A New Life (3 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
I was tired, he thought.
“And now that you know about me,” she said, reaching for a cigarette, “what about you?”
Levin felt himself react against her question—had made no bargains. He was, besides, on edge to be settled and alone.
But her smile was innocent enough. “What I would like to know,” she said, “is why have you come so far? Was it some special reason, or just that the job happened to be here?”
Resisting much there was to say, he replied truthfully. “When the offer came I was ready to go.” Levin rubbed his hands with a handkerchief. “What’s there to say that hasn’t been said? One always hopes that a new place will inspire change—in one’s life.”
“Have you been to many places?”
“The opposite is true.”
He cracked his knuckles as she fiddled with her rose.
He went on although advising himself not to. “My life, if I may say, has been without much purpose to speak of. Some blame the times for that, I blame myself. The times are bad but I’ve decided I’ll have no other.”
He laughed immoderately and stopped abruptly. After a minute’s silence he went on, “In the past I cheated myself and killed my choices.” Levin mopped his brow. “Now that I can—ah—move again I hope to make better use of—things.
“That sums me up.” He got up and began to walk back and forth in the room.
“What better use?” she ultimately asked. Her voice seemed diminished.
“I’ve reclaimed an old ideal or two,” Levin said awkwardly. “They give a man his value if he stands for them.” He stopped pacing. “If you’ll excuse me, that’s about all I care to say on the subject. Too many abstract words make me self-conscious.”
Pauline seemed to be listening to something going on in another part of the house. She asked, “How long have you been teaching?”
“Two years—in a high school,” he confessed. “I was twenty-six when I realized I wanted to teach, a late insight. One day I thought, What you do for others you can do for yourself. Then I thought, I can do it teaching.”
She yawned behind her fingers.
He was irritated by her long empty shoes on the floor.
“You remind me of somebody,” she said.
Levin yawned too. “Excuse me—the long train ride. I didn’t sleep so well.”
“Gerald will be right down.”
He nodded listlessly.
“I hope you won’t be disappointed in us, Mr. Levin. In the College and the town. Easchester can be lonely for single people—I don’t mean the college students, their world isn’t
real. Someone from a big city might be disappointed here. You have no idea how sheltered we are, landlocked, and bland.”
real. Someone from a big city might be disappointed here. You have no idea how sheltered we are, landlocked, and bland.”
“Not me, I’ve had too much—”
She put out her cigarette. “I had a terrible time my first few years here. We miss a lot through nobody’s fault in particular. It’s the communal sin of omission. People here are satisfied. I blame it on nature, prosperity, and some sort of laziness, mine too, but for God’s sake please don’t quote me. Otherwise it’s a lovely town, good will abounds, and there are many advantages for family living.” She smoothed her skirt. “But for someone without a wife and children, maybe you ought to try San Francisco or Seattle.”
“I’ve had my fill of cities,” Levin replied. “For a change I want the open sky on my head.”
“And the gentle rain?”
“It rains here?”
“It does. It almost drove me mad at first but I’ve learned to live with it. The trick is no longer to love the sun. Didn’t Gerald write you about the rain?”
“No.”
“About our community?”
“No.”
“About the College?”
“A few words.”
“He ought to have. It rains, for instance, most of the fall and winter and much of spring. It’s a spongy sky you’ll be wearing on your head.”
“You can’t have everything.”
“To be fair I must also tell you the sun may shine for days on end in winter if a freeze sets in. At the same time it’s not like Eastern cold, and Gerald wears a trench coat all year round. Many Cascadians want rain and warmth rather than sunlight and cold. But our summers, except rarely, are practically flawless. Even Californians come here then. There are people here, originally from the Plains states or the Midwest,
who swear Easchester is paradise. Gerald is one of them. Wherever he goes he wants to come home.”
who swear Easchester is paradise. Gerald is one of them. Wherever he goes he wants to come home.”
A mild heaviness had settled on Levin’s spirit. He felt he had talked too much about himself and was worried what she might repeat to her husband. Who could guess what a stranger would make out of his unguarded remarks about his past; he might already have endangered his career.
