Small Worlds by Allen Hoffman

Author:Allen Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Architecture Interiors Press
Published: 2011-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

EVEN WITH THE DOOR OPEN, MATTI COULD NOT SEE a thing as he entered Grannie Zara’s cottage. He stepped forward and felt sharp flashes of pain bite into his shin. “Ugh,” he moaned as what sounded like a small stool crashed across the floor. In reflex, Faigie squeezed his hand even harder. He knew that if he could not light a candle quickly, he would scream from the pain. She was crushing him in an iron vise; he sensed that it would be futile to ask her to release him. In the midst of his agony, his ironic mind was active; the only thing superhuman about all this was Faigie Soffer’s strength. Her last name gave him an idea.

“Do you have any matches?” he whispered.

There was no reply. If she weren’t breaking his hand, he would never have believed that she was with him.

“Faigie, do you have any matches?” he hissed.

What if she were paralyzed with fear? He doubted that he had enough strength to break her grip.

“Faigie Soffer, put your hand in your pocket and give me the matches right now,” he commanded in a desperate but insistent tone. “The matches, Faigie, right now!”

She was tugging and manipulating something awkwardly with his hand. He assumed these were the phantom parallel movements of her free hand in her pocket. Then he felt her pressing something against his arm.

“I can’t light them; let go of my hand and hold my arm,” he said as he took the box of matches.

He felt her loosen her crushing hold and slide her hand up his arm. She held him above the elbow. Matti seized the opportunity and dragged a match over the roughened edge of the box. It screeched into a blinding explosion of light and then descended into a small yellow flame. Faigie, fearful of what she would see, gripped his arm as tightly as she had held his hand. Ignoring this as best he could, he stepped over to light the candle on the table and then sat down. He tried to remove Faigie’s grip, but she seemed oblivious to his attempts to peel back her fingers.

“You’re hurting me.”

She removed her hand.

“Have a seat,” he suggested, but Faigie continued to stand. She turned around in a complete circle to make sure nothing was behind her.

Seeing how naturally Matti made himself at home—sitting right down like that at Grannie Zara’s table—left no doubt that Faigie was with the Jewish witch.

She looked down at Matti, who was massaging the area where she had held his arm. The imprint of her fingers stood out clearly. Well, she thought, just like they say, even a witch gets burned by the pot. She wondered when Grannie Zara would return.

As Matti methodically rubbed his arm, he flexed his allbut-numb fingers and looked around at what had been Grannie Zara’s home. It looked like any well-to-do widow’s, except that it was so remarkably neat. Not so much clean as orderly. Everything seemed to have a preordained position, and all the insignificant objects together exuded a harmony like a symphony but played much too loud.

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