A New Life (27 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: A New Life
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But what had tilted Levin into love had not tipped her. In bed she dispatched the act with an easy cry. He loved her,
wanting as he loved. She fell asleep as he lay awake thinking of the unyielding irony of his life.
Afterward she said, “You’ve been so strange.”
He apologized. “I had some trouble but it’s gone now.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Pauline, the truth is I love you.”
She said after silence, “How like a woman to want to love the one you sleep with.”
“I do.”
She held her hands to her ears.
He shut his mouth, eyes, his life. She dressed and quickly left. He wasn’t looking.
Each day passed excruciatingly, he tried not to count. He fought thinking of her, a mockery—she was in every thought. He beat his brains to destroy her place in his mind without maiming himself. How to be, please God, not Levin? How to live loveless or not live? Once more he paid for who he was, a dirty deal.
Late one night she tapped on his window and nervously entered. Levin, putting down a book he couldn’t read, faced her with what dignity he could muster, concealing love in his own defense, and the pain her presence invoked.
“I saw your light,” she said.
He answered nothing.
“I tried not to come,” Pauline said. “It isn’t fair to you.”
Fair or foul, he would settle for sex.
“Considering what I know about your life—what you’ve been through—I have no right to love you or expect your love, my poor darling.”
He rose with an aching heart.
“I love you,” she was saying, “although I try not to. I tried to be fair to you, to Gerald, and my children.”
They embraced. She dug her nails into his back. He beat her with his heart.
“I love you, Lev. That’s my name for you. Sy is too much
like sigh, Lev is closer to love. I love you, I’m sorry, you deserve better.”
“I deserve you.”
“I should never have let you that day in the woods. But I love the kind of man you are, the kind I have to love.”
“I love you willingly, with all my heart.”
“Oh, my darling, we must do something with our lives.”
My God, thought Levin, “What hath God wrought?”
It was easy to duck Gilley whether on campus or some downtown street. From afar his red head flared; Levin spun around and walked another way. In Humanities Hall he cut out tea to stay out of the coffee room. He could not avoid him at department meetings but didn’t go near his office—hadn’t since Albert Birdless. If it were possible to escape the sight of him, Levin escaped. Yet when they met at somebody’s house, since Pauline was there he felt less self-conscious with Gerald than he thought he would be, guilt diminished because divided. (She glanced at him; he looked at her; she looked away.) Gilley and he sometimes talked shop, or the sportsman described how to wallop a little white ball across the grass or pull a half-dead fish out of water. He teaches me, thought Levin, and felt, in spite of all, a mild affection for the man, a sort of third cousin by marriage. But when he was alone,
Levin worried. He feared the HUSBAND of the wife, ashamed of eating his apple, spitting on his manhood, betraying him in a way the betrayer would have died to be betrayed.
Levin had only casually tied morality to sex, the act, that is. Sex was where it grew, where with luck he found it, manna when least expected. What was for free was for free so long as nobody got hurt. If the lady was willing nature approved. But the matter became moral when, in getting at sex, a man interfered with another’s “rights.” Though he loved Pauline he had no right to her at present. Gilley had staked his claim and she had agreed, the marriage contract. Destroy the value of that and every personal right lost value. And pretense to Gerald, at the moment he was sleeping with his wife, that their relationship—such as it was—continued to be what had it had been, ladled hypocrisy on deceit. He was also ashamed of old-fashioned disloyalty to someone who had favored him with a job that pointed to a future. For which Levin (bearded witch riding Gilley’s corpse) repaid him with kicks where it hurt most, once, God forbid, he knew he had been kicked.
Yet he tried to convince himself not to let his conscience weigh too heavily. Gilley was, after all, not guiltless; he erred too. Indifferent to his wife in vital ways, did he deserve her fidelity? His “rights” were formal, less than right because he hadn’t used them very well, at the very least to keep her from sexual hunger; and rely on more than two adopted kids to hold the marriage together. He had flubbed his best chances. As to what Levin could do for her, what his chance amounted to (beyond love itself) he did not know for sure. Since she was not free it was a matter for the future; they would have to wait for the right time. Pauline, after confessing her love, had thus far said nothing that reached past present, suggested no startling changes in their lives. He would have worried if she had, was still bound by the plans he had come with. If they were to live together some day, it would have to be arranged with the greatest care; neither of them could afford to make the wrong compromises. He thought good must eventually
come from their love, willy nilly Gilley; and when it came, would the ex-husband profit less from more in the world? Although such reflections induced no great peace, at least Levin knew where he stood, and wasn’t knowledge a blessing, even when it weighed on the head like lead? So he continued to avoid Gilley wherever possible, a bit of a feat because they used the same classroom three mornings a week at contiguous hours. When the bell rang the instructor bolted but had twice managed to run into arms that had held Pauline.
