Dubin's Lives (24 page)

Read Dubin's Lives Online

Authors: Bernard Malamud

He was old in the bathroom mirror. Dubin was afraid not to shave. He told himself not to but didn't know what else to do. This was the wrong day not to shave. He had rarely not shaved when he wasn't sick in bed.
In the lusterless mirror his left eye was fixed, distant, cold; contemplating his frightened right eye.
Dubin felt himself groan.
“Hush,” said Kitty from the bedroom. “It never ends.”
“Stupid bastard,” Dubin groaned.
“Who?” she wanted to know.
He groaned in silence.
“Be silent,” Carlyle writes himself in his journal, “be calm, be not mad.”
Dubin tries to get a religious thought going.
“Love,” Lawrence wrote, “is a thing to be learned through centuries of patient effort.”
Where can I find the time?
“Please come out of the bathroom.”
She was up early, dressed, studying herself in the long mirror. A night's decent sleep had helped her mood, looks; had brightened her eyes, quickened last night's lank hair.
“I wouldn't go on the long walk if I were you. It's going to blizzard.”
“I thought it was.”
“So far it's been only the wind with snow flurries. The radio says a blizzard is coming.”
“I thought it had begun.”
“That was the wind,” Kitty said.
He'd come back to the house if it snowed heavily, Dubin said.
“No further than to the green bridge,” she cautioned. “And put on long johns and your wool socks or you'll catch cold.”
He looked away from her. They ate breakfast in silence. He listened to her chew her crisp toast.
Kitty left for the library. She returned to sniff the gas burners. “Ta ta,” she called as she left.
He looked at his work, tried not to think how he felt. He held the misery off, kept it at bay with a stiletto as he wrote out his long yellow page of snaky
sentences, reflecting on each, trying to connect them; by some act of grace to weave a tapestry, a life, a biography. Then on a white page he wrote a dozen new sentences and read them with care to see what they said; to find out if they were taking him seriously. He read them with dignity to show the sentences he had written and respected them, and must himself be respected. They were not to crawl or slither or flop around. They must go somewhere seriously into the life of Lawrence, revive, re-create, illumine it. But the last sentence, when he read it, said, “I am trapped.” Dubin with a cry flung his pen against the wall. Disgust rose to his gorge and he fought the approach of panic. I've got to get out of here. I've got to get away from my fucking mind.
He left the kitchen door and ran through the trees into the field. Here the wind leapt at him, struck him, clawed his face. He gasped, choked, stood immobilized by the wind. His eyes teared, breath ached, as he tried to push on. The wind was a gorgon with an armlock on his stone head.
He retreated into the house, waited shivering in the kitchen, to recover his strength. He wanted not to go anywhere, to stand there till the weather abated, winter disappeared, the world changed. But he was afraid, if he stayed, of nothing, heavy, painted black. He was afraid of the silence ticking. After endless minutes he went out the front door, stumbled down the steps, hurried along the street. A heavy wind tore through the tops of moaning trees. He made his way downtown, icy snowflakes stinging his face.
Dubin hurried to the library. If he bought a newspaper he could read it there, forget himself; he dared not return to the empty house. Could he sit in the library reading the paper? Not with Kitty around, concerned to see him there. It was best not to buy a paper. He'd be better off into his routine, part of it rather than nothing. Not doing what he had to added to the misery of not doing. He would walk in the weather rather than do nothing.
Dubin went slowly in the falling snow to the outskirts of town, past the thermometer-assembly plant, the auto graveyard, two gas stations, then a motel and a tourist house. Along the wet highway he trod, approaching the long route by the back way. He had never walked it this way before. If Kitty asked why he had taken the long walk after all, he would say he had never done it this backwards way before.
