The Magic Barrel

by Bernard Malamud

  Manischevitz was profoundly disappointed at the return of his active pain and suffering. He had hoped for a longer interval of easement, long enough to have some thought other than of himself and his troubles. Day by day, hour by hour, minute after minute, he lived in pain, pain his only memory, questioning the necessity of it, inveighing against it, also, though with affection, against God. Why so much, Gottenyu? If He wanted to teach His servant a lesson for some reason, some cause – the nature of His nature – to teach him, say, for reasons of his weakness, his pride, perhaps, during his years of prosperity, his frequent neglect of God – to give him a little lesson, why then any of the tragedies that had happened to him, any one would have sufficed to chasten him. But all together – the loss of both his children, his means of livelihood, Fanny’s health and his – that was too much to ask one frail-boned man to endure. Who, after all, was Manischevitz that he had been given so much to suffer? A tailor. Certainly not a man of talent. Upon him suffering was largely wasted. It went nowhere, into nothing: into more suffering. His pain did not earn him bread, nor fill the cracks in the wall, nor lift, in the middle of the night, the kitchen table; only lay upon him, sleepless, so sharply oppressively that he could many times have cried out yet not heard himself through this thickness of misery.

  In this mood he gave no thought to Mr Alexander Levine, but at moments when the pain waivered, slightly diminishing, he sometimes wondered if he had been mistaken to dismiss him. A black Jew and angel to boot – very hard to believe, but suppose he had been sent to succor him, and he, Manischevitz, was in his blindness too blind to comprehend? It was this thought that put him on the knife-point of agony.

  Therefore the tailor, after much self-questioning and continuing doubt, decided he would seek the self-styled angel in Harlem. Of course he had great, difficulty, because he had not asked for specific directions, and movement was tedious to him. The subway took him to 116th Street, and from there he wandered in the dark world. It was vast and its lights lit nothing. Everywhere were shadows, often moving. Manischevitz hobbled along with the aid of a cane, and not knowing where to seek in the blackened tenement buildings, look fruitlessly through store windows. In the stores he saw people and everybody was black. It was an amazing thing to observe. When he was too tired, too unhappy to go farther, Manischevitz stopped in front of a tailor’s store. Out of familiarity with the appearance of it, with some sadness he entered. The tailor, an old skinny Negro with a mop of woolly gray hair, was sitting cross-legged on his workbench, sewing a pair of full-dress pants that had a razor slit all the way down the seat.

  ‘You’ll excuse me, please, gentleman,’ said Manischevitz, admiring the tailor’s deft, thimbled fingerwork, ‘but you know maybe somebody by the name Alexander Le-vine?’

  The tailor, who Manischevitz thought, seemed a little antagonistic to him, scratched his scalp.

  ‘Cain’t say I ever heared dat name.’

  ‘Alex-ander Lev-ine,’ Manischevitz repeated it.

  The man shook his head. ‘Cain’t say I heared.’

  About to depart, Manischevitz remembered to say: ‘He is an angel, maybe.’

  ‘Oh him,’ said the tailor clucking. ‘He hang out in dat honky tonk down here a ways.’ He pointed with his skinny finger and returned to the pants.

  Manischevitz crossed the street against a red light and was almost run down by a taxi. On the block after the next, the sixth store from the corner was a cabaret, and the name in sparkling lights was Bella’s. Ashamed to go in, Manischevitz gazed through the neon-lit window, and when the dancing couples had parted and drifted away, he discovered at a table on the side, towards the rear, Levine.

  He was sitting alone, a cigarette butt hanging from the corner of his mouth, playing solitaire with a dirty pack of cards, and Manischevitz felt a touch of pity for him, for Levine had deteriorated in appearance. His derby was dented and had a gray smudge on the side. His ill-fitting suit was shabbier, as if he had been sleeping in it. His shoes and trouser cuffs were muddy, and his face was covered with an impenetrable stubble the color of licorice. Manischevitz, though deeply disappointed, was about to enter, when a big-breasted Negress in a purple evening gown appeared before Levine’s table, and with much laughter through many white teeth, broke into a vigorous shimmy. Levine looked straight at Manischevitz with a haunted expression, but the tailor was too paralyzed to move or acknowledge it. As Bella’s gyrations continued, Levine rose, his eyes lit in excitement. She embraced him with vigor, both his hands clasped around her big restless buttocks and they tangoed together across the floor, loudly applauded by the noisy customers. She seemed to have lifted Levine off his feet and his large shoes hung limp as they danced. They slid past the windows where Manischevitz, white-faced, stood staring in. Levine winked slyly and the tailor left for home.

