A New Life (24 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
He was still a distance from the hills when he approached a large wood—call it a forest—that he had come upon before by other routes. On impulse Levin left the road, hopped over a ditch, and crossing a field, entered among the evergreens. Once in the wood he was not entirely at his ease because he was trespassing, and as he went quietly along he worried about possible bears or maybe a snarling cougar or two, though he had heard of none in the vicinity; if there were any he had only an umbrella to defend himself with. Mostly his uneasiness arose from the thought that his life had been lived largely without experience of very many trees, and among them he felt a little unacquainted. Yet to be alone in the forest, this far in, was already a feat for a born city boy who had never been a Boy Scout. Levin took heart. He walked on soft ground among dark conifers, giants and dwarfs, and a large scattering of leafless other trees; but now he recognized fir, cedars, in green skirts touching the ground, blue spruce, and even hemlock, the trees in profusion, their branches interlaced, the forest gloom broken by rays of sunlight dappling the ground. The wood, as he walked, pungent with levitating coolness, suggested endless distance and deepest depth. Levin began to be worried about getting lost if he wandered too far in, and to avoid circular confusion, considered marking his way with bits of torn paper. The mystery of the wood, the presence of unseen life in natural time, and the feeling that few men had been where he presently was, (Levin, woodsman, explorer; he now understood the soul of Natty Bumppo, formerly paper; “Here, D. Boone CELLED A. BAR”) caused him to nudge aside anxiety and continue to venture among the trees in shade and sunlight.
As he came out of the woods into a clearing, a yellow-green, rich grassy meadow sloping downward, a flock of robins—from Canada, he had been told, while the Cascadian species was vacationing in California; you were dealing with strangers who looked like friends—scattered noisily over his head. From the wood across the field a bird hidden in a tree screeched at
the world. Levin’s head was immersed in silence deepened by a drumming in the wood behind, a woody tattoo. After a short bafflement he located with his glasses a bird drilling away near the top of a dead fir. Hurriedly searching for his bird guide, he read with the greatest satisfaction that he had spotted a red-headed woodpecker, never before seen so clearly. The bird spied Levin and flew into the forest. A moment later he turned pages hastily to identify first a Seattle wren, then a very blue, graybellied blue jay, exciting color; and a chickadee, the first he remembered looking at and naming; also a yellow bird he couldn’t identify, whose flight above the treeline Levin followed with pleasure until it disappeared into light like a light gone out. Who sees this in Manhattan Isle? None but the gifted. Here the common man rejoiced in what was naturally visible. But being where he was not supposed to be continued to trouble Levin; he turned as if forewarned someone was in the wood behind him; expecting, if not a boot in the pants, at least the forester’s hard hand and gruff get the hell off private property. He would run like mad. Instead, he saw Pauline Gilley watching him from amid trees.
the world. Levin’s head was immersed in silence deepened by a drumming in the wood behind, a woody tattoo. After a short bafflement he located with his glasses a bird drilling away near the top of a dead fir. Hurriedly searching for his bird guide, he read with the greatest satisfaction that he had spotted a red-headed woodpecker, never before seen so clearly. The bird spied Levin and flew into the forest. A moment later he turned pages hastily to identify first a Seattle wren, then a very blue, graybellied blue jay, exciting color; and a chickadee, the first he remembered looking at and naming; also a yellow bird he couldn’t identify, whose flight above the treeline Levin followed with pleasure until it disappeared into light like a light gone out. Who sees this in Manhattan Isle? None but the gifted. Here the common man rejoiced in what was naturally visible. But being where he was not supposed to be continued to trouble Levin; he turned as if forewarned someone was in the wood behind him; expecting, if not a boot in the pants, at least the forester’s hard hand and gruff get the hell off private property. He would run like mad. Instead, he saw Pauline Gilley watching him from amid trees.
She looked like someone he had never expected to see again, or was the thought a trick on himself to protect what was left of unused virginity? Pauline approached as if unwilling, an expression he attributed to an embarrassment of remembrance; then as though she had made peace with herself in mid-voyage, she looked up, smiling at his astonishment. Her raincoat unbuttoned, he took in blouse, gray skirt, long blue socks and walking shoes. He also quickly calculated what she had on underneath, an innovation in their relationship.
Her hair shone in the sun. “I’m sorry I startled you, Mr. Levin. I’m just as surprised to see you.”
Levin explained his umbrella; the paper said rain. She smiled at his armload. “Let me help you.”
