The People

by Bernard Malamud

  Fogel nodded.

  “Why are you writing?”

  “Because it’s in me to write. Because I can’t not write.” Fogel laughed embarrassedly.

  “That doesn’t contradict what I said.”

  “I wouldn’t want to contradict it.” He did not say Gary remembered his summer notes perhaps better than he knew.

  The youth thrust forth his hand impulsively. “I’m grateful for your friendship as well as hospitality, Mr. Fogel.”

  “Call me Eli if you like.”

  “I’ll certainly try,” Gary said huskily.

  Several months later he wrote from the Coast: “Is morality a necessary part of fiction? I mean, does it have to be? A girl I go with here said it does. I would like to have your opinion. Fondly, Gary.”

  “It is as it becomes esthetic,” Fogel replied, wondering if the girl was the brunette in the bikini. “Another way to put it is that nothing that is art is merely moral.”

  “I guess what I meant to ask,” Gary wrote, “is does the artist have to be moral?”

  “Neither the artist nor his work.”

  “Thanks for being so frank, Mr. Fogel.”

  In rereading these letters before filing them, Fogel noticed that Gary always addressed him by his last name.

  Better that way.

  In two years Fogel lost four pounds and wrote seventy more pages of his novel. He had hoped to write one hundred and fifty pages but had slowed down. Perfection comes hard to an imper-fectionist. He had visions of himself dying before the book was completed. It was a terrible thought: Fogel seated at the table, staring at his manuscript, pen in hand, the page ending in a blot. He had been blocked several months last fall and winter but slowly wrote himself out of it. Afterward he loved the world a bit better.

  He hadn’t seen Gary during this time, though they still corresponded. Fogel left his letters lying around unopened for months before answering them. The youth had written in November that he was driving East before Christmas and could he call on Fogel? He had answered better not until the writing was going well once more. Gary then wrote, “We must have some kind of mutual ESP, because the same thing has happened to me. I mean it’s mostly because I have been uptight about future worries after I get my M.F.A. in June, especially money worries. Otherwise I’ve had two stories published, as you know, in the last year.” (Both troubled Fogel: unrisen loaves. Gary said they had been “definitely invented.” One was about a sex-starved man and the other about a sex-starved woman.) “And I’ve been thinking ahead because I want to get to work on a novel and wonder if you would like to recommend me to the MacDowell Colony for a six months’ stay so I can get started on it?”

  Fogel wrote: “Gary, I’ve recommended you for everything in sight because I thought you ought to have a chance to prove yourself. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit I’ve been doing it uneasily the last one or two times because there’s such a thing as overextending goodwill. I’ll think it over if you can send me something really good in the way of a fiction, either a new story or chapter or two of your novel.”

  He got in reply, hastily, Gary. The youth appeared several days later, as Fogel was in the street on his way to the liquor store on the corner. He heard the bleat of a horn, a dark green microbus drew up to the curb, and Gary Simson hopped out of the door and pumped the writer’s hand.

  “I have this new story for you.” He held up a black dispatch case.

  Though he smiled broadly he looked as though he hadn’t slept for a week. His face was worn, eyes hardened, as if something in his nature had deepened. He was on the verge of desperate, Fogel thought.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you but I came up from the Coast suddenly, and as you know, you have no phone.” He paused, suffering his usual opening stiffness although Fogel returned his smile.

  “Have you had supper, Gary?”

  “Not as of yet.”

  “We’ll go upstairs and have a bit.”

  “Fantastic,” Gary said. “And it’s a pleasure to see you after all this time gone. You’re looking swell but a little thin and pasty-faced.”

  “Vicissitudes, Gary. Not to mention endless labor, which is the only way I seem able to survive. One ought to be careful how he creates his life’s order.”

  He was about to suggest calling a few people for a party but thought it premature.

  They ate a simple meal. Fogel cooked a tasty soufflé. There was salad, Italian bread, and wine. Both ate hungrily and smoked Gary’s cigars over coffee.