  Fanny lay at death’s door. Through shrunken lips she muttered concerning her childhood, the sorrows of the marriage bed, the loss of her children, yet wept to live. Manischevitz tried not to listen, but even without ears he would have heard. It was not a gift. The doctor panted up the stairs, a broad but bland, unshaven man (it was Sunday) and soon shook his head. A day at most, or two. He left at once, not without pity, to spare himself Manischevitz’s multiplied sorrow; the man who never stopped hurting. He would someday get him into a public home.

  Manischevitz visited a synagogue and there spoke to God, but God had absented himself. The tailor searched his heart and found no hope. When she died he would live dead. He considered taking his life although he knew he wouldn’t. Yet it was something to consider. Considering, you existed. He railed against God – Can you love a rock, a broom, an emptiness? Baring his chest, he smote the naked bones, cursing himself for having believed.

  Asleep in a chair that afternoon, he dreamed of Levine. He was standing before a faded mirror, preening small decaying opalescent wings. ‘This means,’ mumbled Manischevitz, as he broke out of sleep, ‘that it is possible he could be an angel.’ Begging a neighbor lady to look in on Fanny and occasionally wet her lips with a few drops of water, he drew on his thin coat, gripped his walking stick, exchanged some pennies for a subway token, and rode to Harlem. He knew this act was the last desperate one of his woe: to go without belief, seeking a black magician to restore his wife to invalidism. Yet if there was no choice, he did at least what was chosen.

  He hobbled to Bella’s but the place had changed hands. It was now, as he breathed, a synagogue in a store. In the front, towards him, were several rows of empty wooden benches. In the rear stood the Ark, its portals of rough wood covered with rainbows of sequins; under it a long table on which lay the sacred scroll unrolled, illuminated by the dim light from a bulb on a chain over-head. Around the table, as if frozen to it and the scroll, which they all touched with their fingers, sat four Negroes wearing skullcaps. Now as they read the Holy Word, Manischevitz could, through the plate glass window, hear the singsong chant of their voices. One of them was old, with a gray beard. One was bubble-eyed. One was humpbacked. The fourth was a boy, no older than thirteen. Their heads moved in rhythmic swaying. Touched by this sight from his childhood and youth, Manischevitz entered and stood silent in the rear.

  ‘Neshoma,’ said bubble eyes, pointing to the word with a stubby finger. ‘Now what dat mean?’

  ‘That’s the word that means soul,’ said the boy. He wore glasses.

  ‘Let’s git on wid de commentary,’ said the old man.

  ‘Ain’t necessary,’ said the humpback. ‘Souls is immaterial substance. That’s all. The soul is derived in that manner. The immateriality is derived from the substance, and they both, causally an’ otherwise, derived from the soul. There can be no higher.’

  ‘That’s the highest.’

  ‘Over de top.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said bubble eyes. ‘I don’t see what is dat immaterial substance. How come de one gits hitched up to de odder?’ He addressed the humpback.

  ‘Ask me something hard. Because it is substanceless im
materiality. It couldn’t be closer together, like all the parts of the body under one skin – closer.’

  ‘Hear now,’ said the old man.

  ‘All you done is switched de words.’

  ‘It’s the primum mobile, the substanceless substance from which comes all things that were incepted in the idea – you, me and everything and body else.’

  ‘Now how did all dat happen? Make it sound simple.’

  ‘It de speerit,’ said the old man. ‘On de face of de water moved de speerit. An’ dat was good. It say so in de Book. From de speerit ariz de man.’

  ‘But now listen here. How come it become substance if it all de time a spirit?’

  ‘God alone done dat.’

  ‘Holy! Holy! Praise His Name.’