“It’s nothing much.” Her presence in the wood aroused a renewed momentary sadness, as if he had come too late to the right place, familiar situation of his dreams.
“The day turned out so springlike I left the children with a sitter so I could walk,” Pauline said.
“You’ve been here before—in this wood?”
“Yes, haven’t you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t know you watched birds.”
“If you can call it that. Most get away before I know what I’ve seen.”
“You were engrossed when I saw you.”
“When I was a kid I used to look out of the window at sparrows on telegraph wires or hopping in the snow.”
“I haven’t seen you for weeks, Mr. Levin,” Pauline said.
“About two, I’d say. Time flies.”
“I talked so much at the Bullocks. I don’t think I’ve been that much affected by liquor in years.”
“No need to worry, I’ve forgotten what you said.”
“Please don’t.”
They weren’t looking at each other. When their eyes met, although he obsessively expected a veil, there was none, and Levin beheld an expression of such hungry tenderness he could hardly believe it was addressed to him. Enduring many complicated doubts, he dropped his things in the grass. They moved toward each other, their bodies hitting as they embraced.
“Dear God,” Pauline murmured. Her kiss buckled his knees. He had not expected wanting so much in so much giving.
Levin warned himself, Take off, kid, and in their deep kiss saw himself in flight, bearded bird, dream figure, but couldn’t move.
They parted, breathing heavily, looked at each other as though seeing were drinking—he could have counted twenty —and after mutual hesitation to the point of pain, embraced.
“My darling.”
“Pauline.” He kept himself from crying love.
Levin clutched at her chest, and seizing nothing, ran his
hand the other way. She gripped his fingers, then let go, embracing him tightly.
hand the other way. She gripped his fingers, then let go, embracing him tightly.
“Where shall we go?”
“Anywhere.”
She took his hand and they went into the woods, Levin glancing back to see where his things were. “Here,” she said in the green shade. The evergreens were thick, the ground damp but soft with fir needles and dead leaves.
“Spread your coat.” She spread hers over his, then stepped out of her shoes. She removed a black undergarment, the mask unmasked. Lying on the coats, Pauline raised her hips and drew back her skirt, to Levin the most intimate and beautiful gesture ever made for him.
He hung his trousers over the branch of a fir. When he knelt she received him with outstretched arms, gently smoothed his beard, then embraced him with passion as she fixed her rhythm to his.
He was throughout conscious of the marvel of it—in the open forest, nothing less, what triumph!
As she was combing the needles out of her hair the woods turned dark and it began to rain. They waited under Levin’s umbrella under an old lichenous elm. If he expected uneasiness after the fact, he felt none. When he searched her eyes for guilt he was distracted by their light and warmth. He held the umbrella over their heads, his arm around her waist. They were resting against the tree trunk, her head on his shoulder. He felt, in gratitude, peace, and tried not to think of what he didn’t have to, namely the future.
When she spoke he wished she hadn’t. “Please don’t worry about anything.”
“Worry?”
“I mean if you have any regrets you’re not bound to me. There are no obligations. You can leave this minute if you wish.”
Levin pictured himself leaving her under the tree in the rain. Later he returned to see if she were there.
“Why speak of regrets? I have none.”
“Your eyes seem sad.”
“The fix of habit. I’m happy.”
“What were you thinking of just now?” she asked.
“Oh you, your quality. I never had it this way before.”
“You haven’t had many women, have you?”
“Not many.”
“I know you’ve been in love.”
“Often—with the wrong kind. One or two made hash of me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“My own fault, but that’s in the past.”
“Poor boy, did you have to connive for sex?”
“Not connive but pleasure never came too easy.”
She was silent a minute. “Did this?”
“This is good.”
“You respect me?”
“Of course.”
“Mrs. Gilley, mother of two?”
“I respect you, Pauline.”
They kissed again. She rubbed her head against his. “I’m hungry to know everything about you.”
“I’ve had my bad times.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Levin was reluctant to speak about the past.
“You never do. I won’t ask again.”
He said, thick-voiced, half his face crippled, “The emotion of my youth was humiliation. That wasn’t only because we were poor. My father was continuously a thief. Always thieving, always caught, he finally died in prison. My mother went crazy and killed herself. One night I came home and found her sitting on the kitchen floor looking at a bloody bread knife.”
Pauline leaned her face against him.
