Zelmenyaners by Moyshe Kulbak

Author:Moyshe Kulbak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

There was a celebration in the village. Uncle Yuda was asked to play the fiddle. The potter came to the farm to help him get ready, and they set out.

Not that it’s nice to poke fun at them, but the two friends trudging along looked like a pair of old brooms.

Uncle Yuda was in fine form that night. He played like a house on fire, fiddling his wailingest tunes. After a while he was lifted onto a table and fiddled from there.

Then he had a few glasses of vodka.

The potter, as always when he had something to drink, fell asleep at once. Uncle Yuda went on playing. The peasant couples danced, as usual, first in the room, then in the vestibule, and finally the devil knows where.

Uncle Yuda played with a vengeance. Seeing that no one was left in the room, he went outside and fiddled in the street.

Snow, snow, and more snow.

The snow was brighter than fire. A moon swam out from under it. Silence. The neatly ruled white fields were immaculate. In the pure snow stood a cross, and beside it, its small, trim shadow. A star, the coldest and fattest in the sky, hung above the frozen fields.

Uncle Yuda cavorted and fiddled. The moon beat down on his hat. Suddenly he slipped. Everything spun upside down, and he went sprawling in the snow.

At once Uncle Yuda sobered up. He turned and groped for his spectacles, feeling the frozen earth. Two phosphorescent eyes were moving in the black night, accompanied by a strong smell of fur.

What did Uncle Yuda make of that?

Little by little, in a patch of darkness, he made out a wolf standing on its hind legs.

In the morning he was dragged from the wolf trap, his beard turned gray.

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