The Magic Barrel

by Bernard Malamud

  ‘Mr Gruber,’ said Kessler, ‘I won’t go. Kill me if you want it, but I won’t go.’

  Ignace hurried away from the door as Gruber left in anger. The next morning, after a restless night of worries, the landlord set out to drive to the city marshal’s office. On the way he stopped at a candy store for a pack of cigarettes, and there decided once more to speak to Kessler. A thought had occurred to him: he would offer to get the old man into a public home.

  He drove to the tenement and knocked on Ignace’s door.

  ‘Is the old gink still up there?’

  ‘I don’t know if so, Mr Gruber.’ The janitor was ill at ease.

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

  ‘I didn’t see him go out. Before, I looked in his keyhole but nothing moves.’

  ‘So why didn’t you open the door with your key?’

  ‘I was afraid,’ Ignace answered nervously.

  ‘What are you afraid?’

  Ignace wouldn’t say.

  A fright went through Gruber but he didn’t show it. He grabbed the keys and walked ponderously up the stairs, hurrying every so often.

  No one answered his knock. As he unlocked the door he broke into heavy sweat.

  But the old man was there, alive, sitting without shoes on the bedroom floor.

  ‘Listen, Kessler,’ said the landlord, relieved although his head pounded. ‘I got an idea that, if you do it the way I say, your troubles are over.’

  He explained his proposal to Kessler, but the egg candler was not listening. His eyes were downcast, and his body swayed slowly sideways. As the landlord talked on, the old man was thinking of what had whirled through his mind as he had sat out on the sidewalk in the falling snow. He had thought through his miserable life, remembering how, as a young man, he had abandoned his family, walking out on his wife and three innocent children, without even in some way attempting to provide for them; without, in all the intervening years – so God help him – once trying to discover if they were alive or dead. How, in so short a life, could a man do so much wrong? This thought smote him to the heart and he recalled the past without end and moaned and tore at his flesh with his fingernails.

  Gruber was frightened at the extent of Kessler’s suffering. Maybe I should let him stay, he thought. Then as he watched the old man, he realized he was bunched up there on the floor engaged in an act of mourning. There he sat, white from fasting, rocking back and forth, his beard dwindled to a shade of itself.

  Something’s wrong here – Gruber tried to imagine what and found it all oppressive. He felt he ought to run out, get away, but then saw himself fall and go tumbling down the five flights of stairs; he groaned at the broken picture of himself lying at the bottom. Only he was still there in Kessler’s bedroom, listening to the old man praying. Somebody’s dead, Gruber muttered. He figured Kessler had got bad news, yet instinctively knew he hadn’t. Then it struck him with a terrible force that the mourner was mourning him: it was he who was dead.

  The landlord was agonized. Sweating brutally, he felt an enormous constricted weight in him that slowly forced itself up, until his head was at the point of bursting. For a full minute he awaited a stroke; but the feeling painfully passed, leaving him miserable.

  When after a while, he gazed around the room, it was clean, drenched in daylight and fragrance. Gruber then suffered unbearable remorse for the way he had treated the old man.

  At last he could stand it no longer. With a cry of shame he tore the sheet off Kessler’s bed, and wrapping it around his bulk, sank heavily to the floor and became a mourner.

  THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS

  AFTER MITKA HAD burned the manuscript of his heartbroken novel in the blackened bottom of Mrs Lutz’s rusty trash can in her back yard, although the emotional landlady tried all sorts of bait and schemes to lure him forth, and he could tell as he lay abed, from the new sounds on the floor and her penetrating perfume, that there was an unattached female loose on the premises (wondrous possibility of yore), he resisted all and with a twist of the key had locked himself a prisoner in his room, only venturing out after midnight for crackers and tea and an occasional can of fruit; and this went on for too many weeks to count.

