A New Life (23 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Levin sat silent, on the verge of disappointment.
But Gilley, probably affected by Bullock’s powerful pitcher, blinked without seeing them although staring in their direction. He disappeared into the house.
They were motionless until she spoke. “I’ll have to go now. Gerald wants me.” Pauline got up but unsteadily sat down. “I feel like hell.”
“Sit till you feel better.”
A light went on in an upstairs room. It went out, and on in another. They watched it until it was out.
“What did he do that you didn’t like?” she asked.
“It wasn’t important.”
“I’ll bet it was.”
Levin shrugged.
She did not pursue it. After a while she said, “I remember your saying, the night we met, that you hoped to make better use of your life here. Have you?”
“It’s what one always has to do.”
“Tell me what you want from life?”
“Order, value, accomplishment, love,” said Levin.
“Love last?”
“Love any time.”
“Pardon me for asking, but are you unhappy, Mr. Levin?”
“Why that question?”
“That day I came to see you—”
“Not as I have in the past known unhappiness.”
“I sensed that.”
“What about you?”
Pauline smiled. “I too am conscious of the misuses of my life, how quickly it goes and how little I do. I want more from myself than I get, probably than I’ve got. Are we misfits, Mr. Levin?”
Looking at her veil he thought, Take it off.
“Gerald suffers from my nature,” she said, “though he’s a patient man. With a woman more satisfied with herself, less critical and more appreciative of his good qualities, maybe he would have been a different person.” She went on half absently, “Through the years I’ve known him he’s substituted a series of minor gratifications for serious substantial ones. He’s partly affected by what he thinks people expect of him, and partly he’s reacted as he has because I’ve urged the opposite. Lately he’s developed an intense ambition to follow Orville in as head of the English department.”
“Wasn’t it always what he wanted?”
“Not so much until the last year or so.”
“Ambition is no crime.”
“Not if you’re strong.”
She quickly said, “I wouldn’t want to leave the impression Gerald is weak. He isn’t, Mr. Levin, I assure you. He’s always been an excellent provider, wonderful to me and the children. If you knew him better I’m sure you’d like him.”
“I don’t dislike him.”
Pauline yawned. “Excuse me, I had a restless night.”
Levin rose. “Shall we go in?”
But she sat there. “If you’re a married woman past thirty you have at that age pretty much what you’re going to have. Still, I blame myself for my compromises, and I resist the homogenization of experience and—if I may call it such-intellect. I wish I could do more for myself, I really can’t blame Gerald for not wanting to make a career of shoring up my lacks.”
He listened with interest, finally sitting again.
“Poor Mr. Levin, you came out for a breath of air and I’ve told you all I know.”
“We could all do with a cause.”
Pauline said, “Leo Duffy used to say, ‘A good cause is the highest excitement.’”
Levin copied it on a piece of paper and slipped it into his pocket. “People talk about him but don’t say much. Was he a friend of yours?”
He thought for a minute she would raise her veil but Pauline sat with quiet hands. “What have you heard?”
“Not much—that he livened things up.”
“Yes, he did. Leo was different and not the slightest bit fake under any circumstances. He was serious about ideas and should have been given a fair chance to defend his. People were irritated with him because he challenged their premises.”
“That I guessed.”
“I had the highest regard for him.”
“I have his office now.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She gasped as they were drenched in glaring light. Bullock’s garden spotlights had been turned on.
“That’s the end of the party. George flushes the garden with those lights.” Pauline rose, swayed in her tracks, and again had to sit down, her face so white the veil looked blacker.
“I feel deathly sick. Please, Mr. Levin, call my husband before I pass out.”
“Couldn’t I get you some coffee?”
“Just get Gerald.”
“Let me take you in where you can lie down.”
“Tell Gerald to come take me home.”
Levin hurried into the house. The party was over, the room deserted except for Leopold and Alma Kuck in overcoats, talking quietly to both Bullocks.
“Pauline isn’t feeling so well,” Levin said. “Where’s Gerald?”
“He’ll be down in a jiffy,” George said.
“She’s in the garden and wants to go home.”
The Kucks left. Jeannette saw them to the door.
“The dope is,” Bullock said to Levin, “Gerald’s in the upstairs head. I understand they both ate something that didn’t agree with them. Maybe I ought to drive her home?”
“You’re in no condition to, George,” Jeannette said. “I will.”
“Don’t bother,” Levin said. “I will.”
He asked George where the toilet was.
“First to the left upstairs. There’s another down here if it’s for your use.”
“Not for mine,” said Levin. He raced up the stairs and knocked on the bathroom door. “Gerald, this is Sy. Pauline doesn’t feel so well. She wants you to take her home. If you can’t, can I?”