One day, shortly after lunch, Gilley knocked on Levin’s office door, the instructor fabricating a cracked smile as the condemned man entered. Levin felt an odd abashed gratitude to him for coming in, as though he were a dear friend (apart from the fact they shared a wife) who by his appearance in his office guaranteed his once and future innocence. By definition: a friend was not an enemy. Or as though the husband, present without a club to bash his brains in, was proof of innocence or, at the very least, of gentle pardon. The instructor, flipping open a folded handkerchief, hastily blew his nose, for he felt a tense discomfort until Gilley, visibly on edge, on noticing Levin’s collection of sample textbooks in the bookcase, suggested it might be a good idea to call a meeting of the textbook committee sometime soon. Levin then felt a little relieved.
“We’ll still be using
The Elements
in comp next fall,” Gerald said with that innocence that made him seem so simple in a complex world, “but you could be thinking ahead about a new freshman reader since we do change that every few years or so.”
Levin agreed to call the meeting, still concerned about what might have upset Gerald. An uneasy conscience plastered peril everywhere.
Gerald, red behind both ears and back of his neck, lingered a minute over the view through the cracked window before turning again to Levin, who could not help sighing.
“Haven’t seen much of you lately, Sy. Don’t you drink tea any more?”
“Once in a while,” said Levin.
“You aren’t sore about anything in particular?”
“Not me.”
“About the Birdless boy?”
“Not any more.”
“Good. I didn’t think you’d carry a grudge.”
“Can’t stand them.”
“I’ll try to remember to get that window fixed,” Gilley said absently.
“No hurry.”
“But that’s not what I came to say.”
Levin, as though in a sudden blizzard, feared the worst until Gerald explained he had been upset by something that had happened in Professor Fairchild’s office that morning.
“I started out to tell George about it, but he’s gone so I thought I’d tell you.”
Sunshine devoured blizzard; Levin cautiously relaxed.
“It was embarrassing, Sy, though I came in at the tail end, after Orville, who had borne the brunt of it, sent Milly to get me. What happened was this. The father of one of Dr. Kuck’s girl students—he’s a millhand in town—was waiting in Orville’s office when he returned from his cup of coffee. The man was about fit to be tied. He shouted he wouldn’t have his daughter reading dirty stuff even if this is a college. He was objecting to a Hemingway short story Leopold had assigned in his survey of literature class. Orville tried to talk sensibly to the man but didn’t get very far. He pounded with his fist on Orville’s desk and broke the plate glass cover. He also brought on one of Orville’s high blood pressure headaches. Finally Orville promised to look into the anthology we’ve been using in that course. He asked me to do it and report to him. Then he left for home, looking like something the cat had mauled.”
“What story was he objecting to?” Levin said, fiddling with his whiskers.
“‘Ten Indians.’ Do you know it?”
“I don’t remember anything wrong with it.”
“They object—the girl and her father—to the sex parts.”
Levin rubbed his nose. “I don’t remember anything—er—particularly outstanding.”
“It has a raw touch of subject matter. The boy in the story has been having intercourse with this Indian girl. The girl’s father—the one in Leopold’s class—her father—said his daughter came to him so embarrassed she couldn’t look him in the eye when she asked his opinion of the story. After reading it he forbade her to open the book again. He told Orville if he didn’t get rid of that book he’d go to President Labhart, and if he didn’t give him any satisfaction he’d take it up with the governor, and I believe he would. That was when Orville called me in and it was all I could do to calm the man down. I read the story at lunch time and, frankly, I think we ought to drop the anthology.”
Levin, suppressing excitement, hesitantly rose.
“You can’t do that. Didn’t you tell the man what literature is, why we study it?”
“There was no telling him a thing. He was absolutely enraged. I thought he was going to sock Orville, he was that sore.”
“Maybe you should have asked him to leave?”
Gilley made a face. “The townspeople are just as good as we are, Sy.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Levin, “but are ideas equal?”
“My policy with complaints is to hear them out, not antagonize anybody further.”
“Fine—but—er—censorship is dangerous business.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it censorship.” Gerald had to clear a rough spot in his voice.
“Whatever you call it, that’s what it is.”