  In the late fall, after a long year and a half of voyaging among more than twenty publishers, the novel had returned to stay and he had hurled it into a barrel burning autumn leaves, stirring the mess with a long length of pipe, to get the inner sheets afire. Overhead a few dead apples hung like forgotten Christmas ornaments upon the leafless tree. The sparks, as he stirred, flew to the apples, the withered fruit representing not only creation gone for nothing (three long years), but all his hopes, and the proud ideas he had given his book; and Mitka, although not a sentimentalist, felt as if he had burned (it took a thick two hours) an everlasting hollow in himself.

  Into the fire also went a sheaf of odd-size papers (why he had saved them he would never know): copies of letters to literary agents and their replies; mostly, however, printed rejection forms, with perhaps three typed notes from lady editors, saying they were returning the MS of his novel, among other reasons – but this prevailed – because of the symbolism, the fact that it was obscure. Only one of the ladies had written let’s hear from you again. Though he cursed them to damnation it did not cause the acceptance of his book. Yet for a year Mitka labored over a new one, up to the time of the return of the old manuscript, when, upon rereading that, then the new work, he discovered the same symbolism, more obscure than ever; so he shoved the second book aside. True, at odd moments he sneaked out of bed to try a new thought with his pen, but the words refused to budge; besides he had lost the belief that anything he said could make significant meaning, and if it perhaps did, that it could be conveyed in all its truth and drama to some publisher’s reader in his aseptic office high above Madison Avenue; so he wrote nothing for months – although Mrs Lutz actively mourned – and vowed never to write again though he felt the vow was worthless, because he couldn’t write anyway whether he had vowed or no.

  So Mitka sat alone and still in his faded yellow-papered room, the badly colored Orozco reproduction he had picked up, showing Mexican peasants bent and suffering, thumb-tacked above the peeling mantelpiece, and stared through sore eyes at the antics of pigeons on the roof across the street; or aimlessly followed traffic – not people – in the street; he slept for good or ill a great deal, had bad dreams, some horrific, and awaking, looked long at the ceiling, which never represented the sky although he imagined it snowing; listened to music if it came from the distance, and occasionally attempted to read some historical or philosophical work but shut it with a bang if it lit the imagination and made him think of writing. At times he cautioned himself, Mitka, this will have to end or you will, but the warning did not change his ways. He grew wan and thin, and once when he beheld his meager thighs as he dressed, if he were a weeper he would have wept.

  Now Mrs Lutz, herself a writer – a bad one but always interested in writers and had them in her house whenever she could fish one up (her introductory inquisition masterfully sniffed this fact among the first) even when she could ill afford it – Mrs Lutz knew all this about Mitka and she daily attempted some unsuccessful ministration. She tried tempting him down to her kitchen with spry descriptions of lunch: steaming soup, Mitka, with soft white rolls, calf’s foot jelly, rice with tomato sauce, celery hearts, delicious breast of chicken – beef if he preferred – and his choice of satisfying sweets; also with fat notes slipped under his door in sealed envelopes, describing when she was a little girl, and the intimate details of her sad life since with Mr Lutz, imploring a better fate on Mitka; or she left at the door all sorts of books fished out of her ancient library that he never looked at, magazines with stories marked, ‘You can do better,’ and when it arrived, her own copy, for him to read first, of the Writer’s Journal. All these attempts having this day failed – his door shut (Mitka voiceless) though she had hid in the hall an hour to await its opening – Mrs Lutz dropped to one
horsy knee and with her keyhole eye peeked in: he lay outstretched in bed.

  ‘Mitka,’ she wailed, ‘how thin you have grown – a skeleton – it frightens me. Come downstairs and eat.’

  He remained motionless, so she enticed him otherwise: ‘Here are clean sheets on my arm, let me refresh your bed and air the room.’

  He groaned for her to go away.

  Mrs Lutz groped a minute. ‘We have with us a new guest on your floor, girl by the name of Beatrice – a real beauty, Mitka, and a writer too.’

  He was silent but, she knew, listening.

  ‘I’d say a tender twenty-one or -two, pinched waist, firm breasts, pretty face, and you should see her little panties hanging on the line – like flowers all.’

  ‘What does she write?’ he solemnly inquired.

  Mrs Lutz found herself coughing.

  ‘Advertising copy, as I understand, but she would like to write verse.’

  He turned away, wordless.