Gilley, after a minute, tiredly spoke. “Why don’t you do that, Sy? This has caught me by surprise, but I’m sure it’s something we ate last night, some Italian stuff with red peppers and olive oil. Plus too much vino. We both got up queasy this morning. Tell her she can expect me soon.”
Levin hurried down, found his coat, and returned to the garden. George and Jeannette were there with Pauline.
“I’m awfully sorry,” she was saying.
“Some food she ate,” Levin said. He helped her to her feet. “Gerald asked me to drive you home.”
She felt his beard and giggled. “For a minute I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who, for instance?” George said.
“None of your business,” said Jeannette.
“I’m awfully sorry, Jeannette,” said Pauline.
“It’s not your fault.”
Levin threw Bullock a dirty look but missed. They left by way of the garden. He helped Pauline into his Hudson and quickly drove off.
She rested her head against his shoulder.
“How do you feel?” Levin asked.
“Awful, but sexy. Do you think George wants to seduce me, Mr. Levin? He pours me such big drinks.”
Levin laughed although he felt a headache coming on.
“My one talent,” she said, rubbing her head against him, “only lately developed, is that I know people. I know you, Mr. Levin.”
“What do you know?”
“Who you really are. And you know me, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
She sat up. “I’ve told you about myself but not about my children.”
“Later,” said Levin.
“At first I didn’t want them because I was ashamed a big girl like me couldn’t have her own. When we were first married I had some menstrual trouble and the doctor noticed I had a tipped womb. All along I thought that was the reason why, but years later we were both examined and it turned out Gerald had no seeds. He had had the mumps and enflamed testicles when he was twenty-two.”
“I don’t want to hear about his personal troubles.”
“I know I’m drunk, it makes me talkative.”
She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder and awoke when the car stopped in front of her house. Pauline sucked a mint before she got out. He attempted to hold her arm as they walked up the flagstone path to the door but she wouldn’t let him. In the house while she was paying Zenamae she showed no signs of distress but when the girl was gone she collapsed on the sofa, her hat awry, the veil crawling up one eye.
“Stay with me and hold my hand.”
Her dress had risen above her knees. The legs were exciting though the long black shoes were like stiff herrings aimed skyward. Her chest had the topography of an ironing board.
“I’m suddenly terribly hungry. Could you make me a scrambled egg, Mr. Levin?”
That goddamn veil, he thought. On impulse he tried to pluck her hat off but Pauline clasped both hands over her head. “Stop, it’s my only defense.”
I’d better not start anything, Levin thought.
Upstairs Mary cried. Erik called, “Mommy.”
“Mr. Levin,” said Pauline, “I entreat you to look after my poor babies.” Her head touched the sofa and she sat bolt upright.
“I married a man with no seeds at all.”
She fell asleep, her stomach gurgling.
Levin went upstairs to the little girl’s room and turned on the light. She stopped crying and stared at him. Her bottle was in the crib so he fed her part of it.
In the next room, through the open door he saw Erik sitting up in his bed. “Who’re you?”
“Mr. Levin—the funny man.”
“I want a drink.”
He went to the bathroom and got the water. Erik drank and lay back. As Levin was covering him the child raised his head and kissed him under the eye.
Mary was asleep. Levin put off the light and listened to the children sleeping. The poor orphans. He burst into tears.
A warm, sunlit day exhaling pure spring startled Levin at the end of January. He had been forewarned of this, but the long habit of Eastern winter kept him from believing the season could go without once punishing by blizzard or lacerating freeze every dweller in its domain. He felt unsettled for it seemed to him the unused winter must return to extract a measure of revenge for dying so young, so little of it had there been: a few months of darkish rain, a week of soft wet snow
(crowning the mountains and drawing the hills closer), gone quickly to slush then gone forever; the returned rain broken by nine days of sunlit cold—never below twenty degrees, afternoons warming—which exhilarated Levin although his students complained. Maybe a reluctant icicle had hung for a day or two from the roof of Mrs. Beaty’s porch. Having as a kid, nose and feet burning, waded many times through snowdrifts, and often worn an overcoat into mid-April, Levin felt now as though he had been reprieved by prestidigitation, not entirely trustworthy, from ice, snow, and wild wind. If winter were already dead it left him with some guilt, as though he had helped murder it, or got something for nothing when they read the will, rare in his life. Yet the thought remained that to be alive was a short season.
(crowning the mountains and drawing the hills closer), gone quickly to slush then gone forever; the returned rain broken by nine days of sunlit cold—never below twenty degrees, afternoons warming—which exhilarated Levin although his students complained. Maybe a reluctant icicle had hung for a day or two from the roof of Mrs. Beaty’s porch. Having as a kid, nose and feet burning, waded many times through snowdrifts, and often worn an overcoat into mid-April, Levin felt now as though he had been reprieved by prestidigitation, not entirely trustworthy, from ice, snow, and wild wind. If winter were already dead it left him with some guilt, as though he had helped murder it, or got something for nothing when they read the will, rare in his life. Yet the thought remained that to be alive was a short season.
