He was right; crime did stalk these streets, day and night, like a disembodied spirit in search of a physical form through which to manifest itself. It is in the air, but we do not see it. Suddenly, it precipitates in a human soul, but we are not aware of it and by the time we sense it, it has long since dissolved back into thin air. All that we hear are dark rumours of some hideous deed.

All at once I understood the innermost nature of the mysterious creatures that live around me: they drift through life with no will of their own, animated by an invisible, magnetic current, just like the bridal bouquet floating past in the filthy water of the gutter. I felt as if the houses were staring down at me with malicious expressions full of nameless spite: the doors were black, gaping mouths in which the tongues had rotted away, throats which might at any moment give out a piercing cry, so piercing and full of hate that it would strike fear to the very roots of our soul.

What was the last thing the medical student had said about Wassertrum? I whispered his words to myself, “Aaron Wassertrum is alone now with his greed and – his wax doll.”

What in heaven’s name can he have meant by the wax doll?

I told myself to calm down, he must have meant it metaphorically. It must have been one of those deranged metaphors he uses to take you by surprise; you don’t understand them at first, only later they unexpectedly take shape and give you a profound shock, like a harsh light suddenly striking some unusual object.

I gave the people who were sheltering in the archway with me a closer scrutiny. Now the fat old man was standing beside me, the same one who had given that horrible laugh earlier. He was wearing gloves and a black frock coat, and his protuberant eyes were fixed on the entrance of the house opposite. His coarse-featured face was clean shaven and was twitching with excitement.

Automatically, I followed the direction of his gaze and realised that he was staring spellbound at Rosina, who was standing on the other side of the street, her permanent smile playing round her lips. The old man was trying to make signs to her, and I could tell that she was well aware of them, but was behaving as if she had no idea what he meant.

Finally the old man could stand it no longer, and waded across the street on tiptoe, bobbing up and down in a ridiculous manner, like a huge, black rubber ball bouncing over the puddles.

He seemed to be well-known, to go by all the innuendoes I could hear around me. Someone behind me – a lout with a red knitted scarf round his neck, a blue soldier’s cap on his head and a half-smoked cigar behind his ear – started making leering insinuations which I did not understand. All I could make out was that in the Ghetto they called the old man the ‘Freemason’ and that in their jargon this was a name for a man who has sexual relations with schoolgirls but whose connections with the police render him immune to the legal consequences.

Across the street Rosina and the old man disappeared in the darkness of the entrance hall.

PUNCH

 

We had opened the window to get rid of the tobacco smoke from my tiny room. The cold night wind blew in and set the shaggy coats hanging on the door gently swinging to and fro.

“Prokop’s noble specimen of the hatter’s art is tempted to fly away”, said Zwakh, pointing to the musician’s huge floppy hat, the broad brim of which was beginning to flap like a pair of black wings.

Joshua Prokop gave a cheery wink. “It probably wants to –”

“– go to Loisitchek’s, to listen to the dance band”, interrupted Vrieslander.

Prokop laughed and beat time to the music that was borne across the roofs on the thin winter air. Then he picked up my old, battered guitar that was leaning against the wall, pretended to pluck its broken strings and sang a strange song in a squawking falsetto, exaggerating the pronunciation of its canting jargon:

A dusty hen

With gelt to cough;

A zaftik naffka

For your kife;

Jack-a-dandy,

Snout and scoff:

Nothing but fressing –

That’s the life.

 

“Shows a natural aptitude for thieves’ slang, doesn’t he?” laughed Vrieslander, joining in a reprise with his rumbling bass:

Jack-a-dandy,

Snout and scoff:

Nothing but fressing –

That’s the life.

 

Zwakh explained. “It’s a peculiar song that Nephtali Schaffranek – the meshuggenah with the green eyeshade – croaks out every night at Loisitchek’s; there’s a dolled-up woman plays the accordion and joins in the words. It’s an interesting dive, you should come along with us some time, Pernath. Perhaps later on, when we’ve run out of punch. What do you think? As a birthday treat for you?”

“Yes, you should come along with us”, said Prokop, closing the window, “it really is worth seeing.”

Then we went back to our hot punch, each one occupied with his own thoughts. Vrieslander was carving away at a puppet.

Zwakh broke the silence. “You literally cut us off from the outside world, Joshua, when you closed that window. Since then, no one’s said a word.”

“I was just thinking about the way those coats started flapping earlier on”, Prokop answered quickly, as if to excuse his silence. “Isn’t it strange the way the wind makes inanimate objects move? Doesn’t it look odd when things which usually just lie there lifeless suddenly start fluttering. Don’t you agree? I remember once looking out onto an empty square, watching huge scraps of paper whirling angrily round and round, chasing one another as if each had sworn to kill the others; and I couldn’t feel the wind at all since I was standing in the lee of a house. A moment later they seemed to have calmed down, but then they were seized once more with an insane fury and raced all over the square in a mindless rage, crowding into a corner then scattering again as some new madness came over them, until finally they disappeared round a corner.

There was just one thick newspaper that couldn’t keep up with the rest. It lay there on the cobbles, full of spite and flapping spasmodically, as if it were out of breath and gasping for air.

As I watched, I was filled with an ominous foreboding. What if, after all, we living beings were nothing more than such scraps of paper? Could there not be a similar unseeable, unfathomable ‘wind’ blowing us from place to place and determining our actions, whilst we, in our simplicity, believe we are driven by our own free will? What if the life within us were nothing other than some mysterious whirlwind? The wind of which it says in the Bible, ‘Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth’? Do we not sometimes dream we have plunged our hands into deep water and caught silvery fish, when all that has happened is that our hands have been in a cold draught?”

“Prokop, you’re talking like Pernath. What’s wrong with you?” asked Zwakh, giving the musician a suspicious look.

“It’s the story about the Book of Ibbur that we heard earlier – pity you came too late to hear it – that’s given him such strange ideas”, said Vrieslander.

“A story about a book?”

“Actually about the odd appearance of a man who brought a book. Pernath doesn’t know what he’s called, where he lives or what he wanted, and although he says his appearance was very striking, he can’t describe it.”

Immediately Zwakh pricked up his ears. “That’s remarkable”, he said after a pause.