The Complete Stories (79 page)

Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories

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Half a year later, on his thirty-sixth birthday, Arkin, thinking of his lost cowboy hat and having heard from the Fine Arts secretary that Rubin was home sitting shiva for his dead mother, was drawn
to the sculptor’s studio—a jungle of stone and iron figures—to look around for the hat. He found a discarded welder’s helmet but nothing he could call a cowboy hat. Arkin spent hours in the large skylighted studio, minutely inspecting the sculptor’s work in welded triangular iron pieces, set amid broken stone statuary he had been collecting for years—decorative garden figures placed charmingly among iron flowers seeking daylight. Flowers were what Rubin was mostly into now, on long stalks with small corollas, on short stalks with petaled blooms. Some of the flowers were mosaics of triangles fixing white stones and broken pieces of thick colored glass in jeweled forms. Rubin had in the last several years come from abstract driftwood sculptures to figurative objects—the flowers, and some uncompleted, possibly abandoned, busts of men and women colleagues, including one that vaguely resembled Rubin in a cowboy hat. He had also done a lovely sculpture of a dwarf tree. In the far corner of the studio was a place for his welding torch and gas tanks as well as arc-welding apparatus, crowded by open heavy wooden boxes of iron triangles of assorted size and thickness. The art historian studied each sculpture and after a while thought he understood why talk of a new exhibition had threatened Rubin. There was perhaps one fine piece, the dwarf tree, in the iron jungle. Was this what he was afraid he might confess if he fully expressed himself?

Several days later, while preparing a lecture on Rembrandt’s self-portraits, Arkin, examining the slides, observed that the portrait of the painter which he had remembered as the one he had seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was probably hanging in Kenwood House in London. And neither hat the painter wore in either gallery, though both were white, was that much like Rubin’s cap. The observation startled Arkin. The Amsterdam portrait was of Rembrandt in a white turban he had wound around his head; the London portrait was him in a studio cap or beret worn slightly cocked. Rubin’s white thing, on the other hand, looked more like an assistant cook’s cap in Sam’s Diner than like either of Rembrandt’s hats in the large oils, or in the other self-portraits Arkin was showing himself on slides. What those had in common was the unillusioned honesty of his gaze. In his self-created mirror the painter beheld distance, objectivity painted to stare out of his right eye; but the left looked out of bedrock, beyond quality. Yet the expression of each of the portraits seemed magisterially sad; or was this what life was if when Rembrandt painted he did not paint the sadness?

After studying the pictures projected on the small screen in his
dark office, Arkin felt he had, in truth, made a referential error, confusing the two hats. Even so, what had Rubin, who no doubt was acquainted with the self-portraits, or may have had a recent look at them—at
what
had he taken offense?

Whether I was right or wrong, so what if his white cap made me think of Rembrandt’s hat and I told him so? That’s not throwing rocks at his head, so what bothered him? Arkin felt he ought to be able to figure it out. Therefore suppose Rubin was Arkin and Arkin Rubin—Suppose it was me in his hat: “Here I am, an aging sculptor with only one show, which I never had confidence in and nobody saw. And standing close by, making critical pronouncements one way or another, is this art historian Arkin, a big-nosed, gawky, overcurious gent, friendly but no friend of mine because he doesn’t know how to be. That’s not his talent. An interest in art we have in common, but not much more. Anyway, Arkin, maybe not because it means anything in particular—who says he knows what he means?—mentions Rembrandt’s hat on my head and wishes me good luck in my work. So say he meant well—but it’s still more than I can take. In plain words it irritates me. The mention of Rembrandt, considering the quality of my own work, and what I am generally feeling about life, is a fat burden on my soul because it makes me ask myself once too often—why am I going on if this is the kind of sculptor I am going to be for the rest of my life? And since Arkin makes me think the same unhappy thing no matter what he says—or even what he doesn’t say, as for instance about my driftwood show—who wants to hear more? From then on I avoid the guy—like forever.”

