A New Life (9 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
The assistant professor may have sensed some such thought. “You’re not from the West, Mr. Levin?”
“From New York City.”
“New York?” He slowly slid down the roof and set himself cross-legged a few feet from its edge, worrying Levin that he might fall.
“How has it been coming along—your house?” he asked.
“I gather you’ve heard?” Bucket said. “If it strikes you as nearing completion, that’s an illusion. This house—and, I might add—my dissertation, are as long in the making as Tristram Shandy in being born, or mine Uncle Toby in curing his military wound, a blow from a stone at the siege of Namur. If you happened to glance over the laurel hedge as you turned the corner, no doubt you noticed, in what was at one time part of our back yard, a bedroom I added last year; now Algene and I have decided that a playroom for the children is a necessity if we are to preserve what we have already built. As Tristram puts it in another contest,‘ … such a building do
I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was executed since Adam.’ In the meantime there remains a good deal of interior woodwork finishing, and I’ve also had to install an additional half bathroom—we’re eight in the house —my mother resides with us—and to reinforce the foundation at the rear. Sometimes I think my life follows that pattern of events Sterne calls the ’sad vicissitude of things:” He laughed at that—it was almost a cackle, over in a minute yet exhaustive.
I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was executed since Adam.’ In the meantime there remains a good deal of interior woodwork finishing, and I’ve also had to install an additional half bathroom—we’re eight in the house —my mother resides with us—and to reinforce the foundation at the rear. Sometimes I think my life follows that pattern of events Sterne calls the ’sad vicissitude of things:” He laughed at that—it was almost a cackle, over in a minute yet exhaustive.
“Ah, too bad,” Levin murmured. “Would you,” he asked, “be interested in resting from your labors by going to the movies tonight as my guest? I understand the film they’re showing is fairly good.”
“Awfully nice of you,” Bucket said. “A bit of entertainment is not uncalled for but most of my evenings are spent at the office. I referred to my dissertation a moment ago, ‘Disorder and Sorrow in Sterne,’ in reality a study of his humor. It has, unfortunately,” he said without shame or bitterness, “come back to me for the third time, and I am presently engaged in a new rewriting. What I’m really doing, I shouldn’t be too surprised, is waiting for the chairman of my committee either to retire or expire, although I would prefer retirement if only he’d hurry. Though, if pressed, he will not deny that my scholarship has merit, he doesn’t seem to care for what he calls my presentation and style, and I haven’t in any of my attempts been able to satisfy him. Although my own mentor, my sponsor on the committee, is loyally with me, the chairman is influential and the paper has come back each time with new criticisms and requests for additional alterations. I’m now sending it in chapter by chapter but haven’t got past the second of eight. I’ve many times been tempted to abandon the project but mustn’t or there’ll be no advancement beyond my present rank and a salary I find it impossible to live on.”
“Tst-tst:”
“Had I the courage of my convictions I would twist my committee chairman’s nose till he passed me, but I know it would end up with his twisting mine. As Sterne puts it, ‘They order these things better in France.’”
“I wouldn’t know,” Levin murmured. “This is as far as I’ve been from where I was born.”
“What brings you to this knot of the woods?”
“My fate, I suppose—”
Bucket cackled. He got up carefully on his hands and knees. “I mustn’t delay any longer, if you’ll pardon me.”
“Have you got another hammer by chance? Maybe I could help you?” Levin said.
“My heartfelt thanks, but I don’t carry liability insurance and the roof slopes somewhat too acutely.”
Levin, reluctantly about to depart, thought of something. “I’m sort of curious about this Mr. Duffy you had around here the year before last. In short, could you tell me what he was like?”
Bucket looked down at Levin with new interest. “Who told you about him?”
“Who not? In particular Professor Fairchild.”
“What, specifically, would you like to know?”
“I was told he was a radical of some sort, but I’m not clear what kind. That is, was he a crackpot or somebody with a liberal idea?”
The assistant professor contemplated Levin’s beard.
“I can’t say positively but there were elements of a philosophy that may be defined as liberalism.”
“You’re not using the word pejoratively?”
“Not I—personally.”
“Was he a communist?”
“I strongly doubt it, although there were some who thought so.”
“A fellow traveler?”
“I’ve heard that too.”
