Klein's proposition works better inverted: Salzman exists entirely within ordinary determinations. Everything he does is explicable in naturalistic terms. Thus approached, the story becomes more dramatic and ingenious. The "happy" ending is no longer assured in advance by elfin sorcery: celestial ingenuity yields to the human variety. Salzman's "magical powers," like the "magic" in the barrel, vanish whence they came: Finkle's "distracted globe." A naturalistic interpretation is consistent with Malamud's authorial creed: "I would never," he said in a rare interview, "deliberately flatten a character to create a stereotype. . . . Most of all I'm out to create real and passionate human beings" (Field and Field 16).(1)
The story can be profitably read along the following lines. Even before he meets Finkle, on the basis of what the student "revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae" (Malamud 195), the broker contemplates a marriage between his daughter, Stella, and the new client.(2) After he meets the student, the intention solidifies. Salzman "heartily approved of Finkle" (194) and "let out a soft, contented sigh" (195). As "commercial Cupid," Salzman hopes to do to Finkle what Eros does to the lovelorn in Medieval and Renaissance emblems: put a hood over his head (hoodwink). If his stratagem works, he will in one swoop "save" his daughter and elevate his own social status. From the outset, Salzman envisions Finkle as son-in-law, persistently calling him "rabbi" - trying the respected epithet on for size - and assuming a proprietary air. To preserve an appearance of occupational integrity and, more importantly, to buy time to sound his prey, the broker masks, consummately as it turns out, his predatory intent.
Salzman's comments about his clients disclose his hidden intent. The remarks are rife with double entendres and subtexts. His thespian skills, lavishly on parade throughout the story, are foretold: "On the mother's side comes . . . one actor" (196). Around Finkle, he is always on: he "adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, gently cleared his throat and read in an eager voice. . . ." He can under- as well as overact. When Finkle spurns Sophie P., as Salzman secretly wishes, the broker "hunched his shoulders in an almost imperceptible gesture of disappointment" (196). Rather than betoken wizardly locomotion, as some have thought, his sudden entrances and exits have a patented theatrical quality. His motives, too, are of ordinary provenance. Like Ruth K.'s parents, he and his wife are "particular people" (197) when it comes to a son-in-law. They are "interested in a professional man," and in his anxiety to reel Finkle in, Salzman has become, a la Ruth K.'s father, a specialist in stomach disorders (197). If the broker can land his catch, his daughter "will be thankful for the rest of her life" (196). In another passage ostensibly about Ruth K., Salzman obliquely reveals why he is playing matchmaker for his daughter. "We" may be glossed as Salzman and his wife:
He [Ruth's father] wants she should have the best, so he looks around himself When we will locate the right boy he will introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage than if a young girl without experience takes for herself. (198)
When a "curiously bitter" Finkle rejects Ruth K. out of hand, a sullen Salzman imagines himself father-in-law non grata.
Finally, he [Finkle] shook his head.
"Why not?" Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising.
"Because I detest stomach specialists."
"So what do you care what is his business? After you marry her do you need him? Who says he must come every Friday night in your house?" (199)
To net the slippery student, Salzman must do two things: (1) insure that Finkle is disenchanted with the regular clients, and (2) correctly package Stella.
The first task is easily discharged. Destitute of magic powers, the broker has been unable to ward off the inexorable incursion of modernity. The matchmaking institution, like "the much-handled cards" (194), has become superannuated. Desirable prospects now fend for themselves. Hence, the broker is poor and ill-fed, lives in "a very old tenement house" (210), and constantly rushes, a hapless luftmensch trying to drum up business. When Finkle "remarked that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and honorable" and that his own parents, "brought together by a matchmaker," had had a successful marriage, Salzman, machinations already afoot, "listened in embarrassed surprise" (194). Finkle's respect seems to Salzman as antiquated as the institution the broker represents (Finkle later admits he does not really care for it [199]). The praise nevertheless rekindles an extinguished idealism: Salzman "experienced a glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years ago" (194). Stella and Finkle are, as Salzman might say to his wife, "two fine people that they would be wonderful to be married" (207).
