Authors: Bernard Malamud
Dubin's Lives (12 page)
“Anything the matter?” Dubin asked.
“I was thinking about myself. I'm not the world's most stable woman.”
He said, after a moment, that the feeling was not an unnatural one at her age.
“Yes, but why now?”
“You tell me.”
“Just a mood, I'm tired of being in bed.” Sighing, she went back to her reading as he flipped through a guidebook of Venice. He felt close to her, easy in his mindâat home; he was glad he had suppressed his doubts and gone off with her.
She told him about her lifeâthe usual happy unhappiness of childhood. She had an older sister she called a bitch and a father who thought of Fanny as one. “My mother is the only friend I've got.”
“You've got me.”
Playing with her long hair, she observed him. “I like to be with you, William. I also like the vibes you have with what you're doing. I wish I could do more with my life.”
“More what?”
“More good,” she said hostilely.
He said he had often had the same thought.
Dubin got up and kissed her dry lips, and her ears and eyes. She pressed his hand to her breast.
She had tossed her blanket aside and lay in bed in a nightgown that touched her body like an enduring kiss. Extraordinary the grace a bit of draping gives nudity. Her every casual movement stirred him.
“But I still have cramps that come and go,” Fanny said.
Dubin went into the bathroom and briskly brushed his teeth.
She said she could eat half a horse and, when he advised her nothing solid yet, said she would settle for some ginger ale. “Ginger ale is what my mother used to spoon us after an upset stomach.”
There was nothing in the midget-refrigerator in the room but hard liquor and mineral water. Dubin called down for a bottle of ginger ale but the waiter offered only Pepsi. Fanny made a face: she had this thing about cola drinks âthey gave her hives. Dubin said he would hunt up a bottle of ginger ale. He put on his raincoat and borrowed an umbrella from the porter.
He walked in steady rain from their hotel to the Rialto before he was able to find the soda. He was happy he had found it for Fanny. He imagined her saying, when he returned, that she had bathed and wanted him to undress and get into bed with her.
“I think you'll feel better after we make love,” Dubin, speaking to himself, said to her.
When he returned to their room she was lying in bed wearing sunglasses. “Jesus, William, I thought you were dead and gone.” She said she had ordered a sliced chicken sandwich because she was painfully famished, had eaten every bit of it, and held it down.
He was happy to hear it. He thought he'd take a shower.
She came into the bathroom as he was standing in the shower and retching,
threw up the bread and chicken into the toilet bowl; her diarrhea returned; and hours later he began to spoon-feed her some warmish ginger ale, which, by God's graceâif not her ownâshe was able to retain. Fanny promised not to do anything equally stupid. “Please don't hold it against me.”
threw up the bread and chicken into the toilet bowl; her diarrhea returned; and hours later he began to spoon-feed her some warmish ginger ale, which, by God's graceâif not her ownâshe was able to retain. Fanny promised not to do anything equally stupid. “Please don't hold it against me.”
Before falling asleep she whispered, “Tomorrow, William, I promise.”
Tomorrow appeared exquisiteâwarm, clearâ“inspiring,” Dubin said. Fanny awoke glum, as though she'd long worried in her sleep; but after chancingâagainst his solemn adviceâa continental breakfast without suffering consequences, she took a bath with salts, vigorously shampooed her hair, opened windows and doors to air the room, and though still pale, was energetic, vitalized.
“Let's zap out and see the sights.”
He readily agreed. She put on the crucifix, then removed it and dropped it in the drawer. Fanny took it out again and draped it around her neck.
He felt at times he would like to be rid of her.
They hurried to St. Mark's, sheâafter shedding a cardigan because of “the heat”âin white jersey over black bra and in denim swing skirt, carrying her suede shoulder bag. Though she wore heavy-heeled shoes there was a ripple in her walk and people on the street seemed to like to watch her go by.
