zurück

The Glass Jew    (Der gläserne Jude)    1814)

During the last war, a Polish Jew fled from a hussar who wanted to beat him up and took refuge in his brother-in-law's house. His brother-in-law, who was not otherwise his friend, nevertheless put him in a corn sack and laid him on the floor. ‘Nausel, don't move, or we'll both be kapores.’ ‘Doved, I won't move.’ Suddenly, the hussar came in through the door with his sabre raised in anger and shouted, ‘Where is the scoundrel?’ with a fierce gesture; the brother-in-law replied, ‘Strict Sir Sergeant, my house is no refuge for scoundrels. Am I not an honest Jew?’ The hussar replied, ‘I want to know where the rascal is who cheated me out of four talers,’ and searched every corner. ‘What do you have in that sack?’ he snapped at the brother-in-law, holding his shiny sabre over his head. ‘Cruel sergeant, what do I have in the sack? Glass.’ In his anger, the hussar first struck the sack with the flat of his sabre, then with the back of it, with all his might. So many blows, so many calluses. But the Jew inside thought, ‘I will not let my brother-in-law down, and even less myself,’ and made a constant tinkling sound with a clear voice, so that the hussar would think he was hearing glass ringing. And it helped a little. For the idea seemed so ridiculous to the hussar himself that half his anger was already broken. So he knocked out the other half of the same coin in the sack, and the Jew inside rang faster and faster, clink, clink, clink.
But when the hussar was gone and the Jew slipped out of the sack, bloodthirsty, and looked at himself, he said, ‘God's miracle, I will never again become a glass for 4 thalers for the rest of my life.’