Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  Dubin went slowly in the falling snow to the outskirts of town, past the thermometer-assembly plant, the auto graveyard, two gas stations, then a motel and a tourist house. Along the wet highway he trod, approaching the long route by the back way. He had never walked it this way before. If Kitty asked why he had taken the long walk after all, he would say he had never done it this backwards way before.

  Whatever diverts the mind from itself may help. What else is there to do? The wind-driven snow was now falling heavily. Dubin tramped on quickly a quarter of a mile in a world growing white, then had to tell himself it was no use, to turn back. For a while the wind had been thrusting him forward and it was no great trouble plodding on. Now it shifted, blew at him from the east. The wind, wailing, blew the coarse snow in blasts across the field, assailing him like a cluster of arrows, as though he was its only target. His field of vision was luminously white. He had turned tail and had trouble walking back to the highway. He inched on, stopping every several steps to discover if he knew where he was. When the blustery freezing wind momentarily died down and the snow thinned he was able to stride along. Once he beheld in the distance winter fields growing white, a wall of whitening black trees, and beyond, the misted fields flanking the snow-laced hills. Extraordinary sight: he felt a moment of elation before it vanished in the snow. Dubin peered around for a shelter but saw none. Most of the houses were behind him, toward the mid-point of the long road. He expected he would soon reach the highway. The wavering wind came at him again. He stiffened, staggered forward, then realized the ground had softened; the earth had roughened, he was no longer on the road. The snow, blowing in veiled gusty waves across the uneven fields, had wiped out every sign of the familiar road.

  He felt fright, an old fear: his mother frightened by winter; himself stranger, where he oughtn’t to be. Dubin found himself moving on a slope propelled downward. With fear in his gut he then diagonally ascended the incline, following his tracks disappearing as he sought them. The snow came down momentarily slowly, the flakes hanging in air before touching earth. He was standing in a hollow in an unknown field. As he tried to think which way to go he saw a rabbit skittering through the snow pursued by a dog; Dubin realized it was a fox. The rabbit slid up against a rock. The fox pounced on it and in a moment tore the screeching creature apart. The snow was covered with blood. Dubin stumbled away. The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your daily course. A foot past the road and you’re fighting with death. He had changed his black inner world for the white outer, equally perilous—man’s fate in varying degrees; though some were more fated than others. Those who were concerned with fate were fated. He struck his boot against the dazzling white ground to get a fix on where he was but could not tell one part of the frozen earth from another. Dubin could see nothing in the distance, had no understanding of direction. Then he kicked up some threads of dead grass and knew he was still far off the road.

  He waited for the wind to die down so he could see more than snow whirling around him. But the blustery wind continued to blow strongly. Pushing into it, assuming it was coming from the east and he had probably gone off the western side of the road because he had not been walking facing traffic, he wandered amid ridges that rose at last to a level surface. Dubin, in gasping relief, stumbled onto the road. He chose, after a moment, what he thought was the direction to the highway and plodded on, holding his arm above his eyes, trying to see the way ahead. Now and then he could make out a utility pole streaked with snow, and overhead, glimpse the white-coated thick utility wire. Lowering his head against the wind he pushed on, stopping often to peer around through his snow-encrusted eyes. The snow snowed in his ears. He brushed it off his face with his wet mitten. He had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile farther when he felt his galoshes sink into soft snow as a grove of trees opened before him. Disheartened, he knew he had lost the road again.

  Panic went through him in a lightning flash. He pictured himself running in circles, but managed to bring himself under control. Dubin stood motionless, breathing heavily, trying to work out where he was. The woods opened upon the light. No tracks of his own he could see beyond ten feet. Probably the road had turned, though not he with it. He must be somewhere near it, surely not far from the highway. Backtracking, he was once more in the open. He thought for a moment he knew where he was: the road had curved to the right as he had walked on level ground straight ahead, gone into the trees. If he had turned with the road and stayed with it he’d soon have got to the highway. After about a mile, possibly via a ride he might hitch in a passing truck—if there was a truck in this wild weather—he’d be safely into Center Campobello.

