Premise: 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.

Hypothesis: The assistant to the shoemaker was very busy dealing with his passionate work and a family at home.
Relation: contradiction