Pessimism was momentary. Better enjoy the changes that had taken place with or without his knowing. Primroses, Mrs. Beaty had showed him, were in flower, had been all winter. At Christmastime, as Levin lay gloomily in bed, daffodil shoots were a stiff two inches above the ground; crocus under January snow. On New Year’s day naked jasmine in the backyard by the cherry tree touched the dark world with yellow light; forsythia performed the same feat a few weeks later. Camelias were budding in January; quince and heather in flower, petals touching the stillest air. After the snow Levin had come upon a cluster of violets behind the garage. Rain was lighter, moodier, giving way to broken sunlight. And he enjoyed the lengthened day, seven A.M. now six-thirty. There was as yet little of spring to smell, either because early spring odors were still too subtle for his city-built nose, or the Northwest cool cheated scent, the throb of emotion in the wake of warm fragrance. If this was spring, Levin knew it because he eternally hunted for it, was always nosing out the new season, the new life, “a new birth in freedom.”
On this reasonable facsimile of a late March day, a Thursday when Levin had no afternoon classes, although he had planned to return to the office after lunch and grind away at technical
reports, the weather tempted him to a country walk to see what nature across the bridge had been busy at without him; and to feel the sun’s beneficent hand on his head. He got out of his bureau drawer, where they had lain all winter, his binoculars and Western Birds, Trees and Flowers. Since he had read in last night’s paper it might rain, he carried his trusty umbrella; and with this armload, tramped to the distant wood rising to the hills. He went by a route he had not tried before, a country road lined with old pussy willow trees, their sticky budding branches massed against the sky. Although Levin rejoiced at the unexpected weather, his pleasure was tempered by a touch of habitual sadness at the relentless rhythm of nature; change ordained by a force that produced, whether he wanted it or not, today’s spring, tomorrow’s frost, age, death, yet no man’s accomplishment; change that wasn’t change, in cycles eternal sameness, a repetition he was part of, so how win freedom in and from self? Was this why his life, despite his determined effort to break away from what he had already lived, remained so much the same? And why, constituted as he was and living the experience he engendered, he had not won anything more than short periods of contentment, not decently prolonged to where he could stop asking himself whether he had it or not? If I could only live as I believe, Levin thought. How often have I told myself happiness is not something you flush out in a planned expedition, a hidden complicated grail all at once the beholder’s; that it’s rather grace settled on the spirit in desire of life. We’re here for a short time, often under the worst circumstances—possible that man may someday be blown off the tips of Somebody’s Fingers; the battle lost before we knew what we were about, yet how magnanimously beautiful even to have been is. I have many times in differing circumstances told myself this, so why can’t I quit worrying if happiness comes and how long lasts, if it does either? Discontent brings neither cold cash nor true love, therefore why not enjoy this tender marvelous day instead of greeting it with news of everything I haven’t got?
reports, the weather tempted him to a country walk to see what nature across the bridge had been busy at without him; and to feel the sun’s beneficent hand on his head. He got out of his bureau drawer, where they had lain all winter, his binoculars and Western Birds, Trees and Flowers. Since he had read in last night’s paper it might rain, he carried his trusty umbrella; and with this armload, tramped to the distant wood rising to the hills. He went by a route he had not tried before, a country road lined with old pussy willow trees, their sticky budding branches massed against the sky. Although Levin rejoiced at the unexpected weather, his pleasure was tempered by a touch of habitual sadness at the relentless rhythm of nature; change ordained by a force that produced, whether he wanted it or not, today’s spring, tomorrow’s frost, age, death, yet no man’s accomplishment; change that wasn’t change, in cycles eternal sameness, a repetition he was part of, so how win freedom in and from self? Was this why his life, despite his determined effort to break away from what he had already lived, remained so much the same? And why, constituted as he was and living the experience he engendered, he had not won anything more than short periods of contentment, not decently prolonged to where he could stop asking himself whether he had it or not? If I could only live as I believe, Levin thought. How often have I told myself happiness is not something you flush out in a planned expedition, a hidden complicated grail all at once the beholder’s; that it’s rather grace settled on the spirit in desire of life. We’re here for a short time, often under the worst circumstances—possible that man may someday be blown off the tips of Somebody’s Fingers; the battle lost before we knew what we were about, yet how magnanimously beautiful even to have been is. I have many times in differing circumstances told myself this, so why can’t I quit worrying if happiness comes and how long lasts, if it does either? Discontent brings neither cold cash nor true love, therefore why not enjoy this tender marvelous day instead of greeting it with news of everything I haven’t got?
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