  To find his way he had to make the right next move. Dubin trudged along, stopping at intervals to listen for traffic sounds in the distance; or perhaps a car on the road he’d been walking. Sooner or later a clanking snowplow would come by; sooner on the highway, later on this country road. He heard only the soughing wind. The storm was increasing in intensity, the wind blowing flowing sheets of snow over the road. Dubin turned from the wind. Snow crackled on his clothes. He heard a shrieking bird but could not see it. He thought of running but dared not—would break his leg if he stepped into a hole. A moment later overhead became strangely light but there was no sky. The wind abated. He pushed on. Why haven’t I learned more about nature? Which way is north? He had seen moss on all sides of a tree. How can I keep from walking in circles? You can’t if you live in them. He felt a chill of fear, an icy trickle on his head, his brain pierced by cold. With a cry Dubin tore off his hat and slapped it savagely on his arm, beating off the wet snow. The red wool hat in his hand startled him.

  He was tired. Coming to a low stone wall—would it be bounding a road or dividing a field?—farmers sold their fields with walls running through them—Dubin climbed over it, following until the snow-covered wall ended in a spill of rocks amid trees; then he slowly traced it back the other way. The wind had decreased in force but the coarse wet flakes were falling so rapidly he could barely see five feet ahead of him. He thought he might follow the wall, touching it with his hand; but it was not there to be touched. He was into a grove of sparse trees once more. The woods were gusty with wind, impossible to go through. Now I am really lost. Should he cry for help? Who would hear him in the wailing wind? If a car passed nearby its windows would surely be shut. Who could hear his shouts?

  As Dubin came out of the trees he pictured an abandoned house. He pictured the kind of hut children built and left in the fields. After walking up the long flank of a rise and then down, he was again at a gray lichen-covered stone wall—the same?—another? He must stay with it, see where it led. The wall crumbled as he climbed it. Dubin, after a while, got up, brushed off his pants, limped on. He went through a grove of knee-high pines, then beheld a stand of tall whitened Norway pines. Where were these trees? He was almost certain he had seen them close to the road before the bend to the highway where the road sloped on the right. But there was no downward slope he could feel, let alone see. Are these pines where I think they are? Am I where I think I am? What a mad thing not to have stayed home with my small stationary miseries. Now I risk my life. He thought he ought not move until he could think of something sensible to do next. How few choices there are when the weather is white, wind fierce, snow thick. I am mad to be here. He jabbed a finger at the sky. There was a man in his mind wandering forever in deep snow. Dubin beat his breast. He heard his mother’s voice. Leo, she called. I could drown here as my brother did in the ocean.

  Exhausted, he sank to the ground and crawled under the branches of a spruce. Here was room to sit, perhaps rest. Above, the drooping branches were heavy with snow, the lower ones dry tufts of green. The beige spruce needles that covered the ground between trees were dusted with patches of white. He sat with his back to the broad spruce tree, waiting for fatigue to ease, trying to restrain fear, to stay alert.

  It was quiet where Dubin sat, though he could hear the wind still groaning in the swa
ying trees, and every once in a while a clump of snow fell, sifting like mist through the spruce. He would wait till he had recovered his strength to get up and go on being lost. His lungs seared his chest. He could feel his mouth trembling. Despite the cold he felt sweaty; he felt his age. It was easy enough to sit under a tree but he feared the woods filling with snow. He saw himself buried amid trees in snow up to his neck. Embarrassing to die so close to the road; like drowning in a bathtub. Dubin let out a shout for help but the strange cry frightened him, so he sat with hard pounding heart, silent in the still spruce grove. He whispered to himself.

  What a mad thing to happen. What a fool I am. It was the having I wanted more than the girl. Who is she to me? She doesn’t deserve the feeling I give her. See what I’ve done to myself. I’m like a broken clock—works, time, mangled. What is life trying to teach me?

