Free The victim by Saul Bellow

with his clean red fingers. In the yellowish, stiff web over the blackness of the window, the ferns and the immense moths were shot with holes and gaps. The kitchen air and the noises of the court entered the room. The boy was raised and his pillow turned over. "You should sponge him every few hours," said the doctor. "I did it this afternoon. I'll do it again soon," said Elena. She had been whispering to him from time to time and now she spoke up eagerly, almost joyfully. She seemed to feel there was nothing to fear any longer. "I trust him so much," she said to Leventhal, gazing at the doctor. Leventhal's hands were damp and chill. He was beginning to feel ill from the sudden doubling of his tension. He wiped his face, passing the handkerchief over the bristles on his cheek and leaving a piece of lint on them. He was sure he had interpreted the doctor's silent communication correctly. Elena's hopefulness stunned him. He turned, careworn, looking at her and at the children, and a few moments passed before it came to him that this burden after all belonged to his brother. At once he was furious with Max for being away. He had no right to go in the first place. Leventhal felt for his wallet; he had put Max's card in it. He would wire him tonight. Or no, a night letter was better, he could put more into it. He began to form the message in his mind. "Dear Max, if you can tear yourself away from what you're doing... if you can manage to get away for a while..." He would not spare him. The harsher the better. Just look at what he left behind him: this house, a tenement; Elena, who might herself need taking care of; the children they had brought into the world. Leventhal returned to the composition of the night letter. "You are needed here. Imperative." That it was he, almost a stranger to the family, who was sending the message, should show Max how serious the matter was. Ah, what a business! And the grandmother? If anything happened to the boy she would consider it in the nature of a judgment on the marriage. The marriage was impure to her. Yes, he understood how she felt about it. A Jew, a man of wrong blood, of bad blood, had given her daughter two children, and that was why this was happening. No one could have persuaded Leventhal that he was wrong. Hardly hearing what was being said in the room, he contemplated her grimly, her grizzled temples, the thin straight line of her nose, the severity of her head pressed back on her shoulders, the baring of her teeth as she opened her lips to make a remark to her daughter. No, he was not wrong. From her standpoint it was inevitable punishment--that was how she would see it, a punishment. Whatever else she might feel -and after all the boy was her grandson--she would feel this first. 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.
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    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