“What did Dr. Gilley mean, could you tell me, when he characterized him as a ‘disagreeable radical?’ Was it the political connotation he had in mind or the oddball?” Levin hesitated. “I might have asked him, but being new I thought it best not to.”
“I can understand your discretion.”
Bucket continued to gaze down and Levin to crane until the back of his neck grew stiff.
“Nice people—the Gilleys” he said, to adjust a possibly wrong impression.
“Yes.”
“Pauline—Mrs. Gilley, that is—they’re both nice. Very hospitable. He has many interests. She showed me some pictures he—”
Bucket lost his hold on the roof and slid forward. Levin, fearing for the man’s life, rushed toward the house to break his fall, but the assistant professor managed to dig his heels into the gutter, stopping himself from going off the roof.
“Holy cow!” He looked sick.
“My fault,” Levin said, disturbed. “Sorry I bothered you. I’m on my way.”
“My own inexcusable carelessness,” Bucket gasped. “I should never come up here without crampons.” He drew a deep breath, righted himself, and crawled back to the security of a two-by-four.
“I’ll say goodbye.” But Levin turned at the gate. “Excuse me,” he called, “could you direct me to Dr. Fabrikant’s house?”
“Fabrikant?”
Once more with the big eyes, Levin thought. What’s so strange about every question I ask? “C. D. Fabrikant, in our department.”
“I wanted to be sure you hadn’t confused him with Carleton Fabricius in entomology. I once courted his daughter Imogene.”
“Not that one.”
Bucket pointed west with his hammer. “About half a mile past the college barns. His house is the first you’ll come to.”
Levin lifted his hat.
“Nice to meet you.” Bucket crawled up the roof and was again banging nails into shingles.
Poor guy, Levin thought. ‘Sad vicissitude of things.’
On his way along the county road the new instructor peeked through the door of the voluminous red college barn at the pedigreed black bulls in pens, marvelous beasts, but when they bellowed at the sight of him he quickly left.
Coming to Dr. Fabrikant’s mailbox, under a chestnut tree, Levin followed a graveled driveway to an old blistered-green house, set back about a hundred feet from the road. The house was of wood with broad tower-like structures on both sides of the façade, not what Levin had expected to see. This seemed to have a New England quality, the little he knew of New England after a three-day pilgrimage wandering in the vicinity of Boston.
It was an odd place and creaked in the breeze, he thought, until he discovered a thin-faced woman watching him from her rocker on the porch. Lifting his startled hat, he went to her. She was shelling beans in a pot on her lap.
“Good evening,” said Levin. It was still afternoon. She was straight-backed and meager, her black hair grizzled at the tight hairpinned bun.
“Looking for somebody?”
“Please,” said Levin. “Is Dr. C. D. Fabrikant home?”
“You’re not a student, are you? I don’t see so well without my glasses.”
“No, ma’am—a teacher, new instructor here. I don’t want to bother him if he’s busy. I was just out walking.”
“He’s not at his desk,” she said, still rocking slowly. “I think he’s out to the melon patch on Isobel—that’s his mare. I’d go look for him but I just got over my sciatica, and the fields are more than is ripe for me just now.”
“Don’t think of it,” Levin said. “I’ll be glad to wait a bit if you don’t mind.” He sat down on the doorstep.
“Doorstep’s dirty, why don’t you take the chair there?”
The chair on the porch held books that Levin didn’t want to disturb; he said he was all right on the step.
“You say you’re at the college?” she asked. “Do I know you? Not that I get around so much but after a while you know names and such.”
“No ma’am. I’m the new man in the English department.”
“Oh? Where from?”
“New York City.”
She placed the pot on the floor. “I’d better call CD. He’ll want to meet you. He got his Ph.D. at Harvard, in the East.”
“You don’t say,” said Levin. “Maybe I’d better not disturb him.”
She walked to the far end of the long porch and searched the weedy field, her hand shading her eyes. Then she came back to the rocker.
“My father sent him East. It was before the Depression and he was having some good years. He was a farmer in Montana. There were six of us kids, I being the eldest and CD right after me. He was the smart one right off. Read him something out of a book, even when he was a shaver, and he would rattle it right back at you in the same words. After his A.B., CD got three or four years of business experience, but he didn’t like any of it, so Father sent him to Harvard, and he had a fine career there in A grades and all sorts of honorable mention. This professor he had—he was sort of a world authority—said CD showed remarkable promise and would have a successful career. He would have had for sure if the Depression hadn’t come along.
