He just then observed great agitation in Elena and began to pay attention to the conversation. He heard the doctor speaking of the hospital and he thought, “She can’t keep the kid here any more. She’ll have to give in.”
“I told her yesterday she ought to send him to the hospital,” he said.
Elena still resisted. “But why isn’t it just as good for him at home? Better. I can look after him better than a nurse.”
“He’s got to go if you want me to take the case.”
“But what’s the matter here?” she pleaded.
“Has to be done,” said the doctor knocking up the clips of his bag.
“Should I go for a cab?” Philip softly asked his uncle.
Leventhal nodded. Philip ran from the room.
6
THE doctor told Leventhal on the way back to Manhattan that he thought — though he needed more evidence to confirm the diagnosis — Mickey had a bronchial infection of a rare kind. He named it two or three times, and Leventhal tried to fix it in his mind but failed. Such cases were serious; not necessarily fatal, however. “You think you’ll be able to help him, doctor?” he asked in great eagerness, and the doctor’s word of hope raised his spirits. The boat moved out; the immense golden crowns of light above the sheds now had space to play on the water between the stern and the shore. “I was going to wire my brother to come,” said Leventhal — he had already explained that he was not the father. The doctor answered that he didn’t think it was necessary at present. It was enough to tell him to stand by. Leventhal accepted this as sensible advice. Why create a scare now? It wasn’t so critical after all. He would send Max a night letter and let him decide for himself whether to come or wait. The ferry crawled in the heat and blackness of the harbor. The mass of passengers on the open deck was still, like a crowd of souls, each concentrating on its destination. The thin discs of the doctor’s spectacles were turned to the sky, both illumined in the same degree by the bulb over his head. Leventhal wanted to ask him more about the disease. It was rare. Well, did medicine have any idea how a thing like that singled out a child in Staten Island rather than, say, St Louis or Denver? One child in thousands. How did they account for it? Did everyone have it dormant? Could it be hereditary? Or, on the other hand, was it even more strange that people, so different, no two with the same fingerprints, did not have more individual diseases? Freed from his depression by the doctor’s encouragement, he had a great desire to talk. He would have liked to discuss this but he had already asked the name of the disease several times and failed to retain it, and so the doctor must have a poor opinion of him. And maybe he would be condescending to a layman. Accordingly, Leven-thal was silent and thought, “Well, let it ride.” But he continued to wonder about it. They said that God was no respecter of persons, meaning that there were the same rules for everybody. Where was that? He tried to remember.
They were in the middle of the harbor when the heat was suddenly lifted by a breeze. High and low between the shores, the lights of ships, signals, and bridges drifted and ran, curved, and stood riding on the swell, and the sonorous, rather desolate bells rang from the water when the buoys were stirred. The breeze blew a spray to the deck, and the boat now and then seemed to tremble to the pull of the ocean beyond the islands. As they neared the Manhattan side, people began to get up from the benches in the salon; there was a great press when the chains were dropped. Leventhal was separated from the doctor.
He went home on the subway, pushing through the revolving steel gate at his station and breathing the cooler air of the street with deep relief.
He was expecting a letter from Mary — one was about due — and he opened the mailbox swiftly while Nunez’ dog sniffed at his legs. Instead of a letter, Mary had sent two post cards closely covered with writing. She and her mother were starting for Charleston on Friday. The house was sold. They were both well and she hoped he was, too, in spite of the heat. It was fine old Baltimore summer weather — it simply drugged you. The second card was different; there were intimate references on it. Only Mary could write such things on cards for everybody in the world to read. Amused, proud, pleased with her, pleased rather than embarrassed at the possibility that postal clerks had read the cards, he put them in his pocket. “Do I pass inspection?” he demanded of Nunez’ dog. “Blow now.” Stooping he caught the dog’s head and rubbed it. He started up stairs and the animal came after him. “Blow now, I say.” He barred the way with his leg, then whirled inside and slammed the hall-door. “Go home!” he yelled, and laughed uproariously. “Go on home!” He pounded the glass, and the dog barked raucously and leaped at the pane. Leven-thal told one of the neighbors, whom he hardly knew, “The super’s dog is having a fit. Hear him?” An elderly, guarded, pale face gave him an uncertain smile and seemed to listen in awe to the racket in the foyer. Leventhal hurried up with thumping steps, whipping his hat on the banister and entering his flat with a commotion. Dear Mary! If she were only here now to put his arms around and kiss. He flung away his hat and his jacket, pulled off his shoes, and went to open the windows and push aside the curtains. It had turned into a beautiful night. The air was trembling and splendid. The moon had come out; there were wide-spaced stars, and small clouds pausing and then spinning as the cool gusts broke through the heat.
He lit the lamp on the secretary and began to write to his wife. Gnats fell and rose again from the illuminated green blotter. He gave her an account of himself, forgetting that he had felt nervous, restive, and unwell. He said nothing about what had happened at the office. It did not seem worth saying. He wrote swiftly and exuberantly; he discussed the weather, he mentioned that Wilma had drunk the beer, that the parks were terribly crowded. Then he found himself telling her about his nephew, writing with sudden emotion, the words beginning to sprawl as his hand raced. In a changed tone he described Elena. He had been afraid to look at her, he confessed, when she got into the cab and he laid the bundled-up child — she had him in two blankets although the temperature must have been over ninety-on her lap. All the impressions of the moment returned to him — the boy’s eyes with the light of the meter on them, the leathery closeness of the back seat, the driver’s undershot jaw and the long peak of his black cap, Philip’s crying, Villani keeping back the children on the sidewalk. The beating of Leventhal’s heart rose and his tongue became dry. As for his brother… But when he had written Max’s name he stood up and leaned over the paper. He had meant to send the night letter before coming up. The pen was staining his fingers. He dropped it and began looking for his shoes outside the circle of lamplight. He had just found them and was forcing his feet into them without bothering about the laces when his bell rang, piercingly and long. Leventhal straightened up with a grunt of annoyance and surprise. “Now who in the name of hell would ring like that?” he said. But he already knew who it was. It was Allbee. It must be. He opened the door and listened to the regular sibilance and knocking of the footsteps in the hollow stair well. It occurred to him that he could escape Allbee by going to the roof. If he went out stealthily he could still get away. And if he were followed, the next rooftop was only a matter of six inches away, an easy step over. Then he could get into the street and good-by. He could go even now. Even now. Yet he stood firm and strangely enough he felt that he had proved something by doing so. “I won’t give ground,” he thought. “Let him. Why should I?” He promptly went back to his letter, leaving the door open. He finished it abruptly with a few perfunctory sentences and read it over. He wrote “All my love,” signed his name, addressed the envelope, and by that time Allbee was in the room. He knew that he had come in; nevertheless he controlled his desire to turn. He stamped the envelope first, sealed it, momentarily guessed at its weight, and only then did he appear to take notice of his visitor, who smiled at him without parting his lips. To enter without a knock or invitation was an intrusion. Of course the door was open, but it was taking too much for granted all the same not to knock. Leventhal thought there was a trace of delight in the defiance of Allbee’s look. “I owe him hospitality, that’s how he behaves,” passed through his mind.