The Complete Stories

by Bernard Malamud

  “This salve does no harm to women,” the doctor said, “although I understand it might shrink a man’s testicles.”

  “If it can shrink a man’s testicles, I’d rather not try it,” she said. He gave her the emulsion.

  Ida would part a strand of hair and gently brush her scalp with the emulsion-soaked cotton; then she would part another strand and gently brush there. Whatever she tried didn’t do much good, and her scalp shone through her thinning hair like a dim moon in a stringy dark cloud. She hated to look at herself, she hated to think.

  “Martin, if I lose my hair I will lose my femininity.”

  “Since when?”

  “What shall I do?” she begged.

  Martin thought. “Why don’t you consider another doctor? This guy is too much a salesman. I still think it could be caused by a scalp ailment or some such condition. Cure the scalp and it slows down the loss of hair.”

  “No matter how I treat the scalp, with or without medication, nothing gets better.”

  “What do you think caused it?” Martin said. “Some kind of trauma either psychic or physical?”

  “It could be hereditary,” Ida answered. “I might have my father’s scalp.”

  “Your father had a full head of hair when I first met him—a shock of hair, I would call it.”

  “Not when he was my age, he was already losing it.”

  “He was catting around at that age,” Martin said. “He was some boy. Nothing could stop him, hair or no hair.”

  “I’ll bet you envy him,” Ida said, “or you wouldn’t bring that up at this particular time.”

  “Who I envy or don’t envy let’s not talk about,” he replied. “Let’s not get into that realm of experience, or it becomes a different card game.”

  “I bet you wish you were in that realm of experience. I sometimes feel you envy Amy her odd life.”

  “Let’s not get into that either,” Martin insisted. “It doesn’t pay.”

  “What can we talk about?” Ida complained.

  “We talk about your hair, don’t we?”

  “I would rather not,” she said.

  The next day she visited another skin man, who advised her to give up brushing her hair or rubbing anything into her scalp. “Don’t stress your hair,” he advised. “At the most, you could have it puffed up once in a while, or maybe take a permanent to give it body, but don’t as a rule stress it. Also put away your brush and use only a wide-toothed comb, and I will prescribe some moderate doses of vitamins that might help. I can’t guarantee it.”

  “I doubt if that’s going to do much good,” Ida said when she arrived home.

  “How would you know until you’ve tried it?” Amy asked.

  “Nobody has to try everything,” Ida said. “Some things you know about without having to try them. You have common sense.”

  “Look,” said Martin, “let’s not kid ourselves. If the vitamins don’t do anything for you, then you ought to have yourself fitted for a wig or wiglet. It’s no sin. They’re popular with a lot of people nowadays. If I can wear false teeth, you can wear a wig.”

  “I hate to,” she confessed. “I’ve tried some on and they burden my head.”

  “You burden your head,” Amy said.

  “Amy,” said her mother, “if nothing else, then at least mercy.”

  Amy wandered out of the room, stopping first at the mirror to look at herself.

  Martin, that evening, fell dead of a heart attack. He died on the kitchen floor. Ida wailed. Amy made choked noises of grief. Both women mourned him deeply.

  For weeks after the funeral, Ida thought of herself vaguely. Her mind was befogged. Alternatively, she reflected intensely on her life, her eyes stinging, thinking of herself as a widow of fifty. “I am terribly worried about my life,” she said aloud. Amy was not present. Ida knew she was staying in her room. “What have I done to that child?”

  One morning, after studying herself in the full-length looking glass, she hurried to the wigmaker’s on Third Avenue. Ida walked with dignity along the busy, sunlit street. The wig shop was called Norman: Perukier. She examined the window, wig by wig, then went determinedly inside. The wigmaker had seen her before and greeted her casually.

  “Might I try on a wig or two?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Ida pointed to a blond wig in the window and to another, chestnut brown, on a dummy’s head on a shelf, and Norman brought both to her as she sat at a three-paneled mirror.

