A New Life (16 page)

Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: A New Life

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George Bullock was standing in the hall, blinking at the
light, his hat and trench coat soaked. His sharp nose and narrow cleft chin inclined him to hatchet-faced.

“Raining,” he said.

“So?” said Bucket.

“I heard voices. Thought Gerald might be here.” His glance fell on Levin.

“Sorry,” Bullock said to Bucket.

Bucket shut the door, he seemed uneasy.

“Was he listening?” Levin asked.

“Sh.” The assistant professor kept his ear to the door until they heard footsteps going down the hall.

“Don’t you like him?” Levin asked.

“That’s a difficult question.”

“Excuse me for asking.”

“We’re not friendly, a case of mutual disapprobation.” He put his ear to the door again, then sat down.

“What does he do here at night?”

“He tutors athletes twice a week.”

“Athletes?”

“Bullock seems genuinely concerned about them as underprivileged people. Sometimes he has more than a half dozen a night who are having trouble in composition or literature, or both.”

“Is that an assignment?”

“As I understand it, no official source has commissioned this particular occupation. Bullock apparently thought up the idea on his own and no one opposes it. At first it was a completely voluntary, and, I suppose, generous act on his part, but then the Physical Education department heard about it and insisted on paying for his services. I’ve heard no complaints about it. I understand that Leroy Davis and someone else from upstairs, have pitched in now and then, at George’s request, to help. He’s a popular figure with the athletes. Last Christmas Eve the football and basketball squads serenaded him and Jeannette on their front lawn. They held white candles and sang carols.”

“Why would a Ph.D. in English be so interested in athletes?”

“The breed has infinite varieties.” Bucket cackled.

“Is that sort of thing cricket?”

“Some say no.”

“Er—Shouldn’t something be done about it?”

“Possibly—under the right circumstances.”

Levin pondered his remark. “You mean if the right person gets to be head?”

“I’ll say no more.”

“I’ll go now.”

“You needn’t rush.”

“I’ve wasted your evening.”

Bucket denied it. “I’ll be revising this accursed paper forever.”

“Then one more question: I’ve lately talked to Fabrikant and Gilley—I’ve heard that either one or the other may be the next head. They’re different types, that’s sure, but both very conscious of the limitations of whatever powers they might have in the future—in other words, what they can hope to accomplish here. I’m a little more favorable to Fabrikant, I like his point of view, but I like Gerald too, as a person. I have no illusions that my support, or the lack of it, will mean anything much to either of them but just so that I know what I’m doing, who’s the better man if you don’t mind saying?”

Levin put away his handkerchief and Bucket pulled his out and mopped his brow.

He said in a low voice, “My own considered preference is for CD over Gerald.”

“Aha.”

“That of course is strictly confidential.”

“Of course.”

“Gerald, in his way, can be an efficient administrator. He may someday be dean of something or other, but CD, in my opinion, is more truly interested in literature and literary scholarship and would be more effective in raising our standards. Although I agree with your observation that there’ll be
few daring innovations under either man, yet what comes with CD will come with increasing value.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“When I say ‘raising our standards,’” Bucket hurried on, “I speak without disrespect for Professor Fairchild, an old and much-liked teacher of mine. I’ve often thought it a shame that he did not devote himself entirely to teaching. I’ll testify he does it well.”

“Does Fabrikant have a chance at the job?”

“Your guess is equal to mine. I understand the situation is fluid. No one I know quite understands the preference of the new dean in all this. One hears all sorts of rumors.”

“Is Gilley at all liberal? His wife sounds as though she might be.”

“I wouldn’t judge him by her.”

“He was dead set against Duffy?” Levin asked, one hand investigating his beard.

“That describes it.”

“And Fabrikant defended him?”

“At the outset.”

“Something happened between them? Was it some sort of fight?”

“I don’t think I’d care to go into that”

“Were they ever friends?” Levin asked.

“I believe they respected each other but that’s as far as it went. They were both very independent people and tended not to attract one another.” Having said that, Bucket stepped out of his shoes.

“I’m leaving now,” Levin said, “after this: When Fabrikant dropped Duffy’s defense in the AAP, wasn’t there anyone else to take it up?”

“He had become universally unpopular.”

“Was he, with you?”

