A New Life (15 page)

Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: A New Life

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“That’s very interesting,” said Levin. “It reminds me what you said last time: that if I was a liberal I might be called on to prove it. Those were your words and would you care to elaborate a little?”

Though his butt had gone out, Fabrikant still puffed. He
puffed and said nothing. Levin grew uncomfortable. In his mind he began to search for an exit.

“Did I say that?”

“Something of that nature.”

“I was annoyed. Frankly, I didn’t like the circumstances of your hiring.”

“Me?” Levin had partially risen.

“Yes,” said Fabrikant. “The arrangement is for the three senior members of the department—Fairchild, I, Cilley—to look over applications for positions and make a choice. I wrested this morsel of democratic procedure, together with a course or two, out of them some years ago, but in your case my approval was omitted.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“It’s true that there was an emergency when the man we had hired in the spring reneged in summer and a new selection had to be made in a hurry. Fairchild was in Walla Walla at his daughter’s, and Gilley, without consulting me, acted on his own. He later contended he had tried to get me on the phone at my house but couldn’t. My answer to that was he ought to have driven over to the farm, because he knew my sister was in the hospital with her sciatica and I am usually on the premises. He didn’t bother and made the selection alone. He hired you.”

“Ah—I’m sorry.”

“No fault of yours.”

Levin felt low. Once in his life he hoped to be somebody’s unchallenged first choice.

“After talking to you,” Fabrikant said, “I was satisfied Gilley had blundered into a suitable appointment. Nevertheless, I have to insist on the few prerogatives I have here.”

“I understand,” Levin said. “What I was referring to before is that since there seems to be a contest of some kind developing, I thought I ought to inform myself what your ideas are for running the department, if I may ask.”

Fabrikant was deathly silent.

My God, have I jumped the gun again? Levin asked himself. “I—er—hope the question is not out of order?”

“No,” said Fabrikant, “but I’ll answer only if it’s understood I’m not politicking. I don’t care for that.”

“Of course.”

“If I become head of this department,” Fabrikant said, “I’ll change plenty.” He gazed gloomily at the book-lined wall. “But this is all premature. I don’t know that I’m even remotely considered as a possibility. There’s been talk that the new dean may want—but that could be no more than rumor. At any rate whoever they may or may not have in mind for the job, I’ll say without false modesty that I am at all odds the logical choice. They can’t match my educational background, nor my research and publications, granted that they mean something in this institution, which I won’t grant.”

“I have heard that you were being considered—”

“Possibly. This is strictly confidential, but the administration hasn’t always been happy with me. I’ve espoused more than one unpopular cause in the past.”

“Like Duffy, for instance?”

Fabrikant grimaced. “Let’s forget him.”

“Excuse me—”

“I’ve been too independent for them. I haven’t made friends or influenced people. Gilley has made a career of that. He’s always washed Fairchild’s dirty drawers so the old man could be free to potter with his textbook. Such devotion is not for nothing.”

“Does Mrs. Gilley approve of that?”

“I have no interest in Mrs. Gilley,” Fabrikant said. “Since you’ve brought this matter up I’ll tell you what I would try to accomplish in the department. First of all I’d ask this new dean to do something drastic about salaries. Fairchild is stingy, so was Dean Feeney, a conjunction of two constipated stars in the same constellation. For years they kept us dancing in our bare bones; as a result, this department is the lowest paid on the campus. If Fairchild had gone bellowing to the president
that he employs human beings, Labhart might have done something more than throw the poor dog a bone.”

“Tst-tst”

“Before I brought it to a stop Fairchild wasn’t spending the pittance we were allowed for a library allotment and was turning part of the money back to Dean Feeney, who assigned it to those departments who were overdrawn on theirs.”

“That’s too bad—”

Fabrikant drew on his dead cigar. “By the way, what are we paying you?”

“Me? Three thousand a year.”

“That’s scandalous. You should be getting thirty-five hundred, at least.”

“Without college teaching experience? I taught for two years in a high school.”

“Even so you’re ridiculously underpaid.”

“Dr. Gilley said he would have given me more if I were married.”

“What’s that got to do with your ability to perform your task? I’m not married and proud of it.”

“I’m just saying what he told me.”

“We have a few good men here, most of whom I’ve insisted ought to be hired, but their efforts are frustrated by those who came to teaching to hide, their ignorance. I’ll name no names. I’d throw them out if I could and bury the rest in composition.”

“Could I ask what you’d do in composition—to improve it?”

“I’d throw out
The Elements.”

Levin gulped.

“He’s got stinking rich out of that atrocity.”

“Er—What is your position on the liberal arts issue? Would you try to bring back English majors?”

“One couldn’t unilaterally,” Fabrikant said. “That’s a political football and would have to be worked out with our idealistic friends at Gettysburg. Of course I’d plug for the return of the whole liberal arts program, but keep in mind that this situation
has existed for thirty years and nothing’s going to change it overnight. I don’t think the majority of this faculty is interested in a good liberal arts program.”

“But some are?”

“Very few and that includes those in our own division. They’ve lived in the graveyard so long I doubt they’ll ever come back to life. I’m frankly pessimistic and don’t foresee any change in the situation during my lifetime. It takes fifty years to grow a tree and that sort of thing influences people’s ideas around here.”

“Shouldn’t we start propagandizing—working, that is, for the idea, to recover what we once had? With the right leader we—”

“There’s only one leader at Cascadia College and that’s Marion Labhart. What he wants is what we get.”