  Ida’s breathing was audible. She tried on the first wig, a light, frizzy, young one. Norman fitted it on her head as if he were drawing on a cloche hat. “There,” he said, stepping back. He drew a light blue comb out of his inside pocket and touched the wig here and there before stopping to admire it. “It’s a charming wig.”

  “It feels like a tight hat,” Ida said.

  “It’s not at all tight,” Norman said. “But try this.”

  He handed her the other wig, a brown affair that looked like a haircut Amy used to wear before she had adopted a modified Afro in college.

  Norman flicked his comb at the wig, then stepped back. He too was breathing heavily, his eyes intent on hers, but Ida would not let his catch hers in the mirror; she kept her gaze on the wig.

  “What is the material of this wig?” Ida asked. “It doesn’t seem human hair.”

  “Not this particular one. It’s made of Dynel fiber and doesn’t frizz in heat or humidity.”

  “How does a person take care of it?”

  “She can wash it with a mild soap in warm water and then either let it dry or blow it dry. Or if she prefers, she can give it to her hairdresser, who will wash, dry, and style it.”

  “Will my head perspire?”

  “Not in this wig.”

  Ida removed the wig. “What about that black one?” she asked hesitantly. “I like the style of it.”

  “It’s made of Korean hair.”

  “Real hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” said Ida. “I don’t think I’d care for Oriental hair.”

  “Why not, if I may ask?” Norman said.

  “I can’t really explain it, but I think I would feel like a stranger to myself.”

  “I think you are a stranger to yourself,” said the wigmaker, as though he was determined to say it. “I also don’t think you are interested in a wig at all. This is the third time you’ve come into this shop, and you make it an ordeal for all concerned. Buying a wig isn’t exactly like shopping for a coffin, don’t you know? Some people take a good deal of pleasure in selecting a wig, as if they were choosing a beautiful garment or a piece of jewelry.”

  “I am not a stranger to myself,” Ida replied irritably. “All we’re concerned about is a wig. I didn’t come here for an amateur psychoanalysis of my personality.” Her color had heightened.

  “Frankly, I’d rather not do business with you,” said the wigmaker. “I wouldn’t care for you among my clientele.”

  “Tant pis pour vous,” Ida said, walking out of Norman’s shop.

  In the street she was deeply angered. It took her five minutes to begin walking. Although the day was not cool she knotted a kerchief on her head. Ida entered a hat shop close by and bought a fuzzy purple hat.

  That evening she and Amy quarreled. Amy said, as they were eating fish at supper, that she had met this guy and would be moving out in a week or two, when he returned from California.

  “What guy?” snapped Ida. “Somebody that you picked up in a bar?”

  “I happened to meet this man in the importing office where I work, if you must know.”

  Ida’s voice grew softer. “Mustn’t I know?”

  Amy was staring above her mother’s head, although there was nothing on the wall to stare at, the whites of her eyes intensely white. Ida knew this sign of Amy’s disaffection but continued talking.

  “Why don’t you find an apartment of your own? You earn a good salary, and your father left you five thousand dollars.”
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br />   “I want to save that in case of emergency.”

  “Tell me, Amy, what sort of future do you foresee for yourself?”

  “The usual. Neither black nor white.”

  “How will you protect yourself alone?”

  “Not necessarily by getting married. I will protect myself, myself.”

  “Do you ever expect to marry?”

  “When it becomes a viable option.”

  “What do you mean option, don’t you want to have children?”

  “I may someday want to.”

  “You are now twenty-eight. How much longer have you got?”

  “I’m twenty-eight and should have at least ten years. Some women bear children at forty.”

  “I hope,” said Ida, “I hope you have ten years, Amy, I am afraid for you. My heart eats me up.”

  “After you it eats me up. It’s an eating heart.”

  Ida called her daughter a nasty name, and Amy, rising, her face grim, quickly left the room. Ida felt like chasing after her with a stick, or fainting. She went to her room, her head aching, and lay on the double bed. For a while she wept.

