Itzik thought about this and calculated the face of the baron. Squinting up at the setting sun, Itzik said, ‘I would be very happy and honored to do this, Excellency, but you know I must pay in money for my pots and pans and your serfs do not have any money.’

‘Go and they will pay you.’

‘But, Excellency, already my house is filled with sour cream and many hides which I have had to take in exchange for my goods. The people even outside the estate have very little money. I have no way of disposing of these things, Excellency. I can’t buy pots with sour cream, I must have money to buy.’

The baron looked down at him and said, ‘Go into my estate and take your business with you. Go now.’

Itzik realized it was a command and bowed low and the baron rode away. He hitched his horse to his wagon and drove behind the baron and when he reached the gate of the estate he found it open for him and he drove in. -He rode through some woods and then he came to the huts of the peasants. It was the first time that a stranger had entered their compound and they all came out to see. Sadly, Itzik got down from his seat and they crowded around him and his shining pots and pans. In Polish he told them that they could buy anything on the wagon. Then he fell silent. It was the worst sales talk he had ever given. He hoped, too, that they would not understand about buying, for he knew they had never bought anything in their lives. But some instinct led them to understand that he was trying to exchange these pots and pans, and several of them gingerly pointed to certain of the articles on the wagon and asked Itzik how they could have them for their own.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you have in your houses anything of value, show it to me and I will tell you how you can have these pots and pans.’

Several of them went into their huts and brought out what they thought might have value. One woman brought him a shoe which she said a priest had worn, but Itzik shook his head. Another showed him a little bag of broken buttons, and he shook his head. Then a man came to him and said.

‘I have a picture of the king. I have twenty of them.’

‘How big is this picture?’ Itzik asked.

‘Here, I have a few of them in my pocket,’ the man said. With which he drew out a handful of the carefully folded pictures.

Itzik looked at the pictures and noted well the numbers printed in the corners. ‘1,000 Kroner’ was printed there. He took a breath.

‘Have any of you others got such pictures?’

A babble of replies greeted his question. Before he knew it they pulled him into a hut and there on the walls he saw pasted up hundreds of 1,000 Kroner notes. He went into the next hut and the next and finally stood in the middle of the rutted road and realized that he had walked into a gold mine.