“I guess you heard how hard things were then? I remember seeing pictures of bread lines in New York, hungry men, some with coats, some without ’em or even a hat, standing in the snow for a doughnut and coffee. We didn’t have it that bad but we had it bad enough, partly on account of the drought we had in the state at that same awful time. Wheat was fifty cents a bushel, if that, and you couldn’t get enough to pay for fixing your machines to harvest it. One year Father put in a hundred acres of flax, but though the clouds stayed low there was no rain and he cut less than three, not enough to pay back the cost of the seed. We used to mill a little wheat for
breakfast food and bread, and we had some stock so no one starved. But our clothes were shameful and would come apart if I rubbed too hard on the board. And to make things worse our poor mother died. She didn’t say how sick she was, although the doctor would’ve come for nothing if she had called him a few months before. Anyway, after CD had graduated with his doctor’s degree he taught for two years in a real old college in Maine, but then it had to close down and he was out of work. He came back to Montana and after about a year took the first job that opened to him, in a country school near Bozeman. I knew it was a terrible trial to him with all his education. He never said much-CD isn’t that type—but you could tell by looking at him what it meant not to be doing what he was fit to.”
breakfast food and bread, and we had some stock so no one starved. But our clothes were shameful and would come apart if I rubbed too hard on the board. And to make things worse our poor mother died. She didn’t say how sick she was, although the doctor would’ve come for nothing if she had called him a few months before. Anyway, after CD had graduated with his doctor’s degree he taught for two years in a real old college in Maine, but then it had to close down and he was out of work. He came back to Montana and after about a year took the first job that opened to him, in a country school near Bozeman. I knew it was a terrible trial to him with all his education. He never said much-CD isn’t that type—but you could tell by looking at him what it meant not to be doing what he was fit to.”
She began shelling her beans again.
“After a year of that, there came this letter from CD’s professor at Harvard—the one I told you about that liked him—that Professor Fairchild, out here, was short a man because somebody had died, and he advised CD to apply right away. To make the story shorter, CD did get the place, but as fate had it, Father took seriously sick and CD had to help me care for him because we were the only ones around by now, and I was already on and off with my sciatica. Well, that winter Father died. In the meantime, some lady teacher on the staff here got herself married and quit so there was another opening, for which Dr. Gilley was hired. He came in September, 1932, just before the winter CD could come, and so he beat CD in by three months and has had seniority over him ever since by that one term, although in some of the departments of the college, CD found out later, the man with the Ph.D. generally gets the seniority over the one who hasn’t got it if they come in close together. Dr. Gilley got his degree years later but that didn’t seem to make any difference to Professor Fairchild. Just by that one term, after the two or three older men had retired, Dr. Gilley got his promotions and raises first, including his full professorship. CD is still an associate, though
he had many times been promised his advancement. I admit my prejudices, but I have my own doubts that Dr. Gilley really deserved advancement over CD. He hasn’t got CD’s intellect or his list of publications, but that’s Professor Fairchild for you.
he had many times been promised his advancement. I admit my prejudices, but I have my own doubts that Dr. Gilley really deserved advancement over CD. He hasn’t got CD’s intellect or his list of publications, but that’s Professor Fairchild for you.
“When my brother came here he was paid sixteen hundred dollars a year. Of course he’s doing financially all right now, since he’s single and has me to help him, or we couldn’t have bought this property—the house and twenty acres—but to tell you the truth, though he doesn’t complain about it, I’m sorry for all the years he has stuck it out here. I wish he had taken a chance to move to a university where a man of his background could have had the kind of authority and courses he was entitled to by his education and writing. He didn’t want to move, because once he had his assistant professorship and we had bought this farm, he got attached to it—we’re all close to the land—and he said he’d rather not move to any place that might turn out worse than this. Even now I still advise him to look around for a change to a better college where he could get the respect he deserves, but he’s fifty now and hasn’t got the energy for that kind of a move. Besides he’s disgusted with what he’s been through in his life, though I can’t exactly say I blame him for that.
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