  She lay there, at length wanting to forget their quarrel. Ida rose and looked in an old photograph album to try to forget how bad she felt. Here was a picture of Martin as a young father, with a black mustache, tossing Amy as a baby in the air. Here she was as a pudgy girl of twelve, never out of jeans. Yet not till she was eighteen had she wanted her long hair cut.

  Among these photographs Ida found a picture of her own mother, Mrs. Feitelson, surely no more than forty then, in her horsehair sheitel. The wig looked like a round loaf of dark bread lying on her head. Once a man had tried to mug her on the street. In the scuffle he had pulled her wig off and, when he saw her fuzzy skull, had run off without her purse. They wore those wigs, the Orthodox women, once they were married, not to attract, or distract, men other than their husbands. Sometimes they had trouble attracting their husbands.

  Oh, Mama, Ida thought, did I know you? Did you know me?

  What am I afraid of? she asked herself, and she thought, I am a widow and losing my looks. I am afraid of the future.

  After a while she went barefoot to Amy’s room and knocked on her door. I will tell her that my hair has made me very nervous. When there was no answer she opened the door a crack and said she would like to apologize. Though Amy did not respond, the light was on and Ida entered the room.

  Her daughter, a slender woman in long green pajamas, lay in bed reading in the light of the wall lamp. Ida wanted to sit on the bed but felt she had no right to.

  “Good night, dear Amy.”

  Amy did not lower her book. Ida, standing by the bedside looking at Amy, saw something she long ago had put out of her mind: that the girl’s hair on top of her head was thinning and a fairly large circle of cobwebbed scalp was visible.

  Amy turned a page and went on reading.

  Ida, although tormented by the sight of Amy’s thinning hair, did not speak of it. In the morning she left the house early and bought herself an attractive wig.

  1980

  The Model

  Early one morning Ephraim Elihu rang up the Art Students League and asked them how he could locate an experienced female model he could paint nude. He told the woman speaking to him on the phone that he wanted someone of about thirty. “Could you possibly help me?”

  “I don’t recognize your name,” said the woman on the telephone. “Have you ever dealt with us before? Some of our students will work as models but usually only for painters we know.” Mr. Elihu said he hadn’t. He wanted it understood he was an amateur painter who had once studied at the League.

  “Do you have a studio?”

  “It’s a large living room with lots of light.

  “I’m no youngster,” he went on, “but after many years I’ve begun painting again and I’d like to do some nude studies to get back my feeling for form. I’m not a professional painter you understand but I’m serious about painting. If you want any references as to my character, I can supply them.” He asked her what the going rate for models was, and the woman, after a pause, said, “Six fifty the hour.” Mr. Elihu said that was satisfactory. He seemed to want to talk longer but she did not encourage him. She wrote down his name and address and said she thought she could have someone for him the day after tomorrow. He thanked her for her consideration.

  That was on Wednesday. The model appeared on Friday morning. She had telephoned the night before and they settled on a time for her to come. She rang his bell shortly after 9 a.m. and Mr. Elihu went at once to the door. He was a gray-haired man of seventy who lived in a brownstone house near Ninth Avenue, and he was excited by the prospect of painting this young woman.

  The model was a plain-looking woman of twenty-seven or so, and the old painter decided her best feature was her eyes. She was wearing a blue raincoat on a clear spring day. The old painter liked her face but kept that to himself. She barely glanced at him as she walked firmly into the room.

  “Good day,” he said, and she answered, “Good day.”

  “It’s like spring,” said the old man. “The foliage is starting up again.”

  “Where do you want me to change?” asked the model.

  Mr. Elihu asked her name and she responded, “Ms. Perry.”

  “You can change in the bathroom, I would say, Miss Perry, or if you like, my own room—down the hall—is empty and you can change there also. It’s warmer than the bathroom.”