After staring in the mirror in the men’s room, Arkin wandered on every floor of the building, and then wandered down to Rubin’s studio. He knocked on the door. No one answered. After a moment he tested the knob; it gave, he thrust his head into the room and called Rubin’s name. Night lay on the skylight. The studio was lit with many dusty bulbs but Rubin was not present. The forest of sculptures was. Arkin went among the iron flowers and broken stone garden pieces to see if he had been wrong in his judgment. After a while he felt he hadn’t been.

He was staring at the dwarf tree when the door opened and Rubin, wearing his railroad engineer’s cap, in astonishment entered.

“It’s a beautiful sculpture,” Arkin got out, “the best in the room I’d say.”

Rubin stared at him in flushed anger, his face lean; he had grown long reddish sideburns. His eyes were for once green rather than gray. His mouth worked nervously but he said nothing.

“Excuse me, Rubin, I came in to tell you I got those hats I mentioned to you some time ago mixed up.”

“Damn right you did.”

“Also for letting things get out of hand for a while.”

“Damn right.”

Rubin, though he tried not to, then began to cry. He wept silently, his shoulders shaking, tears seeping through his coarse fingers on his face. Arkin had taken off.

They stopped avoiding each other and spoke pleasantly when they met, which wasn’t often. One day Arkin, when he went into the men’s room, saw Rubin regarding himself in the mirror in his white cap, the one that seemed to resemble Rembrandt’s hat. He wore it like a crown of failure and hope.

1973

A Wig

I
da was an energetic, competent woman of fifty, healthy, still attractive. Thinking of herself, she touched her short hair. What’s fifty? One more than forty-nine. She had been married at twenty and had a daughter, Amy, who was twenty-eight and not a satisfied person. Of satisfying, Ida thought: She has no serious commitment. She wanders in her life. From childhood she has wandered off the track, where I can’t begin to predict. Amy had recently left the man she was living with, in his apartment, and was again back at home. “He doesn’t connect,” Amy said. “Why should it take you two years to learn such a basic thing?” Ida asked. “I’m a slow learner,” Amy said. “I learn slowly.” She worked for an importer who thought highly of her though she wouldn’t sleep with him.

As Amy walked out of the room where she had stood talking with her mother, she stopped to arrange some flowers in a vase, six tight roses a woman friend had sent her on her birthday, a week ago. Amy deeply breathed in the decaying fragrance, then shut her door. Ida was a widow who worked three days a week in a sweater boutique. While talking to Amy she had been thinking about her hair. She doubted that Amy noticed how seriously she was worried; or if she did, that it moved her.

When she was a young woman, Ida, for many years, had worn a tight bun held together by three celluloid hairpins. Martin, her husband, who was later to fall dead of a heart attack, liked buns and topknots. “They are sane yet sexy,” he said. Ida wore her bun until
she began to lose hair in her mid-forties. She noticed the hair coming loose when she brushed it with her ivory-topped brush. One day the increasing number of long hairs left in the comb frightened her. And when she examined her hairline in the mirror, it seemed to Ida that her temples were practically bare.

“I think the tight bun contributes to my loss of hair,” she told Martin. “Maybe I ought to get rid of it?”

“Nonsense,” he had said. “If anything, the cause would be hormonal.”

“So what would you advise me to do?” Ida looked up at him uneasily. He was a wiry man with wavy, graying hair and a strong neck.

“In the first place, don’t wash it so often. You wash it too often.”

“My hair has always been oily. I have to shampoo it at least twice a week.”

“Less often,” Martin advised, “take my tip.”

“Martin, I am very afraid.”

“You don’t have to be,” he said, “it’s a common occurrence.”

One day, while walking on Third Avenue, Ida had passed a wigmaker’s shop and peered into the window. There were men’s and women’s wigs on abstract, elegant wooden heads. One or two were reasonably attractive; most were not.

How artificial they are, Ida thought. I could never wear such a thing.

She felt for the wigs a mild hatred she tied up with the fear of losing her hair. If I buy a wig, people will know why. It’s none of their business.

Ida continued her brisk walk on Third Avenue. Although it was midsummer, she stepped into a hat shop and bought herself a fall hat, a wide-brimmed felt with a narrow, bright green ribbon. Amy had green eyes.

