Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  Let her go, he told himself as his wife slept. It wasn’t meant to be more than an affair, a short adventure and quits. I’ve had a good time with her. She isn’t the kind of woman I would have thought to marry, although people do change: we aren’t who we were; she is matured, shows more control, wants better for herself than she’s had. And we’ve seriously affected one another. Obviously she means more to me than I’d supposed. I’ve learned that in winter and summer, at home and abroad. She lives in my blood and neither will nor reason can wring her out. Myself, my, self’s heart, aches for her, for a glowing fundamental pleasure that comes with and from her, an easeful enjoyment of life.

  That night the biographer loved and violated her in sensual and perverse ways. He tore at her every sexual stirring, gratified every fantasy. In steaming dreams and torpid reverie he sought satisfaction on her now familiar, though always surprising, pleasure-yielding body. When at last he fell into a grating half sleep he spoke her name aloud.

  Kitty abruptly awoke. “Fanny who?”

  “Fanny,” Dubin confessed, “must be the girl who worked for us summer before last.”

  “Why are you dreaming of her now?”

  “What shall I tell my dreams to dream?”

  Kitty yawned. “She must have caught your fancy.”

  She got up to go to the bathroom. Dubin waited for her to come out and then went in; he fumbled in his pajamas for the offending member.

  In the morning a letter had come from Fanny: “Once you said be kind to yourself. I am trying to be. That’s why I think we ought to stay broken off. For about a week I didn’t think we really were but now I do think so. You wouldn’t have let me split that night if in your heart you weren’t glad I was going. Maybe you didn’t actually want it to happen but you took the out I gave you. I gave it to you to be kind to myself. I was tired of the punishment I was taking. I want someone who wants me. I don’t care if we get married or don’t but I won’t live alone, it hurts too much. I can’t see any future for us the way things have been going—sometimes I think you’re blind, William—so we’d better not see each other any more. I appreciate certain things you have done for me—some my father might have done but didn’t—although with one hand you take away what the other gives. I hope you know what I have done for you. Sincerely, Fanny.”

  Dubin wrote an impassioned plea: “Dearest Fanny, Let’s not make a hasty mistake. Let’s not end what may have barely begun.”

  Such was the biographer’s commitment. He had mailed his letter and also called her from the barn but now her home telephone was disconnected; and at work they said Fanny had quit.

  “If she really hasn’t, kindly tell her it’s William Dubin on the phone, with much good will and an expectation of kindness.”

  “Why would I want to lie to you?” the operator asked. “I’ve often been in love myself.”

  Dubin had then telephoned Roger Foster, with a wretched stirring of jealousy, to ask if he knew where Fanny could be found; and Roger said, without sorrow or laughter, he thought she’d gone back to Los Angeles.

  “Do you happen to know her address, Roger?”

  “I actually don’t, Mr. Dubin. Not that I didn’t ask her, but Fanny wasn’t all that certain where she was heading. Maybe L.A., or to San Francisco, and she said she’d send me a postcard once she knew for sure.”

  “Would you kindly let me know where she is when you get that card?”

  “I will if she doesn’t object.”

  Dubin had felt an irrational impulse to tell him to stay the hell away from Fanny but had no right to say it.

  A few days later he had made up his mind to go to New York to see if he could find her. Kitty, alternating worry about Gerald with a nagging concern for Maud, who seemed to have stopped writing or calling, said she was in no mood to be left alone in the house.

  “The house won’t hurt you,” Dubin said.

  He had thought of telling her he was intending to get legal advice about Gerald’s case but ultimately said nothing. She hadn’t asked him why he was going to the city. Kitty hadn’t offered to drive him to the station, so Dubin drove himself. He parked at the depot and boarded the train before realizing he had left her without a car.

  In the city he went at once to Fanny’s apartment. The door stood open. The flat was empty—the floor covered with paint-spattered drop cloths. The landlord and a painter standing on a ladder were talking inside.

  “Excuse me,” said Dubin, “do you happen to know where the young lady who lived here has moved to?”

  “Who knows,” said the landlord, “where they go.”

  “Where they want,” said the painter, “they go. These are different times.”

  Dubin, at the window, gazed down at the synagogue. An old Jew was praying. Where they want they pray.

  At the Gansevoort he sat at the desk in his room and wrote Fanny a note, to her at the law office—to be forwarded. “My dearest Fanny, I wish I had done it better. I wish I were a single man—or perhaps more daring. I wish

  … Life is so varied, sweet, sad. Think of me thinking of you. Surely we’ll see each other again? My sense of it is that you’re handling your life with purpose. Go on as you are. Ever yours, William Dubin.”

  As he addressed the envelope he was running through his mind the winter without her.

  The morning in San Francisco he met Maud in the hotel lobby and drove in her VW to the beach. Maud is drawn, distant, lonely. He is tormented to see her so …

  In her last letter she had said she wasn’t intending to return to college for her senior year. Her father was at first angered, but rereading her several letters of the past year had filled him with regret: she had been signaling something less than the joyful life. He had let her down, Dubin had felt, in not more insistently trying to discover what was eating her. He had asked superficial questions and accepted casual replies. In one letter she had spoken of an interest in Eastern religions, not before a serious concern of hers. With Maud much happened in little time. In another letter she wished she had her life to live over. “Before you’ve begun to live?” No response to speak of. He tried it on the telephone: “Before you’ve begun to live?” “Who’s to say how much anybody else has lived?” Fair enough, though not enough. Kitty still theorized that Maud was having her ups and downs in love. Dubin hoped it was that simple. So did Kitty.