  The woods were growing dark. He sat unable to decide whether to stay longer under the trees; wait the storm out. Suppose it snowed till nightfall and throughout the night until morning—Dubin frozen stiff, snowman. Death’s scarecrow. He heard a sudden heavy plop in the branches overhead and cried out as lumps of snow showered on him. His first wild fear was that a bobcat had seen and leapt at him. But when the powdery mist settled he beheld a hook-nosed white owl perched on a swaying branch over his head staring at him through the leathery slits of its cold blinking eyes. But the owl as if frightened by Dubin flew off into the wind-driven snow with a hoot and great flapping of its long wings. It disappeared into the trees. Dubin rose to his knees, crawled out from under the spruce, walked into an open field.

  The wind had quietened, the snow falling silently. It was now more than a foot deep, deeper in drifts. He floundered around the fringe of a stand of bleak ash trees. Two of them had fallen. Dubin picked his way over the fallen trees. Through the brush ahead he made out a snow-covered stone wall about a foot higher than those he had already encountered. Separating him from what fate? He was cruelly fatigued; could barely keep his eyes open. He saw himself lying in the snow. Then he climbed the wall because it was the next thing to do. Dubin lifted himself over the rock wall. He found himself wandering on the recognizable road; assumed he had crossed and recrossed it.

  The narrow road had been plowed, plowed narrowly, though he hadn’t heard the truck go by. Since then another two inches of snow had fallen, but there were earth-streaked mounds of plowed-up snow banking both sides of the road, and he felt with relief that he could easily follow it. Yet snowflakes continued to pelt him thickly so that he could still not tell direction; was still not sure which was the way to go. It begins again: which is the nearest way to the highway? What side of the road did I go off? Where did I come out of the field? Did I cross the road without knowing it? Why is it I don’t remember the high stone wall I just climbed? Has it always been there and I have never noticed, or have I seen it but am too frightened to remember? Is this the long hard-topped road I usually walk, or have I gone somewhere I have never been before? It must be more than a secondary road or they wouldn’t have plowed it so soon. Unless a farmer cleared his own access road and I am on it? If so where does it go? Is there a farmhouse or barn nearby? He saw no light. Now how shall I go? Am I already into the turn of the road, therefore head west, then south and I hit the highway? Or should I go north and if I’m lucky I ought to sight a house in twenty minutes; unless I don’t.

  Dubin turned left where he had been standing at the wall and after tedious and forgetful walking, as dusk grew darker, he was convinced he was on the right road plodding the long but wrong way back. Wrong because long. He stopped, deathly wearied, trying again to decide whether to go the other possibly shorter way. He was dully cold, his clothes wet, face stiff, hands and feet freezing. His back teeth ached with cold. The wind had died down and it was beginning to rain as well as snow. He could feel the icy rain through his soaking hat and see it snowing. Dubin trudged on. After a white wet timeless time it seemed to him something was approaching, a truck, or car, its wheels churning in the slush, brights on, wipers flapping as it loomed up like a locomotive out of the raining snow. The biographer flailed both arms, frantically waved his red hat as he stumbled toward the slowly moving vehicle. It then shot through his frozen head that the white-faced woman, her head wrapped in a black shawl, who sat stiffly behind the wheel, peering nearsightedly through the fogged windshield; frightened, perhaps already mourning, was his wife.

  Kitty held the door open as Dubin numbly got in beside her.

  “I saw a white owl.”

  Crying silently, she drove him home.

  Five

  Kitty’s old friend, Myra Wilson, died in her farmhouse of heart failure. She knew she was dying but would not be moved to a hospital. She died a week after her seventy-ninth birthday, a woman more vital than her body permitted. She had rarely mentioned her age or ailments. In her presence Kitty spoke little of hers. Myra would kiss Dubin mouth to mouth when they met, a way she saw herself. Kitty had wired her daughter that her mother was dying and wired again the next morning to say she was dead. Mrs. Meyer flew in from Milwaukee late in the afternoon. With Kitty’s help she completed the funeral arrangements.

  Mrs. Meyer was a restrained bulky woman in a brown felt hat and black cloth coat. She was about Kitty’s age but looked older. Her right eye was tearing—the effect, she said, of a cold. She stayed with the Dubins for two nights and was restless to be home with her family. “Mr. Meyer said Mama could live with us,” she told them. “She had her choice.” Her youngest child was a boy of thirteen. The girls were nineteen and twenty-four. “My daughter is nineteen,” Dubin told her. “Twenty,” Kitty said. “She was twenty in October.” Dubin felt he had misplaced a year of Maud’s life.