Whatever diverts the mind from itself may help. What else is there to do? The wind-driven snow was now falling heavily. Dubin tramped on quickly a quarter of a mile in a world growing white, then had to tell himself it was
no use, to turn back. For a while the wind had been thrusting him forward and it was no great trouble plodding on. Now it shifted, blew at him from the east. The wind, wailing, blew the coarse snow in blasts across the field, assailing him like a cluster of arrows, as though he was its only target. His field of vision was luminously white. He had turned tail and had trouble walking back to the highway. He inched on, stopping every several steps to discover if he knew where he was. When the blustery freezing wind momentarily died down and the snow thinned he was able to stride along. Once he beheld in the distance winter fields growing white, a wall of whitening black trees, and beyond, the misted fields flanking the snow-laced hills. Extraordinary sight: he felt a moment of elation before it vanished in the snow. Dubin peered around for a shelter but saw none. Most of the houses were behind him, toward the mid-point of the long road. He expected he would soon reach the highway. The wavering wind came at him again. He stiffened, staggered forward, then realized the ground had softened; the earth had roughened, he was no longer on the road. The snow, blowing in veiled gusty waves across the uneven fields, had wiped out every sign of the familiar road.
He felt fright, an old fear: his mother frightened by winter; himself stranger, where he oughtn't to be. Dubin found himself moving on a slope propelled downward. With fear in his gut he then diagonally ascended the incline, following his tracks disappearing as he sought them. The snow came down momentarily slowly, the flakes hanging in air before touching earth. He was standing in a hollow in an unknown field. As he tried to think which way to go he saw a rabbit skittering through the snow pursued by a dog; Dubin realized it was a fox. The rabbit slid up against a rock. The fox pounced on it and in a moment tore the screeching creature apart. The snow was covered with blood. Dubin stumbled away. The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your daily course. A foot past the road and you're fighting with death. He had changed his black inner world for the white outer, equally perilous—man's fate in varying degrees; though some were more fated than others. Those who were concerned with fate were fated. He struck his boot against the dazzling white ground to get a fix on where he was but could not tell one part of the frozen earth from another. Dubin could see nothing in the distance, had no understanding of direction. Then he kicked up some threads of dead grass and knew he was still far off the road.
He waited for the wind to die down so he could see more than snow whirling around him. But the blustery wind continued to blow strongly.
Pushing into it, assuming it was coming from the east and he had probably gone off the western side of the road because he had not been walking facing traffic, he wandered amid ridges that rose at last to a level surface. Dubin, in gasping relief, stumbled onto the road. He chose, after a moment, what he thought was the direction to the highway and plodded on, holding his arm above his eyes, trying to see the way ahead. Now and then he could make out a utility pole streaked with snow, and overhead, glimpse the white-coated thick utility wire. Lowering his head against the wind he pushed on, stopping often to peer around through his snow-encrusted eyes. The snow snowed in his ears. He brushed it off his face with his wet mitten. He had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile farther when he felt his galoshes sink into soft snow as a grove of trees opened before him. Disheartened, he knew he had lost the road again.
Panic went through him in a lightning flash. He pictured himself running in circles, but managed to bring himself under control. Dubin stood motionless, breathing heavily, trying to work out where he was. The woods opened upon the light. No tracks of his own he could see beyond ten feet. Probably the road had turned, though not he with it. He must be somewhere near it, surely not far from the highway. Backtracking, he was once more in the open. He thought for a moment he knew where he was: the road had curved to the right as he had walked on level ground straight ahead, gone into the trees. If he had turned with the road and stayed with it he'd soon have got to the highway. After about a mile, possibly via a ride he might hitch in a passing truck—if there was a truck in this wild weather—he'd be safely into Center Campobello.
To find his way he had to make the right next move. Dubin trudged along, stopping at intervals to listen for traffic sounds in the distance; or perhaps a car on the road he'd been walking. Sooner or later a clanking snowplow would come by; sooner on the highway, later on this country road. He heard only the soughing wind. The storm was increasing in intensity, the wind blowing flowing sheets of snow over the road. Dubin turned from the wind. Snow crackled on his clothes. He heard a shrieking bird but could not see it. He thought of running but dared not—would break his leg if he stepped into a hole. A moment later overhead became strangely light but there was no sky. The wind abated. He pushed on. Why haven't I learned more about nature? Which way is north? He had seen moss on all sides of a tree. How
can I keep from walking in circles? You can't if you live in them. He felt a chill of fear, an icy trickle on his head, his brain pierced by cold. With a cry Dubin tore off his hat and slapped it savagely on his arm, beating off the wet snow. The red wool hat in his hand startled him.
