“He is bound now, but just now he escaped. He fought with all the soldiers. A rough Gentile in the crowd pushed a Jew against the madman and he bit him on the cheek.”
Leiba could see well from the steps; from the stair below Sura watched with the child in her arms.
It was, in fact, a violent lunatic held on either side by two men: his wrists were tightly bound over each other by a thick cord. He was a man of gigantic stature with a head like a bull, thick black hair, and hard, grizzled beard and whiskers. Through his shirt, which had been torn in the struggle, his broad chest was visible, covered like his head, with a mass of hair. His feet were bare; his mouth was full of blood, and he continually spat out hair which he had bitten from the Jew’s beard.
Every one stood still. Why? The guards unbound the lunatic’s hands. The crowd drew to one side, leaving a large space around him. The madman looked about him, and his fierce glance rested upon Zibal’s doorway; he gnashed his teeth, made a dash for the three steps, and in a flash, seizing the child’s head in his right hand and Sura’s in his left, he knocked them together with such force that they cracked like so many fresh eggs. A sound was heard, a scrunching impossible to describe, as the two skulls cracked together.
Leiba, with bursting heart, like a man who falls from an immense height, tried to cry out: “The whole world abandons me to the tender mercies of a madman!” But his voice refused to obey him.
“Get up, Jew!” cried some one, beating loudly upon the table with a stick.
“It’s a bad joke,” said Sura from the doorway of the inn, “thus to frighten the man out of his sleep, you stupid peasant!”
“What has scared you, Jew?” asked the wag, laughing. “You sleep in the afternoon, eh? Get up, customers are coming, the mail coach is arriving.”
And, according to his silly habit which greatly irritated the Jew, he tried to take his arm and tickle him.
“Let me alone!” cried the innkeeper, drawing back and pushing him away with all his might. “Can you not see that I am ill? Leave me in peace.”