Read Online The victim by Saul Bellow - Free Book Online Page B

this missis is the worrying kind." "It's plenty serious," said Elena. She spoke quietly, but Leventhal, watching her closely and paying particular attention to the expression of her eyes, felt a pang of his peculiar dread at their sudden widening. "Ah, ah, how do you know? Are you a doctor? Wait a while." "The man is right, I think, Elena," said Leventhal. "Sure I am. You got to have confidence in the doctor." An impassioned, sharp sound caught in his throat and he flung his arm out in a short, stiff, eloquent curve. "What's the matter! Sure! You listen to me. That boy is all right." The cigar glowed in his fingers. "She'll have confidence," Leventhal assured him. They started upstairs. On the fourth floor Elena stopped and with an excited escape of breath, "Phillie, what did you tell me--Grandma's here?" "She just came." "Oh my!" She turned with anxious abruptness to Leventhal. "What did she say to you, anything?" "Not a single word." "Oh, Asa, if she does... Oh, I hope to God she doesn't. Let her say what she wants. Just let it pass." "Oh, sure," he said. "She's a very peculiar type of person, my mother. She acted terrible when Max and I got married. She wanted to throw me out of the house because I was going with him. I couldn't bring him in. I had to meet him outside." "Max mentioned once or twice..." "She's an awfully strict Catholic. She said if I married anybody but a Catholic she wouldn't have any more to do with me. She would curse me. So when I left the house she did. I didn't even see her until Phillie was born. I still don't see her much, but since Mickey is sick she's here pretty often. If Max is home she won't even come in. She's very superstitious, my mother. She has all the old-country ways. She thinks she's still in Sicily." Elena spoke in a near-whisper, covering the side of her face with her hand. "Don't worry, I'll know how to take her." "She just is that way," Elena explained, smiling helplessly. "You can stop worrying." The old woman met them in the hallway and she began immediately to speak to her daughter, her eyes occasionally moving to Leventhal's face. Her voice had what to him was a characteristic Italian hoarseness. Her long head was drawn back rigidly on her black shoulders. He observed how she turned down her underlip, exposing her teeth as she lingered on a syllable. Elena, dejected, shook her head and answered in short phrases. Leventhal tried to seize a word here and there. He understood nothing. Suddenly Elena interrupted her mother, crying out, "Where? Why didn't you say so right away, Mamma? Where is he? The man is here!" she exclaimed to Leventhal. "The specialist!" She ran in. Leventhal, walking behind the grandmother in the hall leading to the bedroom, contorted his face in an unusual release of feeling. Ugly old witch! To make her daughter wait and listen to her complaints before telling her the doctor had arrived. "Parents!" he muttered. "Oh, yes, parents! My eye, parents!" He was tempted to jostle her. They entered the bedroom. The doctor had pulled up Mickey's shirt and was listening to his heart. The child seemed scarcely awake; he was dull and submitted to the examination, listless with the fever, lifting his eyes only to his mother, identifying rather than appealing to her. Philip leaned on the bedpost to see him. "Phil, don't shake, stay off it," Elena said. The doctor turned a glance over his shoulder. He was a young man with a long, rosy face and thin, gold-rimmed lenses over his close-set eyes. While he pressed the stethoscope on the child's chest and shoulders, he looked steadily at Leventhal, evidently taking him for the father. At first Leventhal was bothered by this error. Soon, however, he grasped the fact that the doctor was trying to tell him the illness was serious. Unobserved by Elena, who was folding back the counterpane, he gave him a gloomy nod to show that he understood. The doctor let the earpieces of the instrument fall around his neck and felt the boy's arms