Dubin's Lives by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online

fifteen. She had his number.”
    â€œWith your assistance,” Kitty said. “That was years ago. He’s a serious
man now and a really good librarian. Crawford isn’t coming back and Roger, I hear, will replace him.”
    â€œHe won’t get my vote.”
    â€œHe won’t need it.”
    Dubin was uncomfortable with his judgment of Roger Foster, because he had disliked him on meeting him and forever thereafter. The biographer did not care to be the victim of that kind of response to people. It indicated objectivity missing, a quality he could not afford to be caught short of.
    He glanced at his watch and whistled. “I’ve been talking to you for half an hour. Lawrence will fry me alive.”
    â€œDon’t regret it,” Kitty said. “I hardly see you once you’re into a new biography.”
    â€œYou see me forty times a day.”
    She wanted a hug before he left. “I’ve been feeling lonely.”
    They kissed affectionately as Fanny entered the room and at once headed out.
    Â 
    Dubin would wander through the house with his cold coffee cup, sipping from one room to another: a momentary break from work—he’d return refreshed. He enjoyed coming on Fanny in motion: forcefully stroking the rugs with the vacuum cleaner; the choreography with a mop over the kitchen floor; her intense private gestures of ironing; hurrying up and down the stairs. He enjoyed her hips in bloom, ample bosom—she wore a brassiere now after a glance or two by Kitty—everything in her figure more beautifully rounded because of the dramatic narrowing of waist between bust and bottom. She was gifted in femininity, Dubin had decided. Fanny wore miniskirts; on hot days she appeared in shorts and gauzy blouses—black, orange, yellow—her white or black bra visible through the garment.
    Intermission, he called his viewing of her—the serious looking when she seemed inattentive yet had surely invited. Is she flirting with me? Whatever for—a man my age? When she bent it was a gracious act. A beautifully formed female figure suggested ideal form—her ass a bouquet of flowers. Ah, my dear, if I could paint you nude, if I could paint. Fanny as “sexual object” was balanced by the responding thought that he wouldn’t mind being hers if she could imagine it. Is she really so tempting a dish, he asked himself, or am I beautifying every cubit of her according to my need? Women move me to deepest feeling, of pleasure and loss. As if they are eternally mine yet
never belong to me. He felt at his thought, as it reverberated amid others, a mounting loneliness. Dubin waited till the feeling had passed. Afterward he reflected that this intense unexpected response to her had probably occurred at the thought she would soon be gone—in a few weeks to the omnivorous city. A momentary source of innocent pleasure lost—the beauty of a vital young woman. Too bad she’d never know. My God, how long does this romantic hunger—residue of old forms, habits, daydreams—haunt the blood?
    Though he foresaw her departure he might as well enjoy the time she’d still be around. As for interrupted concentration, so long as he produced his daily two pages he had little to criticize himself for. But Fanny, as though to prove that his foreboding of an end was itself an ending, seemed to tire of the entertainment: his seeking her; her unwilling continuous performance. How juxtapositions distort intent, pleasure. She seemed all at once actively avoiding him. Dubin, concerned, looked less her way, would play no wolf to her harried Pamela. Once when he accidentally came upon her in the kitchen as she was ironing his underpants, Fanny’s expression was grim. Both were embarrassed as their glances met. Dubin drained his coffee cup and hurried off.
    Afterward she hid when he appeared, or attempted to, whatever his amiability or good intentions; she dropped what she