Magic Barrel Leo Was Informed

Magic Barrel

Leo was informed by letter that she would meet him on a certain corner, and she was there one spring night, waiting under a street lamp. He appeared, carrying a small bouquet of violets and rosebuds. Stella stood by the lamppost, smoking. She wore white with red shoes, which fitted his expectations, although in a troubled moment he had imagined the dress red, and only the shoes white. She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes - clearly her father's - were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers outthrust.

Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted prayers for the dead." -- Ending from "The Magic Barrel"

Why do you chant the kaddish?" said Stella, loudly. She stubbed out her cigarette on the lamppost. The cigarette bled little bits of fire and blew in the wind. The light from the cigarette was the same color as the girl's red shoes. Leo remembered a gentile fairy tale someone had once told him, about a girl with red shoes who nearly danced herself to death. She became a nun, he thought, in atonement for her sins. Maybe faith and danger were closer than he had thought. Maybe those who wore red shoes, who begin dancing with danger would cling more to their God later on.

He was aware, all of a sudden, how little life had tested or asked of him.

He had always found safety in his faith, his religion. The path to becoming a rabbi had seemed steady, and, if not serene, than at least clear. Marriage, with its subtitles, seemed far more indefinite, even though it was one of the steps upon his path.

You recognize the kaddish?" said Leo, suddenly aware of the dryness of his mouth, as if it had been he, his voice, speaking so long and rhythmically in the air of the night. "That wasn't me, speaking that was -- someone else. But you recognize the prayer of the dead?" have known something of the dead," said Stella, "despite what you might have heard of me, of my life. What my father has told you."

Someone you love -- died?"

No, I heard my father once, saying it for me," said Stella. "He told me, you know, that he warned you away from me. He was right -- I am no wife for a rabbi." She smiled, and her smile seemed cruel. "Why do you want to get married, anyway?" She looked at Leo and shook her head. "Are those flowers like they put on a grave, is that why you're chanting for the dead? Violets? Roses?"

She wore white, and the pale cloth hung upon her shoulders like a shroud. But the cut was like a child's cut, a child's first white dress. It was soiled, Leo could see now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, at its hem.

Do you smoke?" she said. She lit another cigarette and took the flowers, smelled them. "The tobacco kills my sense of smell, but they're beautiful. I'm going to the pictures and to the automat -- do you want to come?"

Leo hesitated. He could feel Salzman's presence nearby, although the changing had ceased. "I wouldn't want to intrude."

You're intruding on nothing -- I was going alone. But you're welcome to come," said Stella. "I know the boy who plays the music in the pit, he'll get us in free." Her shoes made a sharp sound on the sidewalk. "Coming? Do you like the pictures?"

Leo could still hear Salzman breathing, although the man was no longer praying for his daughter, or praying -- for something, anything. All prayers had ceased. The night was deep, dark, and desperate in its all-encompassing silence around him. He could feel Lilly's presence, somehow, lurking indefinitely in the corners of the outer air, aging the night moment by moment as she seemed to grow older and older in speeded up time every time he met her.