Isak was a specialist in thrashing. Seven children. She immediately got thrashed. Seventeen! Zipa couldn’t lie. When she happened to mention that she’d seen the upholsterer again, she got thrashed again.
One day she showed her whipped behind in Fritiof’s workshop and told the whole story. Fritiof wanted to rush over from Hornsgatan to Old Town and take revenge for the beating. But Zipa cried and stopped him.
Fritiof had noticed one thing when she displayed her striped bum. She wasn’t wearing any underwear!
She had never had any underwear. Had been surprised when she had seen a girl in the toilet of the clothing factory who was wearing underwear under her dress. By sneaking looks, she realized that all of them were.
She didn’t dare ask for some underwear at home. After all. Momma Ida and her sisters Sascha and Mariascha didn’t have any.
The next time Zipa came to the upholstery shop to drink tea and have a sandwich with veal, Fritiof had bought six pairs of underwear and gave them to her as a present.
She put a pair on right away (the upholsterer helped her); the rest she took home with her and put them right down at the bottom of her drawer.
Several days later it happened! Momma Ida had found the underwear and showed them to Isak.
When Zipa came home from work Poppa stood inside the door with five pairs of panties in his hand.
‘Where the hell did you get these new pieces of fashion?’
‘I got them from the upholsterer.’
‘How could he know that you weren’t wearing underwear?’
‘I showed him my behind.’
How could that Christian devil, that goddamned goy, get his daughter to show her behind? And what else had happened?!
Despite the fact Zipa’s backside still showed evidence of his previous thrashing, the rod came down on her bum and thighs with terrible force, without pause, and with increasing power while Isak screamed the whole time:
Ill slash that satan’s goypanties to pieces!’
That was too much. Zipa fainted and a doctor had to be called. The doctor said:
‘If that happens again I will report you to the police and you’ll be deported back to Russia!’
When Zipa didn’t come to work for a week, Fritiof went down to the Old Town and rang at the door, which was carefully opened. Maybe the police?
A tall serious man stood there.
‘My name is Fritiof Schütt, I’m an upholsterer. I’ve come to take away Zipa Kraitschik who lives here!’
‘Goddamned Satanic goy. May he burn in Gehenna,’ Isak screamed. ‘Don’t let her go!’
‘But the police . . . Suppose he goes to the police and we’re deported to the Cossacks.’
‘Meine doschter, meine doschter!’
Ida cried, the brother and sisters cried. The only one in the family not crying was Zipa. She smiled, but the tears poured down her cheeks.
Translated by Peter Stenberg and Lena Karlström.