Even at the first meeting, Salzman gets an inkling of the guise in which Stella must eventually appear. With 25 years in the business, he readily discerns where Finkle's chief interest lies. Notwithstanding the "scholar's nose" and "ascetic lips" (195), the sheltered student seeks a decidedly sublunary love. He wants a wide field from which to choose: "So few?" he asks when he sees Salzman holding but six cards (195). His second question is, "Do you keep photographs of your clients on file?" (195). He has an eye out for someone young, fresh, and sexy, but not too intimidating.(3) Understandably, he "flushes," twice, when Salzman asks what interests him (198, 201). Sophie P., a 24-year-old widow, does not pass muster. She is damaged goods. Though he will finally agree to meet Lily H., she hasn't a chance either: she is neither young nor libidinous, and has a discomfiting idle fixe on holy men. The 19-year-old, "pretty" (or so Salzman says) Ruth K. fails to meet the exacting specifications because "she is a little lame on the right foot" (198). Finkle wants a perfect ten.
Finkle's finicky standards constitute a daunting challenge for the matchmaker. Bruised, not beautified by poverty (208), Stella's only kinship with Cinderella is the phonic one. Finkle needs a jolt - lest, caught, he prove not worth the catching. The proximate agent of shock will be Lily Hirschorn, votary (as Salzman well knows) of the caricaturally devout. Primed for her "man enamored of God" (203), a "semi-mystical Wonder Rabbi" (206), Lily will function as gadfly, albeit an unwitting one. Her balked expectations, Salzman hopes, will induce in Finkle a guilty conscience. Rightly plumbed, he might lower his standards a bit.
At his second meeting with Finkle, Salzman again shows no trace of shamanic disposition. His anxiety is unfeigned. He is an all-too-mortal schemer in extremis. "His face was gray and meager, his expression hungry, and he looked as if he would expire on his feet." His histrionic faculty taxed, he manages, "by some trick of the muscles, to display a broad smile" (199). By upping the ante - Lily is not only wealthy, stylish, and cultivated, he tells Finkle, but, like him, partikiler (202) - Salzman at last mediates a rendezvous.
When he next sees Finkle, a week later and subsequent to the rendezvous, the harried broker is "a skeleton with haunted eyes" (206). Again, he shows not a sign of sorcerous clairvoyance. He is painfully ignorant of the status of his gambit. He stalwartly feigns a nonchalant attitude:
Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point: how did you like her?"
Leo's anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding, the matchmaker: "Why did you lie to me, Salzman?"
Salzman's pale face went dead white, the world had snowed on him. (206)
For a perilous moment, Salzman thinks he has been hoisted on his own petard, hence the apoplectic reaction. When he realizes Finkle is alluding to Lily, not Stella, he reclaims his histrionic flair and, with glib avowals of innocence, smoothly parries the accusations. Finkle is still son-in-law designate: "The marriage broker fastened hungry eyes on him" (207). Since Finkle "is no longer interested in an arranged marriage" (207), Salzman must pin his hopes on the cheap snapshot of Stella. In a field of wilting lilies, Stella may flourish.
When, unable to fend for himself, Finkle turns in last resort to the pictures the broker has left, he sees women "all past their prime, all starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in the lot. Life, despite their yoohooings, had passed them by" (208). In them, perhaps, he glimpses his own future. Then, he beholds Stella, vibrant youth in a moribund gallery. In his glandular, revved-up imagination, she smacks of earthy sensuality and forbidden fruit - owing in part, one surmises, to a lascivious mien coached by her father. Finkle "received an impression, somehow of evil" (209) - in the original version, "filth" (Dessner, "Revisions" 259).(4) Later, like Jehovah marveling at his own creation, "he examined the face and found it good." She alone "could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking" (209). What he seeks is sexual gratification, but he remains, consciously at least, ignorant of the need. In this respect, Salzman (as well as the reader) is well ahead of him.
When Finkle, via Mrs. Salzman, summons the marriage broker, Salzman has long been on tenterhooks, the outcome of his ploy in limbo. Adrenalin pumping, he arrives breathless, having, he says, "rushed" (211). When Finkle flashes the snapshot of Stella and ejaculates, "Here is the one I want" (211), Salzman puts on, as one might say, a stellar performance: he "slipped on his glasses and took the picture into his trembling hand. He turned ghastly and let out a groan" (211-12). Knowing that Finkle bridles at the hard sale, Salzman now refuses to sell. The scene is unabashed burlesque, even to a chase and a hysterical woman, with Salzman now the masterful human impresario. Slow on the uptake, Finkle does not immediately grasp that Stella is (supposed to be) a sexual dynamo. Salzman's metaphorical inventiveness is sorely tasked:
"She is not for you. She is a wild one - wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi."
"What do you mean wild?"
"Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This is why to me she is dead now."
"In God's name, what do you mean?"
"Her I can't introduce to you," Salzman cried.
"Why are you so excited?"
