More »

Dov’s Dreydel, part, what is this, IV?

The courses were stacked up against the back of the barn.  First, stretched in a row on floorboards, were the eighteen tables of the first course, each identical in size, shape and design: they stood waist-high on spindly legs, their polished rectangular tops divided by a thin gold line into two courts, each just a handsbreadth square with a gold dot at the center.  Behind these tables and just above them on successive risers stood sixteen others - the nine of the second course, the four of the third, the two of the fourth, and the one finals table standing alone on the highest riser, under a large mirror angled to make the tabletop visible from down on the floor.  Riders were beginning to strut among the tables, steeling themselves, hoping to intimidate their opponents.  Names were being chalked up on the black-painted wall and odds were being posted next to them.  Ever more gamblers were making their way over to handicap the field.  Dov saw himself up at 15-to-one, against a two-to-one crowd favorite and Sampson champion.  It would be a short contest, Dov felt sure.  But he would have to win it regardless.

The Emmetznik was circulating from table to table, verifying each one for the impending contest; any he found false were quickly adjusted with a twist or two of the millwork legs.  As he concluded his painstaking confirmation of all eighteen tables, the chazzan recited the pairings and the competitors formally stepped forward, the besotted crowd ululating at each name.  Dov watched carefully, assessing each man’s native capacity and public support.  He had been assigned to table 7, a number he considered somehow propitious; he stood at the out end, turned like all the other riders to face the crowd.  On the other side of this table stood his opponent, Moishe - a heavyset man with a thick beard and a large bald spot. From under a clenched brow he clenched his jaws at Dov in pointed acknowledgment, and then turned back to smile broadly to his chaverim down in the pits.  Dov couldn’t make out the faces of those gathering before him but he that people were getting excited.

The roar of the crowd choked itself off as the riders readied themselves, each positioning his pony above the centerpoint of his assigned square of the Methuselah course, coiling his energy.  “Hold!” Even the dust floating in the air seemed to pause.  “Throw!” Thirty-six men simultaneously threw their dryedels, each whirling furiously in its appointed place.  It occurred to Dov that anyone who thought a fully blazing chanukeah to be the festival’s most inspiring sight, had never witnessed a full Methuselah course by lantern light, thirty-four polished stone tables on five separate levels, each table glinting its own reflections of a barnful of candles and lamps, and thirty-six men among them pouring out their lives on the throw of a top… Even for a man with nothing riding, it was an impressive sight - and Dov had more riding tonight than he’d ever in his life imagined.

The moment of release seemed infinite to Dov.  He noticed everything - the men in the crowd, his opponent’s overextension, the Emmesnik’s eyes bright and focused on the mahogany pony that only now was coming to a soft landing on the centermark before him, standing proud and tall as a tree standing in the earth.

Overextended, yes: Moishe had twisted with his throw, grunting softly, his thumb slipping on the spindle and his feet sliding on the floorboards.  All this and more Dov saw, all at once, as a wave of energy rose up into the soles of his feet, ascended up his legs and through his trunk, picking up speed and torque as it channeled out his right arm, then down his wrist to the tips of his fingers, sending the dreydel spinning with a speed and serenity that almost contradicted each other. 

His toss had not been so flamboyant s to have attracted much attention, but his virtuosity had not gone entirely unnoticed, either.  The Emmesnick, for one, was staring raptly back and forth between Dov and his pony, barely sparing a glance for the other seventeen tables.  Also, several of the spectators standing near Dov had registered something when he threw, and found their attention drawn to him retroactively.

All this was, of course, peripheral.  Dov’s dreydel provided the true focus.  Barely touching the glossy stone, it floated crux-to-crux over its reflected twin, an opposite entity that seemed reciprocal, freeing it from the limitations of the world which had originated it.  The laws of this realm no longer bound it. 

Down at the far end, a clatter and a roar: one match decided already, though it had never really been in doubt.  An overgrown pink-faced manchild had blustered his way where he hadn’t belonged, and now his fey little dreydel had already spun off the table edge.  The victor, taking his pony back up, did not deign to celebrate.  Then, another roar, from nearby - a fat man’s dreydel had run out of steam and dropped to the tabletop.  Two down, sixteen to go.  Soon the sounds of tops falling over or off came more frequently, the cheers and wails blending in a rising wave, more eyes focusing now on fewer remaining contests, and more of those on Dov’s table.

