“A black year on you, robber, swindler! If I go to buy rotten apples, should you charge me for fruit from heaven?”
The familiar voice shot like a bolt to his awakening heart. He looked up to see Hanneh Breineh’s ragged figure wedged in between two pushcarts, her face ecstatic with the zest of bargaining.
“Hanneh Breineh!” he cried, seizing her market basket, and almost throwing himself on her neck in a rush of exuberant affection. “I’ve come back to you and Moisheh!”
“God from the world! What’s this—you in rags?” A quick look of suspicion crept into her face. “Did you lose your money? Did you maybe play cards?”
“I left it all to her—you know—every cent of the ill-gotten money.”
“Left your money to that doll’s face?”
Hanneh clutched her head and peered at him out of her red-lidded eyes.
“Where’s Moisheh?” Berel asked.
He came closer to her, his whole face expressing the most childlike faith in her acceptance of his helplessness, in the assurance of her welcome.
“Don’t you yet know the pants pressers was on a strike, and he owed me the rent for so long he went away from shame?”