Around Mrs Harkavy’s invitation he half unconsciously and in a complicatedly indirect fashion made out a schedule. He was at first uncertain about attending the party. Should he go so soon after Mickey’s death? But, having decided that it would be a good thing for him to be among people, he rode uptown to buy the girl a present. And finding himself near the library at noon, he spent a few hours glancing over some of the trade papers to see what others were doing. So it was nearly evening and he was coming out of a newsreel theater in Times Square before he realized that behind everything he had contrived to fill this weary day was his unwillingness and inability to deal with Allbee. He had set off purposefully down Broadway, and now something seemed to hinder the steady action of his legs and he faltered and began to go slower.
“All right, I’ll send him to Shifcart,” Leventhal decided. “What do I care? I’ll do it, and if that isn’t enough for him, we’ll see. Only what will Shifcart think?” But he was already in disfavor with Shifcart, who had looked at him peevishly in the cafeteria when he failed to laugh at his joke. “It would be better to come in cold than with a recommendation from me. But as long as he believes so much in connections let him go and find out for himself.”
He stopped at home before dinner to put on a clean shirt. Allbee was out. The dirt and disorder of the place sickened Leventhal. There was rubbish on the kitchen floor and the remains of a meal on the table. “He’d behave better in a flophouse. He’s just trying to show me,” thought Leventhal. He swept out the kitchen. Bending down with the dust pan, he experienced a curious tightness in the skin of his face. He threw the broom into the corner, washed his hands, and left.
Mrs Harkavy met him in the entry and she disconcerted him by saying, “I was awfully upset to hear about your nephew.” For he had just then, in the elevator, been thinking about Mickey. “Doctor Denisart told me about it. I’m sure he did his best.”
Leventhal muttered that he thought so too. Because he was disturbed, he was more conscious than usual of the bracing process he went through on meeting one of the Harkavys. He was fond of them, they were kind, but he had never been able to work out a satisfactory balance with them. Mrs Harkavy’s expression was like her son”s, lively and erratic. Yet there was a durable, underlying melancholy in her animation, and occasionally it came uppermost and took him by surprise.
“Someday science will conquer death,” she said. “Last Sunday there was a symposium in the Times about it.”
Leventhal pulled himself together sufficiently to reply, “I hope…”
“Oh, it looks definite. Then the size of the population will have to be controlled. But science will figure that out, too. There are brains enough for everything. This man discovered something to make the tissues live forever. I don’t think we can expect much in our lifetime. It’s for future generations. Meanwhile, we have to make the best of it. I think Mr Banting’s father died of diabetes about a year before insulin was discovered. And this Mr Bogomolets couldn’t use his own serum on account of a bad heart, and he died. Asa, how old was the child?”
“Three and a half, four.. ”
The freakishness seemed to leave her. Only her eyes moved, meeting his own with a familiar, instantaneous significance.
“That’s the brother who lives in Queens?”
“Staten Island.”
“Asa, sometimes I feel wicked still to be here at my age while children die.”
He was at a loss for an answer.
“But I’m not taking it away from anybody,” she said, falling back into her eccentricity; it quivered at the corners of her green-ringed eyes.
“Mamma,” Julia called.
“The men are in the dining-room, Asa. There’s wine and liquor on the sideboard.” Her face was flushed and she turned away, wide-hipped in her blue dress with its ornamented shoulders.
The guests, none of whom he knew, were playing pinochle. He was disappointed. He had hoped to see Schlossberg or Shifcart.
“Take a hand,” said Harkavy.
“No, I don’t think I will. Is anybody else coming, Dan?”
“We’re expecting a few more people,” said Harkavy. He was engrossed in his cards.
Leventhal poured himself a glass of wine and took a diamond-shaped biscuit sprinkled with sugar. Suddenly he remembered the present he had brought and he drank down the wine, tugged the package out of his pocket, and went into the kitchen. There was a cloud over the range. Julia was raising a colander of fried potatoes from the oil, averting her face from the sputter and crying nervously, “Mother, Mother, keep Libbie back.”
“Stay away, honey. Julia, don’t rush those potatoes. They’ll be raw.”
Leventhal came forward with his package.
“I brought something for the girl.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you,” said Mrs Harkavy. “With all your own troubles.”
Leventhal was impassive.
“Here,” he said. “Happy birthday.”
There was a gold seal pasted on the tissue paper and Libbie, after one quick glance at him, began picking it off.
“Not even ‘thank you, Uncle Leventhal.’“ Julia looked furious.
“Julia, it’s only shyness, nervousness.”
“Say thanks, you little animal.”
The girl ran into the hall and Leventhal returned to the dining-room. He had a second glass of the sweet wine, and a third.
“Come, sit in,” Goldstone said to him.
He shook his head and slouched against the sideboard, leaning on his elbow and sipping. This was his fourth glass and he was beginning to feel a heavy, solvent, milky warmth. He was conscious of being extremely clear-eyed, of seeing everything, catching every movement as if under extraordinary illumination. As the cards slapped and flicked over the red leather pad, he diverted himself by observing the hands, shuffling, dealing, manipulating the money, the variety of knuckles and fingers. Harkavy’s were white, pointed, and simple looking. The hands of the man next to him were strung with veins and overgrown with hair, his thumb was turned back and blackened, perhaps by lead — he might be a printer. The flesh of his palm was red and brutally cross-hatched. “Used hard,” reflected Leventhal. Yet these hands were limber with coins, and counted and tossed them with the ease of deep familiarity.
Leaving the sideboard he strolled into the dark living-room and lit a cigar. He felt the blood at his heart and brain to be a very rich and powerful mixture, for the most part pleasurable. A little painful also. The slight distress, however, was part of the pleasure. He took a sip of wine, licked the base of the glass and wiped it on his wrist to prevent a ring, and set it on a little table. Mrs Harkavy’s voice came down the hall. “Future generations!” he grinned. “My Lord!” He sat down, lame and heavy limbed.
After some time he saw Harkavy come in to the room apparently looking for him. He spoke up from his corner.
“Hey, here!”
“Oh, hiding out, having a quiet cigar. The house is filling up. Mamma and Julia are starting to serve.” Leventhal heard the scrape of chairs on the parquet floor of the dining-room.
“Say, do you expect Shifcart tonight?”
“I don’t think he was asked. What do you want him for?”
“Do you think I made a bad impression on him that day?”
“I know you did on me. I’ve never seen such an exhibition of ghetto psychology. The attitude you took toward Disraeli amazed me.”