Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

WEEKDAYS AND SABBATH

T he week begins in the early dawn on Sunday morning when the porters noisily carry around the planks and props for the Sunday market. In the first drab rays of sunshine, the empty market booths and stalls arise like spooky gallows from a desolate plain.

At approximately 9:30 a.m. the first customers arrive. Most of them enter the marketplace at the side where an old man who answers to the nickname "Half-a-sleigh" sits in the midst of his old rubbish. Here the discarded trash of an entire continent has reached the end of its journey. How it got here, nobody knows. Half-a-sleigh sits waiting philosophically behind his heap of rusty junk. He is practically blind. All week this little mole has been hanging around in his shed in the alley, waiting for customers. When boys find a wheel or a frame of an old bicycle they bring their stuff to him and ask, "Half-a-sleigh, how much will you give us for this?"

"Two cents."

"Can't you make it three? There are six of us, that's half a cent each."

"Two cents and not a penny more."

"Done!"

Half-a-sleigh buys and takes apart everything. Nuts and