“I really must go.”
Gilley came downstairs, yawning, his red head lighting the apple-green wall, one side of his face creased.
“Fell asleep in Erik’s room.”
“What did he want?”
“Company—he was a little scared.”
“Of the dark?”
“Ghosts,” Gilley said.
“Ghosts? That’s new,” she said.
“I guess we ought to go,” Levin suggested.
“Sure thing,” said Gilley. “I’ll get my keys.”
“Oh, my heavens, I didn’t notice how late it’s gotten,” said Pauline. “Won’t Mrs. Beaty be sleeping now, Gerald?”
Gilley held up his wrist. “By George, you’re right, it’s past ten. We’ll have to make it tomorrow instead, Sy. My fault, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll go to a hotel,” Levin said. “I had planned to anyway.”
“Why waste five dollars?” Pauline asked. “We have a spare room, and in the morning Gerald can run you over to Mrs. Beaty’s.”
“I wouldn’t want to bother you.”
“You’re no bother, Mr. Levin. It’ll just take a minute to put a blanket on the bed.” She ran up the stairs in stocking feet.
“Please—” Levin called after her.
“Give up, Sy,” advised Gilley. “A woman’s will. Drink?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’ll relax you.”
“I’m relaxed.”
“Good. Professor Fairchild’ll love you. He doesn’t touch liquor himself. His wife is first vice-president of the Anti-Liquor League. Mrs. Feeney’s president, that’s the recently retired dean’s wife. Mind if I do?”
“Please—”
Gilley poured some Scotch into a glass and went into the kitchen for water. “Sy,” he said warmly when he returned, “I bet you’ll like the department and I’m sure we’ll like you. We’re a pretty nice bunch of friendly people engaged in the common endeavor. You’ll find the comp staff particularly is nice—no false pretenses or such. Comp, as I wrote you, will be your program, plus one remedial grammar course which Avis Fliss will give you the dope on when she gets back next month. I will say this, that if you stay on here comp is what you’ll be teaching till you get your doctorate—that’s your union card if you want to stay in college teaching. After that you’ll be given a lit class or two.”
“I had hoped to teach literature,” Levin sighed.
“I personally prefer teaching comp to lit. More satisfaction, I’ve found. You can just see these kids improving their writing from one term to the next, and even from one paper to the next. It isn’t easy to notice much of a development of literary taste in a year.”
“I suppose not—”
“We feel we make progress in composition. Morale is high, everybody works together—a nice bunch. You should see how we function getting finals out of the way and grades in. No problem children, if you know what I mean.”
Levin nodded.
“The one or two we have around are in lit. I was very glad to be appointed director of comp some years ago and focus my attention on it. It’s been an invigorating experience.” He paused, seemed about to say more, then took a drink. “You’ll like us all.”
“I’m sure,” said Levin.
“Good.”
“Bad,” Pauline said, coming down the stairs.
“Who’s that?” asked her husband.
“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Levin about the rain? I’ll bet he came without a raincoat.”
“No, I have one,” said Levin, “and an umbrella.”
“We have no more rain than you have in New York State,” Gilley said, “only it’s distributed more evenly. Anyway, it keeps Cascadia green.”
“It’s green enough,” Pauline said. She put her arm around Gilley. He looked at her with affection.
Nice people, Levin thought, a real home. I shouldn’t regret having to spend the night here.
“We’ll get your bags, Sy.” Gilley, putting down his glass, noticed the picture album on the table. “What’s this out for?”
“I wanted Mr. Levin to see your prize-winning picture at the State Fair.”
“Oh, that,” Gilley said. He seemed momentarily lost in thought, then cheered up. “Got it with my Leica on a moderately bright day. I used Plus X on f11 at one one-hundredth of a second. Care to see my cameras sometime, Sy? Pauline bought me a Polaroid for my birthday.”
“I don’t know anything about them.”
“Photography’s not hard to learn. It’s a satisfying and useful hobby. Come on, let’s get the bags.”
