Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

89 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

"Oh, I thought you still had your socks on."

Jacob spreads the ointment on the painful spot. "We'll let the medicine soak in. Now come here. See, the pain is gone."

The doctor steps with his shoes and all, and with his full weight on the bare corn. The patient keeps smiling, he feels nothing.

While the nature of Jacob's medicine for corns is simple to understand, the toothache cure of his brother Marcus has an air of mystery around it. The toothache powder is dissolved in water and forms a milky liquid which clots in the mouth of the patient.

"Have you rinsed your mouth thoroughly?"

Marcus jumps down from his stand. He snatches a cap from the head of a bystander and presents it to the patient.

"Spit in here."

Marcus searches with a pair of tweezers in the pulpy spittle. "There you are, here are the toothache bacteria. Your pain has disappeared, has it not?"

"You're right! I don't feel anything! The pain has gone!"

The toothache bacteria are visible to everybody. From a distance they look like pulpy threads or fibres.

A little further on, the street-singers earn their living by singing lilting songs of drama and romance. One of them accompanies himself with his concertina and tambourine.

"He kisses her lips But she whispers low You must desist Please my dear, be slow.