One morning after Ida had washed her hair in the bathroom sink, and a wet, coiled mass of it slid down the drain, she was shocked and felt faint. After she had dried her hair, as she gently combed it, close to the mirror, she was greatly concerned by the sight of her pink scalp more than ever visible on top of her head. But Martin, after inspecting it, had doubted it was all that noticeable. Of course her hair was thinner than it had been—whose wasn’t?—but he said he noticed nothing unusual, especially now that she had cut her hair and was wearing bangs.
Ida wore a short, swirled haircut. She shampooed her hair less frequently.

And she went to a dermatologist, who prescribed an emulsion he had concocted, with alcohol, distilled water, and some drops of castor oil, which she was to shake well before applying. He instructed her to rub the mixture into her scalp with a piece of cotton. “That’ll stir it up.” The dermatologist had first suggested an estrogen salve applied topically, but Ida said she didn’t care for estrogen.

“This salve does no harm to women,” the doctor said, “although I understand it might shrink a man’s testicles.”

“If it can shrink a man’s testicles, I’d rather not try it,” she said. He gave her the emulsion.

Ida would part a strand of hair and gently brush her scalp with the emulsion-soaked cotton; then she would part another strand and gently brush there. Whatever she tried didn’t do much good, and her scalp shone through her thinning hair like a dim moon in a stringy dark cloud. She hated to look at herself, she hated to think.

“Martin, if I lose my hair I will lose my femininity.”

“Since when?”

“What shall I do?” she begged.

Martin thought. “Why don’t you consider another doctor? This guy is too much a salesman. I still think it could be caused by a scalp ailment or some such condition. Cure the scalp and it slows down the loss of hair.”

“No matter how I treat the scalp, with or without medication, nothing gets better.”

“What do you think caused it?” Martin said. “Some kind of trauma either psychic or physical?”

“It could be hereditary,” Ida answered. “I might have my father’s scalp.”

“Your father had a full head of hair when I first met him—a shock of hair, I would call it.”

“Not when he was my age, he was already losing it.”

“He was catting around at that age,” Martin said. “He was some boy. Nothing could stop him, hair or no hair.”

“I’ll bet you envy him,” Ida said, “or you wouldn’t bring that up at this particular time.”

“Who I envy or don’t envy let’s not talk about,” he replied. “Let’s not get into that realm of experience, or it becomes a different card game.”

“I bet you wish you were in that realm of experience. I sometimes feel you envy Amy her odd life.”

“Let’s not get into that either,” Martin insisted. “It doesn’t pay.”

“What
can
we talk about?” Ida complained.

“We talk about your hair, don’t we?”

“I would rather not,” she said.

The next day she visited another skin man, who advised her to give up brushing her hair or rubbing anything into her scalp. “Don’t stress your hair,” he advised. “At the most, you could have it puffed up once in a while, or maybe take a permanent to give it body, but don’t as a rule stress it. Also put away your brush and use only a wide-toothed comb, and I will prescribe some moderate doses of vitamins that might help. I can’t guarantee it.”

“I doubt if that’s going to do much good,” Ida said when she arrived home.

“How would you know until you’ve tried it?” Amy asked.

“Nobody has to try everything,” Ida said. “Some things you know about without having to try them. You have common sense.”

“Look,” said Martin, “let’s not kid ourselves. If the vitamins don’t do anything for you, then you ought to have yourself fitted for a wig or wiglet. It’s no sin. They’re popular with a lot of people nowadays. If I can wear false teeth, you can wear a wig.”

“I hate to,” she confessed. “I’ve tried some on and they burden my head.”

“You burden your head,” Amy said.

“Amy,” said her mother, “if nothing else, then at least mercy.”

Amy wandered out of the room, stopping first at the mirror to look at herself.

Martin, that evening, fell dead of a heart attack. He died on the kitchen floor. Ida wailed. Amy made choked noises of grief. Both women mourned him deeply.

For weeks after the funeral, Ida thought of herself vaguely. Her mind was befogged. Alternatively, she reflected intensely on her life, her eyes stinging, thinking of herself as a widow of fifty. “I am terribly worried about my life,” she said aloud. Amy was not present. Ida knew she was staying in her room. “What have I done to that child?”

