The Magic Barrel

by Bernard Malamud

  A packet of garbage thrown out of a window hit their umbrella and bounced off. The garbage spilled on the ground. A white-faced man, staring out of a third-floor window, pointed to the cats. Carl shook his fist at him.

  Bevilacqua was moodily talking about himself. ‘In eight years of hard work I advanced myself only from thirty-thousand lire to fifty-five thousand a month. The cretin who sits on my left in the office has his desk at the door and makes forty thousand extra in tips just to give callers an appointment with the big boss. If I had that desk I would double what he takes in.’

  ‘Have you thought of changing jobs?’

  ‘Certainly, but I could never start at the salary I am now earning. And there are twenty people who will jump into my job at half the pay.’

  ‘Tough,’ Carl said.

  ‘For every piece of bread, we have twenty open mouths. You Americans are the lucky ones.’

  ‘Yes, in that way.’

  ‘In what way no?’

  ‘We have no piazzas.’

  Bevilacqua shrugged one shoulder. ‘Can you blame me for wanting to advance myself?’

  ‘Of course not. I wish you the best.’

  ‘I wish the best to all Americans,’ Bevilacqua declared. ‘I like to help them.’

  ‘And I to all Italians and pray them to let me live among them for a while.’

  ‘Today it will be arranged. Tomorrow you will move in. I feel luck in my bones. My wife kissed St. Peter’s toe yesterday.’

  Traffic was heavy, a stream of gnats – Vespas, Fiats, Renaults – roared at them from both directions, nobody slowing down to let them pass. They plowed across dangerously. At the bus stop the crowd rushed for the doors when the bus swerved to the curb. It moved away with its rear door open, four people hanging on the step.

  I can do as well in Times Square, Carl thought.

  In a half hour, after a short walk from the bus stop, they arrived at a broad, tree-lined street. Bevilacqua pointed to a yellow apartment house on the corner they were approaching. All over it were terraces, the ledges loaded with flower pots and stone boxes dropping ivy over the walls. Carl would not allow himself to think the place had impressed him.

  Bevilacqua nervously rang the portiere’s bell. He was again rubbing the hunchback’s gobbo. A thick-set man in a blue smock came up from the basement. His face was heavy and he wore a full black mustache. Bevilacqua gave him the number of the apartment they wanted to see.

  ‘Ah, there I can’t help you,’ said the portiere. ‘I haven’t got the key.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Carl muttered.

  ‘Patience,’ Bevilacqua counseled. He spoke to the portiere in a dialect Carl couldn’t follow. The portiere made a long speech in the same dialect.

  ‘Come upstairs,’ said Bevilacqua.

  ‘Upstairs where?’

  ‘To the lady I told you about, the secretary of my office. She lives on the first floor. We will wait there comfortably until we can get the key to the apartment.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘The portiere isn’t sure. He says a certain Contessa owns the apartment but she let her lover live in it. Now the Contessa decided to get married so she asked the lover to move, but he took the key with him.’

  ‘It’s that simple,’ said Carl.

  ‘The portiere will telephone the Contessa’s lawyer who takes care of her affairs. He must have another key. While he makes the call we will wait in Mrs. Gaspari’s apartment. She will make you an American coffee. You’ll like her husband too, he works for an American company.’

  ‘Never mind the coffee,’ Carl said. ‘Isn’t there some way we can get a look into the flat? For all I know it may not be worth waiting for. Since it’s on the ground floor maybe we can have a look through the windows?’

  ‘The windows are covered by shutters which can be raised from the inside only.’

  They walked up to the secretary’s apartment. She was a dark woman of thirty, with extraordinary legs, and bad teeth when she smiled.

  ‘Is the apartment worth seeing?’ Carl asked her.

  ‘It’s just like mine, with the exception of having a garden. Would you care to see mine?’

  ‘If I may.’

  ‘Please.’

  She led him through her rooms. Bevilacqua remained on the sofa in the living room, his damp briefcase on his knees. He opened the straps, took out a chunk of bread, and chewed thoughtfully.

