The assistant shoemaker is another of Malamud's weirdly insistent, lonely souls--impelled, who knows why, to devote himself to a hopeless love; still wincing from the horrors of Europe, which he has not entirely escaped; inarticulate, yet bursting with passion, if only his boss, the master shoemaker, will deign to listen.
The master shoemaker does not bother listening to his assistant's passions.
the flies are terrible this time of yeat