Across from Dov, a strong man was growing weak before his eyes.  Moishe was straining to forestall the inevitable, but the fruitlessness of those efforts was growing increasingly obvious.  His dreydel had developed a precession and was slowly rolling its spindle in an increasingly wide gyre.  In consequence, the crux had wandered from the centermark and was circling drunkenly toward the fore edge of the table.  Dov wondered which of these faults would first prove fatal, when they both did at once - the heavy oaken pony lurched over to ground itself out, just as it overedged and tumbled twirling to the boards. 

Moishe’s supporters groaned; Moishe himself bellowed and hurled an impotent fist at the heavens.  Then he turned to Dov, face flushed, smiling. “You got me, chaver,” he growled through his grin even as Dov swept up his still-steady dreydel and held it aloft in victory.  Dov tried to remain impassive, but as his dreydel returned to the palm of his hand he couldn’t help but smile back at his vanquished opponent, who threw a thick arm over his shoulder and shouted into his ear so as to be audible over the crowd, “What’s left of my money’s on you.” When they broke apart Dov noticed that Moishe’s smile was unchanged, but his eyes seemed to contain a splinter of ice drawn from Dov’s own pond.  Moishe had lost one thousand zloty plus whatever he’d wagered on himself, and he’d now return home as nothing more than a local champion.  Still, respect had been earned and was reciprocated - on both sides.

The winner’s take on the first round was 1,500 zloty; Dov let ride his share and made his way to the wagering tables where the original 15-to-1 odds against him had already been cut to 7-to-1 for the second course.  Dov had bet heavily; the wagertakers dealt with him in a silence that seemed all the louder for the general hubbub around them.  That was understandable.  So long as he was credited with all his winnings, Dov did not begrudge them their petulance.

The second course beckoned.  Dov took his assigned position at the second of nine tables, infacing position.  He liked this set-up; he’d be able to watch all but four of his competitors without even turning his head.  Forewarned was forearmed, as they said.  But of course, before he could begin to think about planning for the future, he would need to succeed here.

His opponent, Saul, was a small, dark, physically dense-looking fellow.  From the gleam in his wary eye, Dov presumed him to be extremely intelligent.  His pony had a broad radius with an ingeniously fluted convergence, designed to shed weight and enhance rotational force but in turn demanding the utmost finesse to ensure stability.  This was definitely not a beginner’s model. Saul and Dov exchanged a glance and the room seemed to cool perceptibly.  This man was truly the competition, Dov realized.  It might all be settled right here for him.

Saul was running two-to-one to win the finals.  Dov was still back at 7-to-1 at this contest alone, though by now far from a dark horse - he’d already won a a tough contest with a strong performance, to say nothing of the rumors now spreading of his having made a clean sweep at the lesser games.  Final places were called, the benches closed their books, and Dov returned his attention to the second table on the second riser.  “Hold!”

Conversation in the pit hushed down to whispers, the riders grounded themselves.

“Throw!”

Dov spun his dreydel with a snap of his wrist that began far down in the earth, an powerful but economical gesture in contrast to the throws of most of the other riders he could see down the course.  Opposite him, Saul had taken a more flamboyant approach, trying to boost his pony’s performance with a wide sweep of his arm on the follow-through.  His dreydel dropped right on the centerpoint, as had Dov’s, and both tops spun till their edges dissolved and only their central core remained in this plane of reality.  Dov stole a glimpse at Saul and saw him glaring intently at the tabletop between them, sparing no attention for anything else.  Both men had thrown well.  The victor here was no foregone conclusion.

As this chilling thought insinuated itself in Dov’s mind, two things simultaneously shocked him from dark reverie: clatters fore and aft - two ponies falling simultaneously to the floor, and the culling truly begun; and then, something else he didn’t quite understand - a rekindling of his perfecting spark, aroused by a hard look back at his glimmering, almost ethereal dreydel, oscillating with a profound and replenishing vitality.  More than its beauty, its power seemed to fill the room.  It certainly filled Dov, who straightened his back a little and leveled his gaze at Saul.

Saul remained within himself with an imploding intensity that made him appear even denser.  He barely moved, breathing with slow control.  He was willing stillness, invoking selective entropy, calling in his spiritual chits.  His eyes, however, at the heart of all that stillness, were spinning just as quickly as his extraordinary dreydel did.  He was taking this contest as seriously as Dov was.  The tension between these two unspectacular men in that grimy, smoky barn felt curiously redoubled; heads turned to watch the vortices of their respective rotations resonating against each other in sub-audible harmony.