Fanny and Dubin hurried on in the brilliant sunlight, she keeping pace with his practiced long strides. The biographer wore his blue blazer, with flared reddish plaid slacks, and blue striped shirt with watermelon-pink tie. He was growing longer sideburns whose dominant color was gray. Dubin had occasional thoughts of dyeing his hair. Venice, absolved of fog and rain, had let a golden day rise like a balloon over its annealed islets. The sky floated azure over the green canals of antiquity. The effect was of island, plage, seashoreâonce more of holiday.
“Fanny,” Dubin advised, “take those silly glasses off and look around. Some extraordinary painters took their light from this sky.”
She blew a kiss to the sky, removed the glasses and slipped them into her bag. She walked close to Dubin, their bodies touching. He had never felt younger.
Pigeons rose, wheeling, fluttering over them in the Piazza San Marco. There were a dozen tourists on the Square. Dubin, showing the girl around,
pointed out artifacts, objects of interest in and around the Cathedral, reading to her from his guidebook what had been plundered when and where. She listened, looked where he pointed, walked on.
pointed out artifacts, objects of interest in and around the Cathedral, reading to her from his guidebook what had been plundered when and where. She listened, looked where he pointed, walked on.
Kitty, on first seeing the Cathedral, had cried out in delight. Coming to a new city, she walked on air through its streets. Fanny gazed around almost without curiosity, looking back as though she did not trust either what she saw or her response. He was not dissatisfied. She would learn; he enjoyed her company. Fanny liked to lock fingers as they walkedâwhat pleasure the simple gesture gave, what a compliment, flesh on flesh.
She had a Kodak in her bag and pulled it out to snap his picture. Dubin threw a hand up before his face.
“Oh, come onâwhat's a picture?”
“Let's take yours.” He snatched the camera and snapped one of Fanny, her knees bent, extending a palm to a curious pigeon. Another alighted on her head. “Get off me, you shitty bird.” She swatted at it, laughed in embarrassment as the pigeon fluttered away.
A priest in skirts and biretta, carrying a briefcase and rolled umbrella, perhaps noticing Fanny's crucifix if not her vital good looks, inclined his head in courteous greeting.
He offered to take a picture of them with his Polaroid.
“Let's, Williamâ”
Dubin thanked the priest, said it wasn't necessary. “Are you from the States, Father?”
“Newark, New Jersey.”
“Small world, I was born there.”
“I was born in Trenton,” said Fanny.
“Were you?” Dubin asked in surprise. “We're all from the Garden State âmaybe the same garden.”
The three laughed.
“Where was your wife born?” she asked.
“Montreal,” he answered, clearing his throat.
The priest tipped his biretta. “Blessings on you, my child,” he said to Fanny.
Later she squeezed Dubin's hand.
“What made you ask about my wife just then?”
“Just then I wanted to know where she was born.”
They wandered on the Piazza, along the galleries toward the Campanile.
He asked her impression. “Does this city get to you? Some who see it for the first time wonder if they're the victims of their imagination.”
He asked her impression. “Does this city get to you? Some who see it for the first time wonder if they're the victims of their imagination.”
“I like it all right though it isn't Fat City. I can smell smog. It's like a whiff of L.A., only oilier.”
“That's from the mainland. Still, not everybody loves the Square or Venice itself. Montaigne did but thought it stank. So did Lawrence. In a letter he called it écoeuréâwithout heart; in a poem he speaks of it as âthe abhorrent green slippery city of Venice.'”
“Then why have we come here?”
“To be together.”
“But why here?”
“I thought it might rouse up a bit of magic and blow it around.”
“Did your wife like Venice?”
“Encore my wife?”
“It's an honest question.”
“She loves it, although we've never been here but a short time before something nasty happens.”
“What did?”
“Once I had a manuscript stolen out of my suitcase. I got it back a year later. It was mailed to me in the States and when I reread it I was glad I had lost it.”
“Why?”
“It wasn't a good piece of workâa blow to my pride.”
“Did anything else happen?”
