Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  The house, once he was inside—he had hesitated at the door—was surprisingly empty. Dubin was staggered, as he entered, at the surge of loneliness he felt, like acid invading the bone. Ridiculous, he thought. Standing at the foot of the stairs the biographer, shaken, tried to puzzle out what was affecting him. As a rule he enjoyed solitude. Being away from home, or occasionally remaining alone there, awoke moods he rarely experienced when his life was geared with Kitty’s. What he felt now was more than a melancholy sense of being alone, or perhaps remembrance of that feeling in the past; this seemed a spontaneous almost soiled awareness, more apparent than ever, of one’s essential aloneness: the self’s separate closed self-conscious subjectivity. Dubin defined it for all time, as previously defined: death’s insistence of its presence in life, history, being. If so, nothing new but why once more at this moment?

  What had set it off? The absence of his children, a constant remembrance? One day their childhood, and your enjoyment of it, was over. They take off as strangers, not confessing who they presently are. You tried to stay close, in touch, but they were other selves in other places. You could never recover the clear sight of yourself in their eyes. They had become, as though by need, or their own definition, distant relatives. Dubin thought he had got used to the thought. Therefore it must be mainly Kitty’s unexpected going to her father’s grave? Perhaps he should have gone with her? He switched on the light, waiting as if expecting more light, then trod up the stairs, uneasy still, as though he were a man with three legs who remembered having only two. He wandered in the silent empty house, avoiding his study. What was Lawrence up to when Dubin was away: magicked the circuits of his dark blood? The biographer went up to the third floor to Gerald’s old room, sat on the boy’s bed. The pall of loneliness hung close—negates the sufficient self. Who rides Dubin’s back? It occurred to him it wasn’t so much he was missing his wife as being oppressively aware of himself.

  In Maud’s room he put in a person-to-person call to Berkeley. She wasn’t in; he left a call-back message. Dubin was looking up Gerry’s number in Stockholm in Kitty’s address book when the telephone shrilly rang—Maud returning his call?

  It was Kitty saying she was in Philadelphia.

  He listened very carefully. “Weren’t you going to Montreal?”

  “When I left the house I felt I wanted to see Nathanael’s grave. I’ve not been there for years. I hope you don’t mind?”

  He didn’t think there was any reason he’d mind.

  “I honestly almost never think of him any more. But when I got to the highway I had the impulse to see his grave, and drove south instead of north.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You’re easier on me these days,” Kitty said.

  “One learns,” Dubin said. Then he said, “One thinks he does.”

  “You sound constrained. Are you all right?”

  He was fine.

  “I’ll go to the cemetery with some flowers in the morning, then drive home.”

  He said he was surprised to hear her in Philadelphia as he was thinking of her in Montreal.

  “Your voice sounds distant. Has something happened?”

  “I called Maud. I thought you were Maud calling back.”

  “Give her my love,” said Kitty. “I wish they weren’t so far away.”

  Dubin said he’d go out for a short walk before turning in, and Kitty said she was sorry she wasn’t there to walk with him.

  When he hung up she called back.

  Dubin said he’d thought it was Maud again.

  “I’m not Maud, I’m me. Please tell me what you’re worried about. Is it the Lawrence?”

  He said no.

  “He’s a hard person to love.”

  “I don’t have to love him. I have to say truthfully who he was and what he accomplished. I’ve got to say it with grace.”

  “Then is something else worrying you—money, for instance?”

  He confessed he worried about money.

  “Are we spending too much?”

  “We’ll be all right for another year and then we may be tight.”

  Kitty said if she had to she would look for a paying job. “Good night, love, don’t worry. I’ll be home tomorrow.” She was tender on the phone when either of them was away.

  The night was dark deep and starlit, and Dubin walked longer than he thought he might. He was standing at the poster window of the Center Campobello Cinema when the last show broke and he saw, amid two dozen people straggling out, Fanny Bick in bluejeans and clogs, carrying a shoulder bag. She was wearing a white halter tied around the midriff, her hair bound with a red cord. Dubin sensed her before he saw her. He watched, thinking she would look up and see him but she didn’t. She seemed to be still into the film, conscious of herself; he recognized the feeling. He had not expected to lay eyes on her again and now he felt he would have regretted not seeing her. Roger Foster was not in the crowd. To make sure he hadn’t stopped in the men’s room, Dubin crossed the street and let Fanny walk on; when he was sure she was alone he recrossed the street and followed her.

  No more than a diversion, the biographer thought. He doubted he would talk to her; then he thought he must talk to her. His odd loneliness still rode him—a discomfort he wanted to be rid of, something from youth that no longer suited him. He felt a hunger to know the girl, could not bear to have her remain a stranger. The lonely feeling would ease, he imagined, if he knew more about her. Crazy thing to feel it so strongly, as though he’d earned the right to know. Here I am hurrying after her as if we are occupying the same dream.

  Fanny sensed something. Her pace quickened, the clogs resounding in the shadowy lamplit street. At the next corner she nearsightedly glanced back nervously.

  “Wait up, Fanny—it’s William Dubin.”