“I personally liked him, though I can’t say I liked everything he did.”

Levin rose at last. “Thanks for your time.”

“Think nothing of it. I rely on your discretion.” He said it with an inquiet laugh.

“Have no fear,” said Levin.

He tried grading papers but could not keep his mind on it and left the office. Downstairs he waited on the porch for the pouring rain to let up, thinking of his talk with Bucket.

Whatever’s happening here, he thought, I’d better not get involved.

The door behind him opened, George Bullock. “Want a ride?”

Levin looked at the night. “Thanks.”

“Wait’ll I get the wagon,” Bullock said. “No use both of us drowning.”

In a few minutes he drew up to the curb in a mauve station wagon and Levin ran down the steps and ducked in. He noticed at once a whiskey odor, and Bullock, as if sensing it, lit a cigarette. He was an intense man and drove with his head thrust forward, his sharp face like a ship’s prow directed against the saturated night.

“I’ll take the Bay Area winter fog to this soup anytime.”

“Is that so?” said Levin. “I heard in the coffee room you had recently turned down an offer from a college in Frisco.”

“Nobody but Easterners say Frisco.”

“Excuse me, San Francisco.”

“Your information was correct. My wife loves her mother. I figure better us alone in Cascadia dew than mama living with us in the California sunshine.”

“Aha,” said Levin.

“Now that we’re sharing confessions, and without meaning to be personal, I didn’t know you were palsy walsy with Bucket.”

“Er-Shouldn’t I be?”

“Who said so? I have nothing against the guy even if he does talk like the
New York Times,
but what makes me uncomfortable
is the futility he gives off. Of all the people to write about: ‘Laurence Sterne: a long digression.’”

“What’s wrong with Sterne?”

“That immoral twerp.”

“You don’t say?”

“Have you read Thackeray on him?”

“No.”

“You should.” Bullock shook his head. “What were you two boys doing with your heads together? I bet Bucket played up CD Fabrikant for head of department?”

“His name was mentioned,” the instructor said warily.

“Bucket overrates him, take my word. CD is a fair-enough scholar but starched like my granddaddy’s collar.”

“I hear he’s had a hard life?”

“Who hasn’t.”

“You’ve had?” Levin asked.

“At fourteen I was crippled by polio. The doctor said I would never walk again.”

“Tst-tst.”

“So much for medical science. In college I ran a hundred yards in eleven seconds.”

“Wonderful,” Levin murmured.

“Have you read any of his stuff?” Bullock asked.

“Fabrikant’s?”

“Yes.”

“I expect to.”

“Be sure to go over it with a vacuum cleaner.”

“It’s dusty?”

“You’ll die sneezing.”

“No good insights?”

“They were decrepit when he came on them.”

“Ah, too bad,” said Levin. “I like the thought of having a good scholar in the department.”

“Goddam, imagine bibliographing Civil War fiction.” Bullock snickered.

“Is that what he’s doing?”

“That’s what he told Avis. She drops in to see him every once in a while and he looks at her legs. That’s the only time he keeps his office door open, to show he’s not seducing her. What kind of head of department would he make if you have to get to him with a crowbar?”

“More important,” said Levin, “is does he have qualities of leadership?”

“Who leads behind a locked door?—unless it’s Casanova, which he’s not.”

“Sometimes the door opens and out comes a man with a sword.”

“If you think so he’s your baby.”

“I’ve heard some of the men speak of him with respect.”

“Maybe so, but they know Gerald is the better choice. He gets along with everybody, and don’t think that’s so easy. He plays pinochle with Labhart and they golf together. When the chips are down I’ll bet lox to bagels that Gerald will get more for the department than CD ever could with his history of antagonizing the administration.”

“Are you referring to the Duffy case?”

“No, that time he was safe on base.”

“When he dropped the AAP defense?”

“Yes.”

“Would you happen to know why he did?”

“Didn’t Bucket tell you?”

“No.”

“Maybe Duffy pissed on one of Fabrikant’s Persian melons. Or the old boy finally discovered what everybody else knew all along, that Leo was a fake. Up to then they had a sneaking admiration for each other as members of the maverick’s union. What Fabrikant liked about Duffy was he did what he didn’t dare to. Leo was the oddball’s oddball, he hit the wall with his head. CD is a Milquetoast Quixote.”

