Leventhal jerked his chair away, wrinkling his forehead in confusion and incipient anger. Then he bawled, “Sit down, you lunatic!” and Allbee went back to his place. He sat forward, ungainly, his hands under his thighs, his jaw slipped to one side, exactly as on the night when he had first confronted Leventhal in the park. The white of his trimmed temples and his shaven face made the blue of his eyes conspicuous.
No further word was spoken for a while. Leventhal was trying to settle his feelings and to determine how to recover the ground he had lost through this last piece of insanity.
“It’s hard to have the right mixture of everything,” Allbee suddenly began.
“What are you driving at now?” said Leventhal.
“Oh, this about your calling me a lunatic when I give in to an impulse. Nobody can be sure he has the right mixture. Just to give you an example. Lately, a couple of weeks ago, there was a man in the subway, on the tracks. I don’t understand how he got there. But he was on the tracks and a train came along and pinned him against the wall. He was bleeding to death. A policeman came down and right away forbid anyone to touch this man until the ambulance arrived. That was because he had instructions about accidents. Now that’s too much of one thing — playing it safe. The impulse is to save the man, but the policy is to stick to rules. The ambulance came and the man was dragged out and died right away. I’m not a doctor and I can’t say whether he had a chance at any time. But suppose he could have been saved? That’s what I mean by the mixture.”
“Was he yelling for help? What line was that?” Leventhal said with a frown of pain.
“East-side line. Well, of course, when a man is spread-eagled like that. He was filling the tunnel with his noise. And the crowd! The trains were held up and the station was jammed. They kept coming down. People should have pushed the cop out of the way and taken the fellow down. But everybody stood and listened to him. Those are the real trimmers.”
“Trimmers?”
“They’re not for God and they’re not for the Old Scratch. They think they’re for themselves but they’re not that either.”
“What does he tell me this for?” thought Leventhal. “Does he want to work on my feelings? Maybe he doesn’t know why himself.”
Allbee began to smile. “You should have seen how surprised you looked when I showed up dead sober. You’re going to be even more surprised, you know.”
“By what?”
“You were joking with me this morning about a new start. You wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“Do you believe it yourself?”
“Don’t you worry,” he said confidently. “I know what really goes on inside me. I’ll let you in on something. There isn’t a man living who doesn’t. All this business, ‘Know thyself’! Everybody knows but nobody wants to admit. That’s the thing. Some swimmers can hold their breath a long time — those Greek sponge divers — and that’s interesting. But the way we keep our eyes shut is a stunt too, because they’re made to be open.”
“So. You’re off again. You can do it without whisky. I thought it was the whisky.”
“All right,” cried Allbee. “Now let me explain something to you. It’s a Christian idea but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to understand it. ‘Repent!’ That’s John the Baptist coming out of the desert. Change yourself, that’s what he’s saying, and be another man. You must be and the reason for that is that you can be, and when your time comes here you will be. There’s another thing behind that ‘repent’; it’s that we know what to repent. How?” His unsmiling face compelled Leventhal’s attention. “I know. Everybody knows. But you’ve got to take away the fear of admitting by a still greater fear. I understand that doctors are beginning to give their patients electric shocks. They tear all hell out of them, and then they won’t trifle. You see, you have to get yourself so that you can’t stand to keep on in the old way. When you reach that stage — ” he knotted his hands and the sinews rose up on his wrists. “It takes a long time before you’re ready to quit dodging. Meanwhile, the pain is horrible.” He blinked blindly several times as if to clear his eyes of an obstruction. “We’re mulish; that’s why we have to take such a beating. When we can’t stand another lick without dying of it, then we change. And some people never do. They stand there until the last lick falls and die like animals. Others have the strength to change long before. But repent means now, this minute and forever, without wasting any more time.”
“And this minute has arrived for you already?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know whom you’re stringing, me or yourself.”
“Every word is sincere — sin-cere!” said Allbee inclining his head and gazing at him. He hesitated, his large lips remained parted, the upper, with its long groove, moving a little.
“Go on!” Leventhal abruptly laughed.
“Well, I thought I would try to explain it to you.” He turned slightly in his chair, resting one shoulder on the cushion, and slowly rubbed the side of his extended leg. “I’m not religious or anything like that, but I know that I don’t have to be next year what I was last year. I’ve been at one end and I can get to the other. There’s no limit to what I can be. And even if I should miss being so dazzling, I know the idea of it is genuine.”
“We’ll see what you are next year.”
“You’ll be the same, I know. You people…” He shook his head and his cheek brushed his collar.
“If you start that again, you’ll be on the steps in a minute.” Leventhal began menacingly to rise.
“All right, all right, let’s drop it. Only when a man says something serious about himself he likes to be believed,” said Allbee. “It makes sense to me that a man can be born again. — I’ll take a rain check on the kingdom of heaven, but if I’m tired of being this way I can become a new man. That’s all I’m saying.” Straightening himself in his chair he was silent and lightly held his big hands together. By the curve of his mouth Leventhal saw that he was very pleased with himself. Indeed the position of his hands spoke of applause rather than rest. The hump of shadow behind him was occasionally extended by the slight stirring of his head. The lamp in its green, watered-silk shade made a second, softer center of brightness in the polish of the desk. A rush of low sounds came up from the street, and a gust of air swelled and separated the curtains; they drifted together again.
At this moment Leventhal felt Allbee’s presence, all that concerned him, like a great tiring weight, and looked at him with dead fatigue, his fingers motionless on his thighs. Something would have to happen, something that he could not foresee. Whatever it was, he would be too muddled and fatigued to deal with it. He was played out. His old weakness, his nerves, had never been so bad; he could not concentrate long enough to settle any of his difficulties, and had to wait for the occasion to bring this or that to his attention, and was slow and fitful in his thinking. He ought to have thought of what was going on in Staten Island, if only for Philip’s sake, and he should have phoned Max at least once. Max had hung on to him in the chapel; he had no one else to hang on to. And by now he must have decided that he had no one at all. But the reason Leventhal shrank from calling was that he was unable to clarify his thoughts or bring them into focus, and he lacked the energy to continue the effort. And anyway the sparks, the clear spark of Mickey’s life, the spark of Elena’s sanity, the sparks of thought and courage, even courage as confident as Mary”s — how such sparks were chased and overtaken, drowned, put out. Then what good was thinking? His dark, poring face with its full cheeks and high-rising dull hair was hung toward his chest. He drew a deep, irregular breath and raised his hands from his lap in a gesture of exorcism against the spell of confusion and despair. “God will help me out,” passed through his mind, and he did not stop to ask himself exactly what he meant by this.