Authors: Bernard Malamud
Dubin's Lives (13 page)
The boat was in mid-canal after rounding the bend toward the Rialto before he noticed people staring at them from palazzi windows; others from small craft on the canal. It then occurred to Dubin that theirs was the only tourist gondola out that morning. The Venetians were, from old, commercial types, but he beheld no other sightseers around and felt momentary apprehension which he ridiculed but it was there. Had the gondolier on his fat nerve taken them out at a forbidden time? He had waked that morning short of cash and decided it was still summer? So he hauls his banged-up boat from a back canal and goes hunting for belated tourists? Summer anyone? Fanny with Dubin had walked into his practical needs? What a nuisance if they were stopped by the police motoscafo. He looked around and saw the municipal garbage scow, trailed by floating lettuce leaves and a few boiled onions bobbing in the wavy water.
There was also a sand barge and a variety of rowboats, blunt- and sharp-nosed,
plus assorted topi delivering produce, meat, cases of beer, even a small coffin for a child or midget.
plus assorted topi delivering produce, meat, cases of beer, even a small coffin for a child or midget.
A hairy-chested man called to them from a barge filled with gray sand.
“What's he saying?” Fanny asked.
“Get off the canal, they need the water.”
“Va fan'gulo,” chanted the gondolier.
The hairy bargeman cupped his palm over his upper arm, thrusting the free fist into the air.
Unaffected, Amadeo went on singing his love songs. Now he celebrated a petite blonde in a gondola, who out of exquisite pleasure went to sleep as the gondolier rowed. Dubin had asked him what the song was about. To what end he did not sing. A few people crossing the outer stairs of the Rialto stopped to look at the boat. A woman with flowers waved at them. Dubin, facing an audience, felt self-conscious: glad-ragged goat of fifty-six courting a chick of twenty-two who'd be better served, at least in appearance, by the youth who rowed them. I should be rowing them.
Why, he asked himself, didn't this happen to me when I was twenty-five and had less to be self-conscious about? Why was I studying law when I should by some miracle have been in Venice? He felt false and hungered for privacy.
“Pull over,” he said to the gondolier. “We want to get off.”
“Oh, not yet, please,” Fanny said.
“Pull over to the dock,” Dubin said. “If the police come we may be ordered off the canal.”
“You mak' meestake, signore,” the gondolier replied, angered. “No one 'as the right to tell me when I weel work or what to do, if ees summer or weenter.”
But Dubin, still uncomfortable, insisted and paid him off; to placate Fanny he included a healthy tip over an exorbitant fee. The handsome gondolier lifted his straw hat, bowing stiffly. His copper head of hair remained an enduring vision.
“I wish you hadn't done that, William,” Fanny said on the embankment, her face tense. “So what if the guy was singing at me? It did no harm.”
Dubin denied the singing had bothered him. He said he was restless. “There's so much to see in the city. We'll do better on foot. Distances are deceptive here.”
He insisted on showing her where some extraordinary people had lived and
worked. Close by, near the Goldoni Campo where Venetians gather in talky droves each evening, he pointed out the cortile where Marco Polo's house was supposed to have stood.
worked. Close by, near the Goldoni Campo where Venetians gather in talky droves each evening, he pointed out the cortile where Marco Polo's house was supposed to have stood.
“He left Venice when he was a kid of seventeen for a fabulous journey throughout the East that ended a generation, plus a Venetian war, later, in a dank prison in Genoa. There he dictated a book of his travels, which is, among other things, a masterpiece of observation of an anthropological sort. In folklore he's become Marco Millioni, the comic liar, but in truth he said what he saw in a precise Venetian way, without poetry or passion, yet he saw well and kept the Asian world in his head until he was able to record it on paper, via the help of a literary hack he discovered in his cell. Two centuries later Christopher Columbus read the book and had one more reason to take off for what was to be the new world. Isn't it marvelous, Fanny, the way things tie up and turn out?”
“I read about it when I was a kid.”
They then hurried, by ways Dubin knew, over stone bridges arching quiet canals, to the Moorish neighborhood where Tintoretto had lived and painted. Fanny and Dubin entered the church of Madonna dell'Orto to see his frescoes. Tintoretto was buried by the side of his favorite daughter Marieta. The biographer told Fanny about the painterâa self-educated imaginative man of genius.