  Two weeks ago Maud had telephoned and asked not to be called by them.

  “Why not?” Dubin asked.

  “I need time to think things through.”

  “We won’t interfere with your thoughts.”

  “I’m asking a favor,” Maud wept.

  Granted.

  Last summer when she was home and bored, beyond occasionally asking her out for lunch or a drive, or to walk his walk with him, he felt he had given her not much. Yet she was, after all, home: they talked at the table; had shared the drama of Watergate—it was interesting to see Nixon, perennial loser, like a magician fabricating his losses. Maud read, played tennis, backpacked with the couple living on Mt. No Name; but it was obvious the focus of her life was elsewhere. Dubin and she seemed to resist each other —no explanation he could think of except they were interested in others. His thoughts had lain in Fanny’s lap. One would think that if a man loves, the fountain flows: all may drink, no limit. But in truth the feeling of love for those one has loved was not boundless—it was bound. One loved according to his capacity but capacities differ. If you loved someone with deepening passion the love of others was effectively reduced, perhaps even paid for the passion. No, love was not boundless—not more than a pailful—barely enough for one at a time. You pour love out for a single self: in theory, no; but in practice other selves get less.

  Not that Maud had wanted more from him than he ordinarily gave of affection. She had seemed, last summer, to want less; but that he hadn’t offered more in a time of need bothered Dubin. It worried him that he never really had known what was going on with Maud once she was past sixteen, a
s if this fact, natural enough, embedded in their history, was itself the major cause of what was presently lacking in their relationship. He had thought of telling her about Fanny—being honest—but hadn’t because he didn’t want her to think of him as her mother’s betrayer. Reasoning it thus was how Dubin balanced the construction in his mind: in loving Fanny he withheld love from his wife and daughter.

  Fanny had, on her last birthday, waited for him at the train; he searched for her face in the crowd awaiting arrivals at the San Francisco Airport. Neither she nor his daughter appeared.

  On the beach he impulsively drew her to him. Maud, shivering, stooped to pick up a shell. Dubin thrust his hands into his pockets. “I remember,” he said, “when you were a little girl. Once you asked me to marry you.”

  “Oh, Papa,” she said with an impatient gesture.

  “Sentimentality has its moments.”

  “Not just this minute, please.”

  “Maud,” Dubin said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you? Are you in love? Is it going badly?”

  “I’m always in love. Sooner or later it goes badly.”

  He did not know what to reply.

  Maud then said she wouldn’t be going back to college in the fall. “I’ve had it with school. I want something else—something more satisfying.”

  “Like Zen?”

  She wiped her eyes as though she were wiping away tears. The wind blew her hair into her face. Heartache, he reflected, became her age, not his.

  “Why don’t you call it a day here,” Dubin advised, “and do your senior year in the East? You’ve never greatly liked California.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m tired of intellectual studies, tired of intellectuals.”

  “Who in particular?”

  “No one you know.”

  “You’ve always had intellectual interests.”

  “They’re not very relevant to my life any more.”

  “It’s a temporary feeling, believe me.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Buddha gave up books entirely at a critical time of his life.”

  “Lawrence never did, although I suppose it could be said he was an anti-intellectual natural intellectual.”

  “I wouldn’t mention them both in the same breath.”

  “What makes you think so? In Sicily, when the peasants saw him with his red beard they cried out, ‘Look! Jesus Christ!’”

  “What are you trying to prove, Papa?”

  “I wish I could tell you what I know about life.”

  “Don’t get on that kick, please, not now. I’ve read your books.”

  Dubin, after a while, asked her if she wanted to try psychiatric counseling. “I’ve had six months of that at Berkeley. It leaves me cold.”

  He laughed dully, looked at the ocean, looked away. “I’ve made the traditional suggestions. What I’m really saying is trust me, confide in me.”

  She said she had been talking to a Zen Master in South San Francisco. “When I came into his house he said he’d been waiting for me to appear. I’m thinking of entering a Zen commune if they consider me worthy. I’ve met some of his disciples. People in serious meditation have such clear luminous eyes. I’d like to be one of them. I expect to become a Zen disciple.”

  Dubin said he understood the rules were strict and the formal training no picnic. “It takes, I understand, years of disciplined effort. I’d like you to enjoy the youth of your youth.”

  He had read in Zen after rereading her letters.

  “I’m not out to bliss it, Papa. I want discipline.”

  The word drew a tear to his left eye. He felt a sorrow of sorts for what she had of him in her.

