The Assistant, Bernard Malamud

Frank Alpine, the assistant at the grocery store, shows us how to waste a life and lose a job, and then in the following act, how to save a business, restore love and restart the cycle.

Sometimes in life, when faced with a crisis or extreme situations that make us suffer, one questions the meaning of what is happening, feels powerless against what one considers an unjust fate and resentful of the neighbor’s greener grass. However, life has many twists and turns and patience is recommended to deal with its hardships which, like everything else, will pass in time. China´s millenary wisdom understands as much and decrees the fact with the saying that advises to sit at your front door and wait to see the corpse of your enemy pass. This is a hard concept, distressing - but certainly not the lesser true for that – because it reveals our envy for other’s good fortunes and our wish for revenge, in most cases not by our own hand but by that of fate, the same hand that turns the enemy of those who know how to wait into a cadaver.

Feelings like these are common among shopkeepers who live comparing themselves to others in their vicinity and suffering on account of the success of his closest acquaintances. Such is the predicament of the Jew Morris Bober, owner of the grocery store who, as he gets older and embittered with life for the death of his son Ephraim and for his endless rotten luck, discovers himself not only envying the good fortunes of his fellow Julius Karp but even wishing him wrong: “For years the grocer had escaped resenting the man´s good luck, but lately he had caught himself wishing on him some small misfortune”. For Morris, however, life performs a turn and makes one thing change into another and still into other, leaving us wondering whether the body in the saying is that of our enemy or our own.

Morris and his wife Ida witness the arrival of the newcomer Frank Alpine in their neighborhood, with mysterious motives and a shady life story, himself a sort of King Midas in reverse: what he touches he destroys. Frank says of himself: “I’ve been close to wonderful things – jobs, education, women… but sooner or later everything I think is worth having gets away from me… I work like a mule for what I want, and just when it looks like I am going to get it I make some stupid move and everything blows up in my face”. In a very unorthodox way, Frank makes himself indispensable for Morris’ business, albeit Ida's reservations. She is a strong advocate for the immediate dismissal of Frank on the grounds of her fears for Helen, her young and healthy daughter, on whom, of course, Frank has set his eyes from the start. And then all the necessary ingredients for the impending mess are on the table.

Frank's story is one of guilt and redemption. The story of Frank and Morris is one of loyalty and betrayal. The story of Frank and Helen is one of shame, of love and hate. The overall story is one of reincarnation and of the renewing of a cycle. Frank wanders through life with a heavy burden of guilt, a guilt originated in acts contrary to morals organized around the figure of St. Francis of Assisi and picked up in his orphaned teenage years. Frank suffers from this guilt and from the feeling that he is not, in his right mind, the one who acts, but that there is a black hand forcing him to commit these criminal acts against his better intentions. In his assisting the troubled Morris, Frank sees a path to redemption and pursues it through thick and thin. Frank’s loyalty towards Morris is based in this determination. But still the Black Hand continues to bungle Frank’s actions and cementing the course of treachery, a betrayal which disclosure will be the harder as their relationship strengthens over time.

Frank and Helen are not right for each other, if not for the myriad of things that separate them, only for this: Frank is not Jewish, which asserts a fatal impossibility. However Helen seems to be willing to endure the ignominy that would mean ignoring her predicament and accepting his love ... until, in the nick of time, the Black Hand acts again and builds an insurmountable barrier between them: the cliff of shame.

But against all odds, the author seems to want to establish some truths. The first is that in life there are no impediments large enough against a determination of purpose as formidable as that of Frank’s. The second that the twists and turns of life are what they are: somersaults of fate that make possible today what seemed impossible yesterday. And third, that fate has its tricks, and though it can give you what you want, it seldom does so without a bit of sarcasm. Seeing the solution Frank elaborates at the end of the book, we are left with a smile in the face from the sense of the reincarnation of Morris in him and from his probable repetition of the merchant’s life cycle.