MILLICENT l3ELL
l)avidov, the census-t,lker, opened the door without knocking, limped
into the room, and sat wearily down. Out cline his notebook and he
was
011
the Job. Itosell, the ex-coHl'e salesm,lIJ, waited, eyes despairing,
sat motionless cross-kgged.
011
his cot. The square, cle.m, but cold
room. lit by a dim globe,
\\'.IS
sp.mdy furnished: the cot, a foldillg
chair, sln,lIl tabk, old, ullp.lillted chests- Ilo closets but who needed
them'- alld a SIldl sillk with ,J rough piece of greell, institutional
soap
011
its holder- you could smell it acrms the rOOll1.
51
Is this a hospital room' A prison cell' We are in hell or purgatory,
though those places :lIT not referred to. The "census-taker" Seems ;lI1other
wingless :lngcl, making up the record for Iz.osen who had finally killed him–
self so that he might leave his property to till' widow who sent back all his
letters. "Let her say now no."
M:llalllud's stories-like joyce's-climax in secular epiph:lnies. What,
after all, is Illagic about the matchmaker's barrel full of the pictures of
impossible brides? That it reveals to young rabbi Finkel wh;n he truly is–
someone "unloVl'd and loveless" who "has come to God not because [he]
loved him but bt'causl' Ihl'l did not," whilt' the sallle barrel contains, also, the
bridt' ht' can love, the woman who will redeem hilll, though she is the most
impossible. After Kessler, the isolated ex-egg-candler, has been thrust out of
his miserable lodging but has broken in again, he cries out to his landlord,
"What did I do to you' Who throws out of his house a man he lived there
ten years and pays eVl'ry month on time his rem'" His suffering Illakes hilll
recall the reason for his loneliness- how years before he had abandoned his
family-and he rocks, moaning, on the floor. And Cruber, the landlord, his
ent'IllY, suddenly joins him in sitting
shil/ll.
"With a cry of shame he pulled
the sheet off Kessler's bed and wrapping it around hilllself sank to the floor
and became a 11IOUrJler." It is the same discoVl'ry of redemptive mutuality
that makes the climax in
n/(,
Assislcll/l
between the grocer Morris t30ber and
Frank Alpine, the small-time crook ,lIld drifter who works for him: '''What
do you sutlcr 6.))", Morris" said Fr;lI1k . 'I sufTer f(x you,' Morris said calmly.
'What do you nlean?' asked Frank. 'I mean you suffer ft)r me.'" Their illu–
mination is as much Christian as jewish, resembling what occurs in certain
stories by Flannery O'Connor deriving ultilllately fi-om her Catholicism
(O'Connor, when she read 77/(,
1\
/c!l!ic BalTel,
exclaimed to a fi-iend, "I have
discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including
myself"). His stones give such universality
to
the theille of jewish loneliness
that they justify Malanllld's own remark, "All men are jews."
Malamud would write six 11101"(' novels after
The
Assistallt,
most notably
The Fixer
(which won a Pulitzer Pri ze) about a jewish handyman accused