  She waited, austerely, till he caught up with her. If she was relieved she hid it. But her face, pallid in the street light, and restless eyes, offered no welcome.

  Dubin was about to tip his hat but had none. He hoped he hadn’t frightened her by pursuing her.

  Fanny denied the importance of it.

  He explained, with a gesture alluding to the loveliness of the night, that he’d been out for a stroll before going to bed. He was, this evening, alone in the house. “I happened to see you leave the movie and thought I’d say hello. Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  She said it was a free country.

  “Come on, Fanny—you’ll have to do better than that. I’m sure you know I enjoy your company.”

  She seemed to hesitate. “I don’t mind if you don’t, Mr. Dubin.”

  “Was it a good film you saw?”

  “Good enough—sort of a love story.”

  “Anything I ought to see?”

  They were walking together, her clogs setting the rhythm.

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  He laughed at that, felt awkward, as he had in his house when she was conscious of him observing her, imposing himself.

  “I’m sorry you left without saying goodbye,” Dubin said. “I’d bought you a copy of Sons and Lovers. Would you like me to bring it to you?”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Where can I send it? I heard you were living with Roger Foster. He used to do odd jobs for me when he was in college. He wore a green sweater and his beard had a green cast. I confess I never liked him very much. Perhaps the fault is mine.”

  “Well, he has a blue sweater and a dark beard now and doesn’t do odd jobs any more, and neither do I, certainly not house cleaning.”

  “It seemed to me a curious experience for somebody like you. I hope I conveyed my understanding, my respect. I regret we hadn’t met under better circumstances.”

  “Who said I was living with Roger?”

  Dubin cleared his throat. “My wife happened to mention it.”

  “She sure is all over the place. I live in a room in his house but not with him. His sister and brother-in-law live there too.”

 
“Fanny, I’m sorry about the incident in my study,” Dubin said. “I regret we couldn’t be congenial.”

  She made no reply.

  He asked her if she had left because of that.

  “Not that I know. I just got awfully tired of the cleaning crap. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  He asked her if she had read Short Lives, the book he had given her.

  Fanny said she hadn’t.

  “I’ve wondered,” he remarked a moment later as they were walking along the store-darkened street—he had no idea where she lived—“why you wear that Star of David?”

  “I wear it because I own it. A friend of mine gave it to me and I wear it when I think of him. I wear other things too.” Then she asked, “Your wife isn’t Jewish, is she?”

  He said she wasn’t.

  “How did you happen to meet her?”

  He said he’d tell her the story sometime.

  “What was she doing when you met her?”

  “She was a widow with a child.”

  “She sure is conscious of everything.”

  “She has a sensitive nature.”

  “So have I,” Fanny said.

  The stores were thinning and there were more private houses. At the corner she turned and he followed her into a short street. In mid-block an orange VW was parked in front of a dour narrow wooden house with a thin high gable. The two-story house was dark, its window shades drawn.

  A bright half-moon shone through a copper beech on the lawn. The dark-green house in dappled moonlight looked like a piece of statuary, or an old painting of an old house. Dubin had on a light sweater and loafers, Fanny her jeans and white halter.

  He told her D. H. Lawrence used to go wild in the glow of the full moon.

  “I’ll bet it doesn’t do that to you.”

  “I’m a controlled type,” he confessed.

  She yawned.

  Dubin pointed in the sky. “Look, Fanny, the Big Dipper. And that’s Andromeda, really a galaxy, like ours heading into infinity—if there is an infinity and not just a finite wheel with no apparent end, if we crawl forever around its rim. In this universe, finite or infinite, man is alive amidst an explosion of gases that have become stars in flight, from one of which we have evolved. A marvelous privilege wouldn’t you say?”

  Fanny, momentarily silent, said she thought so too.

  “Lawrence called it ‘the great sky with its meaningful stars.’”

  “Does he mean besides astrology?”

  “Besides that.”

  “Does everything have to mean something?”

  “Where there’s mind there’s meaning. I like the idea of the cosmic mystery living in our minds, and that enormous mystery reflecting our small biological and psychological ones. I like that combination of mysteries.”

  “Like our minds are the universe, sort of?” Fanny reflected.

  “Yes,” he told her. “Perhaps we were invented to see the stars and say they’re there.”

  “That’s not why I was invented.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “I wish I really knew. Why do you bring all that up now?”

  “So that I shan’t appear naked when we meet again.”

  She smiled dimly. “I guess I better go in now. Thanks for the astronomy lesson.”

  Dubin asked her when she would be leaving for New York.

  “Next week I plan to go.”

  The biographer had had a thought: “I’ve got some research to do at the New York Public Library. Can I drive you down?”

  Fanny said she’d be driving her own car. “Roger’s going with me.”

  Dubin had to conceal his disappointment.

  “He’s coming for the ride and going back by bus. You can tell your wife I’m not living with him. He wants to marry me but I don’t dig getting married just yet. I have other things to try out before I do.”

  “Marvelous. What sort of things?”

  Fanny raised her arms in the moonlight. “I’m young yet. I don’t do everything for a purpose. I do some things for fun.”