A third pony fell, to the table; a fourth, to the floor again.  Each time one fell, the victor snatched up his surviving pony in a ritualized gesture of triumph - one, moreover, that foreclosed speculation about how decisive the victory really had been. This was the second course, after all - the Moyel’s Course.  The winners of the first six tables automatically qualified for the third course.  Four of those had already been decided; two more remained to be divulged, and then only three more tables would be left in play.  From those six riders, only the two longest-surviving would continue.  Another dreydel tumbled and clattered down; another rider advanced.  Finally, at the table right next to Dov, the far pony stumbled over the center line.  “Fault!” shouted the attendant, and the failing rider gnashed his teeth and growled.  He had had a good run but it was over.  His opponent - and the five previous table-winners - were leaving him behind. 

Meantime, Dov and Saul still faced off across their little table at each other, as did two other pairs of riders - tables seven and eight, down at the far end.  Dov could watch them easily; Saul did not permit himself the luxury of breaking his focus and turning around to peek.  Table eight was fading fast - both ponies were precessing and falling rapidly out of plumb.  One fell off the edge; very shortly thereafter the other one broke the dividing line.  Two more ponies down; two more men out of the running.

The remaining four riders were all acutely aware of each other.  One was a dandy in tall collar and gleaming cuffs, but by now the Hippodrome and its denizens were all looking rather grubby and the dandies increasingly appeared out of their element.  This gent in particular was perspiring excessively and the gentility of his habiliments served an ironic counterpoint to his own obvious nervousness. His pony appeared to be made of some exotic wood and was painted with gold filigree with a slightly different image of a horse on each side that blurred when spun so that the horse actually looked to be galloping; as they watched the gallping stallion fell into a canter as its rotational energy ebbed, the dreydel slowly sputtering to ground.  It seemed to take forever for that horse to stop walking but really it only lasted a few moments.  With a shrug of exhausted acceptance, the new loser retrieved his pony and returned to take solace in the generosity of his many friends in the pits.

Dov and Saul both looked down the line now at their sole remaining opponent.  He stood infacing at table eight, a gaunt man in nondescript clothes with sallow skin and slack features.  Before him spun a large dark pony, not quite on center but spinning gamely.  His eyes seemed to reach out to it, as if to keep it in place - but the pony seemed to have a mind of its own, slowly, so slowly, moving off course.  It edged to the outside as if it were seeking out its rider, who was murmuring, “no, no,” as it crept toward him, ever nearer the edge.

Suddenly Saul’s pony dipped precipitously.  Its exotic design was showing its weakness - as soon as it lost rectitude it became fatally unstable.  Now it was nearly rolling off the table, headed for the edge in a wide but not lazy arc - when, as it charged the very verge of the precipice, a roar went up over at eight.  The slack man’s pony had finally jumped, just a piece of an instant before Saul’s took the plunge.  Dov snatched up his pony with alacrity upon being acclaimed a survivor of the Mohels’ round.  Saul had to root around on the risers to find his top, and he looked grim as he belatedly held it up.  He’d survived, but only by the slimmest of margins.  He had something to prove now, to the Hippodrome and to himself.  Dov wondered if that made him more or less dangerous a competitor. 

Odds against the slack man had been high; no wellwishers greeted him as he left the risers.  In the crowd he quickly faded away altogether, spectators closing in around him and pushing him out like the loser he undoubtedly was.  Dreydels don’t lie, after all. 

« Less

More »

The Dreydelmaker - part the third

Dov turned back to the miracle table and saw that several more men had gathered there.  The toss was to him - the pot went around for the new players to ante.  The kitty stood at nearly 30 zloty now.  That’s enough to make it worth divulging himself as a player of caliber.  Till now he’d just been another schlemeil with a dreydel.  After this throw, he suspected he’d be seen in a slightly different light.  Fair enough, he resolved, lofting his pony into the well with an economical flick of his wrist.  The time, it seemed, was now.