Levin went outside with him and almost cried out. In the amazing night air he smelled the forest. Imagine getting this for nothing. He drew in a deep wavering breath as he gazed at the stars splashed over the immense dark sky.
“There’s your Big Dipper,” Gilley was saying, “and that’s the North Star. That way is Seattle, British Columbia, Alaska, and then the North Pole.”
“North,” said Levin, with a throb in his throat. “What profound mystery. You go north till there are no men. Imagine the silence, the cold, the insult to the human heart.”
“You’re a bit of a poet, Sy. The other way is San Francisco, and if you’re interested, L.A.”
Gilley unlocked the car trunk and got out the suitcases and golf bags. “We’ll take one of each.” He shut the trunk, paused a minute, then said to Levin, “Just this small matter, Sy. Do you always wear that beard?”
Levin looked at him in embarrassment. “I have for the past year. It’s—er—given me a different view of myself.” He laughed a little.
“Then it’s not permanent?”
“I can’t say just yet. It depends on how things work out—”
“I’ll tell you why I mentioned it. I respect beards but some of your students may think you’re an oddball. It doesn’t take much to set them against a teacher.”
“Some of my best professors wore beards,” said Levin. “Americans have often worn them.”
“Yes, but not so much since the safety razor. This is a sort of beardless town. No one on the faculty wears one that I know of. The administration is clean shaven. It’s usually the students who will grow them. A lot of sophomores encourage whiskers for their spring carnival and they’re a raggy, tacky-looking lot.”
“I have a picture of Abraham Lincoln I could hang up.”
“Well, suit yourself. I just thought I ought to mention it to you. The president’s wife was saying only the other day every time she lays eyes on a beard the thought of a radical pops up in her head.”
Levin guffawed.
Gilley beamed.
The new instructor carried in his valise and Pauline’s clubs; Gilley, the suitcase and his new clubs.
Imagine me carrying golf clubs, Levin thought. Already he had done things he had never before done in his life.
In his room he removed Gilley’s striped shorts and in the upstairs bathroom searched for the laundry chute to dispose
of them. He located it in the hall at the top of the stairs but the door was nailed fast, probably to keep the kids from falling in. In robe and slippers he went downstairs to the other bathroom and got rid of them there.
of them. He located it in the hall at the top of the stairs but the door was nailed fast, probably to keep the kids from falling in. In robe and slippers he went downstairs to the other bathroom and got rid of them there.
Levin brushed his teeth, took a quick bath, soaping himself thickly, and combed his beard to a fine point. On the stairs, through the slightly open bedroom door he caught a glimpse of the Gilleys, man and wife, embracing in their nightshirts.
Standing a moment later, at the curtained window of his room, Levin gazed at the moonlit mountains in the west, more frighteningly higher than he had remembered. In the back yard a birch tree leaned to the left, its symmetry spoiled by its bias. Levin was at first too excited to sleep, but even as he contemplated the possibilities of the future he fell into slumber. He heard Erik calling “papa” and tried to rouse himself, but then he heard a woman’s steps coming up the stairs. He dreamed he had caught an enormous salmon by the tail and was hanging on for dear life but the furious fish, threshing the bleeding water, broke free: “Levin, go home.” He woke in a sweat.
“I can’t,” he whispered to himself. “I can’t fail again.”
On the point of sleep he had the odd feeling he was being covered with a second blanket. Or maybe that was what she was doing to the children across the hall.
“God save us all,” he muttered through his beard.
Other books
Who Walks in Flame by David Alastair Hayden
Let Him In (Let Him Trilogy) by Davis, Sharon
Rock Me Deep by Nora Flite
Enjoying the Chase by Kirsty Moseley
The Vault by Ruth Rendell
Palm South University Season 1 Omnibus by Kandi Steiner
Thin Love by Butler, Eden
Abiding Ink (Inked in the Steel City #4) by Ranae Rose
Ladykiller by Candace Sutton
Imposter by Chanda Stafford
