That was Tuesday. He waited three more nights before Roger appeared on Friday after eight, in his father's one-ton truck. The biographer ducked the truck's brights, fearing he would be spotlighted like a hooked fish on the front seat; but the road curved where he was parked and the lights lit up several sparse elms on the other side. Roger drove into the farmhouse driveway and rang the rusty bell on the door. Dubin kept himself out of sight as Fanny's dog, Snowdrop, a golden Labrador that looked almost white at night, came woofing out of the house as she, in calf-length yellow boots and padded jacket, held the door open for her guest.
The dog sniffed at Roger and was let loose. Snowdrop, frisking through the snow, his tag tinkling, found Dubin's car, where the driver sat motionless on the qui vive, ready to turn on the ignition and take off if the beast barked loudly. Snowdrop, instead, sniffed at the left front tire, pissed a steaming stream on it, and trotted up the road. Dubin waited five minutes, then got out of the car and approached the house.
What were they up to in Myra's old-fashioned parlor? He trod in the soft snow around to the back of the farmhouse, sinking to the tops of his carefully buckled galoshes; listened at the narrow window, his cold ear pressed to the side of the house where he could see an avocado plant Fanny had in a white wooden tub a few feet behind the windowsill. She had kept Myra's worn leather armchairs but had replaced the stuffed velveteen sofa with a slim tan one along modern lines.
It was that they were no doubt occupying. He strained to see. What a base thing to be doing, Dubinâat your age a Peeping Tom. He observed himself staring at them through the avocado leaves, a gray-haired old man with thick salt-and-pepper sideburns and jealous eyes. What if they spotted him spying, to his eternal humiliation? His heart raced but he remained rooted there, ears straining, and heard Roger ask, “Are you still seeing the guy?” Fanny replied, “We're friends but nothing more. I told him so the other day.”
There has to be more to it than she says, the old man thought.
The Labrador ran up to Dubin with a throaty growl.
“It's me, Snowdrop,” he whispered, experiencing excruciating déjà vu. We met Monday. You sniffed me up and down.”
Fanny appeared at the window, shading her eyes; peered out. After a
minute she left. Would she go to the door? My God, what will I say?
Dubin walked backward, the dog persisting, harrying him, growling, now and then letting out a sharp bark. The biographer instinctively moved toward some trees. The dog, snorting, snapped at his sleeve. Dubin tore it free. The animal jumped for his face. He forcefully shoved it aside, fearing exposure, disgrace. Fanny hadn't yet come out. Dubin was about to make a run to his car but the hound was being playful, so he stopped in his flight to rub its head, and Snowdrop licked his gloved hand. In another minute he had made it into the auto, slamming the door and pressing down the lock button. Saved by Fanny: her affectionate nature conditions the likable hound. If it weren't hers the dog would have mangled me. Snowdrop raised his leg, wet the other tire. Dubin started the car after Roger left the farmhouse. He drove for a while, returning to see Fanny's orange light go on upstairs. He rode home, more or less content.
Two days after, the evil effects of his nature caught up with him. Fanny had seen him through the window. “I know that was you spying on us last night,” she wrote. “Please don't come here any more. I don't want to have the shame of seeing you do anything like that again.”
Barely able to stand himself, Dubin drove to the farmhouse. Fanny was in the barn feeding a pregnant Nubian goat. Bosell had built stalls for the goats and repaired the henhouse for the dozen Reds.
She stared at a panful of brown eggs she had collected as Dubin apologized. “To tell the truth, Fanny, I was a victim of a fit of unreasoning jealousy. Forgive me, my feeling for you is immense.”
“What would you say if I told you I'd had an abortion last summer?” she asked wearily, grimly.
“I'd regret it.”
“I don't. I never really cared for the guy.”
“I regret that too.”
“What else do you regret?”
“That I wasn't single and closer to your age when we met.”
“What are you really saying?”
“Let's go on for a while. Let's see what happens.”
“I can't,” she said flatly, nasally, her stiffened eyes fixed on his face. “I wish you wouldn't ask me that any more.”
“I won't,” he said compassionately. Dubin hurried out of the barn and drove at once to Winslow. After searching through a tray of rings at a
jeweler's he found one he liked, a hammered gold band with six glowing rubies. He wrote out a check for $450.
Dubin picked up a hothouse gardenia for Fanny and peacefully drove back to Center Campobello. He would give her the gift and depart. At the barn door he met Bosell, who said he thought Fanny had gone into the house to nap.
He tried writing her a note on the parlor table. Dubin wrote two: “From a former lover who never made it as a friend.” And since that didn't say much, tried “Goodbye, dear Fanny, with thanks for all
you
gave me.” He left neither. He left the ring in its blue velour box and the gardenia in a glass of water. He hurried up the driveway to his car.
A window was noisily raised at the front of the house. “William!”
Dubin trotted back.
Fanny had come downstairs after her nap. Her face was refreshed, softened, flushed by sleep. She was standing at the parlor table, wearing Dubin's ruby ring and holding his white flower.
“It looks like a wedding ring. I feel like a bride.”
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The flickering red candle Fanny had left on the bookcase gave forth a darkish private light.
She had put on Bach:
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
â¦
They had eaten in the parlor and were now in her bedroom, deceptively small in the shadowy light. Fanny, in her see-through caftan, wearing white bra and black underpants, pattered in bare feet from bathroom to bedroom, watering her potted plants out of a drinking glass.