The dreydel landed with a short hop and spun rigidly, sliding across the smooth disk into a side wall.  It felt almost too early to reap this harvest, he thought, even as the attendant called out “Hey!” and the crowd sighed and groaned and surged a little.  The kitty went to the attendant, who parceled out 14 zloty to Dov.  As Dov slipped them into his sack, a new player tipped in and anted up, throwing a shin.  Shins and Nuns went around the table, each shin kicking in two more zloty, each nun leaving the increasingly fat kitty untouched, and four or five new players at the table added fresh ante to the pot in the hopes of cashiering it.  None succeeded, and by the time the throw came back to Dov, the kitty was at 22.  Twenty-two would do, Dov decided as he pulled his dreydel from his pocket and fired a toss with a crispness at odds with his appearances.  the pony leaped into the well and spun harmonically for a few moments before skidding over and clattering down.  Dov did not lean forward to see the fall for himself, but let the call come to him like an echo awaited for a lifetime: “Gimmel.”

It was a solid take, not even taking his two prior victories into account.  The crowd at the table was frustrated and disappointed, but even they had to admit, this scarecrow of a man had played one magnificent game of Miracle.  Of course, having done so, no one would dare to stand his game again tonight.  He’d have to move on, if he wanted to keep playing.And he didn’t just want to keep playing, he felt that to do anything else would be to resist a phenomenon much greater than himself, something tantamount to denying an eternal truth - so he moved further into the barn and sidled up to one of the Dagesh rigs.

The mark was a wooden plank set into the earthen floor, as long as a man is tall.  Ten paces away was the target,a burnished disk as wide as a man’s leg is long, painted in bright, thick concentric rings.  Between the two lay vacant space awaiting either chaos or greatness.  Miracle was a game for lucky men, but Dagesh was a game of skill.

Dov traversed the barn to reach the furthest-off rig, approached the attendant and put in his name for a match.  He kept his voice low but a handful of followers had trailed him from the Miracle tables and they craned to overhear; a few heard, passed the man’s name back to a friend or two.  Meantime the pitchers were lining up at the mark, all facing the target and gauging their throws, eyes distant, fingers twitching.  One rocked slightly; one davened.  It was a motley crew up there; a stubby man at the far end was the favorite but Dov didn’t like the way his lip was sweating, preferring instead the chances of a stout old man with a quick smile.  The broker signalled that the books were closed, but not before Dov had placed a wager or two of his own, as well.

“Ponies ready!,” the attendant called, and all five men brought forth their dreydels.  Two were garish monstrosities; one was a crude hardwood toy.  The favorite had a roughly-carved top, painted white with gold letters; it looked like it had seen the Hippodrome before. The old man’s dreydel was a curious, stubby number with a short spindle.  It appeared ungainly, like some seabirds do on dry land.  But his fingers held it lightly and Dov felt that it might soon take flight before his eyes.

“Hold!  Throw!” The incantation elicited a group response as all five men pitched their ponies at once.  The trajectory was, generally, lofty - the one man who threw too straight saw his pony land first only to skid right off the target.  The other four fell on a more downward path and tended to stay closer to where they landed.  Two, however, landed off the rig and on the floor, to the shame of the pitchers and the apparent frustration of several bettors.  The favorite landed on the target but near the outer edge. The old man’s chubby pelican of a pony landed last, seeming to float down through the air to come to a gentle touch-down quite near the center mark, where it stood spinning for a moment or two before toppling over.  The old man had won; three ponies had flown the rig altogether.  Dov had placed winning bets on both these aspects of the outcome.  The odds against doing so were high; his ____ zloty wagered were returning to him sevenfold, and while he tried to mask the extent of his winnings, some in the assembly were too shrewd not to notice what he’d accomplished.

It was therefore to Dov’s relief that he was among the next five called to the marker. He didn’t have to try to look poor, but he did want to blunt any expectation that winners would keep winning so he let a toe push through a hole in his boot and let his shoulders shlump.  He got the broker to take a few more of his bets, discreetly, and then assumed his place at the marker - the far outside position, his toss the farthest from the target but the least encumbered by the other pitchers.  To his left stood stood his four competitors:  one in dirty homespun, two in cheap linen, and two in velvet and silk.  One of these, immediately beside him, he had heard laughing at him earlier; the man’s disenchantment was palpable at being thrust again together with guttertrash in such a visible setting.  In his heart Dov felt badly for him, out with his wealthy friends to win the world; how distasteful must it be to him to be confronted even here by Dov’s gaunt poverty?  Well, be he was indictment or mere inconvenience, Dov was what he was, so he squared up next to him at the mark and pulled the dark shining pony from his sack once again.

