wife. That wasn’t sentimental. Just the opposite. To get a haircut or a new shirt with those last few dollars of hers would have been sentimental. Worse. That would have been hypocrisy.” His large lips made a burst of disgust. “Hypocritical! The money had to go the way the rest did. It would have been cheap and dishonest to use the last dime differently from the first.”

“In other words, it was all for your wife.”

“It was. I wasn’t going to use a single cent of it to advance myself with. I felt bound to do it that way no matter how much it hurt me. And it did hurt me.” He put his hand to his breast. “But this way I’ve been decent, at least. I didn’t become a success at her expense. I didn’t become what I wasn’t before she died. And consequently I can face myself today.” He stood swaying over him, ungainly, his mouth beginning to swell out derisively. “You wouldn’t have done that, Leventhal.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to,” Leventhal said disgustedly.

“It’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been touched. Wait till you’re touched.”

“Pardon?”

“Wait till something happens to your wife.”

Leventhal blazed up. “You stop that harping on something happening… and that hinting. You’ve done it before. Damn you, you stop!”

“I don’t want anything to happen,” Allbee said. “All I’ve been trying to show is that you’ve been luckier than I. But you shouldn’t forget that luck cuts both ways and be prepared, and when you’re in my position— if you ever are. That’s the whole thing, that if .” He had recovered his favorite key and he brightened. “ If swings us around by the ears like rabbits. But if …! And you have to square it with yourself, every mistake you ever made, all your sins against her, then maybe you’ll admit it isn’t so simple. That’s all I want to say.”

“Oh, now we’re on my sins.”

“I’m not talking about cheating on your wife. I don’t know how it stands, but that’s a very unimportant part of it — your cheating on her, or her cheating on you. What I’m talking about holds good regardless. You mustn’t forget you’re an animal. There’s where a lot of unnecessary trouble begins. Not that I’m in favor of infidelity. You know how I feel about marriage. But you see a lot of marriages where one partner takes too much from the other. When a woman takes too much from a man, he tries to recover what he can from another woman. Likewise the wife. Everybody tries to work out a balance. Nature is too violent for human ideals, sometimes, and ideals ought to leave it plenty of room. However, we’re not monkeys, either, and it’s the ideals we ought to live for, not nature. That brings us back to sins and mistakes. I heard of a case…”

Leventhal cried, “Do you think I’m going to stand here and listen to your cases?”

“I thought you might be interested,” Allbee said pacifyingly.

“Well, I’m not.”

“All right.”

Leventhal started toward the restaurant and Allbee walked beside him. The slanting parallels of shadow from the elevated tracks passed over them. The windows and window metals trembled and flashed.

“Where do you eat around here?”