  There were eight at the graveside: the Methodist minister; Kitty and Dubin; Flora Greenfeld, moody handsome lady—Oscar was on a concert tour in Australia; Ursula and Fred Habersham; Craig Bosell, carpenter and handyman, who had looked after the house and barn for Mrs. Wilson; and there was Mrs. Meyer facing a leafless elm, holding the family Bible. It snowed at the graveside. It snowed lightly into the open grave. As the casket was lowered and the prayers recited, Kitty wept brokenly. Mrs. Meyer darted her a startled glance and wiped her wet eye with a handkerchief. Kitty tried to suppress her sobs, squirmed, bit her lip, but couldn’t stop. She walked away from the grave and sat in the car. Dubin, when the ceremony was over, drove her home.

  “I couldn’t help it,” Kitty said.

  Mrs. Meyer telephoned them from the Wilson farmhouse. She was shutting up the place and would return in the spring.

  “Your mother was a courageous woman living alone in that big house, I couldn’t have done it,” Kitty said.

  “She didn’t have to but that’s the nature she had.”

  Mrs. Meyer delivered the farmhouse keys to Kitty in case someone had to get in. “Bosell is closing the house,” she said. “He’s drained the pipes and when the company takes out the phone he’ll lock the doors and shutters. There’s no stock left in the barn or henhouse and the dog she had ran away.”

  Kitty regretted it. “I should have remembered Ben.”

  “When I come back in the spring I’ll put the place up for sale. We sold off seventy acres after Pa died. Now there are twenty-four left, and the house, barn and henhouse. Thanks kindly for your kindness and consideration to Mama and me.”

  “Myra was a favorite of mine.” Kitty quickly turned away.

  Mrs. Meyer left for Milwaukee.

  “Why am I always crying?” Kitty asked Dubin. He praised her generous nature while disliking her for outdoing Mrs. Meyer at the graveside.

  Kitty, after mulling it awhile, had quit her job at the library. Dubin had urged her not to, but she said she had to think of Roger Foster: he needed a professional librarian who could work full-time. “I’m no great help to him.”

  “That wasn’t what he said to me.”

  “What did he say to you? When did he say it?”

  “He said you were doing
a very good job or words to that effect. I met him by chance on a walk in town.”

  “What else did he say?” she spoke casually, studying him.

  Had Roger mentioned Fanny? Was Kitty alluding to her? “Nothing I can recall,” Dubin said.

  “I quit because the work was becoming a bore,” Kitty said, looking bored. “I’d rather give you the time I gave them.”

  Dubin said she gave him as much time as he needed. He spoke gently and she was gentle with him.

  Her first morning as housewife resumed she spent showing the new cleaning woman, a bulky French-Canadian of fifty-five, how she liked things done. Kitty also sewed on the sewing machine, typed and filed recipes she had torn out of newspapers and magazines, arranged and catalogued their old travel slides—Dubin often studied the villas and farmhouses Lawrence and Frieda had lived in—and energetically wrote letter after letter, some of which she tore up and at once rewrote. “I owe to everybody, especially the kids.”

  She started something new with a burst of energy. She had begun a reading project: to read a book on contemporary philosophy and all of Jane Austen. She had never read Lawrence’s poetry or Thoreau’s Cape Cod, which she thought she would do.

  Shortly after leaving the library she suffered a spell of indigestion and for a while was worried about her health. “I’ve not been feeling well. My color has been poor for weeks. You don’t think there’s anything wrong, do you?” She was nervous and pale, her eyes troubled.

  He didn’t think so. “You’re on edge about something. Just watch your diet. That usually does it for you.”

  She said she would. When the indigestion disappeared so did her worries about cancer. She kept busy and had few complaints.

  Once more Kitty slept late to make up for weary periods of wakefulness in the pit of night, but she would come down in her robe for coffee with Dubin if she was not sleeping when he rose at some outrageously early hour.