Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  “Mama,” he said, “rest in peace in your grave.” Where else could she rest? He thought of her jumble of mad fears; of those he carried in his flesh. He wondered which of them Maud carried in her.

  Dubin left a stone on the tombstone to let his mother know he had been there. Maybe it was to let himself know. The white stone he had left more than a dozen years ago when he had taken Kitty to visit the grave was still there, the color of rust. It had begun to rain. He stopped off at the cemetery office and told them to cut the long grass on his mother’s grave.

  Dubin then rode on the subway to Jamaica and at the station took a taxi to his father’s cemetery. Charles Dubin had divorced himself from his wife in his grave. Let God take care of her now. His son carried a small leather-bound book and read from it a Hebrew prayer for the dead transliterated in English.

  “Rest in peace, Papa,” he said to the wet grave. “You did what you had to.”

  Dubin imagined nine other men standing at the grave with him, saying Kaddish.

  He left the endless cemetery and rode the long subway ride back to Fanny’s apartment. When she had returned from Rome she swore off smoking and had taken up Yoga. She wore black leotards with a run down her left thigh as she did her exercises. Fanny had got to a modified headstand, her head resting in a pool of her thick hair, when he entered the apartment.

  She fell to her knees. Dubin pulled her up and they kissed with open mouths. Her breath was like the scent of a tropical flower. Her hand went to his fly.

  “Not now,” Dubin said.

  “Because I’m bleeding?”

  He said he was not much in a mood. He had just been to the cemetery.

  “Did your wife ever want it when she was bleeding?”

  “Ask her.”

  After a while Fanny said she was sorry she had asked. Her face was pallid and worried. “I was happy all week,” she said to Dubin. “I don’t want to spoil it.”

  He said he didn’t want to spoil it either.

  “Do you honestly like me?”

  “Most honestly.”

  Her eyes softened. “I had a fine time, did you?” She touched his hand with her finger.

  “Never better.”

  “Let’s have more good times, lots of fun.”

  He said that was what he wanted.

  “I will give you a key to the downstairs door and one for my apartment.”

  Dubin said he had better not take the keys. “If I left them around or they fell out of my pocket, Kitty would want to know what they were for.”

  Fanny reluctantly saw the point. “Anyway, when will you be back? I miss you already.”

  He promised soon.

  “Oh, make it sooner. We’re lovers now, aren’t we?”

  Seven

  They made love on a sunny Sunday morning, the moving white curtains enfolding warm light. Afterward Kitty, lying on her side, said the early-fall anemones were especially prettily colored. It was a bright August day thinning toward autumn. He had made love with her, trying not to think of Fanny. Dubin was conscious of himself lying beside his wife, his left arm around her, hers draped across his belly. Kitty was slender, taller than Fanny, felt lighter, weighed less. Her face was at peace and pretty. Her skin shone in the morning light. He was glad she was satisfied; wanted her to have what she was entitled to.

  Forgive me, he thought.

  “What for?”

  He asked, after a minute, what he had said.

  She laughed to herself. “What shall I forgive?”

  “Who I am.”

  She had heard it before. “I forgive who you are.”

  Kitty ruffled his hair, yawned, sat up and reached for her robe. “Let’s have breakfast.”

  Sunday’s was the breakfast they almost always ate together. On Sunday she fixed other than ordinary fare. Today she cooked an omelette aux fines herbes. The buttery golden omelette with greens looked succulent in the omelette pan. Biscuits were hot, creamy, coffee tasty. Mt. No Name, through the window behind Kitty, became more clearly visible as summer heat and haze diminished. There were a few yellowing leaves in the silver maples, not many. After a blow of wind a handful of dead leaves lay scattered on the grass. Dubin watched a single leaf, half-green, half-yellow, part from a branch and drift and twirl to the ground. He had always been affected by the sight. Now he thought of Fanny. He tried not to.

  Kitty, after pouring second cups of coffee, asked him what his impression had been of Maud’s summer. “What did you talk about with her?”

  “Politics often. She was excited by the impeachment proceedings. We both were.”

  “I mean what did she say that was personal?”

  “Not much about herself,” Dubin told Kitty. “She wasn’t giving much though there were moments she seemed to want to. Once in a while I said something that brought her close—not close enough—to saying what was on her mind. I had this sense, on her part, of gesture.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her visit as a kind gesture to her parents.”

  “I hope to God she isn’t having a bad time. If she’s in love I’d hate it to be unhappy love.”

  “Do you think she’s in love?”

  Kitty said she thought so. “She’s been reading Spanish love poems in her room. I hear her as I go up the stairs.”

  “Which poems?”

  “One I asked about she copied out for me. It’s Mother Juana Inés de la Cruz. She copied it and I learned it:

  Al que ingrato me deja, busco amante;

  al que amante me sigue, dejo ingrata;

  constante adoro a quien mi amor maltrata;

  maltrato a quien mi amor busca constante.

  Al que trato de amor, hallo diamante,

  y soy diamante al que de amor me trata …

  When Kitty recited poetry her voice was sincere, soft, hesitant. Maud recited in a sweet emotional fluent voice.

