Nothing extra is wanted for it, she gives me to understand: "You take some ashes from the hearth, potatoes, and other vegetables, work them together in water, let them steam and then simmer over the fire; in that way you get 'unclear' soap, and if you do the same thing over again, you get liter, that is, good soap!" When I leave, she asks a little troubled and ashamed:
"Tell me, I beg of you, when your writings come into the hands of the great people, will they not say I must take out a license?"
——
INSURED
A quiet summer night. Over there the celebrated wood shows black on the sky-line; our forefathers engraved in its trees the names of the divisions of the Talmud they completed as they went along. Yonder, not far off, they halted, and the "head of the dispersion" said "Pöh lîn!" (here abide!), and the land has ever since been called "Pöhlin;"[97] but the other nations cannot make out the reason.
And the wood has a short cut to Jerusalem. There was once a goat belonging to one of the native Làmed-Wòfniks, and the goat knew the road; she used to trot every morning to pasture on the Temple Mount, and return with three pitcherfuls of milk for the holy man.
To the right of the wood, beside a river, lies the town. It is divided into two parts. One part is a long strip—a straight, paved street with walled-in houses under sheet-metal roofs, quite substantial, fastened to the earth with foundations. The inhabitants of the street know for certain that they will live and die in them; that all the winds of heaven may blow without causing them to move an inch.
Then comes the second part, another world, quite spiritual: flimsy "hen-houses" entirely built of straw and fir planks, with only an occasional slate-roof. A breeze blows over them, and they are gone. Do their dwellers hope to find the short cut to the Temple Mount, like the immortal goat, or do they speculate on the fire-insurance?
And how like are the houses to their inhabitants! These are narrow-chested, with darkened eyes, and crouch under crooked straw caps.
Cocks crow out of the huts, ducks quack, and geese cackle. From out the marsh, which licks the threshold with seventy tongues, croak well-fed, portly frogs. A Jewish calf frequently contributes a bleat, and is answered out of the long street by a Gentile dog. I shall begin to take notes early in the morning.