As they turned onto Levin’s street, Bullock said, “I’ll tell you what let’s do. Let’s shoot over to my joint and see how much
comes out of the rum bottle when we squeeze. Jeannette’s a sociable girl and would be happy to have you.”

“Thanks,” said Levin, “but I’m behind in themes.”

Yet when the station wagon stopped in front of Mrs. Beaty’s house, he lingered.

“What I don’t understand,” Levin said, “is why everybody is choosing sides. Will our advice be so important to whoever makes the choice?”

Bullock shot his cigarette out of a window he had lowered. “It was an appointive job at one time but may not be now. Gerald was a shoo-in until they dug up Seagram from the cornfields of Iowa. This former buddy of mine who teaches where he did, wrote me the dean had done a study for some foundation or other on the new rage—departmental elections. Charlie says he’s bugs on the subject. Well, whatever the method is, appointive or elective, I have my dough on Gerald. He’s the logical choice.”

“An election?” Levin felt excitement.

“Nobody knows for sure, but nobody’s taking chances.” He winked in the glass. “Realpolitik.”

The instructor, with the door half open, had another thought. “Ah—when did Gerald first get wind there might be an election?”

“I told him last spring after I heard from Charlie that Seagram was coming here. Why?”

Levin shrugged. He pulled the door shut and went with Bullock.

On days the rain let up Levin still walked on country roads. Once he passed a barn where he thought he had been with Laverne. He thought of her with desire, up to when Sadek entered. After weeks of rain he thirsted for color, the eye seeking it in whatever light. White birches stood in baths of tiny yellow leaves. Elms had golden hair and naked black bodies. Chestnut trees in strong sunlight wore orange impasto. Vine maples, the only adventurers, flared yellow, red, and purple around green at the core. In the setting sun maples turned bronze, and oaks red. Toward Thanksgiving, except for willows, flaming vine maples, and a few tenacious birch and oak, most of the trees that had leaves to lose had lost them, bare except for patches of soggy brown rags and abandoned birds nests.

It seemed to Levin that just when he was about to take the
loss, the yearly symbolic death of nature, to heart, he discovered that many of the recently harrowed fields were touched with bright green grass that turned out to be winter wheat. Bread growing in the harvested field—this went against pathetic fallacy. One day as he was walking outside a forest trying to persuade himself (against the NO HUNTING, FISHING, TRESPASSING warning) to enter and explore, he heard strange noises in the sky, and looking up, beheld for the first time in his life a flight of geese. The fluttering, honking formation of birds was like a ship borne by the wind into the high invisible distance. Levin’s ear burned all night, as if soaked in pitch and set on fire. He wondered what omen the flight held for him and hungered for a victory over nature.

Leaving Humanities Hall late one Friday afternoon, the instructor skidded on a wet leaf on the porch and his books and papers took to the air; he landed on the wet walk, whacking his head. Star clusters popped in his brain. For a second he thought he would remember everything in his life and braced himself not to. The rain drizzled on him but he was too hurt to move. He was vaguely conscious some students, possibly his own, were passing by, but either he was invisible or they were in a hurry. I am a man alone, thought Levin. It seemed a long year but only minutes had gone by before he dragged himself up, found his soiled new hat, collected wet books and papers, and hobbled home.

Levin lay on his bed with Mrs. Beaty’s ice bag tucked under the egg at the back of his bruised and aching head. After twenty minutes’ freezing his brain he got up and stared out the dark window. None but the lonely rain. The instructor riffled through a wet set of quizzes, then thrust them into a drawer where he kept his bird watcher’s guide and a pair of cheap binoculars he had recently bought to follow things in flight. Supper, Levin? He had planned just a Swiss cheese sandwich and a cup of tea but decided he could not stand Mrs. Beaty’s mental health in the kitchen tonight. Sadek, the clothes
snatcher, was long since gone with his Lysol bottle, and the landlady, possibly because she realized she was ageing, had not attempted to rent his room; which suited Levin fine. But he longed for company tonight and considered calling Avis Fliss, though not with great enthusiasm. He was disappointed at how lonely he still was after almost three months in Easchester. Was the past, he asked himself, taking over in a new land? Had the new self failed? He had had invitations here and there, but as Pauline and others had told him, it was tough to be a bachelor in this town. Without a family you were almost always left out. Even Bucket had never invited him to his house. Levin wanted friendship and got friendliness; he wanted steak and they offered spam. Each day his past weighed more. He was, after all, thirty, and time moved on relentless roller skates. When, for God’s sake, came love, marriage, children?