“Kitty got awfully sick here.”
“Like meâthe trots?”
“She ran a high feverâshe almost never doesâand wanted to leave. She was afraid the plague was back for a visit, but as soon as we were on the plane she recovered and that was that.”
“What bugs her? Why does she go around sniffing the gas?”
“It's not important.”
“Man, it's weird.”
“Forget it. Anyway, here we are together.”
She said she wished they had stayed in Rome.
“We'll be back in a day or two. I wanted to scoot up to see if Venice affected you as it does me. Obviously it doesn't.”
She momentarily rested her head on his shoulder.
They had stopped in front of a small jewelry shop. Dubin, noticing something in the window, asked her to excuse him.
“Can't I go in with you?”
“It won't take more than a minute. I'll be right out.”
When he came out of the jeweler's a moment later, Fanny was earnestly engaged in conversation with a taut-bottomed erect red-haired young man in front of a lavish glass shop a few doors down.
“This is Amadeo Rossini. He wants us to ride in his gondola,” she said to Dubin.
“I thought they were mostly stacked away till spring,” he said genially.
“Not his,” Fanny said.
“I am steel een my beezinez, signore,” the young gondolier said. He resembled a matador in black T-shirt and jeans. His pants were tight, buttocks elegant.
“Care for a ride, Fanny?”
“I wouldn't mind.”
The gondolier led them, Dubin carrying Fanny's cardigan, up a narrow street to a mooring pole where a single battered gondola, its prow spotted with bird droppingsâthe boat looked as though it had barely escaped a drastic fateâlay in the green water at the dock, lapped by ripples a parting vaporetto made.
After assisting his two passengers into the bulky boatâhe seemed charmed by the vision of Fanny's black bra through her jerseyâAmadeo, wearing his professional red-ribboned yellow straw hat, pushed off with a long oar and the ride began pleasantly in the warmish early-November sun. Fanny, her color restored, lifted her face to the light. If there were Indians in Italy this was an Indian summer's day.
Amid the decay what beauty! Many of the palazzi were façade-eroded yet stately, graceful, despite asymmetry of windows and columns. Some houses were boarded upâpigeons nesting in the grillworkâin need of restoration; but their shimmering reflections in the greenish waterâsalmon, orange, aquamarineâexcited Dubin. He lit a cigarillo and smoked contentedly, at times beset by thoughts of Venice subsiding in brackish water at the sea's bottom to be nibbled at into eternity by bony pale fish. The gondola was gliding toward Ponte Accademia and as he watched the reflections in the water it was no great effort to think himself afloat in an insubstantial world. With open eyes Dubin dreamed of passionate love in a fantastic city.
The gondolier broke into song. In a pleasant high tenor he celebrated love in a gondola. His eyes, when Dubin turned to look, were anchored on Fanny. Hers, dear girl, were shut as she listened. Perhaps he was singing to her black brassiere? Or was it her gold crucifix that had inspired his song? No doubt simply Fanny herself, sexy Pippa passes. Dubin experienced no jealousy. What he felt in her presence no doubt the young gondolier also felt, but me first by prior contract. I met her once on a country road, wooed her by wanting, flew away with her over the sea. She's with meâmy girl. No point feeling sorry for the gondolier. He has youth; I am momentarily graced by her presence. Next week it's into my long work again.
“Two bits for your thoughts,” he remarked to Fanny musing as she watched the water.
She smiled affectionately, pinched his nose. He bent to her. They kissed in the gondola as the youth sang. She lightly ran her fingers up the inside of Dubin's thigh.
“We're highly visible, should we go elsewhere?”
“I dig this ride,” she softly sighed.
The battered gondola with blue seats and faded green carpet glided on, the youth singing still, confessing passion and pain to an unknown ear, Trident maybe? Though he did not understand the Venetian dialect, Dubin made out “jealous husband” in “Le bele toseta ga el mario gelosa,” and was tempted to advise the young man to rest his voice but refrained.
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