  The model said it made no difference to her but she thought she would rather change in the bathroom.

  “That is as you wish,” said the elderly man.

  “Is your wife around?” she then asked, glancing into the room.

  “I happen to be a widower.”

  He said he had had a daughter once but she had died in an accident.

  The model said she was sorry. “I’ll change and be out in a few fast minutes.”

  “No hurry at all,” said Mr. Elihu, glad he was about to paint her.

  Ms. Perry entered the bathroom, undressed there, and returned quickly. She slipped off her terry-cloth robe. Her head and shoulders were slender and well formed. She asked the old man how he would like her to pose. He was standing by an enamel-top kitchen table in a living room with a large window. On the tabletop he had squeezed out, and was mixing together, the contents of two small tubes of paint. There were three other tubes he did not touch. The model, taking a last drag of a cigarette, pressed it out against a coffee can lid on the kitchen table.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I take a puff once in a while?”

  “I don’t mind, if you do it when we take a break.”

  “That’s all I meant.”

  She was watching him as he slowly mixed his colors.

  Mr. Elihu did not immediately look at her nude body but said he would like her to sit in the chair by the window. They were facing a back yard with an ailanthus tree whose leaves had just come out.

  “How would you like me to sit, legs crossed or not crossed?”

  “However you prefer that. Crossed or uncrossed doesn’t make much of a difference to me. Whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

  The model seemed surprised at that, but she sat down in the yellow chair by the window and crossed one leg over the other. Her figure was good.

  “Is this okay for you?”

  Mr. Elihu nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Very fine.”

  He dipped the brush into the paint he had mixed on the tabletop and, after glancing at the model’s nude body, began to paint. He would look at her, then look quickly away, as if he was afraid of affronting her. But his expression was objective. He painted apparently casually, from time to time gazing up at the model. He did not often look at her. She seemed not to be aware of him. Once, she turned to observe the ailanthus tree and he studied her momentarily to see what she might have seen in it.

  Then she began to watch the painter with interest. She watched his eyes and she watched his hands.
He wondered if he was doing something wrong. At the end of about an hour she rose impatiently from the yellow chair.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “It isn’t that,” she said, “but I would like to know what in the name of Christ you think you are doing? I frankly don’t think you know the first thing about painting.”

  She had astonished him. He quickly covered the canvas with a towel.

  After a long moment, Mr. Elihu, breathing shallowly, wet his dry lips and said he was making no claims for himself as a painter. He said he had tried to make that absolutely clear to the woman he had talked to at the art school when he had called.

  Then he said, “I might have made a mistake in asking you to come to this house today. I think I should have tested myself a while longer, just so I wouldn’t be wasting anybody’s time. I guess I am not ready to do what I would like to do.”

  “I don’t care how long you have tested yourself,” said Ms. Perry. “I honestly don’t think you have painted me at all. In fact, I felt you weren’t interested in painting me. I think you’re interested in letting your eyes go over my naked body for certain reasons of your own. I don’t know what your personal needs are but I’m damn well sure that most of them are not about painting.”

  “I guess I have made a mistake.”

  “I guess you have,” said the model. She had her robe on now, the belt pulled tight.

  “I’m a painter,” she said, “and I model because I am broke but I know a fake when I see one.”

  “I wouldn’t feel so bad,” said Mr. Elihu, “if I hadn’t gone out of my way to explain the situation to that lady at the Art Students League.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” Mr. Elihu said hoarsely. “I should have thought it through but didn’t. I’m seventy years of age. I have always loved women and felt a sad loss that I have no particular women friends at this time of my life. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to paint again, though I make no claims that I was ever greatly talented. Also, I guess I didn’t realize how much about painting I have forgotten. Not only that, but about the female body. I didn’t realize I would be so moved by yours, and, on reflection, about the way my life has gone. I hoped painting again would refresh my feeling for life. I regret that I have inconvenienced and disturbed you.”