  She left a tray in the hall – a bowl of hot soup whose odor nearly drove him mad, two folded sheets, pillow case, fresh towels, and a copy of that morning’s Globe.

  After he had ravished the soup and all but chewed the linen, he tore open the Globe to confirm that he was missing nothing. The headlines told him: correct. He was about to crumple the paper and pitch it out the window when he recalled ‘The Open Globe’ on the editorial page, a column he hadn’t looked at in years. In the past he had reached for the paper with five cents and trembling fingers, for ‘The Open Globe,’ come-one, come-all to the public, to every writer under a rock, inviting contributions in the form of stories at five bucks the thousand-word throw. Though he now hated the memory of it, it was his repeated acceptance here – a dozen stories in less than half a year (he had bought a blue suit and a two-pound jar of jam) – that had started him writing the novel (requiescat); from that to the second abortion, to the impotence and murderous self-hatred that had descended upon him afterwards. Open Globe, indeed. He gnashed his teeth but the holes in them hurt. Yet the not unsweet remembrance of past triumphs – the quarter of a million potential readers every time he appeared in print, all within a single city so that everybody knew when he was in (people reading him in buses, at cafeteria tables, park benches, as Mitka the Magician lurked around, watching for smiles and tears); also flattering letters from publishers’ editors, fan letters too, from the most unlikely people – fame is the purr, the yip the yay. Remembering, he cast a momentarily dewy eye upon the column, and having done so, devoured the print.

  The story socked in the belly. This girl, Madeleine Thorn, who wrote the piece as ‘I’ – though she only traced herself here and there she came at once alive to him – he pictured her as maybe twenty-three, slim yet soft-bodied, the face whip-lashed with understanding – that Thorn was not for nothing; anyway, there she was that day, running up and down the stairs in joy and terror. She too lived in a rooming house, at work on her novel, bit by bit, nights, after a depleting secretarial grind each day; page by page, each neatly typed and slipped into the carton under her bed. At the very end of the book a last chapter to go of the first draft, she had one night got out the carton and lay on the bed, rereading, to see if the book was any good. Page after page she dropped on the floor, at last falling asleep, worried she hadn’t got it right, wearied at how much rewriting (this sank in by degrees) she would have to do, when the light of the risen sun struck her eyes and she pounced up, realizing she had forgotten to set the alarm. With a sweep of the hand she shot the typewritten sheets under the bed, washed, slipped on a fresh dress, and ran a comb through her hair. Down the stairs she ran and out of the house.

  At work, strangely a good day. The novel again came together in the mind and she memo’d what she’d have to do – not very much really, to make it the decent book she had hoped to write. Home, happy, holding flowers, to be met on the first floor by the landlady, flouncing and all smiles: guess what I’ve gone and done for you today; describing new curtains, matching bedspread, a rug no less, to keep your tootsies warm, and surprise! the room spring-cleaned from top to bottom. Oh my God. The girl tore up the stairs. Falling on her hands and knees in her room she searched under the bed: an empty carton. Downstairs like dark light. Where, landlady, are the typewritten papers that were under my bed? She spoke with her hand to her throat. ‘Oh, those that I found on the floor, honey? I thought you meant for me to sweep the mess out and so I did.’ Madeleine, controlling her voice: ‘Are they perhaps in the garbage? I – don’t believe they collect it till Thursday.’ ‘No, love, I burned them in the barrel this morning. The smoke made my eyes smart for a whole hour.’ Curtain. Groaning, Mitka collapsed on the bed.

  He was convinced it was every bit of it true. He saw the crazy dame dumping the manuscript into the barrel and stirring it until every blessed page was aflame. He groaned at the burning – years of precious work. The tale haunted him. He wanted to escape it – leave the room and abandon the dismal memory of misery, but where would he go and what do without a penny in his pocket? So he lay on the bed and whether awake or asleep dreamed the recurrent dream of the burning barrel (in it their books commingled), suffering her agony as well as his own. The barrel, a symbol he had not conceived before, belched flame, shot word-sparks, poured smoke as thick as oil. It turned red hot, a sickly yellow, black – loaded high with the ashes of human bones – guess whose. When his imagination calmed, a sorrow for her afflicted him. The last chapter – irony of it. He yearned all day to assuage her grief, express sympathy in some loving word or gesture, assure her she would write it again, only better. Around midnight he could bear his thoughts no longer. He thrust a sheet of paper into the portable, twirled the roller and in the strange stillness of the house clacked out to her a note c/o Globe, expressing his sorrow – a writer himself – but don’t give up, write it again. Sincerely, Mitka. He found an envelope and sticky stamp in his desk drawer. Against his better judgment he sneaked out and mailed it.

  Immediately he regretted it. Was he in his right mind? All right, so he had written to her, but what if she wrote back? Who wanted, who needed a correspondence? He simply hadn’t the strength for it. Therefore he was glad there continued to be no mail – not since he had burned his book in November, and this was February. Yet on the way out to forage some food for himself when the house was sleeping, ridiculing himself, holding a lit match he peered into the mailbox. The next night he felt inside the slot with his fingers: empty, served him right. Silly business. He had all but forgotten her story; that is, thought of it less each day. Yet if the girl by some mischance should write, Mrs Lutz usually opened the box and brought up whatever mail herself – any excuse to waste his time. The next morning he heard the courier carrying her bulk lightly up the stairs and knew the girl had answered. Steady, Mitka. Despite a warning to himself of the dream world he was in, his heart pounded as the old tease coyly knocked. He didn’t answer. Gurgling, ‘For you, Mitka darling,’ she at last slipped it under the door – her favorite pastime. Waiting till she had moved on so as not to give her the satisfaction of hearing him go for it, he sprang off the bed and tore the envelope open. ‘Dear Mr Mitka (a most feminine handwriting): Thank you for the expression of your kind sympathy, sincerely, M.T.’ That was all, no return address, no nothing. Giving himself a horse bray he dropped the business into the basket. He brayed louder the next day: there was another epistle, the story wasn’t true – she had invented every word; but the truth was she was lonely and would he care to write again?

  Nothing comes easy for Mitka but eventually he wrote to her. He had plenty of time and nothing else to do. He told himself he had answered her letter because she was lonely – all right, because they both were. Ultimately he admitted that he wrote because he couldn’t do the other kind of writing, and this, though he was no escapist, solaced him a bit. Mitka sensed that although he had vowed never to go back to it, he hoped the correspondence would return him to his abandoned book. (Sterile writer seeking end of sterility through
satisfying epistolary intercourse with lady writer.) Clearly then, he was trying with these letters to put an end to the hatred of self for not working, for having no ideas, for cutting himself off from them. Ah, Mitka. He sighed at this weakness, to depend on others. Yet though his letters were often harsh, provocative, even unkind, they drew from her warm responses, receptive, soft, willing; and so it was not long (who can resist it? he bitterly assailed himself) before he had brought up the subject of their meeting. He broached it first and she (with reluctance) gave in, for wasn’t it better, she had asked, not to intrude the person?

  The meeting was arranged for a Monday evening at the branch public library near where she worked – her bookish preference; himself, he would have chosen the freedom of a street corner. She would, she said, be wearing a sort of reddish babushka. Now Mitka found himself actively wondering what she looked like. Her letters showed her sensible, modest, honest but what of the human body? Though he liked his women, among other things, to be lookers, he guessed she wasn’t. Partly from hints dropped by her, partly his intuition. He pictured her as comely yet hefty. But what of it as long as she was womanly, intelligent, brave? A man like him nowadays had need of something special.

  The March evening was zippy outside but cupped in it the breath of spring. Mitka opened both windows and allowed the free air to blow on him. About to go – there came a quick knock on the door. ‘Telephone,’ a girl’s voice sang out. Probably the advertising Beatrice. He waited till she was gone, then unlocked the door and stepped into the hall for his first phone call of the year. As he picked up the receiver a crack of light showed in the corner. He stared and the door shut tight. The landlady’s fault, she built him up among the roomers as a sort of freak. ‘My writer upstairs.’