“Some say he painted too much and wasn't as good as the Venetian best, but many of his pictures knock me cold. His miracles have the mysterious force of the miraculous. Marieta was herself a fine portrait painter who used to help in his studio dressed in the then equivalent of dungarees. She died young, at thirty, and he mourned her the short rest of his life. There's a legend that he painted her portrait as she lay dead.”
“Didn't he paint her when she was alive?”
“Probably. This was something elseâa last act of love.” Dubin, as he talked, perspired.
“Maybe he flipped,” Fanny said.
Reversing direction when they were once more outside, Dubin led her back to St. Mark's and then along the embankment to the Chiesa S. Maria della Pietà . Fanny was showing fatigue. He asked her if she wanted to rest but she said she would stay with it if this was the last of the sightseeing that morning. Dubin assured her it was.
In the church he said: “Here once stood a church orphanage with a music
chapel for girl foundlings. Rousseau said there wasn't one of them without some considerable blemish but when they played their beautiful music he saw less and heard more. Vivaldi was known as âil prete rosso'âhe had auburn hair; he taught them to fiddle and sing, and confessed himself in waterfalls of stringed music. He worked there, off and on, for forty years, composed in a hurry, and earned thousands of ducats. Kings came to hear his concerts but in the end he ran afoul of the Pope's nuncio and fell out of favor, presumably for neglecting to say Mass; not to speak of his friendship with a singer and her sister who had traveled with him for fourteen years. He spent money like water and died a pauper. Like Mozart's, his grave has vanished, but given his music who needs it?”
chapel for girl foundlings. Rousseau said there wasn't one of them without some considerable blemish but when they played their beautiful music he saw less and heard more. Vivaldi was known as âil prete rosso'âhe had auburn hair; he taught them to fiddle and sing, and confessed himself in waterfalls of stringed music. He worked there, off and on, for forty years, composed in a hurry, and earned thousands of ducats. Kings came to hear his concerts but in the end he ran afoul of the Pope's nuncio and fell out of favor, presumably for neglecting to say Mass; not to speak of his friendship with a singer and her sister who had traveled with him for fourteen years. He spent money like water and died a pauper. Like Mozart's, his grave has vanished, but given his music who needs it?”
Her face was weary. “Jesus, all you think about is biography.”
“Not all,” he said with a light laugh.
Dubin explained that since they were so near where men of this kind had lived it was only right to stop by and pay their respects. “I get this mind-blowing senseâas you sayâof their lives and quality. I'm taken by those who celebrate life by making much of their own. It's a subtle altruism.”
“If genius is your bag.”
Dubin thought their genius made their humanity more clearly apparent. “One learns easily from their ordinary lives.”
“I've got my own to live.”
“To live it wellâ”
Though her mouth drooped, Fanny assented.
She said she was dead tired and could they now go home? “At least in the gondola it was a ride.”
Dubin led her by short cuts back to the Hotel Contessa, but not before he had stopped off at the jeweler's he had visited earlier, to pick up a bracelet for Fanny, a twenty-two-carat gold band overlaid with a spiraling coil, which surprised and delighted her. She kissed him warmly as she admired the handsome bracelet on her extended arm. “I am really genuinely happy.”
After a light lunch at the hotel, spaghetti al burro with a small bottle of non-gaseous mineral water for her; fettucine with red wine for Dubin, they went out again. Fanny, after the meal, had complained of cramps but they quickly disappeared. The day's beauty persisted: the flawless sky flared blue; canals encrusted with green sparkling light; and aura of Venice: expansive, enlivenedâsense of island, sense of sea, of voyage.
To Dubin's surprise, though not Fanny's, a small fleet of pleasure gondolas
appeared on the Grand Canal as though a carnival had been declared. Dubin offered to make restitution for the aborted ride of that morning by taking her out again but she, after seriously surveying the scene, shook her head. He suggested, if her cramps were gone entirely and she felt refreshed, the Accademia Gallery so she could see some paintings of Tintoretto's after the frescoes of that morning. But Fanny wanted to do some shopping first and Dubin went with her. She bought discreetlyâa few modest presents for friends, which he offered to pay for because she had only fifty dollars with her. She would not accept.
appeared on the Grand Canal as though a carnival had been declared. Dubin offered to make restitution for the aborted ride of that morning by taking her out again but she, after seriously surveying the scene, shook her head. He suggested, if her cramps were gone entirely and she felt refreshed, the Accademia Gallery so she could see some paintings of Tintoretto's after the frescoes of that morning. But Fanny wanted to do some shopping first and Dubin went with her. She bought discreetlyâa few modest presents for friends, which he offered to pay for because she had only fifty dollars with her. She would not accept.
