At first he heard no one and he tried to signal the operator. Presently she broke in casually with, “Somebody by the name of Williston, for you.” To restore his self-command, he stopped his breath for an instant. Then he said, “Put him on.” He swung slowly back in the leather-backed chair, pulling a drawer open with the tip of his shoe and throwing bis leg over it.
“Hello,” Williston said.
“Hello, Stan, how’ve you been?”
“Pretty fair.”
“You calling about Allbee?” Leventhal knew perfectly well that this directness was what Williston least wanted; Williston preferred to be roundabout. But why should he permit it?
He did not answer immediately.
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am. Yes, I am,” Williston said, sounding reluctant. “I was wondering if you had seen him.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him. He’s been coming around. As a matter of fact, he showed up last night; said he was kicked out of his rooming house. I put him up. He stayed over.”
“Kicked out?” Williston doubtfully said.
“What’s the matter, you think I’m exaggerating? You haven’t seen him. One look at him and it wouldn’t sound so impossible.”
“What does he aim to do?”
“I wish I could tell, but he probably couldn’t say himself. If you want to know, I think he’s probably sick. There must be something wrong with him.”
Williston seemed to consider this; there was no reply for a while. Then he said, “Hasn’t he given you any clue as to what he wants?”
“Too many clues. I can’t get any single thing out of him, that’s the trouble.” He slipped his leg from the drawer and bent over the desk, cradling the phone in both hands. “You should hear him; you’d find out in a hurry there was something wrong.”
Williston’s voice came back in a drawling laugh. “He’s trying to calm me down,” thought Leventhal, feeling discouraged. “He thinks I’m overdoing the complaining and wants to kid me out of it.”
“Oh, it isn’t that bad, is it?” said Williston.
“It’s plenty bad. You don’t know how bad it is. I tell you, you haven’t seen him or heard what he’s got to say, what his line is. I did go wrong with Rudiger, I know, and that whole business was unfortunate. I won’t try to duck out of it, although I could if I wanted to. But listen, you have no idea what he’s like. Probably the thing to do is to get him a job. Whether he’ll take it or not is another story. Maybe he doesn’t want to work. I can’t tell you. He wants everything, and I don’t think he wants to do anything. He keeps play acting with me.” He stopped and grumbled to himself, “I’ll put him straight whether he wants to be put straight or not.”
“Oh, now, that’s just boyishness,” said Williston. Leventhal was unable to decide to which of them the boyishness was attributed. He hunted for words, bluntly bracing his face against the difficulty of carrying on this conversation. It was purposeless, an added burden.
“Well, maybe you can make a useful suggestion, Stan.”
“I said I’d do whatever I could.” Williston appeared to feel himself accused.
“After all, I’m supposed to be his enemy. You’re his friend.”
He did not hear all of his answer. He only caught a reference to a “practical step” and understood that Williston was impatient with the way the conversation was going.
“Sure I’m in favor of something practical,” he replied. But as soon as the words were out he was aware that he and Williston had swung farther than ever, hopelessly far, from the real issues. Over the telephone the “practical step” was vague enough and when he tried to apply it to Allbee it dissolved into irrelevance. For himself, the practical step was to get rid of the man, and this was not what Williston had in mind. “You think of something,” he urged. “You know him. Maybe you can figure out what would satisfy him.”
“He must have a definite object. If I could talk to him I might find out.”
“How would you get to talk to him? He doesn’t want you to know anything about him. He was mad when he found out I talked to you about him. But I’ll suggest it to him and see what happens.”
“I’ll expect to hear from you, then,” said Williston. “You won’t forget to call, will you?”
“I’ll call you,” Leventhal promised. He hung up and, setting the phone on some of his papers as a weight, he made an abstracted survey of his desk, slipped his jacket from the back of the chair, and started out to lunch.
He went down in the elevator amid a crowd of girls from the commercial school upstairs, largely unconscious of the pleasure that he took in their smooth arms and smooth faces. The elevator sank slowly in the musty shaft with a buzz of signals and a sparking of tiny arrowheads. On the street Leventhal bought a paper and glanced through it in the cafeteria. After lunch, he walked toward the river, passing through the sidewalk markets, between the sacks of coffee beans. The roasting odor was mixed with the smell of gas. The occasional piping of a tug or the low blurt of a steamer came through the trample and jamming of trucks, and booms bristled like the spikes of a maguey, dividing the white of the sky as the piers did that of the water.
He was the first to return to the office; the place was empty. A breeze passed over the papers on the desk or left rolled in the typewriters, and shadowed the green linen blinds on the crosspieces of the windows. He stepped out onto the fire escape to finish his cigar, and had just ground it out on the rail and tossed it into the air when one of the phones began to ring. In the violence of his turn, he struck his shoulder on the doorframe and for an instant he could not see — the interior of the office seemed black. The ringing filled the air wildly, coming from all four corners of the room simultaneously. He felt a clutch of horror at his heart, and the thrilling, piercing run of the bell was infinitely faster than the flow of his blood. He reached his desk. The call was for him.
“Yes? Who wants me?” he cried to the operator.
It was Villani.
Leventhal closed his eyes. It was what he had been expecting. Mickey was dead. He listened awhile to Villani and then roared out, “Where is my damned brother!”
“He came in last night,” said Villani. “He went straight out to the hospital. It was too late already. Poor little boy.”
Leventhal put the phone down. He could not restrain the play of muscles in his throat. He held himself off from the edge of the desk, as if about to stand up, and with the sick drop of fuller realization his broad face lost all color and his features grew thick.
After a time he picked up a pad and, printing Mr Beard’s name in large crayon strokes, wrote under it, “Death in the family” and, rising, went to lay it on his desk.
He walked with angry energy to the toilet and began to bathe his head. He had a crushing headache. Over the sink, when his face was wet, he began to cry. He snatched a paper towel from the box and covered his eyes. Then he heard someone approaching and turned blunderingly into a stall. He shut the door and, with his back against it, gradually, with silent effort, brought himself under control.
15
ON the ferry there was only a current of brackish air instead of the usual fresh breeze. The boat took the water with a sullen thudding beneath the broad lip of its bow. The air was chalky and the afternoon sun looked pale. One of the deck hands sat with his naked back touching the pilothouse, his head lying on his knees, his big forearms locked about his legs. At the slip, he dragged himself down the ladder to take down the chain, and Leventhal sprang past him and hurried through the shed. His bus was just pulling away from the curb, and he ran alongside and slammed at the door with his open hand. The bus stopped, the door folded open, and he squeezed in among the passengers on the lower step. The driver raised himself in his seat and called out something, stridently. His throat was taut and angry, his gray collar blackened with sweat. No one answered and, after a delay, he ground down the gearshift and they started again. Leventhal was panting. He did not heed the streaming of his face or the stinging of his hand. He was thinking, as he had thought on the boat, that he must expect to be blamed. Elena was bound to blame him and her mother sure to egg her on. He had argued for the hospital, he had brought the specialist; he had meddled. The old lady did not matter, but his dread of Elena was intense. Probably the disease was already in the fatal stage when Denisart took the case. In the hospital Mickey had at least had a chance, and if she had listened to the first doctor’s advice he might have been saved. So it was her fault, if anyone’s. But it was precisely because of the unreasonableness of the blame that he feared her. Nevertheless he was obliged to face her. He could not stay away now.