AT THE MATZES 261
just been opened. Gravely, the flour-boy, a two weeks' orphan, carried the pot of flour for the Mehereh, and poured it out together with remembrances of his mother, who had died in the hospital of injuries received at their hands, and the water-boy came up behind him, and added recollections of his own.
"The hooligans threw his father into the water off the bridge may they pay for it, siisser Gott ! May they live till he is a man, and can settle his account with them !"
Thus the grey-headed old Henoch, the kneader, and he kneaded it all into the dough, with thoughts of his own grandchildren : this one fled abroad, the other in the regiment, and a third in prison.
The dough stiffens, the horny old hands work it with difficulty. The dough gets stiffer every year, and the work harder, it is time for him to go to the asylum !
The dough is kneaded, cut up in pieces, rolled and riddled is that a token for the whole Congregation of Israel ? And now appear the round Matzes, which must wander on a shovel into the heated oven of Shloimeh Shieber, first into one corner, and then into another, till another shovel throws them out into a new world, separated from the old by a screen thoroughly scoured for Passover, which now rises and now falls. There they are arranged in columns, a reminder of Pithom and Barneses. Kuk-ruk, kuk-ruk, ruk-ruk, whisper the still warm Matzes one to another ; they also are remembering, and they tell the tale of the Exodus after their fashion, the tale of the flight out of Egypt only they have seen more flights than one.