  “What does it mean?”

  “She says she lovingly seeks the one who ungratefully abandons her; and he who lovingly pursues her she ungratefully abandons.”Him whom I treat lovingly I find to be hard, and I am hard for him who treats me lovingly.”

  “It sounds rocky.”

  “It has a Spanish quality. Her voice sounds Spanishy.”

  “Castanets, black hair, and throaty voice?”

  “She’s a surprising girl.”

  “Has she said who the guy is—somebody Spanish or Mexican?”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “No.”

  “He may be, maybe not, I’m not good at guessing. I hope she’s happy with him. Being in love at her age was a happy time for me. When I woke in the morning I ran to see myself in the looking glass.”

  Dubin said it wasn’t a happy time in his life.

  “When I first met you, you said it was.”

  “In a way it was. I enjoyed hurrying to their houses with little bouquets of flowers.”

  “You haven’t brought one home in years.”

  He said the garden was full of flowers. “I felt happy in love until I had to contend with feeling come back to earth. I was by then disenchanted with the one I’d been in love with and was waiting for the next experience. After a while I felt the waste of the affair.”

  “Why was it a waste?”

  “Nothing had come of it.”

  “Does something have to come of everything?”

  He said that was not a bad idea.

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “She went elsewhere.”

  “I sometimes am surprised that you wanted to marry me.”

  “I was ready for you. You were right for me with your kind of experience. I felt we were in the real world.”

  “I wasn’t so sure of that in the beginning.”

  “I wasn’t sure of myself as your step-husband.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” Kitty grimaced.

  Dubin changed the subject: “I sense Maud has a lot to learn.”

  “If I could she will, maybe Ge
rald will too. I hope he’s happy someday.”

  “I doubt he thinks of happiness. I don’t think it’s on his agenda.”

  “What does he think of?”

  “He does his tightrope.”

  “Where to?”

  “To the next tightrope, from the one over rocks to the one over water.”

  Kitty’s dark eyes showed concern. “I liked his last card. He seemed to be having a better time. But he never tells us what he’s doing. I hate that kind of gap between son and mother. Do you think he’ll want to come home soon?”

  “It’ll depend on what President Ford offers the deserters. He isn’t a man with much moral imagination.”

  “Gerry Willis insists on an apology. He has an intense moral imagination.”

  “He’s got the makings of a revolutionary.”

  “What a strange way for one’s own son to be,” Kitty said. “Before you know who he is he’s someone other than you think.”

  Yet she gave the impression she might square things with Gerald if only he returned to the house for a visit. “I have a lot to say to him. I see things more clearly than I used to. I’m not as guilty as I used to be.”

  Despite the uncertainties of Gerry’s life and Maud’s, the worries they kicked up as they defined themselves, lived their experiences, mysteries, Dubin always enjoyed talking about them. Talk was a way of conjuring them up and bringing them close. He often thought of them without worrying about their fates, reflecting on the twists and turns their lives might take before they had settled into vocations—when one could see, if not a completely matured self, at least the self’s direction. He wondered what they would ultimately want to work at, or work in. Maud was interested in many things, none strongly defined except her Spanish. Would she teach? Ask her what she hoped to do and she grew impatient. “I’ll do something, don’t worry. But don’t expect me to get married after college or go to graduate school.” “What shall I expect?” “Expect nothing and be surprised.” Gerald, on the other hand, had always had strong specific interests—his math, astronomy, chess, music. Dubin could imagine him in a Swedish institute doing mathematical research. Or moved perhaps by some indefinable impulse, he might, like his father, become a physician.

  They confided littleand asked little, Dubin thought. I hoped they would want to know what I could tell them. I wish I had told them more about my life.

  “Were we good parents or half-ass ones?” Kitty said. She asked it in a way that seemingly answered the question. She asked it often.

  He thought they weren’t bad parents but what seemed to count most was who parents were as people, not what they said they were. The more self-conscious or insistent or private they were, the quicker the kids made tracks into space.

  “Who you are is the lesson they ingest, resist, live by.”

  “I can’t do much about that,” Kitty said, “but I do wish I had tried now and then to explain myself to them. I wanted to but couldn’t freely. I hid my fears and they knew. But I love them and want their love. I know it’s there, behind the clouds, but I’d like to feel it on me like the living sun.”

  “What’s there will show as they come to terms with themselves.”

  “Let’s not depend on them,” Kitty said. “Let’s depend on each other.”

  They went for a drive into the mountains that afternoon, Dubin driving. Fall was advanced there. Some branches of sugar maples had turned color from trunk to tip. In a few weeks trees would glow like jewels. He loved the softness, quietude, before the assault of color, the rage of winter. There were blue holes in the changing foliage—the sky flowing through trees. “Do you feel how sexy the mountains are as we drive through them?” Kitty asked. He said he knew what she meant. “Do you still think of me as sexy?” Dubin said she was.

  That evening they had dinner at the Ondyks’, with Oscar and Flora. Evan dug out his alto sax and played some songs of the forties. His eyes retained an almost expressionless quality—at most a fixed nostalgia—but the playing was lively. Kitty sang along with him. Then Oscar went to the piano and played Chopin for a while. He apologized for his piano playing. Flora, sitting close to Dubin, whispered she was sorry she hadn’t brought her violin. “I sensed I’d want it with you here.”

