Saul Bellow - The Victim

“Who’s this customer?” Leventhal said to himself. “An actor if I ever saw one. My God, my God, what kind of a fish is this? One of those guys who want you to think they can see to the bottom of your soul.” He tried to stare him down, only now realizing how insolent he was. But the man did not go. He was taller than Leventhal but not nearly so burly; large-framed but not robust. “If he starts something,” Leventhal thought, “I’ll grab his right arm and pull him off balance… No, his left arm and pull towards my left; that’s my stronger side. And when he’s going down I’ll give him a rabbit punch. But why should he start anything? There’s no reason.”

He was squared and resolute; nevertheless there was a tremor in his arms, and during all of it he felt that he himself was the cause of his agitation and suspicion, with his unreliable nerves. Then in astonishment he heard the stranger utter his name.

“What, do you know me?” he asked loudly.

“Do I? You’re Leventhal, aren’t you? Why shouldn’t I know you? I thought you might not recognize me, though. We met only a few times, and I suppose I look a little different than I used to.”

“Oh, Allbee, isn’t it? Allbee?” Leventhal said slowly, with gradual recognition.

“Kirby Allbee. So you do recognize me?”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Leventhal, but he said it rather indifferently. What if it were Kirby Allbee? And he certainly looked changed, but what of that?

Just then several people in the line pushed against him. It was his turn at the spout and, as he took a swallow of the warm water, he looked sidewise at Allbee. The woman who had preceded him — she was painted heavily and looked like a chorus girl who had slipped out of the theater for a breath of air — was in Allbee’s way, and while he was trying to step aside, caught in the circle around the spout, Leventhal walked off.

He had never liked this Allbee, but he had never really thought much about him. How was it, then, that his name came to him so readily? He had a poor memory for names; still he saw the man and recognized him in a moment. “What a box, the mind,” Leventhal thought with something approaching a smile. “You’d just as soon expect hair to grow in your hand as some of the things that come out of it.”

“Hey, wait!”

Allbee was dodging through the crowd after him. “What does he want?” Leventhal irritably asked himself.

“Wait, where are you going?”

Leventhal did not answer. What business was it of his?

“Are you going home?”

“Yes, by and by,” he said distantly.

“Well, now you’ve found out that I still exist and you’re going home, is that it?” He had a curious smile.

“Why should I doubt that you exist?” Leventhal was smiling also, but without much mirth. “Is there any reason why you shouldn’t? I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

“I mean that you just wanted to have a look at me.”

“Pardon?” said Leventhal. He drew up his brows. “To have a look?”

“Yes, I think you did want to, to see how I’ve made out. The results.”

“I came out to cool off a little.” He was beginning to be really annoyed. “What makes you think you’ve got anything to do with it?”

“Well, I didn’t expect this,” Allbee said. “Of course, I didn’t know what to expect. I wondered what line you were going to take with me.” He brought his lips together as if to hold back laughter, slightly jeering, presumptuous, and drew his hand down his cheek over the blond bristles, and all the while his deeply ringed eyes looked angrily into Leventhal’s. He appeared to be saying that he knew perfectly well what he was saying and that it was effrontery and bad acting to deny it. “Just like a bad actor to accuse everyone of bad acting,” thought Leventhal, but he was troubled nevertheless. What was he after? He studied Allbee more closely; until now he had not noticed how seedy he looked, like one of those men you saw sleeping off their whisky on Third Avenue, lying in the doorways or on the cellar hatches, dead to the cold or the racket or the straight blaze of the sun in their faces. He drank, too; that was certain. His voice was thick. He had fair hair parted in the center over his large forehead, moist in the lamplight. He wore a flimsy shirt of material that must have been imitation silk; it opened on the chest on the dirty hem of an undershirt; his light cotton suit was soiled.

“The fact remains that you wanted to see me,” he resumed.

“You’re mistaken.”

“Well, you got my letter, didn’t you? And I asked you to meet me here tonight…?”

“You wrote me a letter? What in the world for? I never got a letter from you. I don’t understand this.”

“Neither do I; if you didn’t get it, this would be quite a coincidence. But,” he went on, smiling, “of course you’re pretending you didn’t get the letter.”

“Why should I pretend?” said Leventhal excitedly. “What reason have I got to pretend? I don’t know what letter you’re talking about. You haven’t got anything to write me for. I haven’t thought about you in years, frankly, and I don’t know why you think I care whether you exist or not. What, are we related?”

“By blood? No, no… heavens!” Allbee laughed.

Leventhal stared into his laughing face and then began to walk away, whereupon Allbee thrust his arm straight before him and held him back. Leventhal grasped it, but he did not jerk according to his plan. He felt no resistance to his grip. It was he rather than Allbee who was off balance, and he removed his hand; he appeared to scowl — in reality he was clearing his throat — and he said, not at all loudly, “What do you want?”

“Oh, that’s more sensible.” Allbee straightened his shoulders and pulled down his cuffs. “I don’t want to wrestle. I’m probably no match for you. I wanted to talk. I didn’t think there would be any physical violence. That’s not how you people go about things. Not with violence.”

“What people are you talking about?” asked Leventhal.

Allbee did not reply to this. “I wanted to take up a few things with you, which is why I wrote,” he said.

“I tell you again, I never got a letter from you.”

“So you’re sticking to that.” Allbee smiled deprecatingly as though wondering why Leventhal refused every opportunity to get rid of this clumsy pretense. “Then why are you here? You wanted to see but not be seen, and you’re mad because you got caught.”

“I’m here because I live down the street a way. Why don’t you own up instead that you wanted to catch me. God only knows what for and what you’ve got to say.”

Allbee moved his large face from side to side in denial. “It’s the other way around. You knew I was here… well, it’s immaterial. As for what I have to say to you, I’ve got plenty to say. But you know that.”

“That’s news to me, too.”

Allbee grinned at him with an intimation of a shared secret that aroused and vexed Leventhal, and sickened him.

“Let’s sit down,” Allbee proposed.

“Damn him, he’s got me, he’s got hold of me,” Leventhal thought. “He’s become some kind of a crank. I shouldn’t have gone out. I should have tried to sleep, after the day I’ve had.”

They found a place on a bench.

“I haven’t got much time. I get up early. What do you want?”

Allbee regarded him. “You’ve become stouter,” he said. “Darker, too. How much do you weigh?”

“About two hundred and ten.”

“That’s too much. It’s bad for your heart to carry so much weight. Don’t you feel it in this weather? I’ll bet your heart takes a beating from it. You have a lot of stairs to climb.”

“How do you know that?”