What concern is it of mine? Everybody has his story. Everyone has been a child. Once I ran in the middle of a cornfield though I wasn’t allowed to. The sun danced like an orange at the bottom of the slope. The kosher butcher had his long white beard tied up so that it wouldn’t get tangled up in the sausage casings. What good did that do? Haven’t we gotten tangled up in sausage casings and damp cellar floors enough without needing to think of the future? Here lies the snow, cold and silent, the sky is gray. Ach du jiderle wants to be entertained and lulled to sleep and amused and embraced by the world. The playpen that Mama brought with her you push away. You think that one can move the fence however one wants. But then the German Shepherds come and the machine guns rattle. Vos toig der guter kop, az di fis kenen im nit trogn? What’s the point of a good head if your feet can’t carry you?
You think that one can move the fences however one wants. Then Deborah comes by foot. You look up. Although I look down. To the nail of my big toe which never seems to want to forget the door of a freight car in Sighishoara. The toe ran screaming out through the door on the other side and I after it. I also wanted to get out of the playpen, you see, Petjale, my whole body screamed with pain, but no sound came out of my throat. Luckily. Everything was against the German soldiers at that moment. They didn’t even have time to realize what happened. Only the toe here that took over. Away! Be gone! Like a story. Because they have happy endings. You want to go to the lamp, of course it’s nice, I think so too, but don’t break it. I wanted to get away from the light. When the first pain had let up, I hid myself in the woodshed at the school. At first I just heard my breath and then gradually nothing, just the usual silence in our town. The toe throbbed, nobody missed me yet. Where would I go? Mr. Eliade was the only one I could go to. I had been good in school. Mr. Eliade liked me; he had arranged for me to get books as prizes, so that I could read more. That night the moon was down. Aha, now you’re quiet when I tell my story. Vos far a glik, what luck! I sneaked behind the wooden fence and the outhouse. When you get bigger, you too will find secret paths, hiding places, and shortcuts that the grown-ups don’t know about, that they’ve forgotten. I came to Mr. Eliade’s house. Had he gone to bed? What would I do then? Everything would be so much riskier. A lamp burned in the library. Oh! It was my salvation. No, no, not this one that you’re so interested in. I went quickly and quietly through the garden, toward the lamp, and knocked carefully on the windowpane.
In taking me in, Mr. Eliade risked his own life. Two years in a cellar and the toenail will never grow again. Even the cuticle. Resentful over the way I was treated! You can understand that, but how much longer? And to what purpose? It is in any event my nail on my toePetjale, now I really do have to begin dinner. And as I told you earlier, this isn’t Mr. Eliade’s lamp. Go somewhere else with your playpen! If it were Mr. Eliade’s lamp, I would wrap it in the rolls of the Torah, spread cinnamon and myrrh over the base of the lamp. But the schoolteacher Mr. Eliade passed away in August at the same time that Antonescu was overthrown and we entered the war together with the Russians against Hitler. Leave the lamp alone, you’re such a Russian! And Jew. Otherwise Deborah will be like the German Shepherds. She’ll snarl and bark. Better then to sleep. Az dos leib shloft, lozt men im shlofn. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Translated by Marilyn Johns Blackwell.