50
PARTISAN Il..EVIEW
broker's contrivance, with the broker's prostitute daughter. 13ut, in "The
First Seven Years," there is also h'ld, the shoemaker whose aspiratiollS for
his daughter are balked by love she arouses in his unpromising apprentice.
In "The Mourners," Kessler, formerly an egg candler, living on social secu–
rity in his dirty flat, provokes repugnance and sadism in the tenement
jani tor and the building owner. In "Take Pi
ty,"
n ..
osen,
.1
coHt:e salesman,
falls in love with a grocer's illlpovcrished widow who refuses his charity.
In
"The l3ill," Schlegel,
;1
janitor, nllls up a bill he ClIlnot pay at a deli–
catessen being squeezed to death by a new self-service. Tomm y Castrelli
(who might just as well be Jewish) watches, with silent pity, as a ten-year–
old steals candy in his stOlT in "The Prison." MaLlIllud had received a
I~ockefeller
grant (sponsored by
PR)
.lI1d wellt to Italy for a year, and some
of the
J\
lil.lZir Bayyel
stories reflect the foreign scene the wri ter observed as
sharply as he had seen the streets of New York. 13ut, in an odd, Henry
Jamesian way, these are represelltations of a transplallted state of ll1ind.
"The Last Mohican" is the first of Malall1ud's stories about
.1
New York
acrarillc
in
l~ome,
the f.liled painter Fidelman, pursued by a
sclilloyyey
he can–
not shake ofT and must embrace.
These stories are not just ge nre sketches despite their representation
of the comic / pathetic circull1stances and pretzel-bent English of the
characters. There is a mysteriom, visionary element in them, a flirting
with the fabulous that heightens their meaning as morality tales.
In
"Ange l Levine" the tailor, Manischevitz, oppressed by revcrses, is visited
by a black man whom he first takes for a down-at-the-heels socia l work–
er but who identifies himself as a wingless Jewish angel sent to succor
him. "So if God sends me
;1Il
angel, why a black?" asks Manischn·itz.
Only after his troubles multiply beyond bearing does he seek out Levine.
He finds hill1 drunk and in b.ld company .It
.1
disrepuuble Harlem
honky-tonk. An authentic angel, this person) "M.lIlischevitz was recall–
ing scenes of his youth as a wheel in his mind whirred: believe, do not,
yes, no, yes, no." He decides: " I think you are an angel frolll God." After
this, Levine sprouts wings. When Manischevitz finds his wife recovered
fi'oll1 deathly sickness, he tells her, "A wonderfu l thing, Fanny. 13elieve
me, there are Jews everywhere." A religious story) Yes. No. A story abo ut
racial division and its repair. About redell1ptive trust and the re covery of
cOll1munity.
Perhaps the supernatural that surflCes in some of the stories derives
fI'om R.abbinical tradition: religiom mythology .lI1e1 moral teaching is often
implied where the flbulom suggests another, sacred world. We wonder
where we are as we begin "Tlke Pity":
