Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 9
ОглавлениеAt night she works in private homes. These patients are well-off, they have their own clean sheets, their own doctor, and a genuine funeral. They also have a separate grave. Whoever can’t afford a grave or a funeral is taken out to the street, where the body must be covered with sheets of newspaper. The paper has to be weighed down against the wind with a brick or a stone.
There’s a lot to be learned from these newspaper shrouds.
Who counts as a Jew (anyone with three Jewish grandparents).
Where to wear the armband with the star (on the right sleeve only).
What kind of armbands are to be worn by ragmen and waste collectors (red violet—the green ones used up until now are no longer valid).
What the March ration cards are good for (five hundred grams of sauerkraut and one hundred grams of beetroot), what the April cards are worth (one box of forty-eight matches), and what can be expected in December (one egg with an oval stamp on the shell).
How to make soup out of leftover bread (soak in water, boil, strain, and add saccharin).
What kind of saccharin is kosher for Passover (as decreed by the rabbinate, only in crystal form, dissolved and run through a sieve before the holiday).
Where Dr. Korczak will be telling children stories (the orphanage on Śliska Street).
What kind of crime Moszek Goldfeder committed (he passed a woman on the street, grabbed her loaf of bread, and took off, eating as he ran; when brought before the Jewish police he apologized to the victim and promised to change for the better).
Where to mend clothes (nowhere but the Keller workshop, because they hire pedantic old spinsters).
Where to arrange for a hearse (nowhere but Eternity, the company that invented the bicycle-cart hearse—very practical, it can carry up to four coffins at once!).
The source of Jewish optimism (it comes from being created in God’s image—the fount of all goodness and the source of all being, without beginning).
No one in her family has died yet. Her father traded half an apartment building for a whole calf’s hide. Her mother trades pieces of the hide for onions and bread.
