THE LAST MOHICAN
"Shimon."
He scratched his ear. "Look in the ghetto."
"I looked."
"Look again."
191
The beadle walked slowly away and Fidelman sneaked out.
The ghetto lay behind the synagogue for several well-packed,
crooked blocks, encompassing aristocratic palazzi ruined by age and
unbearable numbers, their discolored facades strung with lines of
withered wet wash, the fountains in the piazzas, dirt-laden, dry. And
dark stone tenements, built partly on centuries-old ghetto walls, in–
clined
towards one another across narrow, cobblestoned streets. In
and among the impoverished houses were the wholesale establish–
ments of wealthy Jews, dark holes ending in jeweled interiors,
silks
and silver of all colors. In the mazed streets wandered the present-day
poor, Fidelman among them, oppressed by history, although, he
joked to himself, it added years to his life.
A white moon shone upon the ghetto, lighting it like dMk day.
Once he thought he saw a ghost he knew by sight, and hastily fol–
lowed him through a thick stone passage to a blank wall where shone
in white letters under a tiny electric bulb:
VIETATO URINARE.
Here
was a smell but no Susskind.
For thirty lire the student bought a dwarfed, blackened banana
from a street vendor (not S.) on a bicycle, and stopped to eat. A
crowd of ragazzi gathered to watch.
"Anybody here know Susskind, a refugee wearing knickers?"
Fidelman announced, stooping to point with the banana where the
pants went beneath the knees. He also made his legs a trifle bowed
but nobody noticed.
There was no response until he had finished his fruit, then a
thin-faced boy with brown liquescent eyes out of Murillo, piped:
"He sometimes works in the Cimitero Verano, the Jewish section."
There too? thought Fidelman. ·'Works in the cemetery?" he
inquired. "With a shovel?"
"He prays for the dead," the boy answered, "for a small fee."
Fidelman bought him a quick banana and the others dispersed.
In the cemetery, deserted on the Sabbath-he should have come
Sunday-Fidelman went among the graves, reading legends carved
on tombstones, many topped with small brass candelabra,
whilst