  “Fun is a purpose.”

  “It’s a purpose that doesn’t take away your fun.”

  “May I hope to see you in the city, Fanny? Couldn’t we have dinner together?”

  She gave it a moment’s reflection. “That fine with me.”

  “Good. Where shall we meet? Where will you be living in New York?”

  “I don’t know yet. I haven’t looked for an apartment. Do you want me to come to the restaurant?”

  “Would you care to meet me at my hotel?”

  She said that was as good as any other place.

  They arranged a meeting a week hence. Dubin said he would be at the Gansevoort. “That’s Melville’s mother’s maiden name.”

  Fanny stifled a yawn. “This night makes me sleepy.”

  “I won’t keep you,” he said. “I’m happy we’re going to meet again. I was inept the last time we were together. In afterthought I realized how kind you were being.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t think I want to.”

  They had parted friends, he hoped.

  The house, when he returned, had lost its lonely quality, although Maud, if she had telephoned, did not call again.

  Dubin, standing at the darkened bedroom window, looked up at the wash of stars in the night sky. In the universe even the dark is light. “Why should I feel lonely?” Thoreau had asked. “Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”

  He would tell that to Fanny.

  Dubin talks to his mirror: he weighs how some things happen to happen: Kitty’s letter, many years ago, had crossed his desk shortly after he began a new job.

  There were two handwritten letters in green ink, the second cancelling the first: “Please don’t print my recent ‘personals’ note. I should have known not to write that kind of letter when I was feeling low. Could you kindly destroy this with the other I sent you?”

  Having read it because someone had mistakenly laid it on his desk, Dubin searched through a folder in the next office for the first letter. It read, “Young woman, widowed, fairly attractive, seeks honest, responsible man as friend, one who, given mutuality of interests and regard, would tend to think of marriage. I have a child of three.”

  Dubin would tend to think of marriage.

  After a night of peering into his life, of intense dreams; of being tempted to take a chance because the time had come to take a chance—he was past thirty and neither his vocation nor his relationship with women satisfied him —he wrote her in the morning: “My name is William Dubin. I’m an assistant editor at The Nation. Your letter happened to cross my desk. I’ve read it and would rather not destroy it.”

  He had had the job a week and had recently also been writing obituaries of literary figures, on assignment for the Post. Dubin told her he was thirty-one and unmarried. He’d been in the army two years. He was Jewish. He was responsible. He wrote that he had practiced law for a year, had finally, like Carlyle, decided it was not for him, and was no longer practicing. He said he loved law but not practicing it. His father had lamented his giving up his profession. He had for a while felt lost, a burden of loss. Wherever his life was going he did not seem to be going with it. “People ask me what I’m saving myself for. Whatever that may be—I want to change my life before it changes me in ways I don’t want to be changed.”

  He said he had never written to anyone as he was writing to her now. “I am touched that only you and I know about the letter you sent and withdrew. I know something I have no right to know; in that respect I’m privileged. I sense you understate yourself. You seem to be capable of a serious act of imagination: to be willing to love someone willing to love you. Plato in the Republic says that marriages between good people might reasonably be made by lot. I assume we’re that kind of people. Obviously, for whatever reason, you’ve been flirting with the idea yourself. I have the feeling I’ve been predisposed to it all my life, although I can’t say why. Y
our letters have excited me. Mayn’t we meet?”

  She wrote: “Dear Mr. Dubin, Yours disturbs me. It does because it moves me terribly. I am—at least at the moment—afraid to go further. Let me think about it. If you don’t hear from me, please forgive me. It will be best not to have said no. Ever, Kitty Willis.”

  Another letter from her came in less than a month. He almost tore it apart as he tore it open.

  “Dear Mr. Dubin, I am twenty-six, my little boy is three and a half. I wish I could believe I know what I’m doing. I thought I ought to say I don’t think life will be easy for anyone living with me. I sleep poorly, fear cancer, worry too much about my health, my child, our future. I’m not a very focused person. It took my husband years to learn what I’m telling you in this short letter. I want at this point to get these things down: My father was a suicide when I was four. My mother went abroad with a lover when I was nine. She died in Paris of lung cancer and is buried in Maine. I was brought up by a loving grandmother—my rare good luck. My poor husband died of leukemia at forty. It’s such a chronicle of woe I’m almost ashamed to write it.”

  “Of course I’m more than the sum of my hangups and traumas,” she wrote. “Nathanael and I were reasonably happily married, and I ought to make someone a decent wife. I can’t say my emotional season is spring but I love life. Fortunately, I have a strong reality element that keeps me balanced against some of my more neurotic inclinations. You have to know if we’re going to be serious about each other. I had hoped to write earlier, but it took me some time to put my thoughts together. I don’t want to ensnare you with my unhappy history, Mr. Dubin. I sense you lean to that tilt.”

  They had met at the Gansevoort bar. Each recognized the other. Kitty looked as though she was looking for him. She was a tallish slim-figured woman with bright brown hair and luminous dark eyes. Her eyes, as she greeted him, were contemplative, unsure, not very gay. She hadn’t, Dubin thought, fully joined her resolution.