Saul Bellow - The Victim

ON some nights New York is as hot as Bangkok. The whole continent seems to have moved from its place and slid nearer the equator, the bitter gray Atlantic to have become green and tropical, and the people, thronging the streets, barbaric fellahin among the stupendous monuments of their mystery, the lights of which, a dazing profusion, climb upward endlessly into the heat of the sky.

On such a night, Asa Leventhal alighted hurriedly from a Third Avenue train. In his preoccupation he had almost gone past his stop. When he recognized it, he jumped up, shouting to the conductor, “Hey, hold it, wait a minute!” The black door of the ancient car was already sliding shut; he struggled with it, forcing it back with his shoulder, and squeezed through. The train fled, and Leventhal, breathing hard, stared after it, cursing, and then turned and descended to the street.

He was bitterly irritated. He had spent the afternoon with his sister-in-law, his brother’s wife, in Staten Island. Or, rather, he had wasted it because of her. Soon after lunch she had phoned him at the office — he was an editor of a small trade magazine in lower Manhattan — and immediately, with terrible cries, she implored him to come out, to come at once. One of the children was sick.

“Elena,” he said as soon as he was able to make himself heard, “I’m busy. So I want you to control yourself now and tell me: is it really serious?”

“Come right away! Asa, please! Right away!”

He pressed the tip of his ear as if to protect himself from her shrillness and muttered something about Italian excitability. Then the connection was broken. He hung up, expecting her to ring again, but the phone remained silent. He did not know how to reach her; his brother was not listed in the Staten Island directory. She was calling either from a store or from a neighbor’s house. For a long time, Leventhal had had very little to do with his brother and his brother’s family. Only a few weeks ago he had received a card from him postmarked Galveston. He was working in a shipyard. At the time, Leventhal had said to his wife, “First Norfolk, now Texas. Anything is better than home.” It was the old story; Max had married young and now he was after novelty, adventure. There were plenty of shipyards and jobs in Brooklyn and Jersey. Meanwhile Elena was burdened with the care of the children.

Leventhal had told her the truth. He was busy. A pile of unchecked proofs lay before him. He moved away the phone after waiting a few minutes and, making an impatient noise in his throat, picked up a piece of copy. No doubt the child was sick, probably seriously sick, or she wouldn’t have carried on so. And, since his brother was away, it was somewhat in the nature of a duty to go. He would go this evening. It couldn’t be so urgent. It was just beyond Elena’s power to speak calmly about anything. He told himself this several times; nevertheless her cries continued to sound in his ears together with the windy thrum of the long-stemmed electric fans and the tick of typewriters. What if it were really critical? And suddenly, impulsively, meanwhile condemning himself for it, he got up, pulled his jacket from the back of the chair, went to the girl at the switchboard, and said, “I’m going in to see Beard. Buzz him for me, will you?”

With his hands in his hind pockets, pressing against his chief’s desk, bending toward him slightly, Leventhal announced quietly that he had to go out.

Mr Beard’s face, a face enlarged by baldness, with a fierce bony nose and a veined forehead, took on an incredulous, sharp look.

“With an issue to get ready?” he said.

“It’s a family emergency,” said Leventhal.

“Can’t it wait a few hours?”

“I wouldn’t go if I thought it could.”

Mr Beard made a short, unpleasant answer to this. He slapped his metal ruler on the pages of the type-book. “Use your own judgment,” he said. There was nothing further to be said, but Leventhal lingered beside the desk hoping for something more. Mr Beard covered his blemished forehead with a trembling hand and studied an article silently.

“Goddammed fish!” said Leventhal to himself.

A thundershower began when he approached the outside door. He watched it for a while. The air was suddenly as blue as siphon glass. The blind side wall of the warehouse on the corner was streaked black, and the washed paving stones and tar seams shone in the curved street. Leventhal returned to the office to get his raincoat, and as he was going down the hall he heard Mr Beard sayirig in that nagging, prosecuting voice of his, “Walks out right in the middle of everything. Right in a pinch. With everybody else swamped.”

Another voice which he identified as that of Mr Fay, the business manager, answered, “It’s funny that he should just pick up and go. There must be something up.”

“Takes unfair advantage,” Mr Beard continued. “Like the rest of his brethren. I’ve never known one who wouldn’t. Always please themselves first. Why didn’t he offer to come back later, at least?”

Mr Fay said nothing.

Expressionless, Leventhal put on his raincoat. His arm caught in the sleeve, and he pushed it through violently. He walked out of the office with his rather hulking stride, halting in the anteroom to draw a drink from the glass cooler. While waiting for the elevator, he discovered that he was still holding the paper cup. Crumpling it, he threw it with an energetic swing between the bars into the shaft.

The trip to the ferry was short, and Leventhal did not take off his rubber coat in the subway. The air was muggy; his face grew damp. The blades of the fan turned so slowly in the gloomy yellow light that he could count the revolutions. The shower was over by the time he reached the street, and when the boat rode out of the slip over the slight swell, the sun came out again. Leventhal stood in the open, his coat slung over his shoulder, the folds gathered in his hand. There was a slow heave about the painted and rusted hulls in the harbor. The rain had gone out to the horizon, a dark band far overreaching the faint marks of the shore. On the water the air was cooler, but on the Staten Island side the great tarnished green sheds were sweltering, the acres of cement widely spattered with sunlight. The disembarking crowd spread through them, going toward the line of busses that waited at the curb with threshing motors, in a shimmer of fumes.