"Why, he asks," Salzman said, bursting into tears. "This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell." (212)
Salzman is excited because his ploy is working. He has wrapped Stella in the perfect garb. In Finkle's subconscious, the unholy litany of "sin," "hell," "wild," and "animal" reverberates with aphrodisiac potency. With her "impression of youth" and "spring flowers" (208), Stella embodies, or so Finkle thinks, his oxymoronic dream girl: the perpetually virginal painted woman. Later, when he sees her under the street lamp, he imagines "in a troubled moment" she has on a red dress instead of a white one. Consciously, he has adopted the role of savior. An unabashed slut might be hard "to convert . . . to goodness" (213). The virginal white assuages his austere conscience.
From start to finish, the story is firmly situated on the rock of human passion, foible, and aspiration. Salzman's lot is not without pathos. By contrast, Malamud's treatment of Finkle is unremittingly comic.(5) Finkle's condition is throughout reminiscent of Byron's pubescent Don Juan, befuddled by his sexual awakening: "Now we'll turn to Juan. / Poor little fellow! he had no idea / Of his own case, and never hit the true one" (Don Juan, Canto the First, stanza 86).
The narrator's diction is occasionally impish: Finkle watches "with half open mouth" as the moon "penetrates" a hen-like cloud before dropping out like an egg (195). The student is at last "aroused" by fantasies of Lily H. and walks "erectly" to meet her, discreetly, however, resisting the urge to "use" his phallic walking stick (202). Later, he solemnly tells Salzman: "I am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be frank, I now admit the necessity of premarital love." Embarrassed by the Freudian slip - the euphemism for premarital sex - he quickly emends: "That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry" (207). The last we see of Finkle he is rushing toward Stella with flowers "outthrust" (214). The climactically placed verb could hardly be better.
For some readers, Stella is even more problematic than her father. Lionel Trilling remarked that one need not believe "Stella is what her father makes her out to be - possibly her sexual life is marked merely by a freedom of the kind that now morality scarcely reproves" (173). Actually, one need not suppose Stella has any sexual experience at all. In the final vignette, her eyes are full of "desperate innocence," and she awaits Finkle "uneasily" and "shyly." The cigarette and red pumps can be glossed as her thespian father's contributions, part of the packaging. This might be Stella's first date.
In the final, often discussed sentence, Salzman, concealed chaperone, "chanted prayers for the dead." The dead are Stella Salzman and Leo Finkle.(6) The tone is ambivalent. Though pleased to have landed his "professional man," Salzman knows that marriage can be lethal to romantic illusions. Earlier, when Finkle opines that Ruth K. "believes in love," Salzman can barely suppress a guffaw (198). Finkle's "love," he long ago deduced, is Iago's "sect or scion of lust." Knowing marriage demands sterner stuff, Salzman, pious Jew, naturally seeks the aid of higher powers, having none of his own.
1 Asked whether he read criticism of his own works, Malamud replied: "I like imaginative interpretations of my books, whether I agree with them or not. I enjoy criticism that views the work in ways I haven't anticipated - that surprises me" (15).
2 While several readers echo Finkle's suspicion that Salzman "planned it all to happen that way" (213), they believe the plan begins only with The placement of Stella's picture in the envelope. A few believe it begins earlier, but they adduce the fact as further evidence of Salzman's supernatural powers of ordination (See Storey 180; May 95-96; Ochshorn 61-62). Finkle's suspicion may be Malamud's way of alerting readers to his own narrative strategy.
3 Storey, May, and Dessner ("Playfulness") have all commented on the sexual dimension. It seems to me they do not go far enough.
4 The story was first published in 1954 in The Partisan Review and later revised for the 1958 collection The Magic Barrel. In "Revisions," Dessner lists all the differences, most of them minor, between the versions.
5 In the course of the story, Finkle does not learn as much about himself as he thinks. Even as he chides himself for egoism, he wants love to "come to him" (206), Stella to "help him," to find in her "his own redemption" (209, 214; italics added). When Finkle plumes himself on his new self-awareness, the narrative voice is distantly wry, the mode comic: "Never in the Five Books and all the Commentaries - mea culpa - had the truth been revealed to him. . . . [H]e drew the consolation that he was a Jew and that a Jew suffered" (205). "Perhaps with this new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the past" (206). He "had grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom" (213). After Salzman scandalizes Stella, the treatment of Finkle is pure slapstick:
Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. (213)
6 Salzman's previous application of the word to Stella ("to me she is dead now") has been often noted. The word is also applied earlier to Finkle. The devout image Lily has of him has "no relation," the narrator reports, "to the living or dead" Finkle (204).
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