Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  A month later Gerry wrote on a postcard that the U.S. knew where it could shove conditional amnesty. He wanted unconditional amnesty and a public apology.

  “As for who loved who and when, I never think of it.”

  Dubin also wrote to Maud. In the late spring she returned home and stayed the summer, a surprise to all.

  Spring defined itself: present against odds. April rained in May; the early days poured. On the twelfth of May snow fell on white tulips. Kitty could not get into the soggy garden she had unveiled on a hopefully sunny April day. A flock of glistening wet crows, each a foot long, jabbed at the wet grass. One huge beast flew from a redwing blackbird circling in pursuit in the rain —to account for what crow-crime? A jay, screeching, hit Kitty’s feeder with a seed-scattering bump, scaring flickers, two robins, a grackle. Lorenzo, watching from inside, threw up his breakfast. After mid-month the rain rained lightly. May showers brought May flowers: yellow troilius, feather-cusped red tulips, iris, white and purple; dandelions were scattered in the fields, buttercups; a blue haze of forget-me-nots; golden mustard in the green grass. In Kitty’s Wood there were violets. The grass, come to life, thickened quickly. Dubin raked away last year’s dead leaves from under trees and bushes. The new leaves had, on the thirtieth of April, burst forth like light-green lace on bony fingers. The green spoke a dozen green tongues, foliage covering hills and rising in lighter shades on the stony shoulders of Mt. No Name. In the morning, mist lay like a deep sea on the hills, their tops breaking through like green islands in white water. Sometimes clouds in gray and black masses were piled above the distant mountains, towering like Alps into the sky, a line of golden flame burning at the highest edges.

  He welcomed the softened warming days; broke out the tractor mower on Saturday afternoons and drove himself in narrowing circles over the front and back lawns as Kitty sunned herself in a one-piece bathing suit on a strawberry beach towel in the grass. She wore her straw hat and sunglasses and read Cape Cod when she wasn’t napping in the sun. Or she watched the flowers in her garden. They drove into small towns in the Berkshires, walked in each, sometimes picnicked on roadside tables. They played shuttlecock on Sunday mornings; once in a while tennis. Kitty disliked the game. Evenings they went more often to visit friends, driving with the Habershams or other couples to restaurants in nearby towns. After returning from his latest trip abroad, Oscar Greenfeld called and asked them to come for drinks. Kitty nervously begged off and Dubin, of two minds, wouldn’t in the end go without her.

  During the week, one afternoon she wasn’t working he asked her to go along on his long walk and Kitty, after changing into sneakers, walked with him.

  “We haven’t done the long walk for a long time.”

  At the end of the walk, close to where he had been lost in the snow, Dubin felt an urge to leave the road and attempt to retrace his circular wandering, wherever it had been; but one stone wall looked like another; and the woods were full of green trees and flowering bushes, the farmland growing grains and grasses. Where he had been was in truth no longer there.

  “What are you thinking of?” she asked and he answered: “D. H. Lawrence.”

  “Why did I ask? I was thinking of you.”

  She had given up Ondyk with Ondyk’s blessing.

  “So long as we have each other.”

  He told her he had been working well. “I think it will be a good biography.”

  One morning Dubin, slim man—he had stopped dieting—instead of cutting an orange in quarters and eating it at the breakfast table, peeled it, and stood at the morning-blue kitchen window chewing it in pulpy sections. He sucked each juicy piece. He enjoyed fresh coffee, putting on a clean shirt, listening to Kitty playing her harp. That night he was struck by the splendor of the spring sunset bathing the hills brightly crimson, then mauve. The biographer determined to be kinder to his life.

