18 September. H.’s stories yesterday in the office. The stone breaker on the highway who begged a frog from him, held it by the feet, and with three bites swallowed
down first the little head, then the rump, and finally the feet—The best way to kill cats, who cling stubbornly to life: Squeeze their throats in a closed door and pull their
tails—His horror of vermin. In the army one night he had an itch under his nose, he slapped it in his sleep and crushed something. But the something was a bedbug and
he carried the stench of it around with him for days.
Four people ate a well-prepared roast cat, but only three knew what they were eating. After the meal the three began to meow, but the fourth refused to believe it, only
when they showed him the bloody skin did he believe it, could not run out fast enough to vomit everything up again, and was very sick for two weeks.
This stone breaker ate nothing but bread and whatever else in the way of fruit or living flesh that he accidentally came upon, and drank nothing but brandy. Slept in the
shed of a brickyard. Once H. met him at twilight in the fields. “Stand still,” the man said, “or . . .” For the sport of it, H. stopped. “Give me your cigarette,” the man
went on. H. gave it to him. “Give me another one!”—“So you want another one?” H. asked him, held his gnarled stick in his left hand in case of trouble, and struck hits
in the face with his right so that he dropped the cigarette. The man ran away at once, cowardly and weak, the way such brandy drinkers are.
Yesterday at B.’s with Dr. L. Song about Reb Dovidl, Reb Dovidl of Vassilko is going to Talne today. In a city between Vassilko and Talne they sing it indifferently, in
Vassilko weepingly, in Talne happily.
19 September. Comptroller P. tells about the trip which he took in the company of a schoolmate at the age of thirteen with seventy kreuzers in his pocket. How one
evening they came to an inn where a huge drinking bout was going on in honor of the mayor who had returned from his military service. More than fifty empty beer
bottles were standing on the floor. The whole place was full of pipe smoke. The stench of the beer dregs. The two little boys against the wall. The drunken mayor
who, remembering his military service, wants to maintain discipline everywhere, comes up to them and threatens to have them sent home under arrest as deserters, what
he takes them for in spite of all their explanations. The boys tremble, show their Gymnasium identity cards, decline “mensa”; a half-drunk teacher looks on without
helping them. Without being given any definite decision about their fate they are compelled to join in the drinking, are very pleased to get for nothing so much good beer
which, with their limited means, they would never have dared to allow themselves. They drink themselves full and then, late at night, after the last guests have departed,
go to sleep on thinly spread straw in this room which had not been aired, and sleep like lords. But at four o’clock a gigantic maid with a broom arrives, says she has no
time, and would have swept them out into the morning mist if they had not themselves run away. When the room was cleaned up a little, two large coffee-pots, filled to
the brim, were placed on the table for them. But when they stirred their coffee with their spoons, something large, dark, round kept coming to the surface from time to
time. They thought it would be explained in time and drank with appetite until, in view of the half-emptied pots and the dark object, they became really worried and
asked the maid’s advice. Then it turned out that the black object was old, congealed goose blood which had been left in the pots from yesterday’s feast and on to which
the coffee had simply been poured in the stupor of the morning after. At once the boys ran out and vomited everything to the last little drop. Later they were called