Saul Bellow - The Victim

The woman’s look remained with him. So did her scent; it seemed to cling to the rooms. The voices continued in the vestibule. Leventhal went into the dining-room. On the day-bed’s crumpled sheets, the pillow gray, almost black, there were newspapers, underclothes, and socks. Between the curtains, on the sill, he discovered a cup of coffee in which drops of mold floated, and crumbs and scraps of food.

The outer door shut and he strode into the front room.

“Look here,” said Allbee, as soon as he came through the kitchen door. “I thought you were out of town for the week end. You didn’t come home last night. I thought…”

“You thought you’d bring a tramp in from the street.”

“No… now wait.” He gave a hasty, somewhat breathless laugh. “I know I have a fallen nature. I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t. Why all the excitement? You might have given me a few minutes.” He spoke placatingly, with humorous chagrin. He looked sallow and his lips were dry. His smile persisted at the corners covertly, it was boastful.

Leventhal flushed thickly. “In my bed!”

“Well, the day bed is so narrow. No place to take a lady.. I wanted a little more space…” He was by no means sure of himself and his voice wavered as he made the joke. “I fail to see what there is to fuss about.”

“Oh, you don’t see! It gave you a bang to put your whore where I sleep.”

The vehemence of his loathing gave a different turn to Allbee’s smile; it became jeering, and a yellowish hot tinge came over his bloodshot eyes. Leventhal heard him murmur something about “fastidiousness.”

“You hypocrite! I thought you couldn’t get over your wife.”

“Don’t you mention my wife!” Allbee cried.

“Why not, you’re always crying about her, aren’t you?”

“I say don’t! Leave things alone that you can’t understand.”

“What can’t I understand?”

“Not that, for sure!” Allbee said harshly. His face was inflamed; his cheekbones looked as if they had been branded. But he checked himself and slowly the color retreated. Only a few refractory spots remained. He seemed to force himself to make a gesture of retraction. “I mean,” he said, “she’s dead. What does she have to do with it? I have needs, naturally, the same as anybody else.”

“What did she have to do with the other things? You mealy-mouth, you were using her to work on my feelings. All right, what do I care? Go to hell. But you weren’t satisfied that you made this place so filthy I can’t stand to come in; you had to bring this woman into my bed.”

“But what’s there to be so upset about? Where else, if not in bed…?” He looked amused again and blinked his bloodshot eyes. “What do you do? Maybe you have some other way, more refined, different? Don’t you people claim that you’re the same as everybody else? That’s your way of saying that you’re above everybody else. I know.”

“Go get your stuff in the dining-room and clear out. I don’t want any more of you.”

“You don’t care about the woman. You’re just using her to make an issue and break your promise to me. Well, and I thought I had seen everything in the way of cynicism. By God, you could give lessons! I never met anyone who could touch you. I guess there’s an example in the world of everything a man can imagine, no matter how great or how gruesome. You certainly are not the same as everybody else.” He looked at him, keenly, brilliantly, triumphantly insolent. “What do you care about my wife! But your instinct told you where to jab, in the way that insects know where they’ll find the most sap.”

“You dirty phoney!” Leventhal cried huskily. “You ugly bastard counterfeit. I said it because you’re such a liar, with your phoney tears and your wife’s name in your mouth, every second word. The poor woman, a fine life she must have had with you, a freak like you, out of a carnival. You don’t care what you say. You’ll say anything that comes into your head. You’re not even human, if you ask me. No wonder she left you.”

“It’s very interesting that you should take her part. She was like me. What do you think of that? We were alike,” he shouted.

“Well, get out! Beat it! I told you to leave when the woman did.”

“What about your promise?”

Leventhal pushed him toward the door. Allbee fell back a few steps and, seizing a heavy glass ash tray, he aimed it menacingly and cried, “Keep off me!” Leventhal made a rush at him and knocked the ash tray down. Pinning his arms, he wheeled him around and ran him into the vestibule.

“Let go, I’ll leave,” he panted.

The door, as Leventhal jerked it open, hit Allbee in the face. He did not resist when Leventhal thrust him out on the landing and, without looking back, he started down the stairs.

Winded, Leventhal stumbled into a chair, pulled at his collar. The sweat ran into his eyes and a pain, starting at his shoulders, passed downward through his chest. Suddenly he thought, “Maybe he’s still hanging around. I’d better look.” He forced himself up and went to the stairs. Holding the rail, he stared into the shaft. It was silent. He thought as he returned to the flat, “He didn’t even have the courage to fight back. As much as he hates me. And he’s bigger; he could have killed me.” He wondered whether Allbee was stunned by the door when it struck him in the face. The sound of that did not leave him.

He stopped to examine the chain. The staple was only loosened and might have been hammered in. But one of the links had given. He tossed the severed half away. Over the furrows of the rug in the front room there was a long, curving trail of ashes. He wiped his sweat with his sleeve and took in the room, angry, but exultant also; he felt dimly that this disorder and upheaval was part of the price he was obliged to pay for his release.

The radiators were spitting and the room was unendurably hot. He flung up the window and bent out. Instantly he heard the tumultuous swoop of the Third Avenue train rising above the continuous, tidal noise of the street. People were walking among the stripes of light on the pavement, light that came from windows opening on carpeted floors and the shapes of furniture; they passed through the radiance of the glass cage that bulged before the theater and into shadows, tributaries that led into deeper shadows and led, still further on, into mighty holes filled with light and stifled roaring. “Is he around somewhere?” Leventhal asked himself. He doubted that Allbee was near. Certainly he knew he had nothing more to hope for here after tonight. And what he had hoped for in the first place remained a mystery. The idea of an introduction to Shifcart lost all its substance; it was a makeshift demand, improvised. That he was able to see this gave Leventhal the feeling that he was becoming himself again after a long lapse.

The breeze was cooling him too rapidly. He drew his head in, shivering, and sat down, wiping the grit of the sill from his palms. His throat was bitter and raw, and there was a deadening weight in his side. But he sat and rested briefly and soon felt better. When he rose, he began unsystematically to set the flat in order, going slowly and desultorily from task to task.

He stripped the linen from the beds and threw it in the laundry hamper. Then, without taking the trouble to clean out the scraps in the drain, he spilled soap powder over the dishes in the kitchen sink and let the hot water run until the foam boiled up and covered them. He made up his bed with clean sheets, awkwardly shaking the pillows into pillow cases and dragging the bed away from the wall in order to tuck in the blankets. In the dining-room, he turned over the mattress of the day bed and forced up the seldom-opened windows. On one of the chairs he found a glossy haberdasher’s bag with a Second Avenue address. It contained Allbee’s old shirt and a few other articles that he did not examine. He threw the bag into the dumb-waiter, together with the socks and undershirts and the newspapers Allbee had accumulated. Next, in the bathroom, he took down the towels, turned on the shower to rinse the tub, and made an effort to clean the basin. After a few strokes he gave this up and returned the rag to its pipe beneath the sink.