Prev | Current Page 135 | Next

Steinberg, Jehudah

"The Story of an Old Man"

Make out
a paper assigning the house to Marusya."
"I promise faithfully."
"I believe no promises."
"What shall I do?"
"You have paper and pencil in your pocket?"
"Certainly!"
I turned around, supported myself on both my arms and one knee, and
made a sort of a rickety table of myself. And on my back Serge
wrote out his paper, and signed it. But all that was really
unnecessary. He would have kept his word anyway. For he was always
afraid I might blurt out the whole story. Not I, though. May I
never have anything in common with those who profit by falsehoods!
As to what happened later, I cannot tell you exactly. For I was
taken away, first to a temporary hospital, and then to a permanent
one. I fell into a fever and lost consciousness. I do not know how
many days or weeks passed by: I was in a different world all that
time. How can I describe it to you? Well, it was a world of chaos.
It was all jumbled together: father, mother, military service,
ikons, lashes, lambs slaughtered, Peter, bullets, etc., etc.
It was all in a jumble, all topsyturvy.


Pages:
123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147