One morning, after studying herself in the full-length looking glass, she hurried to the wigmaker’s on Third Avenue. Ida walked with dignity along the busy, sunlit street. The wig shop was called Norman: Perukier. She examined the window, wig by wig, then went determinedly inside. The wigmaker had seen her before and greeted her casually.

“Might I try on a wig or two?”

“Suit yourself.”

Ida pointed to a blond wig in the window and to another, chestnut brown, on a dummy’s head on a shelf, and Norman brought both to her as she sat at a three-paneled mirror.

Ida’s breathing was audible. She tried on the first wig, a light, frizzy, young one. Norman fitted it on her head as if he were drawing on a cloche hat. “There,” he said, stepping back. He drew a light blue comb out of his inside pocket and touched the wig here and there before stopping to admire it. “It’s a charming wig.”

“It feels like a tight hat,” Ida said.

“It’s not at all tight,” Norman said. “But try this.”

He handed her the other wig, a brown affair that looked like a haircut Amy used to wear before she had adopted a modified Afro in college.

Norman flicked his comb at the wig, then stepped back. He too was breathing heavily, his eyes intent on hers, but Ida would not let his catch hers in the mirror; she kept her gaze on the wig.

“What is the material of this wig?” Ida asked. “It doesn’t seem human hair.”

“Not this particular one. It’s made of Dynel fiber and doesn’t frizz in heat or humidity.”

“How does a person take care of it?”

“She can wash it with a mild soap in warm water and then either let it dry or blow it dry. Or if she prefers, she can give it to her hairdresser, who will wash, dry, and style it.”

“Will my head perspire?”

“Not in this wig.”

Ida removed the wig. “What about that black one?” she asked hesitantly. “I like the style of it.”

“It’s made of Korean hair.”

“Real hair?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” said Ida. “I don’t think I’d care for Oriental hair.”

“Why not, if I may ask?” Norman said.

“I can’t really explain it, but I think I would feel like a stranger to myself.”

“I think you are a stranger to yourself,” said the wigmaker, as though he was determined to say it. “I also don’t think you are interested in a wig at all. This is the third time you’ve come into this shop, and you make it an ordeal for all concerned. Buying a wig isn’t exactly
like shopping for a coffin, don’t you know? Some people take a good deal of pleasure in selecting a wig, as if they were choosing a beautiful garment or a piece of jewelry.”

“I am not a stranger to myself,” Ida replied irritably. “All we’re concerned about is a wig. I didn’t come here for an amateur psychoanalysis of my personality.” Her color had heightened.

“Frankly, I’d rather not do business with you,” said the wigmaker. “I wouldn’t care for you among my clientele.”

“Tant pis pour vous,” Ida said, walking out of Norman’s shop.

In the street she was deeply angered. It took her five minutes to begin walking. Although the day was not cool she knotted a kerchief on her head. Ida entered a hat shop close by and bought a fuzzy purple hat.

That evening she and Amy quarreled. Amy said, as they were eating fish at supper, that she had met this guy and would be moving out in a week or two, when he returned from California.

“What guy?” snapped Ida. “Somebody that you picked up in a bar?”

“I happened to meet this man in the importing office where I work, if you must know.”

Ida’s voice grew softer. “Mustn’t I know?”

Amy was staring above her mother’s head, although there was nothing on the wall to stare at, the whites of her eyes intensely white. Ida knew this sign of Amy’s disaffection but continued talking.

“Why don’t you find an apartment of your own? You earn a good salary, and your father left you five thousand dollars.”

“I want to save that in case of emergency.”

“Tell me, Amy, what sort of future do you foresee for yourself?”

“The usual. Neither black nor white.”

“How will you protect yourself alone?”

“Not necessarily by getting married. I will protect myself, myself.”

“Do you ever expect to marry?”

“When it becomes a viable option.”

“What do you mean option, don’t you want to have children?”

“I may someday want to.”

“You are now twenty-eight. How much longer have you got?”

“I’m twenty-eight and should have at least ten years. Some women bear children at forty.”