A New Life

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Book: A New Life Read Online Free PDF
Author: Bernard Malamud
That way is Seattle, British Columbia, Alaska, and then the North Pole.”
    “North,” said Levin, with a throb in his throat. “What profound mystery. You go north till there are no men. Imagine the silence, the cold, the insult to the human heart.”

    “You’re a bit of a poet, Sy. The other way is San Francisco, and if you’re interested, L.A.”
    Gilley unlocked the car trunk and got out the suitcases and golf bags. “We’ll take one of each.” He shut the trunk, paused a minute, then said to Levin, “Just this small matter, Sy. Do you always wear that beard?”
    Levin looked at him in embarrassment. “I have for the past year. It’s—er—given me a different view of myself.” He laughed a little.
    “Then it’s not permanent?”
    “I can’t say just yet. It depends on how things work out—”
    “I’ll tell you why I mentioned it. I respect beards but some of your students may think you’re an oddball. It doesn’t take much to set them against a teacher.”
    “Some of my best professors wore beards,” said Levin. “Americans have often worn them.”
    “Yes, but not so much since the safety razor. This is a sort of beardless town. No one on the faculty wears one that I know of. The administration is clean shaven. It’s usually the students who will grow them. A lot of sophomores encourage whiskers for their spring carnival and they’re a raggy, tacky-looking lot.”
    “I have a picture of Abraham Lincoln I could hang up.”
    “Well, suit yourself. I just thought I ought to mention it to you. The president’s wife was saying only the other day every time she lays eyes on a beard the thought of a radical pops up in her head.”
    Levin guffawed.
    Gilley beamed.
    The new instructor carried in his valise and Pauline’s clubs; Gilley, the suitcase and his new clubs.
    Imagine me carrying golf clubs, Levin thought. Already he had done things he had never before done in his life.
     
    In his room he removed Gilley’s striped shorts and in the upstairs bathroom searched for the laundry chute to dispose
of them. He located it in the hall at the top of the stairs but the door was nailed fast, probably to keep the kids from falling in. In robe and slippers he went downstairs to the other bathroom and got rid of them there.
    Levin brushed his teeth, took a quick bath, soaping himself thickly, and combed his beard to a fine point. On the stairs, through the slightly open bedroom door he caught a glimpse of the Gilleys, man and wife, embracing in their nightshirts.
    Standing a moment later, at the curtained window of his room, Levin gazed at the moonlit mountains in the west, more frighteningly higher than he had remembered. In the back yard a birch tree leaned to the left, its symmetry spoiled by its bias. Levin was at first too excited to sleep, but even as he contemplated the possibilities of the future he fell into slumber. He heard Erik calling “papa” and tried to rouse himself, but then he heard a woman’s steps coming up the stairs. He dreamed he had caught an enormous salmon by the tail and was hanging on for dear life but the furious fish, threshing the bleeding water, broke free: “Levin, go home.” He woke in a sweat.
    “I can’t,” he whispered to himself. “I can’t fail again.”
    On the point of sleep he had the odd feeling he was being covered with a second blanket. Or maybe that was what she was doing to the children across the hall.
    “God save us all,” he muttered through his beard.

Levin saw himself fleeing with both heavy bags when he learned the next morning that Cascadia College wasn’t a liberal arts college. Gerald Gilley gave him the news, one long leg, thick-ankled in home-knit argyle socks, amiably dangling over the arm of a chair in Levin’s newly acquired room at Mrs. Beaty’s, complete with fireplace and optional private entrance. The new instructor had waked at the Gilleys in despair, typical of him in a strange place (it often amazed Levin how
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