he halted before dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. fifty multiplied by. the figures whitened in his mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. the shiny links packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's blood.
a kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. he stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her hand. chapped: washing soda. and a pound and a half of denny's sausages. his eyes rested on her vigorous hips. woods his name is. wonder what he does. wife is oldfish. new blood. no followers allowed. strong pair of arms. whacking a carpet on the clothesline. she does whack it, by george. the way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.
the ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. sound meat there like a stallfed heifer.
he took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. the model farm at kinnereth on the lakeshore of tiberias. can become ideal winter sanatorium. moses montefiore. i thought he was. farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. he held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. a young white heifer. those mornings in the cattlemarket the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. he held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. the crooked skirt swinging whack by whack by whack.
the porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace.
-- now, my miss, he said.
she tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.