“That’s nothing,” an anonymous finisher cried. “The fit is too tight.”

“Wait!” Luftgas commanded. He removed the jacket and took another from the pile. He put it on and did it up. This time nothing happened. Luftgas turned this way and that, as if he were examining himself in a mirror. How proud he was of his little belly, in which pieces of lamb meat, with waxed beans, were at that moment floating. He stamped his boot, he straightened his back, and with a stiff arm he saluted. A second button noiselessly bounded away.

A gasp rose from the crowd.

Said Luftgas, “Once is a coincidence. Twice is not.”

A different finisher, Marx this time, said a word. “It’s carelessness, Supervisor Luftgas. Or maybe it’s the quality of the thread.”

The supervisor took off his officer’s cap. His hair was matted down. The knees of his trousers looked, all of a sudden, swollen. From the uniform heap he pulled out another tunic. “Look, fellow Jews,” he said, plucking a button. “It just comes off in my hand. This is a catastrophe. When I first found this out I thought I must be having a dream.”

“We need more soup,” said a finisher, fearless. “With more soup we could pull the thread tighter.”

I. C. Trumpelman made his hand into a fist. “More soup! More soup! Who is that genius? Write down his name! Don’t talk about carelessness! About rotted thread! Look at this!” The Chairman dashed to the clothing and threw the things about. “The button is here. It’s firmly secured. But the buttonhole is missing! And it’s missing from this one! And this one, too! This is deliberate! It’s sabotage! Buttonhole makers of the Baluty Suburb! For such actions you could be shot!”

There was an indescribable commotion among the old craftsmen. They looked at each other with shock. You can imagine, then, their amazement when from their very number a high-pitched voice came piping: “Comrades! Workers of the world! Stand fast! Do not let the fruits of our labor clothe the backs of the oppressor!”

Who was that? Everyone looked around. But the speaker was so short that, in the milling buttonholers, you could not see him at all.

“Comrades, let’s be shot! Let’s be hanged together! Better death than to assist the Race of Masters in their crimes!”

“An outside agitator!” Trumpelman cried. “Seize him, Jews! It’s one of Lipsky’s men!”

But the hundred buttonhole makers, instead of converging on where the provocateur’s voice had been, drew swiftly apart, leaving Nachman Kipnis, with his mole, his thick glasses, and his fecalist’s cap, all alone on the floor. “Greetings from the proletariat to Chaim, the exploiter,” the youngster said.

“Ah! Assassin! He’ll shoot me!” Trumpelman cried.

But the boy pulled pamphlets, not a pistol, from his pocket. He pressed a manifesto on everyone. “No twelve-hour shifts! No work taxes! We will not stitch for the Blond Ones!”

The Judenrat President pulled his lips back from his teeth. “Needle trade workers! There’s only one way to survive. Our Ghetto must become the number one clothing center in Europe. We have to produce every uniform the Conqueror wears. There’s no shirking in such a project. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. You die!” So saying, Chaim reached for the gigantic cauldron.