MARIANKA
113
set fire to the old dresser reflecting silvered pools. The flames
jumped up to the ceiling, joined together, drew apart, sniffed, said
they liked this sort of thing, and began to spit, to smoke, to eat
with a fine appetite. "You will roast like fleas!" they shouted to
us. "Good luck!" and they would not stop laughing and shouting
with merriment. "Mind your beard, it's going to shrivel up! We
shall pray for your soul, you old body snatcher! Ha ha ha ha!"
Stamping over Kolenko's body, they went out by the little passage
way.
We remained there, the three of us, with the woman's body,
with Kolenko's, and the fire-already a very fierce fire. Almost at
the same time as the men left, the bench caught alight. A flame
ran down the passage as if in their pursuit, blocking the doorway.
It licked Kolenko's head, drew away, came back with reinforce–
ments, stroked it this time, then quickly hugged it in a spiral
movement, twined itself around, gently roasted it. The strong
blacksmith stench of burning hooves burst through the air and the
head seemed to move, its hair become a golden halo.
The first, I regained my senses. The furnace was growing
lethal. Another minute and we should be blazing like Kolenko,
over there. I shouted out:
"Sir, sir, Rabbi Mellakh, we must get away!"
He remained crouching near his wife's body, the flames danc–
ing a frenzied polka in his staring eyes. Myriam lay across her
mother, silent; she never once sobbed; a living creature crucified
on a dead one.
My eyes smarted and I fancied I heard my skin crackle, peel
off me like a fish's scales. A fit of coughing lacerated my lungs
and the smoke and heat were deadly. I grasperl the old man by
the shoulders, shook him:
"Master, you will he burnt alive! Get away from here! Get
away from here! Myriam! Myriam!"
The old man slipped through my hands and fell on his daugh–
ter. His lips mumbled prayers. Each little hair in his beard curled
like grass at sunset. I yelled:
"Sir! Sir! Myriam!"
The fire creaked with a noise of tearing muscles. The old
man didn't answer. I felt ready to flare like a torch, like a log of
dry
fir-tree. With one last effort, I took Myriam's arm and pulled
it towards me. I wanted to get her away, I didn't want her to be