  Now as he briskly strode along the road it was May-become-June, a touch of summer in the mild breeze, nice reversal of running time. If you’re into something—this lovely day—you’re in it, not longing for it. Dubin wore buff cords, striped T-shirt, blue sneakers with loose white laces: he had been shopping; Kitty had said he needed summer things. He bowed to an ash tree, slender, virginal, but didn’t linger. Its young leaves were light-green, seed pockets lavender, like a girl’s spring dress. In the fall it bloomed green-gold; then the windy rain came and it was bare, broke the heart. The biographer hurried on. It could get dangerous loving trees, drive you wild. H.D.T. had wanted to embrace a scrub oak “with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow …” Lush fields were sprinkled with wild flowers; shrubs in bloom. The maples were dropping spinning white seeds into the breeze. Poplars reflected changing sunlight. The lyric greens of first spring had darkened and sights of field and wood enticed the eye: meadows sloping upward toward a descending line of trees; and above sprawling woods upland fields rose to groves of evergreens surging over the hills. Mt. No Name, behind him, was covered with foliage except its stony top. The day was broken by patches of bright blue sky through gaps in cottony clouds sailing like slow ships. At intervals the sun, looking through, lit the landscape. Dubin loved what he observed: nature rather than scene. For nature he felt—had earned in winter this beauty of late spring.

  A new world, he sighed. In a new world he looked for a friend—scanned the road for Oscar Greenfeld—but the flutist, when you wanted him most, was elsewhere fluting. Dubin had regrets about his affair with Flora.

  A white Volvo passed from behind, swerved suddenly—it had drifted too close to the walker’s side of the road. Gave Dubin a turn; sped on in the risen dust.

  Ten minutes later, as he was inhaling lungfuls of air at the verge of the road, the white car, long past its prime, drove by a second time, skirting the opposite shoulder of the road. It slowed down and, a hundred feet on, parked in the grass. Tourist stopping to view the view? She seemed to hesitate, head bent as though considering the odds, then opened the door, set a doubtful foot down and came toward him. Dubin knew the slender-waisted abundant body, her sturdy stride, female presence. He reflected it was inevitable they would meet again. He knows life.

  Fanny, wearing sunglasses—he remembered the short denim skirt, her bare legs in sandals—walked toward him in deep focus, on her face an apprehensive smile. She was in no great hurry, taking her time, might never make it. Perhaps she didn’t want to. People do impulsive things they immediately regret, Dubin for one. He might have trotted off the other way; she’d never have caught up once he was on the run—as if to prove he lived in his era, she in another. But here we both are. He’d give her short shrift.

  Fanny smiled amiably, or tried to; obviously there were difficult emotions to contend with; maybe she was groping for one he couldn’t match. The man had learned his lesson.

  Now they touched hands, Dubin lightly.

  “I thought it was you but wasn’t sure,” she said breathily, as though surprised.

  “How are you, Fanny?” His voice was subdued, manner polite. Dubin saw clearly what she had and what she lacked; was unmoved by her. She lacked, he thought, experience of a necessary sort; certain mistakes are wrong to make.

  “I hope you don’t mind me stopping to say hello.”

  “Hardly.” Why would he mind?

  “I’ll bet you thought you’d never see me again?”

  “There were times I hoped so.”

  She paused to breathe, her lips moving as if she was searching for a new way not to wince. Fanny looked down, then directly at him, her pupils tight, mouth toward sour. He remembered the expression, tried to remember less, remembered all. Dubin was tempted to say a quick goodbye but after a momentarily shaky sense of wasted effort, a feeling quickly banished, objectivity returned. Mustn’t make any more of the experience.

  Neither spoke for a minute, he observing the small locket she wore, a gold heart with red ruby at its center. Gone six-pointed star and/or naked crucifix, whatever they had signified. Here was another
sign. She looked sensibly older although less than a year had gone by since they had first met. She would be, he remembered, twenty-three come August.

  A child, he reflected, recalling her face in sleep. Mad he had felt so much for her all winter. A sort of love; he knew the feeling, an old one, indulged in often in youth. Kept one young, he supposed. But how could I put my fate in her hands? Dubin wondered what she had learned from the experience. It seemed to him a commentary on himself that he expected her to have learned something.

