The Magic Barrel

“The Last Mohican,” like many of Malamud’s tales, blends scrupulous realism with flashes of the fantastic. Jewish scholar Arthur Fidelman, like Carl Schneider of “Behold the Key,” comes to Rome to research a paper on Italy’s past. Also like Carl, he becomes fractiously involved with a hard-up mendicant who serves more as a gadfly than a guide, revealing to Fidelman the emptiness within himself, and he ultimately learns more from these encounters than he does from the Renaissance niches and piazzas that he has come to study. Just like Henry Levin/Freeman of “The Lady of the Lake,” Fidelman is also a divided man, for his scholarly pursuits mark him as a nominally Jewish devotee of a very Christian artist (Giotto), and he ironically hugs a decidedly unkosher pigskin briefcase to his chest in an attempt to shield his precious manuscript from the world. This schism suggests that, just like the protagonists of the other two Italian-themed stories, he has become indifferent to the sufferings of others. Thus, as with many of Malamud’s characters, Fidelman proves himself to be overdue for a reckoning. Accordingly, his repressed Hebraic half confronts him in the uncanny form of Shimon Susskind, a consummately Jewish “guide” who, in his first appearance, is shown to gaze at Fidelman just as Fidelman is mentally gazing at himself. Susskind’s worldwide wanderings also make him a prime avatar for the recurring theme of Alienation and Diaspora.

As previous short stories in the collection have already demonstrated, doubles occur frequently in Malamud’s writings, whether they are allusive or overtly fantastic. In either case, the appearance of a double is designed to offer the hero (or the anti-hero, as the case may be) a new source of self-knowledge and a chance for salvation. However, this eventual transformation is delayed by Fidelman’s continued resistance to the implied lessons that the odd figure of Susskind represents, and the majority of the story is filled with Fidelman’s efforts to escape the magical doppelganger who hounds him relentlessly, knows all of his secrets, and sabotages his every venture. Susskind ultimately fills the role of a disconcerting yet savage instructor, for he magically tails Fidelman throughout the vast city of Rome, pricking his buried conscience, and finally burns the magnum opus that Fidelman hoped would elevate him to the ivory tower of Renaissance scholarship, claiming that he has done the scholar a favor. Fidelman, who shrugs off any personal responsibility for the reminder of Jewish suffering that Susskind represents, is nonetheless bedeviled even in sleep by his double, whom he pursues in nightmares through the Jewish catacombs beneath the Appian Way, wielding a menorah like a club. This ongoing battle of wills forces Fidelman to acknowledge a very different layer of the “Eternal City,” for although Fidelman initially felt tingles at the thought of the ancient ruins beneath his feet, he finally acknowledges the stark realities represented by a Jewish cemetery whose neglected graves contain the bodies of Jews betrayed by the Fascists and murdered by Nazis. This tableau resonates darkly with the story’s title, which references James Fenimore Cooper’s classic novel, The Last of the Mohicans, in which the Mohican chief Chingachgook, who acts as a guide for the white characters, watches his once-mighty tribe diminish almost to the point of extinction.

Like any mythic quest, Fidelman’s long search for Suskind and the stolen manuscript is essentially an inner search for himself. In time, his sufferings armor him with some of Susskind’s own savvy, for when he finally finds the man, he craftily trails him to his hovel and later ransacks it in search of his manuscript. He does not find it, but the sight of a frail goldfish, tenderly kept by Susskind, sparks an epiphanic dream of an iconic Giotto fresco—transposed into a synagogue—of St. Francis handing his gold cloak to an old knight. This episode represents yet another example of Malamud’s use of dreams and visions to precipitate transcendental moments for his characters. Accordingly, Fidelman experiences a philosophical reversal upon waking from this dream and runs to offer Susskind his spare suit. His action thus symbolizes another example of doubleness, but it is now seasoned by charity and a belated acknowledgement of the Jewish Susskind in himself. Although the burning of the manuscript enrages him, he is nonetheless staggered by Susskind’s “insight” that manuscript’s “words were there but the spirit was missing” (182), and he sobs out his forgiveness. Having finally learned charity even as he acknowledges the subterranean depths of his own tortured heritage, Fidelman also realizes that the vibrant heart of a Giotto painting lies beyond his poor ability to comprehend or express it. As the story’s last words (“still running”) suggest, his quest for himself has only just begun. Thus, as with the protagonist of “The Lady of the Lake,” Fidelman is left empty-handed—but considerably wiser, humbler, and more caring.