The Magic Barrel

Kessler, a retired “egg candler” in his late sixties, lives alone in a cheap apartment on the East Side. No one ever visits him, and he has no family, for he abandoned his wife and children 30 years earlier and has never thought of them again. Word spreads, largely through a janitor who does not like him, that he is a dirty, slovenly man whose room “stinks,” and the other tenants in the apartment house begin to shun him. A sour, irascible man, Kessler feels nothing but contempt for his neighbors. One day, after a violent quarrel with Kessler, the janitor complains to the overweight landlord, Gruber, about the filthiness of both Kessler and his apartment. The landlord decides to evict Kessler and rent his room to a less troublesome tenant for more money. At his orders, the janitor climbs “victoriously” to the top floor to give Kessler notice but is shocked by the old man’s sickly, skeletal appearance. Weeks pass, and Kessler refuses to leave, angering Gruber, who finally trudges wearily up the stairs to give him an ultimatum. Desperately, Kessler begs to be allowed to stay, but the landlord orders him out within two weeks. The date comes and goes, but the frightened Kessler does not leave, not even to contest his eviction in court. Soon, the city marshal and two assistants force their way into his flat and bodily remove him, along with all his property.

Kessler, with nowhere to go, sits desolately on a split chair on the sidewalk, surrounded by his belongings. As the sun sets and it begins to snow, the “wizened” Italian woman who lives in the room below his sees him and begins to scream. To placate her, her two middle-aged sons pick Kessler up and carry him and his things back into his apartment. The Italian woman also sends up a big plate of macaroni with tomato sauce, which the weeping old man does not touch.

Upon learning about Kessler’s return to his flat, Gruber drives furiously to the apartment house and demands that the old man leave by the next morning, but Kessler cries that Gruber will have to “kill” him to be rid of him. The next day, after a sleepless night, Gruber decides to give Kessler once last chance to leave before calling the city marshal.

At the building, the janitor fearfully states that he peered through Kessler’s keyhole but could not see or hear anything in the darkness. Gruber opens Kessler’s door with his key and finds the old man alive but in a very strange state. Stricken with remorse over his misspent life—especially his desertion of his innocent family—Kessler is rocking back and forth on the floor, moaning and tearing at his own flesh. Gruber, frightened, has a sudden revelation that the old man is in mourning. Just then, he has a vision of himself falling down the five flights of stairs, and feels, with a “terrible force,” that he is the one who is dead, and that Kessler is mourning him. After a throbbing agony, like the onset of a stroke, Gruber opens his eyes to another vision, of Kessler’s apartment “drenched with daylight and fragrance” (26). Overcome with remorse for his treatment of the old man, Gruber tears a sheet from Kessler’s bed and wraps it around himself. Sinking to the floor beside Kessler, he becomes a “mourner.”