Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

MR. MONDAY 7 9

as you may have guessed. As a scholar, he lived at least three hundred years too late. The object of his study wasn't exactly modern either, he was trying to build a machine that was driven by perpetual motion. In the little shed at his back door lay the remnants and wreckage of oddly contrived instruments. On the shelves stood jam pots, grey with dust filled with mysterious powders and solutions. An alchemist's workshop. That rubbish was from the time Mr. Monday thought that he could find the unfindable by empirical means, by trying out many things and hoping for results. He was only cured of that belief after he nearly caused the whole of Manege Street to go up in smoke. After that explosion, he did not follow the empirical way anymore but chose to seek the perpetuum mobile in a theoretical way only. He shared his nightly hours equally between Talmud and the Abbe Nollet. "First you must study, practice must wait," he explained his new approach.

Modern people would have become prey to restlessness with such a split of their psyche, but Mr. Monday did not know what a nervous ulcer was. Somewhere he had found the synthesis of his two bookcases. He remained serene, nothing could destroy the rest of his soul, neither endless study nor domestic troubles. And domestic troubles he had, really more than one man could bear. In his family life all adversities seemed to be aimed mercilessly at him. He had a son called Elkan whose birth had been a fight against death and his mother had never recovered full health again. Mrs. Monday became partially paralysed, and she complained of water that made her legs swell like overstuffed sausages.

Elkan himself was an imbecile. Mostly he sat in the corner of the workshop, saliva dripping from his mouth.