Each man held his dreydel in his own way; Dov held his as it told him to hold it at any given moment - which at this moment was upside-down, the spindle rising up like a flower’s stem into into his cupped hand.  “Hold!” Some pitchers had been swinging their arms or shaking out their fingers; they all stopped and held.  “Throw!” Five ponies sailed again through the air, all arcing high, all converging on the same goal. Two landed heavily and bounced right off; two landed lightly and regained footing toward the red zone of the target.

Dov had thrown his pony with an audible snap of his fingers, without reversing it back to its normal heads-up orientation.  It flew upside-down high up into the dark of the barn’s upper reaches, coming down on its spindle like a rain funnel.  It hopped a little but really didn’t bounce or move from where it landed, crux tauntingly uppermost, defying gravity even in its fall and twirl, square on the black spot in the exact center of the target.  There was no question but that Dov had fallen most fairly and the crowd groaned in appreciation of the artistry of his throw as much as with frustration at having bet against him.  Such a throw was a fluke, of course, but after all, they had witnessed it.

His pony still spun, stock still on its head, almost humming as Dov stepped forward to claim his victory by retrieving his winning throw.  A stranger, indigent and unprepossessing, the odds against him had been five-to-one.  His winnings came to fourteen hundred zloty, a wealthy man’s income, a serious sum.  It was growing to be too much to move around with him, and he had to seek out a banker to manage the physical bulk of his new fortune for him.  He’d clearly worn out his welcome at Dagesh as well as at Miracle, but he could still probably do all right with a few rounds of Chelm before the opening of Methuselah.

The Sampson pits were heating up by now, with ponies in three weight classes sent down into the shallow rings to smash each other to ground - last top standing the winner.  The crack of dreydels colliding, battling each other for primacy in round after round… Dov knew he couldn’t abandon his sweet pony to the cruel vicissitudes of such confrontations, and feared it might even hurt his chances at the big game later - might poison odds against him prematurely, might even damage his beautiful handiwork.  Sampson was crude, a mere brawl generating the excitement that violence always generates, but it held no interest for Dov.  Brute force was not what had bought him to the Hippodrome.  His advantage was elsewhere.  So he just watched the pot rise and fall a few times, hoping to allow any recollection of his prior successes to fade from brandy-soaked memories.  Some men wouldn’t forget, he knew, but they’d keep their own counsel for whatever advantage it gained them.

After some certain time had passed, Dov moved, casually but deliberately, over to a Chelm table.  There he stood watching as seven men threw their ponies at once, to the raucous accompaniment of howls of encouragement and derogation.  Seven ponies spun, expending their energy, falling one by one as fate might dictate: two gimmels, two nuns, three heys.  A few spectators had bet three hays and collected three-for-two on the odds; one had bet two pair and a trey and cleaned up at seven-to-three.  Dov took his time, watched the players, watched their game.  He figured he could get three or four bets down before giving up any anonymity he might still wish to retain for the main event later in the evening, so he’d limit himself to two games only.  Chelm was neither quite a game of skill nor yet one of chance; a canny player could find accomodating odds for such myriad outcomes that the right bet could quickly turn a stake into a fortune.  He cradled his pony in his hand as he watched the hubbub around the table; it calmed his thoughts and sharpened his vision for telltale details.  The fat man opposite him threw too hard; the men flanking him, not hard enough.  That bright blue pony - it veered widdershins.  After watching three rounds, Dov felt pretty much at home in Chelm.  He strolled behind the crowd to the wager-takers’ bench, laid a double wager against his banker’s marker (confirmed from across the barn by a nod from the banker himself) - and after a few more moments of general commotion, the attendant closed betting and called for the throw.

For seven men to throw seven four-faced tops that land with four on one face and three on another is a rare occurrence - the payoff on quad shins and trey heys was ten-to-one.  Dov had bet _______ zloty.  He was the only one to have wagered so accurately or heavily in this game, and held back from collecting his winnings till the little winners had snatched up their handfuls of coins.  For Dov, the banker had to come over to settle his account with another marker.  “Why don’t you try a little smile?,” the banker asked him, handing over a new note.  “You’re cleaning the place out!”

