Everyone, the torchbearers, the relations, stood perfectly still. Only the widow’s handkerchief continued to dab at her eyes. Kornischoner slightly swayed. “Where was I? What was it I wanted to say? The hunger affects my mind! Once I saw a note for a hundred zlotys. That was in the town of Lvov. There! On the ground! I do not put my foot on it. I do not put it in my pocket. I tell my son, Lipa: This might be the savings of some poor person. That is the kind of man you see before you! A man who sets an example!

“Let’s talk about Lunt. Let’s talk about Nomberg. They wear sport coats. That’s because the Judenrat says, no more gabardines. Next thing the Elder will make us shave off our beards! Otherwise, you don’t get kohlrabi! Kohlrabi! It’s the stems you eat. The stems! Friends, remember this about Kornischoner. He would not wear a short coat. He would not trim his beard. Never mind if I’m crying. I’m weeping! Never mind. But when you speak of him, say that his coat came down to his shoes!”

Somebody said, “What about Fiebig?”

Kornischoner, with his sleeve, wiped the tears from his eyes. “Fiebig? The financier? Willy Fiebig?”

“Yes, yes. We want to hear about him.”

“What is there to say?” asked the rabbi. “Fiebig was a rich man who went crazy.”

No sooner had this eulogy ended than Fiebig’s former wife opened her eyes quite wide. Then she uttered three little cries and pointed to where, with its head lowered and its horns pointed frontward, a tremendous black and white bull was charging straight for them all.

Of course this was the Tsarskoye Selo Holstein. Whether, like a bull, it had become enraged by the widow’s red handkerchief; or whether like any cow it had been attracted by the smell of her ex-husband’s flowers, there is no way of saying. For before it could reach either goal it fell headlong into the freshly dug grave.

“Moooo!” went the beast, in an international tongue.

Madame Fiebig swooned into the arms of Adolf, one of her sons. With the crack of a whip, the funeral wagon, still dragging its ramp, bounced over the frozen ruts, in the direction of the dim mansion. Hersh Einhorn ran at it from an angle, so as to cut it off.

“Stop! Muszkat!” he shouted.

The liveryman lashed his horses, a brown and a white one. “This was not our agreement!” he yelled. But before the wagon rolled by him, Einhorn had thrust his hand into his pocket and was waving a wad of bills in the air. The hearse quickly stopped. Clouds came out of each horse’s nose. “What’s that in your hand, young Einhorn? Zlotys?”

“Four hundred. Two hundred now. Two hundred when we get through the gate.”

Muszkat leaned from the box of the wagon; a ribbon’s worth of skin showed between his eyebrows and his hair. “Three hundred now. Later two.”

The Red partisan considered a moment. “Agreed!”