  Kitty, when they arrived home, sat down at her harp and played intensely for ten minutes. In their bedroom she looked at herself in the mirror and said this had been one of their happiest days.

  Dubin promised many more.

  The biographer, while settling the business of his articles, had managed another short visit to Fanny at the end of August. He had registered at the Gansevoort and spent most of his time in her apartment. He would call the hotel for messages and telephone Kitty from a phone booth if she had called. She called once. Dubin and Fanny were immediately intimate. He was perhaps surprised at how quickly and comfortably they came together, as though he wasn’t sure he had earned the privilege. He had and he hadn’t, as when strangers become lovers they remain in part strangers. Or as when married men, having affairs with single women, expect less than total commitment. But Fanny had pronounced them lovers, and coming together in felt acceptance and desire was a happy circumstance. He enjoyed their familiar life together. They were friends, more to their relationship than sex; but happily there was sex. Dubin worried that he was seeing her so infrequently. How long would they go on being lovers if she had to wait for him to show up—with luck—once or twice a month? He knew she was seeing other men—how could he ask her not to? She had told him, “We go out but I honestly don’t sleep with any of them. I pick guys who won’t give me a hard time. One is almost your age, and reminds me of Harvey. I hope you don’t mind? I also see women I know, one from work, if I feel lonely.” Looking at him openly Fanny asked, “Do you believe me?”

  Dubin said he did.

  They squeezed hands and with serious faces kissed seriously.

  She hesitantly showed him a term paper she had written for her government class and sat on the bed clipping her toenails as he read it.

  Dubin told her it was informed and well written. Fanny respected facts and reasoned well. The term paper revealed qualities he had not often observed in her: of knowing more than she seemed to; of being organized as she thought things through. He said that to her.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “Only a little.”

  “Are you glad?”

  He said he was.

  “You like me to be a good student?”

  “I like you to be a good whatever.”

  She laughed happily and offered to go to bed. When he asked her why, right then, Fanny said she felt sexy when he complimented her. They went out for dinner and for a while talked of courses she might take in the fall. She intended, she said, “really” “finally” to get her degree. Dubin ordered a bottle of champagne.

  Champagne made her feel high, Fanny said. So did music, bright colors, a witty evening, a happy time. They hurried home; she loved hurrying home to make love. He did too. It was a good way to be.

  Dubin left on Sunday morning, promising his earliest possible return, thankful she hadn’t insisted on a secure date to write down.

  “Let’s say I’ll be back the first chance I have, Fanny. It isn’t always easy to get out but I’ll manage.”

  “It’s cool,” Fanny said. She knew the game, the rules, the odds.

  He traveled home thinking of her; putting her out of his mind when the train, its whistle like a sustained organ chord, approached the station where Kitty, sitting in her car, loyally awaited the bull’s return. Dubin lifted his Panama, opened the car door; they kissed. As they drove home he had to restrain himself from talking about the girl, as if he were expecting his wife to appreciate Fanny’s contribution to his well-being, good life. What “on balance” he owed his wife he would soon repay. He treated her tenderly.

  These visits to Fanny sparked his work. Ideas swarmed in Dubin’s mind. He was still writing of Lawrence and Frieda during their slow journey on t
he Continent after their elopement; their deepening love, celebrated in poems and letters written in Germany, Italy, Sicily, as they lived in a villino amid olive, almond, and lemon trees; or in a farmhouse on a mountainside.

  And at last I know my love for you is here;

  I can see it all, it is like twilight …

  Strange how we suffer in spite of this!

  Dubin worked in the barn study, writing securely and rapidly. Kitty said she would rather he was in the house but would settle for a phone in the barn, “just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case I need you in a hurry. One never knows.”

  He had a telephone put in. She called rarely—once when the tree man wanted to see him: another elm was dying; once or twice when he had worked long past lunch and she was beginning to be worried.

  He labored steadily. There were no serious distractions. Now and then he would put down his pen to pursue a thought of Fanny—usually to relive her looks or body; or simply enjoy the marvelous fact that William Dubin had, at his age, a vital vivid young friend. Sometimes he searched amid the papers in a folder on his desk for the picture she had recently given him—to contemplate Fanny. He kept it hidden in a box of photocopies of the Lawrence correspondence he had discovered in Eastwood, with her short affectionate letters beginning “Dearest William,” and closing with four x’s in place of love. Her handwriting slanted downward. A triangle of bare paper was left at the bottom. Dubin thought he could write a whole letter in it.

  “When are you coming?” she wrote. “I am waiting in bed.”

  She mailed her typed letters without a return address, his name purposely mispelled; and varied the size and color of the envelope as if to indicate the letters were coming from different people in different places. Dubin remembered that Jonathan Swift had instructed Vanessa to have someone else address her letters to him; but the biographer wanted no part of that. He was surprised by Fanny’s machinations; hadn’t asked her to join the deceit; did not want to share it with her, nor be reminded or informed of her experience with other men.