Opening a book, he looked down a page without reading, then tossed it aside. In the cellar he filled the sawdust hopper and left the house. Levin walked in the cold rain, the wettest, dreariest he had ever been in. The town was tight around his shoulders, the wet streets long and dark, street lights obscure at corners. A man could drown mid-block and nobody would know. It was after eight but half the houses he passed were totally dark. On rainy nights people went to bed; it was, after all, a diversion for the married; another was the small blue images of television he occasionally glimpsed through drawn curtains. Levin listened, as he walked, for a human sound and heard himself walking in the rain. He stood for five full minutes at the next street corner, not knowing which way to go, finally wandering toward the Gilleys.

Half heartedly he rang the bell. A light in a glass barrel went on over his head and Gerald opened the door. When he saw who it was he seemed embarrassed.

“I was passing by,” Levin explained. “But if you’re busy or otherwise occupied, I’ll make it some other time.”

“We’re late getting the kids to bed,” Gilley said. He glanced
back into the house. “Come on in if you can stand the mess.”

He spoke without welcome so Levin held back.

“I’ll make it some other time.”

“Was it department business?”

“No, I was just walking by—” He looked at the rain.

Gilley peered out. “Better come on in.” He held the door open.

Levin, relieved, entered, and Gerald hung up his soaked raincoat and hat.

Pauline, in her violet pants, came out of the kitchen with an armful of diapers. Seeing who it was she let out a little shriek and darted up the stairs. Levin was nervously having a beer with Gilley when she reappeared in a green woolen dress. Five minutes ago in pants, uncombed hair, flat chest, she had all the appeal of a pine board. Now, with the same apparatus, the green dress, her hair brushed, she seemed to glow. She knew how to use what she had, not a bad talent.

“Excuse me for coming without phoning—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Levin. I hope I didn’t scare you out of your normal growth but I hate to be seen in my pants.”

She giggled at the way she had put it, Gilley mildly eyeing her.

“Gerald,” Pauline said, “please stack the dishwasher while I get Erik out of the tub before he goes down the drain. Excuse me for one minute, Mr. Levin.”

“I came at the wrong time,” he called after them.

A few minutes later, Erik, in bunny pajamas, waddled in from the bathroom and went through Levin’s beard with both hands.

“Any bugs in it?”

“Butterflies.”

The boy tugged at the whiskers, then ran with a little cry to the kitchen. He pushed open the swing-door and Levin saw Gerald and Pauline facing each other across a table loaded with dirty dishes.

“We’ve got to get started entertaining again,” he was saying with emotion. “It’s hurting me in the department.”

She grabbed the butter dish and flung it at the wall. It hit the electric clock. The butter stuck to the face of the clock as the plate crashed to the floor.

Gilley yanked Erik into the kitchen and the door snapped shut.

Levin put down his beer and got into his wet raincoat and hat. He was headed for the front door when Pauline, flushed, entered the room.

“Oh, you’re not leaving yet, Mr. Levin? We haven’t exchanged a word.”

“I’ve got this headache,” he explained, removing his hat and showing her his bump. “I slipped on a leaf and hurt my head. Tell Gerald thanks for the beer.”

She touched the bump gently with cold fingers, Levin conscious she smelled like a flower garden. “I’m awfully sorry, can’t I get you some ice?”

“I’ve had some.” He moved towards the door.

“Try us again soon,” she called after him through the open door. “We’d honestly love to see you.”

He hurried away.

The rain had thinned to mist, and a part-time moon wandered amid the broken pieces of sky. Walking on the campus, Levin was drawn to the Student Union by the sound of dance music. He watched a dance through the barred ballroom window. The girls were prettier than they had ever been, the men with more possibilities than that morning in class. He stood there for a half hour, envying them their looks, their youth, their future. His own was imprisoned in the old Levin. Where is my life? What has become of me? he asked himself. Ancient questions. Once more the music began, the same he had heard in another time, in another world. Though Levin made no sound, his shoulders shook.