  ‘But has dis spirit got some kind of a shade or color?’ asked bubble eyes, deadpan.

  ‘Man of course not. A spirit is a spirit.’

  ‘Then how come we is colored?’ he said with a triumphant glare.

  ‘Ain’t got nothing to do wid dat.’

  ‘I still like to know.’

  ‘God put the spirit in all things,’ answered the boy. ‘He put it in the green leaves and the yellow flowers. He put it with the gold in the fishes and the blue in the sky. That’s how come it came to us.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Praise Lawd and utter loud His speechless name.’

  ‘Blow de bugle till it bust the sky.’

  They fell silent, intent upon the next word. Manischevitz approached them.

  ‘You’ll excuse me,’ he said. ‘I am looking for Alexander Levine. You know him maybe?’

  ‘That’s the angel,’ said the boy.

  ‘Oh, him,’ snuffed bubble eyes.

  ‘You’ll find him at Bella’s. It’s the establishment right across the street,’ the humpback said.

  Manischevitz said he was sorry that he could not stay, thanked them, and limped across the street. It was already night. The city was dark and he could barely find his way.

  But Bella’s was bursting with the blues. Through the window Manischevitz recognized the dancing crowd and among them sought Levine. He was sitting loose-lipped at Bella’s side table. They were tippling from an almost empty whiskey fifth. Levine had shed his old clothes, wore a shiny new checkered suit, pearl-gray derby, cigar, and big, two-tone button shoes. To the tailor’s dismay, a drunken look had settled upon his formerly dignified face. He leaned toward Bella, tickled her ear lobe with his pinky, while whispering words that sent her into gales of raucous laughter. She fondled his knee.

  Manischevitz, girding himself, pushed open the door and was not welcomed.

  ‘This place reserved.’

  ‘Beat it, pale puss.’

  ‘Exit, Yankel, Semitic trash.’

  But he moved towards the table where Levine sat, the crowd breaking before him as he hobbled forward.

  ‘Mr Levine,’ he spoke in a trembly voice. ‘Is here Manischevitz.’

  Levine glared blearily. ‘Speak yo’ piece, son.’

  Manischevitz shuddered. His back plagued him. Cold tremors tormented his crooked legs. He looked around, everybody was all ears.

  ‘You’ll excuse me. I would like to talk to you in a private place.’

  ‘Speak, Ah is a private pusson.’

  Bella laughed piercingly. ‘Stop it, boy, you killin’ me.’

  Manischevitz, no end disturbed, considered fleeing but Levine addressed him:

  ‘Kindly state the pu’pose of yo’ communication with yo’s truly.’

  The tailor wet cracked lips. ‘You are Jewish. This I am sure.’

  Levine rose, nostrils flaring. ‘Anythin’ else yo’ got to say?’

  Manischevitz’s tongue lay like stone.

  ‘Speak now or fo’ever hold off.’

  Tears blinded the tailor’s eyes. Was ever man so tried? Should he say he believed a half-drunken Negro to be an angel?

  The silence slowly petrified.

  Manischevitz was recalling scenes of his youth as a wheel in his mind whirred: believe, do not, yes, no, yes, no. The pointer pointed to yes, to between yes and no, to no, no it was yes. He sighed. It moved but one had still to make a choice.

  ‘I think you are an angel from God.’ He said it in a broken voice, thinking, If you said it it was said. If you believed it you must say it. If you believed, you believed.

  The hush broke. Everybody talked but the music began and they went on dancing. Bella, grown bored, picked up the cards and dealt herself a hand.

  Levine burst into tears. ‘How you have humiliated me.’

  Manischevitz apologized.

  ‘Wait’ll I freshen up.’ Levine went to the men’s room and returned in his old clothes.

  No one said goodbye as they left.

  They rode to the flat via subway. As they walked up the stairs Manischevitz pointed with his cane at his door.

  ‘That’s all been taken care of,’ Levine said. ‘You best go in while I take off.’

  Disappointed that it was so soon over but torn by curiosity, Manischevitz followed the angel up three flights to the roof. When he got there the door was already padlocked.