Dov glanced at him, blue eyes dubious.  “The night is young,” he said, “and it’s a work-night.” With this, he took the marker reflecting his new-won fortune and walked slowly around the periphery of the gaming tables to the Methuselah courses.  Twenty-three names had already been accepted for the evening’s rounds.  Dov paid his thousand-zloty course fee and made it twenty-four, leaving room for another dozen to follow him.  As he made his way back to another Chelm table, he felt the eyes of several savvy wagerers following him, taking note of his actions, tracking his movements.  Some had been on his trail since his first Miracle wins, and some were hearing just now of him, third- or fourth-hand by rumor and vague description.  But mostly, he was still just a face in the crowd, undistinguished, weaving his patchy way through the smoky crowd to a fresh Chelm table, watching quietly, placing a wager - this time, six Hays - and gathering back up his winnings of eight-to-one on a _____ zloty bet.  His cunning had not yet failed him, but now it was nearly midnight and nearing time to begin the tournament that had really brought him to the Hippodrome in the first place.  All till now had been prelude.  He’d earned his credibility and paid his dues.  Now he cleared his mind for the games to begin in earnest. 

« Less

More »

Hippodrome Story: Part the II-nd

The atmosphere on the other side was almost overwhelming after his long day of snowy solitude and the closeness of the vestibule.  The air was a blend of stale barnsmells - hay, wood, seasons stacked and stored - and the frenetic scents of hundreds of agitated men - their unwashed outerwear, their hair pomaded with goosegrease, stale and sour; their breath, panting and hungry, reeked of greed and garlic. Every man in the huge barn had come replete with dreams of greatness, which each had realized to greater or lesser extent.  Some gambled in sumptuous haberdash and some, like Dov, in tattered remnants of homespun.  Most of them seemed to fall somewhere in the middle, though - men of petty means and limitless avarice, staked to every zloty they could find, a year’s hoarding come down to a single night, the seventh night of an eight-night festival, the same as every year, here in this old barn, smoky and noisy and seething like a pit of serpents: the Hippodrome. 

The same as every year, except this time, Dov reminded himself as he weighed his dreydel in the palm of his hand, this time he was there too.  He realized that he looked like the others, or at least the most indigent of them.  Some well-heeled patrons scoffed behind his back, deriding the craven pauper with the chutzpah to walk among them, but Dov felt the slight as if it were some story he was hearing and not a matter for personal offense at all.  Thought he appeared to be part of things, Dov more accurately felt himself over them, or maybe through them.  Though he was in their midst, they did not touch him; unreality eddied around the indivisible dyad that was himself and his pony.  In utter contrast to his entire life of toil and humility, tonight he was irresistible.  He was infallible.  And he felt lucky.  Sidling up to the nearest Miracle table, he anted up.

The Hippodrome was organized into five areas: only one was truly the “course;” the rest were ancillary.  Miracle was ancillary, a stakebuilder, where a zloty or two could meet a sackful of chavers and bring them all home - but it remained a small-time game because any streak of luck scared off the other players.  Easy to win small, but hard to win big - and therefore forever relegated to the pit of the Hippodrome.  Plus, the fact that kids played it didn’t help.  Twelve Miracle tables lined one wall of the barn, circular tables with wells in their centers; a few men stood around a few of these, shouting and jostling each other.  Beyond them stood some larger tables for Chelm, ringed with raucous men challenging each other; three rigs for Dagesh; three large round Sampson pits; and in the back, the Methuselah courses, still yet and quiet at this early hour of the evening.  Dov noted the finals table on its dias, a mirror angled above it for the championship yet to come, and sensed as he approached a fairly quiet Miracle well that all was as it should be.

Dov gave one of his five remaining zloty to the attendant, and took his place among three other men.  The table around which they stood had a surface about a hands-width wide, surrounding a circular well as deep as a fist, its bottom surface a disk of polished stone that glinted in the lantern-lit barn.  Each man held a dreydel, or one lay on the table before him.  Dov put two more zloty into the kitty, under the attendant’s watchful eye, as the other men there looked him over dubiously.  The attendant removed the kitty from the table and turned to Dov.  “New pony,” the attendant barked.  The other men sharpened their gaze, curious what this shabby shlump might do.

Dov pulled out his dreydel and gave it a desultory flick from the hip; it leapt in a graceful arc, entering the well like a living thing returning home.  Around him, jaws dropped.  The cast had been effortless, casual; the pony had landed square on target and spun intently, gliding across the polished surface, until with a clatter it struck the wall and tumbled to the stone.  Gimmel.  As if ordained.  Inside his chest, Dov’s heart sang.  His eyes, however, remained like two blue chips of ice from the millpond beyond.  No reason to celebrate yet, he thought.  Just let the pony run.  I’ll have a lifetime to cheer him on after tonight.