He was tired. Coming to a low stone wall—would it be bounding a road or dividing a field?—farmers sold their fields with walls running through them—Dubin climbed over it, following until the snow-covered wall ended in a spill of rocks amid trees; then he slowly traced it back the other way. The wind had decreased in force but the coarse wet flakes were falling so rapidly he could barely see five feet ahead of him. He thought he might follow the wall, touching it with his hand; but it was not there to be touched. He was into a grove of sparse trees once more. The woods were gusty with wind, impossible to go through. Now I am really lost. Should he cry for help? Who would hear him in the wailing wind? If a car passed nearby its windows would surely be shut. Who could hear his shouts?
As Dubin came out of the trees he pictured an abandoned house. He pictured the kind of hut children built and left in the fields. After walking up the long flank of a rise and then down, he was again at a gray lichen-covered stone wall—the same?—another? He must stay with it, see where it led. The wall crumbled as he climbed it. Dubin, after a while, got up, brushed off his pants, limped on. He went through a grove of knee-high pines, then beheld a stand of tall whitened Norway pines. Where were these trees? He was almost certain he had seen them close to the road before the bend to the highway where the road sloped on the right. But there was no downward slope he could feel, let alone see. Are these pines where I think they are? Am I where I think I am? What a mad thing not to have stayed home with my small stationary miseries. Now I risk my life. He thought he ought not move until he could think of something sensible to do next. How few choices there are when the weather is white, wind fierce, snow thick. I am mad to be here. He jabbed a finger at the sky. There was a man in his mind wandering forever in deep snow. Dubin beat his breast. He heard his mother's voice.
Leo
, she called. I could drown here as my brother did in the ocean.
Exhausted, he sank to the ground and crawled under the branches of a spruce. Here was room to sit, perhaps rest. Above, the drooping branches
were heavy with snow, the lower ones dry tufts of green. The beige spruce needles that covered the ground between trees were dusted with patches of white. He sat with his back to the broad spruce tree, waiting for fatigue to ease, trying to restrain fear, to stay alert.
It was quiet where Dubin sat, though he could hear the wind still groaning in the swaying trees, and every once in a while a clump of snow fell, sifting like mist through the spruce. He would wait till he had recovered his strength to get up and go on being lost. His lungs seared his chest. He could feel his mouth trembling. Despite the cold he felt sweaty; he felt his age. It was easy enough to sit under a tree but he feared the woods filling with snow. He saw himself buried amid trees in snow up to his neck. Embarrassing to die so close to the road; like drowning in a bathtub. Dubin let out a shout for help but the strange cry frightened him, so he sat with hard pounding heart, silent in the still spruce grove. He whispered to himself.
What a mad thing to happen. What a fool I am. It was the having I wanted more than the girl. Who is she to me? She doesn't deserve the feeling I give her. See what I've done to myself. I'm like a broken clock—works, time, mangled. What is life trying to teach me?
The woods were growing dark. He sat unable to decide whether to stay longer under the trees; wait the storm out. Suppose it snowed till nightfall and throughout the night until morning—Dubin frozen stiff, snowman. Death's scarecrow. He heard a sudden heavy plop in the branches overhead and cried out as lumps of snow showered on him. His first wild fear was that a bobcat had seen and leapt at him. But when the powdery mist settled he beheld a hook-nosed white owl perched on a swaying branch over his head staring at him through the leathery slits of its cold blinking eyes. But the owl as if frightened by Dubin flew off into the wind-driven snow with a hoot and great flapping of its long wings. It disappeared into the trees. Dubin rose to his knees, crawled out from under the spruce, walked into an open field.

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