At first the stage was dark, like a pitch-black box. But an owl, or something like an owl, was hooting. Then a yellow light came on and you could see the fog. It was yellow, too, and looked like clouds of sulphur. In the middle of the stage was a large, leafless tree. Its limbs were black and twisted. Suddenly, from either side of the stage, a really frightening figure trotted out. The members of the audience asked themselves, Are these men or women? For both creatures wore ragged gowns and sandals with heels—that suggested the female sex, as did the locks of hair that spilled from their conical caps. But the beards on their chins were just like a man’s. These marvels met at the center of the stage and, from under the palms of their hands, peered anxiously about. What nails they had on their fingers! How the fog bank swirled about their tattered clothes! Yet neither was any taller than a half-grown child.

Then, from behind the trunk of the gnarled tree, a third crone came leaping. Smolenskin cranked the gramophone handle and the three witches—what else could such fiends be?—linked their arms together and danced in a circle. They went, as they hopped, hee-hee-hee! The latecomer jumped so wildly that his hat dropped off. Some people, by his close-cropped hair, by the shape of his skull, recognized him. It was the pinhead! The gardener boy! Grinning, his head lolling, he loomed over his partners. These two began to speak, piping away:

1st WITCH: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

2nd WITCH: The weird sisters, hand in hand
Posters of the sea and land.

The voices belonged to Tushnet, with his face blackened, in a wig, and to Leibel Shifter, in a similar disguise. The children of the Hatters’ Asylum were putting on a show! What a sensation! No one could remember when the orphans, the Elder’s favorites, had last left the estate grounds. And why had they kept everything—the long preparations, the months of effort—such a secret? Was it to give Trumpelman and Madame Trumpelman a grand surprise?

From some spot overhead a thunderclap sounded. A bright light, the forks of lightning, lit up the stage. An orphan, standing where no one could see him, was shaking a piece of tin. The Jews in the crowd knew that, but they shivered anyway. The rumble and roar echoed like cannonballs. Once more the arc of white light spilled over the spectators’ upturned, fearful faces. The slave dance from Aida stopped. The three demons, in the wind and the rain, cupped their hands to their ears.

1st WITCH: A drum, a drum!

2nd WITCH: Macbeth does come!

Two warriors, holding swords, moved from the back of the platform to the front. The furious storm broke about them. The lightning glanced off their breastplates and shields. It was as if young Krystal were setting off all his flash lamps at once. One soldier took a step forward. He wore something like an airman’s helmet, with leather flaps for the ears. Fixed to his face was a curly black beard. “So foul and fair a day,” he shouted, into the boom-booming blasts, “I have not seen.”