Behold! Look! Lo!

If such a thing were possible, his hair, where it was not weighted down with the yellow crown, was rising from his head.

Then two servants, who had been standing in front of Lifshits’ seat, now stepped aside. Everyone in the audience saw that someone was sitting in the king’s chair. That person was wearing a sheet, with holes cut for the eyes. It was exactly like a child dressed up as a ghost! But the nobles on the stage did not seem to see it. One of them gestured toward the chair.

NOBLE: Here is a place reserved, sir.

The guest was practically touching the sheeted figure with his hand, yet not a lord or a lady showed any sign of surprise. The goblin was invisible! Then the spirit rose from the chair and stood on its rubber-soled shoes. What was terrible, awful, unspeakable really, was the sword handle stuck into one side of its body, and the sword blade that came out the other. Ladies and gentlemen: the ghost of Usher Flicker!

“Hee, hee hee!” Someone was laughing. Someone in the crowd, not on the stage. The audience, which had been dumbstruck by the sight of the apparition, now looked around. In her long gloves, in her comfortable chair at the center, Madame Trumpelman was laughing and wiping her eyes. Naturally, the other Jews thought they should be laughing, too. After all, there was something comical about the scene onstage. To see a grown man, a man with a beard, trembling, shaking, and popping his eyes! And all the time raving at air!

Hence, horrible shadow!

Thus the more alarming the events in the play, and the more Macbeth shouted, the louder the laughter became. At last the guests fled in confusion, the banquet ended, the two halves of the curtain closed. Madame Trumpelman stood in front of her chair. She lifted her veil. She bubbled with laughter. She gasped and gasped. “Ha! Ha! Don’t you see? Trumpelman and Madame Trumpelman! On the stage! Dear Doctor! It’s us they are playing! Ha! Ha! Ha! You! And me!”

Then old Philosoff, with his string beard, succeeded in standing. “Heavens!” he shouted. “It’s true!” Other Judenrat members reached out to pull down the Minister of Charities and Welfare. Trumpelman, the Elder, rose next to his wife. He pushed his spectacles up his nose.

“No, no, no, no, no. It’s a coincidence!”

But the purple cloth was already parting on the same scene with which the Tragedia Makbeta had begun. Thunder. More thunder. The black, leafless tree. Only this time the fog—or smoke it was, or steam—seemed to be coming from a big metal pot in the center of the stage. Near this kettle hopped the two witches, Tushnet and Shifter, each with a tuft of beard on his chin. They were throwing things into the stew.

1st WITCH: Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.

2nd WITCH: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf.