The victim by Saul Bellow Read Free Book Online

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." His wife spoke up. "Don't pay any attention to him," she said. "You sing it very nicely." "Aaah, yes he does," he said contemptuously. "Why, thank you, Mrs Allbee," said Harkavy. "It's a lovely song." "Go on, Dan, go on with it," Phoebe Williston urged him. And Leventhal said, "Sing the rest of it. "I'm going to," Harkavy replied, and began over. "No, no, no!" Allbee broke in again. "You shouldn't sing those old songs. You have to be bred to them." His wife colored and said, "Kirby, don't be like that." "Oh, I don't mind, ma"am." Harkavy drew in his chin and crossed his arms, his round eyes glimmering. "Sing, Dan," said Leventhal. "Sing a psalm. I don't object to your singing. Sing one of the psalms. I'd love to hear it. Go ahead. I would," said Allbee. "I don't know any psalms." "Then any Jewish song. Something you've really got feeling for. Sing us the one about the mother." And with a drunken look of expectancy he bent forward, leaning on his knees, and pretended to prepare to listen. It was apparent to everyone that he was deeply pleased; he smiled at Harkavy and the girl, and he had a glance for Leventhal, too. His wife seemed quietly to dissociate herself from him. The Willistons were embarrassed. Allbee was not merely an acquaintance but a friend, and Williston later tried to make excuses for him and explain away the insult. That was what had happened. Leventhal had naturally been angry, but not for long. He had shrugged it off. Did Allbee think something like that would make him go to such lengths for revenge? He was an idiot if he did. He overestimated the magnitude of the insult and his power to be insulting. Or did he think that on that night he had revealed something that was not plain before? Then he was twice as idiotic. "And if I were mad, is that what I would do?" thought Leventhal. "He gives himself an awful lot of credit for nothing. Who does he think he is?" That he had afterwards asked Allbee for an introduction to Rudiger should have shown how much importance he attached to the incident. At that time, Williston's man had returned from Arizona and Leventhal was looking for another place. Williston gave him a very good reference letter which made it easier to get interviews. However, several months went by before Leventhal was hired by Burke-Beard and Company, and during those months he was despondent and became quarrelsome once again, difficult, touchy, exaggerating, illogical, overly familiar. Reports of this reached Willis-ton, who called him in and lectured him. Leventhal was bitter and suspicious of him and he offered to return the letter -foolishly, he now realized. But he thought that Williston regretted writing it. It was his own idea to approach Allbee about a job at Dill's. Williston endorsed it and may have been instrumental in getting Allbee to introduce him to Rudiger. Or perhaps Allbee agreed in order to make up for his unpleasantness. Williston tried continually to explain it away. You had to know Allbee when he was sober, he said; he was intelligent and decent. His New England upbringing was behind his drinking; there were ministers in his family, influences to throw off, and once he threw them off he would be another man. Leventhal indifferently acknowledged that that might be so; he had no particular grudge against him. "I'll be much obliged to him if he gets me the introduction. What a break if I could land a job with an outfit like that." The interview at Dill's still troubled him. Rudiger kept him waiting for nearly an hour in the reception room and for a few minutes more in his office. He was watching several tugs shouldering a huge