The bedroom was furnished as her city apartment had been, with the exception of Myra's standing lamp with its large orange shade: the same chairs, pictures on the walls, even the colored snap with pigeons in San Marco, the same books in the bookcase; almost everything but the single bed âdouble in the city. What this meant he seemed to think he knew. Dubin, listening to the choral bang of the cantata, sat in striped boxer shorts and undershirt, his clothes piled on a straight-back chair, black winter shoes stuffed with black socks tucked under it. In the bathroom he combed his gray hair with her slightly soiled bone comb and rinsed his mouth. Fanny had once instructed him to urinate before getting into bed. “You'll come better.” She educates me. He was grateful.
Wohl auf, der Bräutigam kömmt
â¦
She glanced at him momentarily anxiously as he took the water glass from her hand and held it as they kissed. Their first kiss, after a season of separation, loss, before renewing joy, hurt. Dubin set the glass down and began to unbraid Fanny's warm hair. She shook it out, heavy full. Her shoulders, breasts, youthful legs, were splendid. He loved her glowing flesh. Fanny removed her heart-shaped locket and his bracelet, placing them on the bookcase near the dripping red candle. She kept the ruby ring on. Forcefully she pulled his undershirt over his head; he drew down her black underpants. Fanny kissed his live cock. What they were doing they did as though the experience were new. It was a new experience. He was, in her arms, a youthful figure. On his knees he embraced her legs, kissed her between them.
So geh herein zu mir,
Du mir erwalte Braut!
She led him to bed, flipped aside the blanket. He drew it over their hips.
“Hello, lover.”
“Hello, my child.”
“I'm not your child.”
“Hello, dear Fanny.”
They wrestled in her narrow bed, she with her youth; he with his wiles. At her climax Fanny's mouth slackened; she shut her eyes as though in disbelief and came in silence.
Mit harfen und mit zimbeln schon.
Dubin slept with his arms around her; she with her hand cupping his balls.
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When he awoke that Christmas-day morning he felt, as he stared at the bedroom floor, that weeds were growing between the boards. Kitty, awake, said, “If I am born again I hope it will be with B-cup breasts.”
“Don't get up,” she said. Sitting, she drew off her blue-flowered nightgown and moved toward him. Dubin lay back. Though he willingly embraced her warm familiar body he felt no stirring of desire. She held his phallus but it lay inert.
Kitty, lying motionless, her head on his breast, shifted to the edge of the bed and lay looking out the window.
Dubin said he was sorry.
“You're doing this to punish me.”
“What for?”
“For being who I am. For having married you. Because you lived your life with me.”
“I lived with you willingly.”
“I think you willed it.”
“I will waking up, for Christ's sake. I will my goddamned work. There are times I will living.”
“Love can't be willed.”
“There is a will-to-love.”
“The thought depresses me.”
“Don't let it,” he shouted at her.
“Oh crap,” said Kitty.
“Don't piss on the past. Don't deny the love I felt for you because you don't think I feel it now.”
“I know you don't.”
“I'm saying not to deny I loved you.”
“What good is that to me now?”
“It preserves the past. It keeps you from making something into nothing.”
“When I was a little girl I used to fantasy a church bell tolling when someone was advising me to count my blessings if I was feeling loss. I remember the sound.”
“Why bother?”
“Don't feel superior to me. You're the one who's impotent.”
He didn't say whom he was not impotent with.
You tell the truth, Dubin thought, it stands erect, finds the well. You lie as I lie to her it plays dead. She gets no use of it.
Kitty, on her back, monotonously recited complaints he had heard many times in many voices:
“We were never passionately in love. I suppose it was a mistake to have got married. I should have waited. We had the best of intentions, and hopes, but it was surely a mistake. What you lack of love in marriage, of true passion, if you're me, you never make up. You miss it always, even when, I suppose, you oughtn't to. I went through my young married life telling myself the good things I hadâmy home, children, hardworking faithful husbandâa decent life, surelyâbut I missed something.”
“The bell tolled?”
“Often.”
“Tough,” Dubin said. “Whatever you missed you'd have missed with any man. Marriage doesn't make up for what life fails to deliver.”
“With some it does, the right marriage.”
“Yes, for a while, but a time comes when you miss what you've always wanted more of. I would have lacked something with any woman I married.”
“We missed more, married to each other. The kids missed something too. They sensed our lack of deep love for each other. Both of them sensed it and I'm sure it bothered them.”
“People bother people. If it was there to sense I'd want them to.”
“They were hurt by our tensions, irritations, quarrels. We pretended a better relationship than we had.”
“Doesn't everyone? You put it together as best you can. You protect it.”
“It was not the best of marriages.” Kitty wept briefly into the pillow.
Dubin lay on his side, his back to her, trying to tote it up as a fairly decent marriage. Not in this mood.
She blew her nose. Shifting into dispassion, she told him she had dreamed that she had bought a plane ticket to Amsterdam to see the spring tulips but had landed, instead, in Newark, New Jersey, where William Dubin lived with his parents.
“I went up a couple of rickety flights of stairs in a broken-windowed tenement, but when I got to your door I was afraid to ring. Finally I had to. I was a widow with a child, who needed help. I'd been told you were looking for a wife. The door opened, and a woman ran down the hall and hid in the bathroom. I came across you in a small room at the end of a hallway. You were a man with earlocks and dark lonely eyes. You were wearing a yarmulka and studying a book in Hebrew. The letters looked like broken bits of a puzzle. This man is a rabbi, thought. It would be a mistake to marry him.”