  Carl admitted to himself that he liked the flat. The building was comparatively new, had gone up after the war. The one bedroom was a disadvantage, but the kids could have it and he and Norma would sleep on the day bed in the living room. The terrace studio was perfect for a workroom. He had looked out of the bedroom window and seen the garden, a wonderful place for children to play.

  ‘Is the rent really forty-five thousand?’ he asked.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And it is furnished?’

  ‘In quite good taste.’

  ‘Why doesn’t the Contessa ask more for it?’

  ‘She has other things on her mind,’ Mrs. Gaspari laughed. ‘Oh, see,’ she said, ‘the rain has stopped and the sun is coming out. It is a good sign.’ She was standing close to him.

  ‘What’s in it for her?’ Carl thought and then remembered she would share Bevilacqua’s poor three per cent.

  He felt his lips moving. He tried to stop the prayer but it went on. When he had finished, it began again. The apartment was fine, the garden’ just the thing for the kids. The price was better than he had hoped.

  In the living room Bevilacqua was talking to the portiere. ‘He couldn’t reach the lawyer,’ he said glumly.

  ‘Let me try,’ Mrs Gaspari said. The portiere gave her the number and left. She dialed the lawyer but found he had gone for the day. She got his house number and telephoned there. The busy signal came. She waited a minute, then dialed again.

  Bevilacqua took two small hard apples from his briefcase and offered one to Carl. Carl shook his head. The Italian peeled the apples with his penknife and ate both. He dropped the skins and cores into his briefcase, then locked the straps.

  ‘Maybe we could take the door down,’ Carl suggested. ‘It shouldn’t be hard to pull the hinges.’

  ‘The hinges are on the inside,’ Bevilacqua said.

  ‘I doubt if the Contessa would rent to you,’ said Mrs Gaspari from the telephone, ‘if you got in by force.’

  ‘If I had the lover here,’ Bevilacqua said, ‘I would break his neck for stealing the key.’

  ‘Still busy,’ said Mrs Gaspari.

  ‘Where does the Contessa live?’ Carl asked. ‘Maybe I could take a taxi over.’

  ‘I believe she moved recently,’ Mrs Gaspari said. ‘I once had her address but I have no longer.’

  ‘Would the portiere know it?’

  ‘Possibly.’ She called the portiere on the house phone but all he would give her was the Contessa’s telephone number. The Contessa wasn’t home, her maid said, so they telephoned the lawyer and again got a busy signal. Carl was by now irritated.

  Mrs Gaspari called the telephone operator, giving the Contessa’s number and requesting her home address. The telephone operator found the old one but could not locate the new.

  ‘Stupid,’ said Mrs Gaspari. Once more she dialed the lawyer.

  ‘I have him,’ she announced over the mouthpiece. ‘Buon giorno, Avvocato.’ Her voice was candy.

  Carl heard her ask the lawyer if he had a duplicate key and the lawyer replied for three minutes.

  She banged down the phone. ‘He has no key. Apparently there is only one.’

  ‘To hell with all this.’ Carl got up. ‘I’m going back to the United States.’

  It was raining again. A sharp crack of thunder split the sky, and Bevilacqua, abandoning his briefcase, rose in fright.

  ‘I’m licked,’ Carl said to Norma, the next morning. ‘Call the agents and tell them we’re ready to pay seventy-five. We’ve got to get out of this joint.’


  ‘Not before we speak to the Contessa. I’ll tell her my troubles and break her heart.’

  ‘You’ll get involved and you’ll get nowhere,’ Carl warned her.

  ‘Please call her anyway.’

  ‘I haven’t got her number. I didn’t think of asking for it.’

  ‘Find it. You’re good at research.’

  He considered phoning Mrs Gaspari for the number but remembered she was at work, and he didn’t have that number. Recalling the address of the apartment house, he looked it up in the phone book. Then he telephoned the portiere and asked for the Contessa’s address and her phone number.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ said the portiere, eating as he spoke. ‘Give me your telephone.’

  ‘Why bother? Give me her number and save yourself the trouble.’

  ‘I have strict orders from the Contessa never to give her number to strangers. They call up on the phone and annoy her.’

  ‘I’m not a stranger. I want to rent her flat.’

  The portiere cleared his throat. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Albergo Sora Cecilia.’

