Saul Bellow - The Victim

“Some judge of time, that Nunez,” Leventhal growled, starting up the stairs.

HE fell asleep without difficulty and slept deeply. The alarm clock on the night table awoke him, and he seized it and clapped down the catch. Then he crouched down at the window — he was naked — and looked over the sill. Already, at half-past seven, the street looked deadened with heat and light. The clouds were heavily suspended and slow. To the south and east, the air was brassy, the factories were beginning to smolder and faced massively, India red, brown, into the sun and across the hot green netting of the bridges. There was a hard encircling rumble of trucks and subterranean trains. Nunez was out in front, cleaning the sidewalk with a bucket of water and the stub of a broom. His wife was busy at the window boxes. New white strings stretched up to the lintel; she was leaning out, training vines on them.

Leventhal washed and shaved. Allbee’s note was lying on the kitchen table. He reread it and threw it into the pail beside the sink. He was about to slam down the lid but checked himself — he was behaving as he would have yesterday when he was at the end of his patience — and, almost smiling at himself, he set it in place lightly and pushed the pail toward the wall with his foot. Well, he could have been forgiven yesterday for losing his patience or even his head. What a day! With all that he had weighing on him already, this Allbee shows up to add his little bit. He must have brooded over the affair for years, until he convinced himself that Rudiger had fired him because of that interview. Of course, it was true enough that Rudiger had a rotten bad temper, probably was born bad-tempered, but not even he would fire an employee, not for what the man himself had done but because of someone he had recommended. “How could he?” Leventhal asked himself. “Not a good worker; never.” It was absurd. Allbee must have been fired for drunkenness. When could you get a drinking man to acknowledge that he had gotten into trouble through drinking? Especially when he was far gone? And this Allbee was far gone.

He put on the wrinkled brown summer flannels he had thrown over the foot of the bed last night, and a pair of white shoes. He remembered to shut the windows and draw the drapes. The room was darkened. He took a handkerchief from the dresser and came across a statement on tax deductions for the year, a gloomy reminder of Mr Beard and the office. Instead of keeping such things in the desk where they belonged, Mary had the habit of putting them under the linens. Irritated, he buried the paper deeper and roughly shoved the drawer shut. He went out with a frown. Beard would probably send for him and call him down, ostensibly for some mistake which he would dig up. Or he would delegate someone — he had done that before; perhaps that pinch-nosed, knob-faced little Mil-likan, his son-in-law. “If he sicks him on me.. ” he thought. But he did not know what threat to make. And now it seemed to him that he had rested badly. His legs were tired, his head ached, and his eyes — he examined them in the long mirror in the pillar before the coffeeshop — were bloodshot; he looked drawn. He shook his head in concern. The corners of the glass were flaming with the blue and red of the spectrum.

For a while he was so preoccupied with what awaited him at the office that he forgot about Allbee. He did not think of him again until he was on the subway. He was even less amused than before. From a sober person — that is, from a normal person, someone you would have to reckon with — such an accusation would be no trifle. With Allbee it came out like a stunt: the note, the bell ringing, the acting. And not quite a stunt, for a stunt was done deliberately, whereas it was questionable whether this queer, beaten, probably suffering Allbee was in control of his actions. Suffering? Of course, suffering, Leventhal told himself gravely: down and out, living in a moldy hotel somewhere, hanging out in bars, sleeping whole days, picked up off the streets by the paddywagon or the ambulance, haunted in his mind by wrongs or faults of his own which he turned into wrongs against himself; and that stirring around of the thoughts and feelings, that churning — everybody experienced it, but for a man like that it must be ugly, terrible, those thoughts wheeling around. It was something like this that Leventhal was thinking of when he occasionally said that he had gotten away with it. But (without taking credit for it; he might have fallen in another way) his character was different. Some men behaved as though they had a horse under them and went through life at a gallop. Or thought they could, at any rate. He was not that way.

He had met Allbee several times at Williston’s house. In those unsettled days when he was jobhunting, the Willistons used to give parties frequently. Perhaps they still did; he had not seen them in several years. Because they were room-mates, he and Harkavy were usually invited together. Allbee had shown an antipathy toward Harkavy, and Leventhal recalled that he, as a matter of fact, had been offended by several of Allbee’s remarks and by his attitude generally. Mrs Allbee was a quiet blonde. He wondered what had become of her; had she left him, divorced him? He found that he retained a distinct image of her, of the firmness of her face and the form of her eyes, gray eyes. He had thought her much too good for the husband lounging beside her with a glass, staring at the other guests and smiling. He might have been asked by Williston to classify them, he eyed them so, spread out there on the sofa, large-limbed, his face swelling with smiles. From time to time he made a comment to his wife, fixing his look on someone so that it was uncomfortably evident whom he was talking about. He frequently picked out Harkavy, which Leventhal resented, Harkavy himself seemingly unaware that he was being stared at.

It had to be admitted that Harkavy attracted stares. He liked to talk and at these parties he was easily kindled, for some reason. Any trifle made him enthusiastic, and when he spoke his hands flew and his brows slanted up, sharpening the line of his nose. His eyes were light, round, and depthless, his fair hair was fading back, the curls thinning. Allbee studied him, grinning and curious; Harkavy appeared to delight him. He must have had some witty things to say about him for he sometimes made his wife smile, and as a rule she did not respond to his remarks. Harkavy may have noticed this. Leven-thal had never asked him about it, but perhaps it did light on his consciousness, for all his traits, the Jewish especially, became accentuated. He carried on, giving imitations of auctioneers, in reality burlesquing his father. Leventhal watched, unsmiling and even forbidding. The laughter and the somewhat ambiguous applause, sometimes led by Allbee, seemed to excite Harkavy, and he would start again, working up the bid. The Willistons laughed with the guests, though more moderately and with a trace of anxiety about Allbee. Leventhal himself, at times, could not help joining in. But he was annoyed.

The incident Allbee had referred to occurred one night when Harkavy and a girl he had brought to the party were singing spirituals and old ballads. It was late, and everyone else was silent, rather tired. That evening Harkavy had been a little more restrained than usual. He sang poorly, but at least he did not provoke laughter and was not trying to. Nor did the girl sing well; she hesitated over words. It was pleasant, however. Halfway through a ballad Allbee interrupted; regardless of his denial, he was drunk.

“Why do you sing such songs?” he said. “ You can’t sing them.”

“Why not, I’d like to know?” said the girl.

“Oh, you, too,” said Allbee with his one-cornered smile. “It isn’t right for you to sing them. You have to be born to them. If you’re not born to them, it’s no use trying to sing them.”