  Luckily he could see through a small broken window. He heard an odd noise, as though of a whirring of wings, and when he strained for a wider view, could have sworn he saw a dark figure borne aloft on a pair of magnificent black wings.

  A feather drifted down. Manischevitz gasped as it turned white, but it was only snowing.

  He rushed downstairs. In the flat Fanny wielded a dust mop under the bed and then upon the cobwebs on the wall.

  ‘A wonderful thing, Fanny,’ Manischevitz said. ‘Believe me, there are Jews everywhere.’

  BEHOLD THE KEY

  ONE BEAUTIFUL LATE-AUTUMN day in Rome, Carl Schneider, a graduate student in Italian studies at Columbia University, left a real estate agent’s office after a depressing morning of apartment hunting and walked up Via Veneto, disappointed in finding himself so dissatisfied in this city of his dreams. Rome, a city of perpetual surprise, had surprised unhappily. He felt unpleasantly lonely for the first time since he had been married, and found himself desiring the lovely Italian women he passed in the street, especially the few who looked as if they had money. He had been a damn fool, he thought, to come here with so little of it in his pocket.

  He had, last spring, been turned down for a Fulbright fellowship and had had no peace with himself until he decided to go to Rome anyway to do his Ph.D. on the Risorgimento from first-hand sources, at the same time enjoying Italy. This plan had for years aroused his happiest expectations. Norma thought he was crazy to want to take off with two kids under six and all their savings – $3,600, most of it earned by her, but Carl argued that people had to do something different with their lives occasionally or they went to pot. He was twenty-eight – his years weighed on him – and she was thirty, and when else could they go if not now? He was confident, since he knew the language, that they could get settled satisfactorily in a short time. Norma had her doubts. It all came to nothing until her mother, a widow, offered to pay their passage across; then Norma said yes, though still with misgiving.

  ‘We’ve read prices are terrible in Rome. How do we know we’ll get along on what we have?’

  ‘You got to take a chance once in a while,’ Carl said.

  ‘Up to a point, with two kids,’ Norma replied; but she took the chance and they sailed out of season – the sixteenth of October, arriving in Naples on the twenty-sixth and going on at once to Rome, in the hope they would save money if they found an apartment quickly, though Norma wanted to see Capri and Carl would have liked to spend a little time in Pompeii.

  In Rome, though Carl had no trouble getting around or making himself understood, they had immediate rough going trying to locate an inexpensive furnished flat. They had figured on a two-bedroom apartment, Carl to work in theirs; or one bedroom and a large maid’s room where the kids would sleep. Although they searched across the city they could locate
nothing decent within their means, fifty to fifty-five thousand lire a month, a top of about ninety dollars. Carl turned up some inexpensive places but in hopeless Trastevere sections; elsewhere there was always some other fatal flaw: no heat, missing furniture, sometimes no running water or sanitation.

  To make bad worse, during their second week at the dark little pensione where they were staying, the children developed nasty intestinal disorders, little Mike having to be carried to the bathroom ten times one memorable night, and Christine running a temperature of 105; so Norma, who didn’t trust the milk or cleanliness of the pensione, suggested they would be better off in a hotel. When Christine’s fever abated they moved into the Sora Cecilia, a second-class albergo recommended by a Fulbright fellow they had met. It was a four-story building full of high-ceilinged, boxlike rooms. The toilets were in the hall, but the rent was comparatively low. About the only other virtue of the place was that it was near the Piazza Navone, a lovely 17th-century square, walled by many magnificently picturesque, wine-colored houses. Within the piazza three fountains played, whose water and sculpture Carl and Norma enjoyed, but which they soon became insensible to during their sad little walks with the kids, as the days passed and they still found themselves homeless.

  Carl had in the beginning avoided the real estate agents to save the commission – 5 per cent of the full year’s rent; but when he gave in and visited their offices they said it was too late to get anything at the price he wanted to pay.

  ‘You should have come in July,’ one agent said.

  ‘I’m here now.’

  He threw up his hands. ‘I believe in miracles but who can make them?’ Better to pay seventy-five thousand and so live comfortable like other Americans.

  ‘I can’t afford it, not with heat extra.’

  ‘Then you will sit out the winter in the hotel.’