“I’d like to ask you what kind of budget you think this college would rate if this man’s complaint reached the legislature? It’s more than likely they’d see it pretty much as he does. We have to watch our step nowadays, or the next thing you
know they’d be accusing us of something a lot worse than teaching sexy stories.”
“A college is no place to show contempt for art or intellect. If you drop the book, you’ll be making cowards of us all.”
Gilley frowned. “Aren’t those pretty strong words, Sy?”
Conscious of nervous knees, Levin sat down.
Gerald spoke mildly. “You sound as though I were out to hurt the institution, although what I was thinking of first and foremost was our welfare. Let me tell you what happened in one of our colleges of education last year. This art instructor they hired from some California college got a nude model to pose in his painting class, which nobody knew anything of till he exhibited the pictures they had painted of her. Well, the exhibition lasted about an hour, but that was long enough to raise a fuss and smell that the newspapers carried all over the state. The next thing everybody knew, it was reported in
Time
. Only last month one of my former students, who is now in oil in Venezuela, sent me a clipping of it in Spanish. But the worst of it was this. Although the art instructor was canned, in traveling around the state I still hear occasional smutty talk about what the students are learning in the Northern Cascadia College of Education. It wouldn’t at all surprise me if their graduates are having trouble finding teaching jobs in the state, and maybe out. Now we can’t afford to have that sort of thing happening here. The reputation of an institution of higher learning is sacred. That’s why I did everything I could to pacify the man instead of antagonizing him, as you suggested. Besides, the girl was just nineteen, and you know how sensitive they are at that age.”
“Maybe she doesn’t belong in college,” Levin said.
“Any Cascadia high school graduate is by law eligible to enter Cascadia College.”
“If the course is too much for her she ought to drop it.”
“That’s not the point. All she does is object to a story I can’t legitimately defend.”
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, I think you’re wrong.”
“Have you read it recently?”
“No, but I’ve never heard any criticism of it as an improper story.”
“Leopold had gone through the anthology before he recommended it to Orville, who at that time was too busy to read it, but he admits he might have slipped up on that particular story. For one thing, the boy’s father seems to have approved the son’s illicit relationship with the Indian girl, even though he had told him—his son—that he—the father—had witnessed the girl having intercourse with somebody else in the woods. Now would you defend that as a story for classroom discussion?”
Though Levin felt hot under his beard and was contemplating a sarcastic remark, he had quick second thoughts. In the
woods?
For a wild minute he was convinced Gilley had followed Pauline into the forest that day and was leading up to a devastating accusation. The instructor felt tense and sweaty, but as he guardedly studied Gerald’s face he knew his annoyance was for something less than a mortal wound. Again he felt secret relief.
“What would you have done if you were in my shoes?” Gilley asked.
Levin, limp, said he wasn’t sure.
“I’ll bet you’d have done pretty much what I had to. I’ve read
Aereopagitica
, too, Sy, but we have to be practical as well as idealistic. Suppose we kept on teaching the story and one of our Indian students, or somebody with Indian blood in him, objected to it as degrading the American Indians? They’re pictured as drunks, even if there was a Fourth of July celebration in the story. It wouldn’t be long, I bet, before we’d have the Un-American Committee here investigating us and making all sorts of nasty charges. Then where would we be?”
Staring out of the window, Levin noticed that the cracked glass resembled forked lightning. He drew a wavering breath but said nothing.
“It’s a question,” Gilley was saying, “of our bread and butter.”
“Not of our immortal souls?” Levin laughed unwillingly.
Responsive to smiles and laughter, Gilley beamed. “I knew you’d see it my way. We may disagree here and there, Sy, but I think we value the same things.”
In shame, Levin looked away.
After rereading Hemingway’s innocent little story he felt faint, disgusted with himself for the ineffectuality of his protest.
 
Standing at the lone urinal in the second floor lavatory he tried to think what he could possibly do to save the anthology. The voice of Dr. CD Fabrikant penetrated the thin wall from his classroom, and Levin, as though staring the man in his hypnotic big eye, listened. He had on this spot previously heard portions of lectures on “The Noble Savage in James Fenimore Cooper,” “Nightmare in Edgar Allan Poe,” “Huck Finn’s River Journey,” “The American Past,” and parts of other discourses. One heard in Fabrikant’s dehydrated rumble a breath of excitement in the expression of ideas, perhaps his only emotion after too many dry years; still, he was able to communicate that ideas can excite, and Levin considered him a good teacher. He was at the moment lecturing on Emerson, and the instructor after a while listened with half an ear, still thinking of his upsetting talk with Gerald.

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