  ‘I’ll call you back in a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Have it your way.’ He gave the portiere his name.

  In forty minutes the phone rang and Carl reached for it. ‘Pronto.’

  ‘Signore Schneider?’ It was a man’s voice – a trifle high.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Permit me,’ the man said, in fluent though accented English. ‘I am Aldo De Vecchis. It would please me to speak to you in person.’

  ‘Are you a real estate agent?’

  ‘Not precisely, but it refers to the apartment of the Contessa. I am the former occupant.’

  ‘The man with the key?’ Carl asked quickly.

  ‘It is I.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘In the foyer downstairs.’

  ‘Come up, please.’

  ‘Excuse me, but if you will permit, I would prefer to speak to you here.’

  ‘I’ll be right down.’

  ‘The lover,’ he said to Norma.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  He rushed down in the elevator. A thin man in a green suit with cuffless trousers was waiting in the lobby. He was about forty, his face small, his hair wet black, and he wore at a tilt the brownest hat Carl had ever seen. Though his shirt collar was frayed, he looked impeccable. Into the air around him leaked the odor of cologne.

  ‘De Vecchis,’ he bowed. His eyes, in a slightly pock-marked face, were restless.

  ‘I’m Carl Schneider. How’d you get my number?’

  De Vecchis seemed not to have heard. ‘I hope you are enjoying your visit here.’

  ‘I’d enjoy it more if I had a house to live in.’

  ‘Precisely. But what is your impression of Italy?’

  ‘I like the people.’

  ‘There are too many of them.’ De Vecchis looked restlessly around. ‘Where may we speak? My time is short.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Carl. He pointed to a little room where people wrote letters. ‘In there.’

  They entered and sat at a table, alone in the room.

  De Vecchis felt in his pocket for something, perhaps a cigarette, but came up with nothing. ‘I won’t waste your time,’ he said. ‘You wish the apartment you saw yesterday? I wish you to have it, it is most desirable. There is also with it a garden of roses. You will love it on a summer night when Rome is hot. However, the practical matter is this. Are you willing to invest a few lire to obtain the privilege of entry?’

  ‘The key?’ Carl knew but asked.

  ‘Precisely. To be frank I am not in good straits. To that is added the psychological disadvantage of the aftermath of a love affair with a most difficult woman. I leave you to imagine my present condition. Notwithstanding, the apartment I offer is attractive and the rent, as I understand, is for Americans not too high. Surely this has its value for you?’ He attempted a smile but it died in birth.

  ‘I am a graduate student of Italian studies,’ Carl said, giving him the facts. ‘I’ve invested all of my savings in this trip abroad to get my Ph.D dissertation done. I have a wife to support and two children.

  ‘I hear that your government is most generous to the Fulbright Fellows?’

  ‘You don’t understand. I am not a Fulbright Fellow.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ De Vecchis said, drumming his fingertips on the table, ‘the price of the key is eighty-thousand lire.’

  Carl laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Carl rose.

  ‘Is the price too high?’

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  De Vecchis rubbed his brow nervously. ‘Very well, since not all Americans are rich Americans – you see, I am objective – I will reduce the sum by one half. For less than a month’s rent the key is yours.’

  ‘Thanks. No dice.’

  ‘Please? I don’t understand your expression.’

  ‘I can’t afford it. I’d still have a commission to pay the agent.’

  ‘Oh? Then why don’t you forget him? I will issue orders to the portiere to allow you to move in immediately. This evening, if you prefer. The Contessa’s lawyer will draw up the lease free of charge. And although she is difficult to her lovers, she is an angel to her tenants.’

  ‘I’d like to forget the agent,’ Carl said, ‘but I can’t.’

  De Vecchis gnawed his lip. ‘I will make it twenty-five thousand,’ he said, ‘but this is my last and absolute word.’

  ‘No, thanks. I won’t be a party to a bribe.’

  De Vecchis rose, his small face tight, pale. ‘It is people like you who drive us to the hands of the Communists. You try to buy us – our votes, our culture, and then you dare speak of bribes.’

  He strode out of the room and through the lobby.

  Five minutes later the phone rang. ‘Fifteen thousand is my final offer.’ His voice was thick.