  “I finally had electrolysis done on my chin,” Fanny explained as though he had asked. “One morning in Rome I waked up anxious and made an appointment. The creep used an unsterilized needle and my face blew up but after a week I was okay.”

  “You’ve cut your hair?”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  Dubin thought it looked fine. “Visiting Center Campobello?”

  She examined him vaguely. “Only for a week to take it easy, but I’m driving back tomorrow. Roger invited me up when I got back from Rome and I came up for the day about a month ago. This time I was here a little longer.”

  “Thinking of getting married?” he courteously inquired.

  She shook her head. “We’re friends—as my mother says—Platonically; I don’t sleep with him.”

  He nodded politely.

  “I’m capable of it.”

  “Is Roger?”

  “He’s really a great guy.”

  “How was Rome?”

  “Not that good, in fact flaky. My friend who I wrote you about—Harvey —died.”

  Dubin grimaced sympathetically. Fanny sadly smoothed the road with her sandal.

  “And I told you about my operation—the cyst I had?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry.” He remembered she could still have children and tried to think of her as a mother but it came to nothing.

  “My father’s been sick. I visited him last week in L.A. Otherwise I’m still living in New York. I had a job for a month that I lost when I went to California. And I take an evening course at the New School.”

  Dubin approved.

  “How are you doing?” Fanny wanted to know.

  “Fine, now, after a difficult winter.”

  She was for a moment neither here nor there, then said, “I’m sorry for whatever of it was my fault.”

  Fanny had hesitantly raised her hand as if to sympathize with at least his bare arm but Dubin had instinctively stepped back. She was again uneasy.

  He spoke kindly. He had, now they had talked again, nothing against the girl. She was who she was, no doubt her own worst enemy. Caveat emptor, or words to that effect.

  “No need to be,” he finally replied. “We make our own fates.”

  “That might be, still people hurt each other without wanting to. Could I give you a ride somewhere?”

  “Thanks, I’m on my walk.”

  She remembered, with a smile.

  Dubin, after gazing in the distance as though estimating tomorrow’s weather, after a confident minute of self-scrutiny, remarked, “Care to walk a little instead?”

  If the invitation surprised her it didn’t surprise him—normalizing things. For his sake if not hers: helped put the past in place. Calm now made experience then easier to live with. What still rankled still hurt. Better seeing in perspective, not always possible, but where it seemed to be occurring, let it. He didn’t want the girl to be uncomfortable—scared of him. Suppose something similar—he doubted it—happened to Maud?

  Fanny said she wouldn’t mind. “Just let me get my bag out of the car. It’s got everything I own.”

  She reached into the Volvo for her shoulder bag and car keys. He noticed a bit-into peach on the front seat.

  Dubin advised her to lock the car; Fanny did.

  They strolled in the direction he had been going. The afternoon sun, having escaped the steamy clouds, was now in full bloom.

  “Why don’t we get off this road and walk in the grass? I dig that.”

  Fanny stepped up on a stone wall and before Dubin could warn against it had hopped off on the other side.

  “Private property,” he said.

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to arrest us for walking in the grass. There’s endless miles of it.”

  Dubin stepped up on the wall and jumped down.

  Fanny removed her sandals and dropped them and her glasses into her bag, swinging it back on her shoulder.

  “Careful of poison ivy.”

  “I’ve never stepped in any that I know of, though I guess I’ve stepped in everything. I don’t even know what it looks like, do you?”

  He told her the plant had three shiny leaves.

  For a moment Fanny proceeded cautiously, then walked on without concern.

  It occurred to him he was more a comic type with her. With Kitty, their anxieties meshed, highlighting the serious life. That’s the way it is: you marry a serious woman the chances are increased of a serious fate; a lighter type laughs every ten minutes and takes you with her.

  He said he knew a better way to walk, led her diagonally across the field. A brown cow wandered in their direction. Fanny quickly moved toward Dubin, who shooed the animal away.

  “At first I thought it was a bull.”

  “With those teats?”

  “I’m not wearing my contacts.”