  In Fogel’s study the youth snapped open the dispatch case lock he had been fiddling with—too bad it wasn’t the guitar—and they were at once alertly attentive to each other. Fogel detected an odor of sweat and Gary proved it by wiping his face, then twice around the flushed neck with his handkerchief.

  “This is the first draft of a story I did the other day, my first in months. As I wrote you in my letter, I just wasn’t making the scene for a while. I got the idea for this story the night before last. I was planning to drop in on you yesterday but instead spent the day on twenty cups of coffee in this girl’s room while she was out working, and finally knocked off the story. It feels good to me. Would you care to hear it, Mr. Fogel?”

  “A first draft?” asked Fogel in disappointment. “Why don’t you finish it and let me read it then?”

  “I would certainly do that if the closing date for my application wasn’t hitting me in the eye this coming Monday. I’d really like to work on it another week at the very least, and the only reason I suggest reading it to you now is so you will have a quick idea of the merits of what I’ve done with it so far.”

  “Well, then let me read it myself,” Fogel said. “I get more out of it that way.”

  “My typing isn’t so hot, as you well know, and it’ll be hard for you to make out the corrections in my lousy handwriting. I’d better read it to you.”

  Fogel nodded, removing his shoes to ease his feet. So did Gary. He sat cross-legged on the couch in tennis socks, holding his papers. Fogel, rocking slowly in his rocker, gazed melancholically at the pile of his own manuscript on the writing table. Remembering his youthful aspirations, the writer wanted Gary’s story to be good.

  The youth brushed his lips with a wet thumb. “I haven’t got a sure title yet but I was thinking of calling it ‘Three Go Down.’” He began to read and Fogel’s rocker stopped creaking.

  The narrator of the story was George, a graduate student at Stanford who had driven to New York and, having nothing to do one spring day, had looked up Connie, who had been in love with him last summer. She lived in the West Village, in an apartment with two friends, Grace and Buffy, pretty girls; and soon George, while eating with them, on learning that none of the girls was going out that night, had decided to sleep with each of them, one after the other. He wanted it to be a test of himself. Connie, he figured, he had been in before and knew the way back. Grace was uneasy when he looked her over, which he thought of as an advantage. Buffy, the best looking of the lot, seemed a cool drink of water, aloof or pretending it, maybe impossible, but he wouldn’t think of her as yet. It was a long night and there was no hurry.

  George invited Connie for a walk and later bought her a drink in a bar on Sullivan Street. While they were at the bar he told her he hadn’t forgotten last summer in Bloomington, Indiana. Connie called him a shit for bringing it up. George, after saying nothing, said it had been one of the best summers of his life. He then became deeply silent. They had a second drink and in the street she softened to him and walked close by his side.

  It was a warm airy evening and they wandered in the Village streets. George said it was his impression that Buffy was a pothead, but Connie said it was ridiculous, Buffy was the really stable one of them. She worked for a youth opportunity program as secretary in charge of anything. Her father had been killed in the Korean War and she was devoted to her widowed mother and two younger sisters in Spokane.

  “What about Grace?”

&n
bsp; Connie admitted that Buffy had a lot more patience with Grace than she had. Grace’s problems, though she didn’t say what they were, were more than Connie cared to contend with. “Even when she has a good time she comes home in a funk and pulls out some more of her eyelashes, one by one, while sitting at the mirror.”

  After a while George told Connie that he had loved her last summer but hadn’t been willing to admit it to himself. His father had been hooked into an early marriage and he didn’t want that to happen to him; the old man had regretted it all his life. Connie again called him a shit but let him kiss her when he wanted to.

  When she said she would sleep with him George said there was a mattress in his bus and why bother going upstairs? Connie laughed and said she had never made love in a microbus but was willing to try if he parked in a quiet, private place.

  In the bus he gave it to her the way he remembered she liked it.

