The Magic Barrel

In a dark hovel with few furnishings, an “ex-coffee salesman” named Rosen, who is described as being “wasted” and having “despairing eyes,” answers the brusque questions of a sour-faced “census-taker” named Davidov, who wants to know about a widow named Eva Kalish. Rosen tells him that Eva’s husband was a Polish refugee who started a small grocery in a failed neighborhood, and who dropped dead one day while complaining to Rosen about his unhappy life. Rosen says that he advised Eva to use the life insurance money to move, but she refused, saying that she had nowhere to go since her relatives had all died in the Holocaust and that she would use the money to fix up the shop and support her two little girls. Rosen suggested that she look for a new husband, but she scoffed at the idea, adding bitterly, “In my whole life I always suffered. I don’t expect better. This is my life” (89).

Rosen relates that over the next few months, Eva put all of the insurance money into the grocery store, which continued to fail. Soon, no one would give her credit except for Rosen, who, unbeknownst to her, paid the coffee company out of his own pocket.