  ‘Not a cent,’ said Carl.

  Norma stared at him.

  De Vecchis slammed the phone.

  The portiere telephoned. He had looked everywhere, he said, but had lost the Contessa’s address.

  ‘What about her phone number?’ Carl asked.

  ‘It was changed when she moved. The numbers are confused in my mind, the old with the new.’

  ‘Look here,’ Carl said, ‘I’ll tell the Contessa you sent De Vecchis to see me about her apartment.’

  ‘How can you tell her if you don’t know her number?’ the portiere asked with curiosity. ‘It isn’t listed in the book.’

  ‘I’ll ask Mrs Gaspari for it when she gets home from work, then I’ll call the Contessa and tell her what you did.’

  ‘What did I do? Tell me exactly.’

  ‘You sent her former lover, a man she wants to get rid of, to try to squeeze money out of me for something that is none of his business – namely her apartment.’

  ‘Is there no other way than this?’ asked the portiere.

  ‘If you tell me her address I will give you one thousand lire.’ Carl felt his tongue thicken.

  ‘How shameful,’ Norma said from the sink, where she was washing clothes.

  ‘Not more than one thousand?’ asked the portiere.

  ‘Not till I move in.’

  The portiere then told him the Contessa’s last name and her new address. ‘Don’t repeat where you got it.’

  Carl swore he wouldn’t.

  He left the hotel on the run, got into a cab, and drove across the Tiber to the Via Cassia, in the country.

  The Contessa’s maid admitted him into a fabulous place with mosaic floors, gilded furniture, and a marble bust of the Contessa’s great-grandfather in the foyer where Carl waited. In twenty minutes the Contessa appeared, a plain-looking woman, past fifty, with dyed blonde hair, black eye-brows, and a short, tight dress. The skin on her arms was wrinkled, but her bosom was enormous and she smelled like a rose garden.

  ‘Please, you must be quick,’ she said i
mpatiently. ‘There is so much to do. I am preparing for my wedding.’

  ‘Contessa,’ said Carl, ‘excuse me for rushing in like this, but my wife and I have a desperate need for an apartment and we know that yours on the Via Tirreno is vacant. I’m an American student of Italian life and manners. We’ve been in Italy almost a month and are still living in a third-rate hotel. My wife is unhappy. The children have miserable colds. I’ll be glad to pay you fifty-thousand lire, instead of the forty-five you ask, if you will kindly let us move in today.’

  ‘Listen,’ said the Contessa, ‘I come from an honorable family. Don’t try to bribe me.’

  Carl blushed. ‘I mean nothing more than to give you proof of my good will.’

  ‘In any case, my lawyer attends to my real estate matters.’

  ‘He hasn’t the key.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he?’

  ‘The former occupant took it with him.’

  ‘The fool,’ she said.

  ‘Do you happen to have a duplicate?’

  ‘I never keep duplicate keys. They all get mixed up and I never know which is which.’

  ‘Could we have one made?’

  ‘Ask my lawyer.’

  ‘I called this morning but he’s out of town. May I make a suggestion, Contessa? Could we have a window or a door forced? I will pay the cost of repair.’

  The Contessa’s eyes glinted. ‘Of course not,’ she said huffily. ‘I will have no destruction of my property. We’ve had enough of that sort of thing here. You Americans have no idea what we’ve lived through.’

  ‘But doesn’t it mean something to you to have a reliable tenant in your apartment? What good is it standing empty? Say the word and I’ll bring you the rent in an hour.’

  ‘Come back in two weeks, young man, after I finish my honeymoon.’

  ‘In two weeks I may be dead,’ Carl said.

  The Contessa laughed.

  Outside, he met Bevilacqua. He had a black eye and a stricken expression.

  ‘So you’ve betrayed me?’ the Italian said hoarsely.

  ‘What do you mean “betrayed”? Who are you, Jesus Christ?’

  ‘I hear you went to De Vecchis and begged for the key, with plans to move in without telling me.’

  ‘How could I keep that a secret with your pal Mrs Gaspari living right over my head? The minute I moved in she’d tell you, then you’d be over on horseback to collect.’