  They climbed over another low wall into county property, walking along an overgrown broad path, remnant of a former road. Nearby a narrow brook flowed through the matted grass, turning where some two-trunked silver beeches grew. Fanny thought it would be fun-following the water; Dubin said if it was water she liked there was a pond in a quarry not too far from there. Beyond those trees he pointed to.

  It seemed, she thought, a good way to go.

  Fanny, as they were walking amid a scattering of bushes and small trees on the overgrown path, as if they were now far enough away from Europe to talk about their late mutual misadventure, asked, “Why didn’t you answer my letters? I honestly regretted what happened and said I respected you but the letter you sent me was a mean son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Mean was how I felt and the winter was freezing. I was in no mood to correspond with you.”

  “Is that the way you still feel?”

  “Detached,” Dubin told her solemnly. “I think I’ve earned it.” He said he hadn’t felt too bad when he had left Italy but once he was home self-disgust came down hard on him. “After your letter, and for other reasons I won’t go into, I was depressed and couldn’t work. I’ve never lived through a worse winter.”

  “I said I was sorry,” she said sullenly. “I did a stupid thing but a lot that led to it was your own stupid fault.”

  “In Venice you said you did it to hurt me; you did a good job.”

  “Because you made it pretty clear to me that you wanted only so much of me and no more. I wasn’t to interfere with you or crawl into your life. I was to be invisible.”

  “I was protecting my wife.”

  “Who was protecting me?”

  He didn’t say.

  “I’m not saying you weren’t considerate and kind in nice ways that I really appreciate. But when I was having a bad trip in Rome and wrote for some advice and understanding, you didn’t even bother to be civilized. I felt pretty bad.”

  “That’s what I was hoping.”

  “You got your hope.”

  “For your sake—”

  “Whosever,” Fanny said bitterly.

  If it was only her body I wanted, why the long heartbreak? And if I was in love with a child how could I have been?

  “Are you still sore at me?”

  “I told you how I feel, I’ve lived the experience, lived through it.”

  “I don’t bear grudges either,” Fanny said quietly. “I don’t have that kind of nature.”

  He complimented her on her nature.

  He would give her, Dubin reflected, fifteen minutes, then walk her to her car and hit the road.

  Fanny, her mood
amiable, strode on freely. That she should now be walking by his side after the winter he had experienced seemed to him almost laughable, one of life’s little jokes. Yet better so than having the memory of her as she was in Italy locked in the mind forever as his last view of her.

  The biographer told her they were passing an abandoned orchard. “Nobody sprays the trees or picks the worm-eaten apples. They stay on the branches into winter, looking like red bulbs on a Christmas tree. I’ve seen crows peck at them through snow.”

  Fanny said she had never seen anything like that. “Why doesn’t somebody spray the apples?”

  “There was a house here belonging to the people who owned the orchard. When the man died the widow had it moved away on rollers. The land, I understand, later went to the county for non-payment of taxes.”

  They arrived at a clearing—before them in the long fields a spangling of wild flowers, soft islands of blue, yellow, white, violet in the hazy green grass. He remembered Lawrence had said wild flowers made him want to dance. Dubin felt happy but kept it to himself. The flower-stippled meadow extended to a crescent of oaks a quarter of a mile away.

  “Do you know wild flowers, Fanny?”

  “Just a few. Most of my life I’ve lived in cities, first in Trenton, and when I was seventeen we moved to L.A. I like the country, though, and have since I was small and was sent to camp. I once thought of majoring in environmental studies—preserving animals, forests, the land, you know.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I got good enough grades but my heart wasn’t in staying in college. I was restless with myself.”

  He pointed to buttercups, then daisies. “Those are oxeye daisies. Do you know what the word means?—the day’s eye, Fanny—beautiful, the sun in a flower.”

  She fished a plastic case out of her bag—her contact lenses. Fanny wet them with the tip of her tongue, then pulled her eyelids apart and dabbed in each lens with her index finger. “Jesus, what pretty flowers!”