  Maud said she expected first to be instructed in meditation. “During the formal training I’ll support myself by working in the commune—whatever they want me to do is worth doing. I want to live on my own labor, not yours. Please don’t send me any more money, though I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me. I’m fed up with my ego. I want, eventually, satori—true enlightenment, an end to confusion and pain. I’d like to be different than I’ve been. I’m not looking for, quote, happiness. I want to be in the lsness of the Great Self. I will begin with emptiness.” “Emptiness I know about. It’s nothing. Take something, you’re only twenty.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Twenty-one,” he said hastily.

  “My age makes no difference. I feel like forty. I’d like to step out of time.”

  “Maud, come off that goddamned fantastic horse.”

  “That will get you nothing.”

  “My child,” Dubin urged, “take your clear luminous eyes in your hand, as my father used to say, and look through them to see life clearly. In life fulfill yourself.”

  “I want fulfillment in Zen.”

  “Why don’t you come home and think things through before you make your next move?”

  “What’s home?” she asked. “Two lonely people trying to get along.”

  “Use us, for Christ’s sake, we’d be less lonely.”

  “I have my own life to live.”

  “Then live it. Don’t be a nun, Maud. You’ve always called yourself a Jew. Jews live in the world. Don’t hide from pain, insult, fear of failure. Don’t expect perpetual serenity. It’s not that kind of life or real world.”

  “How do you define the real world? All things share in the Buddha nature if one can find it in herself. I want to live in Buddha, that’s where it is for me and I wish you wouldn’t try to dissuade me now that I know where I want to be. Frankly, Papa, Zen would be good for you too.”

  She was walking in the surf.

  He followed her along the ribbed hard sand. The wind was down; the fog had lifted but not the fog in Dubin. Of himself he had said nothing; she hadn’t asked.

  Maud strode on; Dubin followed. He was tempted to say, “My child, I understand your pain. I live with my own. Let me tell you about it.” He didn’t say it; he was, he thought, the father.

  She walked on, eyes in the distance. My daughter, the stranger. He looked back: the waves washed the smooth shore and flowed into the sea. When he looked again their footsteps had reappeared.

  Maud walks in Dubin’s dreams.

  It was a quiet long summer, two alone in a big house. The weather had turned humid-hot, and in the evening they sat on the porch facing the long-trunked graceful silver maples. Kitty’s garden showed bunches of red phlox within a border of late-blooming yellow lilies. She served salads in white bowls, or cold sliced meats and cheeses they carried out on earthenware plates, with brown bottles of Alsatian wines. As they ate they watched the reflection of dull-gold sunsets on the heavy hills. The grass yielded light at dusk. Swallows darting in broken circles above the trees swooped low over the green lawn. Lorenzo, after long watching the birds, slept on the warm planks by the porch rail.

  “He sleeps his life away,” Kitty said.

  “It’s his to sleep.”

  At dark she lit a three-candle candelabrum he had bought her in Venice their first time there. Kitty smoked to keep the mosquitoes away. The biographer would watch the candles melt until the stars appeared. Afterward they read downstairs until their bedroom had cooled off, and then read in bed. Kitty was into Lawrence’s poetry again.

  “My God, listen to this—he’s talking about his lonely erect phallus: ‘How beautiful he is! without sound, / without eyes, without hands; yet flame of the living ground. / He stands, the column of fire by night. / And he knows from the depths; he quite / alone understands.’ Isn’t it just like D. H. Lawrence to write that?” Kitty laughed.

  Dubin said he knew the poem. “He loved his thing.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He was reading the Confessions of St. Augustine, often putting the book down when he could not concentrate. “Love means that I want you to be,” Augustine had said. As Dubin read he heard the ping of the moths hitting the window screens and saw lightning bugs flash in the trees in the outside dark.
There was no breeze through the open windows; the curtains were limp. Kitty lay with her eyes shut, fanning herself in long strokes with a magazine.

  “Lord, it’s hot.”

  “Not that hot.”

  “I feel hot. Don’t tell me it’s only me.”

  “It’s cooling now,” Dubin said.

  It was cooler at midnight, but they were restless in bed. Kitty said it looked like another uncomfortable summer. “Whatever’s happened to Northeast weather? Where are the east winds and cool summers?” Dubin didn’t know. In the warm dark when they moved apart to try to sleep, Fanny crept close to him, Dubin lay close to her.

  Sometimes as he wrote he felt lust arise from nowhere, tempting him at his task. That morning he had gored Fanny on his horn. Fanny pressed her fleshy firm breasts to his lips, caressed his buttocks. Her experienced tongue traveled up his inner thigh to the head of his cock. She dipped it again and again into her mouth. Then she rose on her knees, placing herself above his erect flesh and locked it in her moist vagina, riding rhythmically, enacting an ancient legend in sweet time. Seizing her, he held her motionless, pumping upward until she burst into flame. William, she groaned in silence. He came, at length, extravagantly.

  Dubin felt the shame of lust at his age.

  “Clouds arose from the slimy desires of the flesh and from my youth’s spring. They clouded over and darkened my soul, so that I could not distinguish the calm light of chaste love from the fog of lust.”

  Augustine’s youth’s spring; Dubin’s late wasteful autumn. Not that flesh is slime, but some emotions are outworn. The expense of spirit: not because he had had her in his wife’s company, but because he had had her when he hadn’t; when she was no longer his to have.