The folk in the Central Square started to cheer. Then they took hold of the Jews. What they did was shake them, not hard, not violently, but slowly, steadily, mechanically even. No one said anything. The three remaining horses stood peacefully switching their tails. The bottom wall of the wagon swung up and the fire went out. The only sound in the square, with its grand hotel, the station by Donati, and its monument to a hero, was the clacking of teeth and the ring of coins on the pavement. That’s because some of the Jews were being shaken upside down.

Way off, from a side street, a man appeared and began to walk across the empty part of the square. People stopped what they were doing to watch. This big man, a bearlike man, was moving unsteadily, from one side of the square to the other. It was Fiebig, the financier. What caught people’s eye was, he had his coat on, a fur coat, made out of mink, or foxes, as if it were not one of the hottest days of the year. Stranger still, he had it on backwards. The back of the coat was in the front, and up his spine some person had done all the buttons. As he went by, you could see the sweat on his face, the fat cheek, the long, wet black strands of hair stuck on his forehead. His arms just hung down.

It was comical, really—such a rich man, shuffling and stumbling across the public square. Yet nobody laughed, perhaps because in front of Fiebig, waiting for him, were two Men of Valor, each with a skull, a death’s-head, on his cap. The financier reached the first officer, stopped, took a half step forward, and then he hauled up his arm and with a fat wrist saluted.

“What’s that? I’m not a friend of yours!” said the Death’s-Header, and struck him smartly on one of his eyes.

Fiebig hung his head between his furry shoulders and trudged ahead, just three steps, when the other one hit him with a balled-up fist.

“Don’t you salute? A Jew has to show some respect!”

This man Fiebig, a member of the Community Council, breathed in and out. Then he fumbled with his hand, like a drunken person, trying to get at his backward pocket. After groping a moment, he pulled out a matchbook. God knows why, he lit a match.

For a cigarette? For them? For a Sport brand of his own? To hurl, perhaps, into the face of his tormentor? Or was he going to touch it to the fur of his coat and go up—a terrible idea, a great gesture—like a torch, a ball of fire? These thoughts went at the speed of light through the mind of everyone there: Myer Krystal, in his raincoat; Mann Lifshits, standing nearby; the whole crowd of gentiles and Jews. But the fact is, he didn’t do anything. He just stood there. In the sky the hot sun jumped a centimeter higher, like the hand of an automatic clock. It shone so brightly you could not even see the live flame of the match, which moved down the wooden stick until it burned Fiebig’s fingers and then went out. That’s when everybody went home, or else to a café for something cooling to drink. As for Fiebig, zlotys or no zlotys, he had simply gone mad.