My youth, my lost youth.

After recovering from Levin’s beard Avis Fliss took to visiting him in his office to discuss the tactics of teaching remedial grammar, sometimes staying so long he grew restless. Her virtue was her unique fund of information concerning department and college routine; she always knew what was due when, and usually had it in first. And she seemed to know the activities and accomplishment of everyone in the department. On a more primitive level his eye was drawn to her bosom and ungirdled behind. Whenever in her presence he found himself thinking of her as a woman, he sensed a response but wasn’t sure. What bothered him about Avis was that as soon as she came close to revealing something personal, her eyelids fluttered autonomously, her voice took flight, and when it returned she launched into a long digression addressed to his shoulder. He had, however, learned she had stopped off at Easchester several years ago, after a summer school vacation in Alaska, to surprise an old friend. The friend had been married and was gone, but Avis, possibly inspired by the event, had stayed on where it had taken place. Although she had only a bachelor’s degree, she had taught in a well-known private girls’ school, and Professor Fairchild, with Gilley’s vote —despite Fabrikant’s lack of enthusiasm, “though not against the lady personally although I don’t like having too many around”—had put her on in the flourishing remedial program. Fairchild, therefore, was a “dear,” and the director of composition, whose unofficial assistant she was, “tops.” She praised him as an able man with a lovely little family, although she said once in passing that his wife was not entirely suited to him.

“Really?” said Levin. He asked her why she thought so.

“Well,” she said, with a hesitant laugh, “she strikes me as the sort of person who can’t always be depended on to strengthen a man’s rear when he’s on the march.”

“On the march?”

“Advancing careerwise.”

“His rear?”

“Figuratively speaking. Please don’t misunderstand me, Seymour, I have nothing against Pauline. She’s been nice to me, especially when I first came to Easchester, kind with invitations to their house, though I suspect Gerald had to ask her to ask me. What I have reference to is that she gives the impression of being dissatisfied in the midst of plenty, and I imagine some people wonder whose fault that is and unjustly blame Gerald. She can also be absent-minded about her social responsibilities, which rather disturbs him.”

“What do you mean ‘in the midst of plenty’?”

“What any woman would consider herself lucky to have.”

“To me they look like people who generally get along. I could be wrong.”

“Oh, they do,” Avis said. She seemed worried. “Please don’t quote me.”

One Saturday night, Levin, with nothing to do, drifted up to the office. Down the hall Avis’ door was open but apparently no one else was around, Levin wondering if Bucket were sick. He began a letter to a second cousin, a lady in Cleveland who sometimes wrote to him, when Avis knocked. She was looking for a match, but when he had none, discovered a last one at the bottom of her purse. She stayed to smoke, resting one buttock on his desk. They talked of this and that, then books, then poetry, and were soon reading aloud to each other from an anthology. Levin read several stanzas from “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and Avis read Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall.” One poem led to another, and soon Levin, taking Avis’ bashful hand, gently drew her down upon his lap. A blessed thing, poetry.

They kissed, Levin suffused in her orange blossom and tobacco aroma, then kissed again more deeply.

“Your whiskers tickle,” she laughed, her bosom heaving. “You ought to cut them off.”

“Never.”

“For a person who isn’t handsome, Seymour, you act as though you were.”

“Ha ha,” laughed Levin.

After another breathless kiss Avis suggested they go for a drive.

“Fine,” he said. “Where’s your car?”

“I was thinking of yours.”

“I have none.”

“Oh, too bad. Mine’s in the garage having its valves ground.”

“Tst-tst.” To test what she had in mind, he said, “We could walk if you don’t mind the rain.”

She coughed bronchially.

He was considering his room. They could sneak up the back stairs, only Mrs. Beaty was tonight entertaining some club ladies. If sex was approaching Levin wanted it without the worry of visitors.

“What about your place?” he asked.

“I daren’t. The landlady’s teen-age daughter sleeps in the next room to mine.”

He was weighing other possibilities when Avis hopped quickly up out of his lap.

“What was that?” She listened tensely at the door. “I thought I heard footsteps.”

He listened. “Nothing.”

Levin was aroused. They kissed at the door. He felt for her nipple. Avis pushed his hand away.

An old maid, he thought, I’d better not.