“The drawers are already filled to the top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a new rabbi?” Leo blushed at this, regretting all he had revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae he had sent to Salzman. “You wouldn’t believe me how much cards I got in my office,” Salzman replied. When Leo’s eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out in Salzman’s hand. He gazed around at shelves upon shelves of books and let out a soft, contented sigh. Salzman, though pretending through eye-glasses he had just slipped on, to be engaged in scanning the writing on the cards, stole occasional glances at the young man’s distinguished face, noting with pleasure the long, severe scholar’s nose, brown eyes heavy with learning, sensitive yet ascetic lips, and a certain, almost hollow quality of the dark cheeks. He now observed the round white moon, moving high in the sky through a cloud menagerie, and watched with half-open mouth as it penetrated a huge hen, and dropped out of her like an egg laying itself. Although it was still February, winter was on its last legs, signs of which he had for the first time in years begun to notice.
As he flipped through them, a gesture and sound that physically hurt Leo, the student pretended not to see and gazed steadfastly out the window. Salzman eagerly unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much-handled cards. He seated himself at the matchmaker’s side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat. Leo had led Salzman to the only clear place in the room, a table near a window that overlooked the lamp-lit city. Later, however, he experienced a glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years ago, and he heartily approved of Finkle. Salzman listened in embarrassed surprise, sensing a sort ofĪpology. They had made, if not a financially profitable marriage – since neither had possessed any worldly goods to speak of – at least a successful one in the sense of their everlasting devotion to each other. Moreover, his own parents had been brought together by a matchmaker. He remarked in passing that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and honorable, highly approved in the Jewish community, because it made practical the necessary without hindering joy.
JUNK JACK RETRO OFF OF STEAM TRIAL
Therefore he thought it the better part of trial and error – of embarrassing fumbling – to call in an experienced person to advise him on these matters. He had for six years devoted himself almost entirely to his studies, as a result of which, understandably, he had found himself without time for a social life and the company of young women. He at once informed Salzman why he had asked him to come, explaining that his home was in Cleveland, and that but for his parents, who had married comparatively late in life, he was alone in the world. His voice, his lips, his wisp of beard, his bony fingers were animated, but give him a moment of repose and his mild blue eyes revealed a depth of sadness, a characteristic that put Leo a little at ease although the situation, for him, was inherently tense. He smelled frankly of fish, which he loved to eat, and although he was missing a few teeth, his presence was not displeasing, because of an amiable manner curiously contrasted with mournful eyes. Salzman, who had been long in the business, was of slight but dignified build, wearing an old hat, and an overcoat too short and tight for him. The matchmaker appeared one night out of the dark fourthfloor hallway of the graystone rooming house where Finkle lived, grasping a black, strapped portfolio that had been worn thin with use. Since he had no present prospects of marriage, after two tormented days of turning it over in his mind, he called in Pinye Salzman, a marriage broker whose two-line advertisement he had read in the Forward. Finkle, after six years of study, was to be ordained in June and had been advised by an acquaintance that he might find it easier to win himself a congregation if he were married. Bernard Malamud The Magic Barrel Not long ago there lived in uptown New York, in a small, almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student in the Yeshivah University.
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