  Connie went to bed with a headache. She had said he could stay in the living room till morning and no later. “That’s our rule and Buffy doesn’t like it if we break it.” George sat on the sofa, reading a magazine for a while, then looked into Grace’s room. Her door was open and he went in without knocking. Most of Grace’s eyelashes were gone. She wore a terry-cloth robe and said she didn’t mind talking to George so long as he kept his machismo in his pants. She wasn’t careful with her robe and he saw her large bruised breasts through the nightgown.

  That’s her bag, George thought.

  He started talking sex with her and told her about some girlfriends he had in California who had given it to him in various interesting ways. She listened with slack mouth and uneasy eyes while drying her hair with a large towel.

  George asked her where the gin was, he would make the drinks. She said she didn’t want a drink. He asked her if she wanted to split a joint.

  “I’m not interested,” Grace said.

  “What interests you?” George said.

  “I’ll bet you slept with Connie.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  He then said he knew what interested her. George got up, and though she grabbed his hands, he freed one, forced her chin up, and French-kissed her. She shoved him away, her robe falling open. George, pretending he was a prizefighter, went into a crouch, ducked, then feinted with his left. With his right hand he grabbed her breast and twisted hard. Grace gasped and was about to cry. Instead, after wavering hesitations, searching his face, she swung to him, her eyes unfocused, grinning. When they kissed she bit his lip. George punched her between the legs. Grace came close again with a quiet moan. He began to pull off her robe but she caught his hands, then shut the door.

  “Not here,” Grace whispered.

  “Put on your dress and meet me downstairs.”

  She came down in a green dress, wearing nothing underneath but her bruises. Grace stepped into the bus. “I love you,” she said.

  George handed her his belt and said she could hit him a few whacks but not too hard.

  Buffy had been reading in bed. She said come in when he knocked but, seeing who it was, drew up her legs and asked him not to since it was late and she had to go to work in the morning. George offered her one of the joints he had got from Grace but Buffy said to cool it. He asked her if she would mind talking for a few minutes, then he’d go. She said she would mind. George then told her he was leaving for the war in the morning.

  She asked him why was that, they were sending few draftees in.

  “My draft board was saving me up. They were sore at all the postponements I had requested.”

  “Why don’t you refuse to serve?”

  He said he had been a physical coward all his life and it was time to get over it. She called it a useless, unjust war, but George said you only died once. He offered her the joint again and she lit up. Buffy smoked for a few minutes, then said it wasn’t turning her on.

  “Nor me either,” George admitted. “Why don’t you get dressed and come out for a walk? It’s a nice night.”

  When she asked him hadn’t he done enough walking with Connie and Grace, he told her she was the one who really aroused him.

  “Before I left I wanted to tell you.”

  “I must be five years older than you.”

  “That doesn’t change my feelings.”

  “What malarkey,” she said.

  George said goodbye. He thanked her for the supper and for talking to him. “See you after the war.”

  “Connie said you were staying here tonight.”

  He said he would be sleeping in his bus downstairs. He had to be at Fort Dix at seven, and before that had to deliver the bus to a friend who would drive him to Jersey, then keep it for him while he was away. He was leaving at 5:00 a.m., and no sense waking everybody in the house.

  “Are you afraid of death?” Buffy asked him.

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  He shut her door and went down the stairs. In the bus George, plugging in the shaver, began to shave for the morning. There was a tap on the door. It was Buffy in skirt and sweater, ready for a walk. Her hair in a coil at the neck fell over her right breast. She wore a golden bracelet high up on her left arm.

  When they returned it was still a warm breezy night. After talking quietly awhile they entered the microbus. George plowed her three times and the third time she finally came.

  As they lay on the narrow mattress, smoking, she asked him whether he had also had Connie and Grace that night, and George admitted it.

  “Three go down.”

  That was the story.

  What have I fostered? Fogel thought.

  “Ah,” said the writer, his bad leg trembling. He stepped into his slippers to pour himself a drink and was angered by the empty bourbon bottle. He drank a long unsatisfactory glass of water.