“I mourned them but it was a lie. I was in love with an unhappy, embittered woman who had just got rid of me. I
mourned the loss of her more than I did them. I was mourning myself. I became a drunk, it was the only fate that satisfied me.”
mourned the loss of her more than I did them. I was mourning myself. I became a drunk, it was the only fate that satisfied me.”
She moaned; Levin trembled.
“I drank, I stank. I was filthy, skin on bone, maybe a hundred ten pounds. My eyes looked as though they had been pissed on. I saw the world in yellow light.”
“Please, that’s all.”
“For two years I lived in self-hatred, willing to part with life. I won’t tell you what I had come to. But one morning in somebody’s filthy cellar, I awoke under burlap bags and saw my rotting shoes on a broken chair. They were lit in dim sunlight from a shaft or window. I stared at the chair, it looked like a painting, a thing with a value of its own. I squeezed what was left of my brain to understand why this should move me so deeply, why I was crying. Then I thought, Levin, if you were dead there would be no light on your shoes in this cellar. I came to believe what I had often wanted to, that life is holy. I then became a man of principle.”
“Oh, Lev,” she said.
“That was the end of my drinking though not of unhappiness. Just when I thought I had discovered what would save me—when I believed it—my senses seemed to die, as though self-redemption wasn’t possible because of what I was—my emptiness the sign of my worth. I denied the self for having denied life. I managed to get and hang onto a little job but as a person I was nothing. People speak of emptiness but it was a terrifying fullness, the soul has gas. It isn’t exactly apathy, you have feeling but it’s buried six feet. I couldn’t respond to experience, the thought of love was unbearable. It was my largest and most hopeless loss of self before death.”
Her eyes were shut.
“I felt I had come to something worse than drunkenness. This went on for how long I can’t say. I lived in stone. My only occasional relief was in reading. I had a small dark room in a rooming house overrun by roaches and bugs. Once
a week I burned the bedbugs with a candle through the bedsprings; they popped as they died. One Sunday night after a not otherwise memorable day, as I was reading in this room, I had the feeling I was about to remember everything I had read in my life. The book felt like a slab of marble in my hands. I strained to see if it could possibly be a compendium of every book ever written, describing all experience. I felt I had somewhere read something I must remember. Sensing an affirmation, I jumped up. That I was a free man lit in my mind even as I denied it. I suddenly knew, as though I were discovering it for the first time, that the source of freedom is the human spirit. This had been passed down to me but I had somehow forgotten. More than forgetting—I had lived away from it, had let it drift out of my consciousness. I thought I must get back what belongs to me; then I thought, ‘This is how we invent it when it’s gone.’ Afterwards I experienced an emotion of well being so intense that I’ve lived on it ever since.”
a week I burned the bedbugs with a candle through the bedsprings; they popped as they died. One Sunday night after a not otherwise memorable day, as I was reading in this room, I had the feeling I was about to remember everything I had read in my life. The book felt like a slab of marble in my hands. I strained to see if it could possibly be a compendium of every book ever written, describing all experience. I felt I had somewhere read something I must remember. Sensing an affirmation, I jumped up. That I was a free man lit in my mind even as I denied it. I suddenly knew, as though I were discovering it for the first time, that the source of freedom is the human spirit. This had been passed down to me but I had somehow forgotten. More than forgetting—I had lived away from it, had let it drift out of my consciousness. I thought I must get back what belongs to me; then I thought, ‘This is how we invent it when it’s gone.’ Afterwards I experienced an emotion of well being so intense that I’ve lived on it ever since.”
He said no more. Pauline rubbed her wet eyes against his shoulder. “I sensed it. I knew who you were.”
“I felt a new identity.”
“You became Levin with a beard.”
“What was new were my plans for myself.”
“I won’t interfere with them,” she said fervently. “We shan’t meet again.”
Pauline smoked as they watched the rain let up. “I’d better be getting back.”
Levin, gathering up his things, tucked the umbrella under his arm, and they went through the wet woods. He called it a miraculous forest but she laughed and said it was the property of Cascadia College, where they trained foresters.
“Then it’s no miracle you came here today?”
“I’ve often been, on picnics with forestry friends, and sometimes I come alone to walk in the woods.”
It worried him they might have been seen, but she seemed
unconcerned so he was content. Whosever forest it was, he had gone into it, met her, and they had made love in the open, marvel enough for Levin.
unconcerned so he was content. Whosever forest it was, he had gone into it, met her, and they had made love in the open, marvel enough for Levin.
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