Wherever they went she cast occasional glances behind. Dubin, looking where she had looked, saw bright sunlight between palazzi. If you saw through dark glasses would that people the world? Fanny removed her shades only to examine the colors of objects in the shops.
“You feel all right, Fanny?”
“I guess so. I guess what's on my mind is that I better have a bath and get some rest instead of tracking along with you to the museum. That is, if you expect me to have energy for this afternoon.” She smiled affectionately.
“In that case do rest, my dear.”
She asked him not to stay too long, and Dubin promised to be back at five.
He took the gallery picture by picture at first, viewing slowly; yet not always seeing: thinking of Fanny as Venus bathing, Venus revived. He stayed until half-past four and considered remaining longer to give her more time to herselfâhe had thoughtlessly worn her out with walking that morning; but Dubin hadn't the serenity to wait longer. He left the gallery and as he was recrossing the Accademia bridge, observed below, in a long black gondola on the sunlit canal, an auburn-haired girl with a gray-haired man, his arm draped around her shoulders. They were sitting with their backs to him, the girl resting her bronze head against the old man's breast. Dubin, watching in a confusion of emotion, called down from the bridge, “Maudâit's your father! Maud, it's me!” She did not turn. He hurried down fifty steps and ran, as Venetians watched, across the Campi Morosini and S. Angelo, then into Calle de la Mandola toward the water. After ten minutes he emerged at the Grand Canal close by the Rialto. Dubin arrived before the gondola and waited, windedânot sure what he could say or do or not doâfor the boat to catch up with him. But when it floated toward the bridge, the gondola had in it only the gondolier poling it. Could this be the one he had
seen? Another that followed contained two young women and a boy. Dubin looked into the distance and beheld no others.
seen? Another that followed contained two young women and a boy. Dubin looked into the distance and beheld no others.
He called in Italian to the gondolier: “Where are your passengers?”
The man blew his nose in the water and waved vaguely with his hand: “Al sinistro.”
Dubin went hastily up the bridge steps and down the other side into the market streets. He hurried through crowds and on the first side street spied a red-haired girl about a block before him, but not the man. Was it his daughter? Though now fatigued Dubin hastened toward her. When he reached the corner she had disappeared, but the first house as he turned into the street was a pension, and he was convinced that was where she was. He thought of entering and seeking her out, then decided not to. If it was Maud it would be wise to talk to her alone. The last thing he needed was to confront his daughter in the presence of her loverâwho else?
Seeing a bakery across the street, Dubin went in, tempting the reluctant baker with a thousand lire to produce a telephone book; then he called the pension number.
“Is there a signorina Maud Dubin registered there?”
The padrone wasn't sure and who was calling?
“Tell her her father, William Dubin.”
“I can't tell her a thing if you're really her father because there's nobody here by that name.”
“She's red-haired,” Dubin explained, and the padrone laughed and said, “We've got two different redheads this week. Eh, signore, they're a deceptive lot. You can't tell what they really are until you've looked up their legs.”
“I'm much obliged.” Dubin lingered at the corner to see if either of the women came out and in less than thirty minutes both did; one a girl with hair dyed orange, the other a strawberry blonde with a middle-aged spectacled escort, neither so much as resembling Maud. Dubin, relieved, though irritated with himself for wasting time he could have used to better purpose, hurried back to the Rialto; since a vaporetto was about to depart and he was weary, he hastened up the gangplank.
It was an interminable trip. He arrived at San Marco at close to seven and broke into a hurried run. What a stupid waste, he thought in anger.
Dubin absently got off the elevator at the fourth floor and ran up to the next flight. Fanny was not in their room. He began to undress for a shower
when it occurred to him that the adjoining room was giving off percussive sighs. As he tried the door it easily opened: the bed was made and unoccupied; but not the floor.
when it occurred to him that the adjoining room was giving off percussive sighs. As he tried the door it easily opened: the bed was made and unoccupied; but not the floor.
On the rug, crouched on hands and knees was the red-haired Amadeo, his fiery hairy ass not so handsome as it had seemed in tight Levi's; and under him, alas, lay Fanny. Dubin observed her gold-braceleted arm around the young man's strong back. Her eyes were shut, her face drawn; she looked, he thought, before slamming the door, like a woman of fifty.
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