“Couldn’t it be suggested to him?—”

“It has been, but it won’t do any good until he falls over it himself. One has to be careful with that type.”

Levin imagined the scholar hadn’t been.

Fabrikant dropped the cigar stub into the wastebasket and rose. So did Levin.

The scholar fixed him with his gloomy eye—it was almost without iris. “I’ll have to caution you again to be discreet about our talk. In my position a man has to think along more than one track. If Gilley should be chosen over me I’d still have to live with him.”

“I won’t say a word.” Levin stepped over the note cards on the floor. “Thanks, I’ve—ah—learned a lot.”

Fabrikant lifted his shoe to strike a match, then realized he had discarded the cigar butt. He shook out the match and tossed it into the wastebasket. In afterthought he poured half a glass of water into the basket.

Levin had the door open but shut it. “Do you happen to know how much Mr. Duffy was paid?”

“Thirty-seven hundred.”

“I guess he had more experience?”

“He had never taught before.”

“You don’t say? Er—Would you know any special reason or circumstance why I was chosen over other applicants for the job? Was I the only one who was willing to take three thousand ?”

“As I told you, Gilley didn’t consult me.”

“Thanks anyway.” Levin left.

A minute later he was back. “Sorry to bother you again. This popped into my head but I forgot to ask you. They’re showing a good film downtown tonight and I wondered if you’d be interested in seeing it? We could have some coffee after—that is, if the idea appeals to you?”

“Thank you, no,” Fabrikant said. “I don’t go to the movies, too darn much sex.”

Levin guffawed.

The instructor had discovered a rich night life on the second floor of Humanities Hall. He found not only Bucket at his lamplit desk—door wide open for he felt it unnatural to work in silence after living with five kids—but also George Bullock, usually with a half dozen six-footers sitting around his desk; and Avis Fliss typing or mimeographing objective tests for her remedial classes. Levin heard from her that Gilley popped in once in a while, and it was rumored Merdith Schultz also came in but no one tried to prove it.

Levin had several times spoken with Bucket, but only in passing, for the assistant professor was one of the few genuinely busy men in the department. When not in class he had one or more students in his office, who came early and stayed late. At night Bucket banged away in a fast hunt-and-peck on the latest revision of his dissertation. He worked in the same cement-stained levis Levin had seen him in on the roof, and in socks, his army shoes on the floor. Since he was always so busy Levin preferred not to bother him, but one rainy night in early November, shortly after his talk with Fabrikant, after
twice wandering past Bucket’s open door without attracting his attention, the instructor knocked on the jamb.

Bucket hastily covered the papers on his desk with a folder and swiveled to face his visitor.

“Could I see you for a few minutes?” Levin asked.

“Please come in.”

“I won’t stay long. I know what your time means to you.”

Bucket cackled. “I’ve meant to visit with you but you know my situation.”

“Tst,” said Levin.

“It could be worse.”

“I admire your patience.”

“Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in a bad.’”

“Sterne?”

“Touché.”

Leaning back in his chair Bucket rested his shoeless feet on the desk. He reconsidered and withdrew them.

Levin sat with his handkerchief in his hands.

Bucket glanced covertly at the typewriter but waited patiently.

Levin sighed. “I’ve been teaching here five weeks, half the term, without a feeling I’m accomplishing much. I’m up to par,” he went on quickly, “according to the syllabus, but short on satisfaction. Maybe you can advise me?”

Bucket glanced out into the hall. “You might keep your voice down.”

Levin peered through the door but saw no one. “If you’ll pardon me for saying so, I’m so busy with
The Elements,
trying to cover what I have to for the departmental objective, that there’s very little time for much else.”

Bucket nodded.

“The themes I’ve been getting are short on ideas, and I’ve had to take time off in self-defense, though the syllabus doesn’t call for it, to teach how to organize and develop a topic. I know they’re supposed to know—”

Bucket nodded.

“Er—The
Science in Tech
essays, when we do get to them are something less than inspiring, for which I blame not the subject but the selection. I blamed myself until I read them again. Believe me, I can understand why Duffy ordered outside readings.”

Bucket, poking his head into the hall, quietly shut the door. In afterthought he snapped the lock. Stepping into his shoes, he polished his glasses and sat back in the chair.

“The way the world is now,” Levin said, “I sometimes feel I’m engaged in a great irrelevancy, teaching people how to write who don’t know what to write. I can give them subjects but not subject matter. I worry I’m not teaching how to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The instructor laughed embarrassedly. “Imagine that, Bucket, I know it sounds ridiculous, pretentious. I’m not particularly gifted—ordinary if the truth be told—with a not very talented intellect, and how much good would I do, if any? Still, I have the strongest urge to say they must understand what humanism means or they won’t know when freedom no longer exists. And that they must either be the best—masters of ideas and of themselves—or choose the best to lead them; in either case democracy wins. I have the strongest compulsion to be involved with such thoughts in the classroom, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” said Bucket, “but if we all did that who’d be teaching composition?”

“That’s what I tell myself but it doesn’t help much.”

“Take my advice and don’t introduce any extraneous text into the course without Professor Fairchild’s express permission.”

Someone knocked on the door.

When Levin realized he was looking for a place to hide, he composed himself by smoothing his beard.

Bucket, after a quick glance around, got up and turned the lock.