“Gimmel!” shouted the attendant, handing over the kitty.  Dov tipped the bowl into the canvas sack tied to his waist as the others at the table looked sourly upon him.  The kitty had eaten 6 of their zloty.  Now, it had coughed Dov up a nice golden hairball.  Beginner’s luck, they wordlessly resolved, anteing again - but keeping an off eye on the underfed scrapman who’d just appropriated their potential winnings.

With eight zloty back in the pot; the first man pulled out his pony, a gaudy handful of painted oak, and tried to replicate the hip-flip that Dov had demonstrated.  Unfortunately, his pony soared off the table altogether, landing amid the Dagesh rigs where an outcry was generally voiced as he shamefacedly recovered it.  Naturally, his turn was effectively forfeit - a rulebook Nun.

The next man took no chances with his sturdy pine dreydel, spinning it from within the well; it landed solidly and ran decently till collapsing on - “Shin!” Clenching his jaws, he paid two more zloty to the kitty.  The third and fourth men also shinned, and also visibly bit back curses upon doing so and paying their two-zloty toll.  The kitty was by now loaded to fourteen zloty as the throw came again to Dov, the stranger among strangers, the last winner too, and on both scores an object of suspicion.  As he began to pull his mahogany pony once again from his pocket, the man beside him, florid and pockmarked, his nose running into his mustaches, lodged a shrill challenge: “Pony check!”

The call brought attention Dov would have preferred not to have aroused, but it was all part of the outspinning of the evening and so he awaited the Emetznik in something like repose.  A knot of men gathered, a small crowd, Dov at its center like the void at the center of a whirlpool, his pony resting cool and ready in the palm of his hand.  Within moments the Emetznik arrived, tall and finely-arrayed in the black and white of Yom Echad, an imposing figure, a staff of justice risen from a roiling river of human frailties.  The crowd parted.  He inquired in a clear, quiet voice, easily heard: “Who challenges?”

The man next to Dov indicated himself with a small wave of his red, runny nose.  The Truthteller turned to him and asked with measured tone, “Who’s challenged?” The other man shnozzpointed to Dov.  Dov stepped forward and let the Emetznik look right into his eyes, perfectly calm though the air all around him was charged with the others’ anticipation. A corner of the Truther’s mouth crept up as Dov handed over his dreydel.  All was going accordingly.

Upon the pony touching the Emetznik’s palm, the tall man’s eyes sparkled.  He could feel it, too.  He turned, still imperious, to the table and placed in the center of its well a small glass beaker, which he filled from a flask until Slivovitz reached a marked level circumference.  He moved the tumbler to two or three other spots, verifying the table first.  Satisfied, he tossed back the brandy and, still unflinching, raised up Dov’s pony and released it briskly into the well.

As it spun, everybody watched in silence.  A truthing bore the possibility of unmasking malefaction, invoking ignominy, and rendering retribution, and for these possibilities alone it would already be a prominent event at the Hippodrome.  But atop that and beyond it was the verificatory aspect of this ceremony, the way in which a truthing actually established truth; it was decided by expertise, proof and acclimation, and this tripartite redundancy invoked total confidence in the verdict.  The Emetznik’s word would be good tonight, and was never to be questioned thereafter.  The proof, in fact, of the truth of his truth, was that it actually constituted the historical record.  He not only told truth, he personified it.  As against the operation of such a grave personage, the potential ejection of a mere gonnif was of pale significance.

The Emetznik had spun the pony into the well even as the vapors from the brandy shuddered through him.  The rush made him limber, let him let the pony do the work, removed him from the process so the essence of other things could emerge.  It was a powerful gift, divination, and he took it seriously and not for granted.  The slivovitz shiver released the dreydel to do the talking.  But this time the dreydel spoke so clearly from the outset that the test felt like a formality.  Not that formalities weren’t important - in many ways they were indispensable.  But this dreydel was true, he could tell right off.  With the shabby man’s eyes shimmering at him through blue fumes, he felt almost as if he was being tested himself.

The dryedel spun within the well for a short eternity, erect as an obelisk.  The Emetznik retrieved it with a smooth sweep of his arm, returning it to Dov without flourish.  “True.  Good luck,” he announced formally and firmly.  But as he walked past Dov on his way back to his bench, did he whisper, “Not that you’ll need any”?

There’s more of this available, if you’re interested.  I’d like to know what you think of it so far.  Oh and btw that word I couldn’t come up with for the first section?  I think I’m gonna go with “crux.” Worth waiting for, eh?

« Less