  Gary had finished strong and was at the edge of the couch, his feet turned inward. He was observing his tennis socks, occasionally darting glances at Fogel.

  “You like?” he finally had to ask. “I don’t mind if you slog it to me so long as it’s the truth.”

  “I guess Connie’s right in characterizing George as a shit?”

  “Up to a point, an anti-hero is an anti-hero,” George explained defensively. “What the story means is that’s how the crow flies, or words of that effect. In other words, c’est la vie. But how do you like it is what I want to know.”

  Fogel sat motionless in his rocker.

  “I wish you were more than a walking tape recorder of your personal experiences, Gary.”

  He did not accuse him of having lived the experience to record it, though the thought was distastefully on his mind.

  Gary laced up his shoes, a glaze of annoyance in his eyes.

  “I don’t see what’s so bad about that. You yourself once said that story material has no pedigree of any kind. You told me it depends on what the writer does with it.”

  “That’s right,” said Fogel. “To be honest, I would have to say that, all in all, this story seems an improvement over your last two. It’s a compelling narrative.”

  “Well, that’s a lot better, Mr. Fogel.”

  “As for the recommendation, I want to think about it. I’m not sure.”

  Gary rose, waving both arms. “Jesus, Mr. Fogel, give me a break. What am I going to live on for the next year? I have no father who left me a trust fund of five thousand bucks a year as you told me your father did for you.”

  “You have me there,” said Fogel, rising from the rocker. “I’ve got to have a drink. I was on my way to the liquor store when you drove up.”

  Gary offered to go for the bottle but Fogel wouldn’t hear of it.

  The writer limped down the stairs in his slippers. At the curb stood the green bus. The sight of it nauseated him.

  He’s no friend of mine.

  He went to the corner and on an impulse returned to the bus to try the door handle. The door was open. The back seats had been removed and on the floor lay a battered pink-and-gray thin-striped mattress.


  In the liquor store Fogel bought a fifth of bourbon. Stepping into Gary’s bus he pulled the door shut. The curtains were drawn. He did not flick on the light.

  As he opened the whiskey bottle, Fogel, as though surprised by what he was about to do, told himself, “I have the better imagination.”

  On his knees, using a small silver penknife he kept to sharpen pencils, the writer thoroughly slashed the mattress and sloshed whiskey over it. He lit the soaked cotton batting with several matches. The mattress stank as it burned with a blue flame.

  Fogel then went upstairs and told Gary he had entered his story to give it a more judicious ending.

  After the firemen had extinguished the blaze and the youth had driven off in his smoky bus, the writer took his letters out of the folder in his files and tore them up.

  He got one last communication from Gary, enclosing a magazine with the published “Three Go Down” much as he had written it in the first draft. Amid the pages he had inserted some leaves of poison ivy.

  1968

  A Wig

  IDA WAS AN ENERGETIC, competent woman of fifty, healthy, still attractive. Thinking of herself, she touched her short hair. What’s fifty? One more than forty-nine. She had been married at twenty and had a daughter, Amy, who was twenty-eight and not a satisfied person. Of satisfying, Ida thought: she has no serious commitment. She wanders in her life. From childhood she has wandered off the track, where I can’t begin to predict. Amy had recently left the man she was living with, in his apartment, and was again back at home. “He doesn’t connect,” Amy said. “Why should it take you two years to learn such a basic thing?” Ida asked. “I’m a slow learner,” Amy said. “I learn slowly.” She worked for an importer who thought highly of her though she wouldn’t sleep with him.

  As Amy walked out of the room where she had stood talking with her mother, she stopped to arrange some flowers in a vase, six tight roses a woman friend had sent her on her birthday, a week ago. Amy deeply breathed in the decaying fragrance, then shut her door. Ida was a widow who worked three days a week in a sweater boutique. While talking to Amy she had been thinking about her hair. She doubted that Amy noticed how seriously she was worried; or if she did, that it moved her.