Read Online A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Zygmunt Miloszewski
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great deal in the media, both he and his wife. He should look through some editorials, gossip, and reports from sessions of the City Council. Everything. The unique sound of being teleported from Myst Island informed him that a new message had come in.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Prosecutor asking about razor-machete
To: [email protected]
Date: 15 April 2009 19:44 CET
Hello,
You gave me a proper fright with the word “Prosecutor” – I thought we’d infringed some paragraph of the law by showing pictures of too big knives :-) But to get to the point, I had to ask a few serious collectors in order to confirm my own identification, and they all agree that your “razor-machete” is a chalef , a knife for the ritual slaughter of animals as used by a shochet , a Jewish butcher.
From the dimensions one may conclude that it is designed for the slaughter of cattle (the smaller ones are for poultry and lambs), and from the condition that it could still easily be used in many a kosher abattoir. You ought to know that knives for ritual slaughter must be in a perfect state, and the slightest scratch, chip or bump renders them unusable. The blade is tested with a fingernail before and after each use, the point being that only a perfectly sharp knife can cut the oesophagus, larynx, main jugular vein and artery at a single stroke, and such are the conditions for ritual, kosher slaughter. The Jews believe that this is the most humane and painless way of killing (how much truth there is in that is another matter).
I hope this is helpful, and that the knife – by the way, I love the definition “razor-machete” – has not been used for any ignoble purpose ;-)
Yours sincerely,
Janek Wiewiórski
Editor
Szacki read the e-mail several times, no longer thinking about his personal problems at all. So in a churchy city with an anti-Semitic past he was supposed to conduct an inquiry into a case involving themurder of a well-known social benefactress, who had been ritually slaughtered like a cow in a Jewish abattoir.
Someone knocked at the door.
This is going to be a bloody mess all right, thought Szacki, at the same time reproaching himself for the unfortunate choice of words, and opened the door. Klara was standing on the other side of it as naked as the Lord God had made her. He looked at her lovely, supple body, her pert young breasts and the chestnut locks tumbling down her neck. And he smiled happily and encouragingly, without feeling anything for her at all.
But the smile was sincere. Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had a case, and he was very happy about it.
2
Thursday, 16th April 2009
For Jews in the diaspora it is the solemnly observed final day of Passover, for Christians it is the fifth day of the Easter Week and for Poles it is the final day of national mourning following the tragic hotel fire. The Polish Army is celebrating Sapper’s Day, actress Alina Janowska her eighty-sixth birthday and the Warsaw stock exchange its eighteenth. In Włocławek the municipal guard picked up a priest and his altar boy, in their vestments, both roaring drunk and aggressive. They turned out to be laymen who had pinched the outfits from one of their mothers, a seamstress. A British firm has found enormous deposits of gas under Pozna
ń
, and according to the British press, the piece of music most often played at funerals is Frank Sinatra singing
My Way
; also high on the list is
Highway to Hell
by AC/DC. In the second leg of the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup the winners are Dynamo Kiev, Shakhtar Donetsk, Werder Bremen and Hamburg, who face fratricidal encounters in the semi-finals. Sandomierz is outraged by the relocation of its vegetable market, which must vacate its site to make way for a car park serving the new stadium. Whatever their views on this matter, all the citizens have another cold day. The temperature does not rise above fourteen degrees, but at least it is sunny, with no rain.
I
Prosecutor Teodor Szacki did not
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Prosecutor asking about razor-machete
To: [email protected]
Date: 15 April 2009 19:44 CET
Hello,
You gave me a proper fright with the word “Prosecutor” – I thought we’d infringed some paragraph of the law by showing pictures of too big knives :-) But to get to the point, I had to ask a few serious collectors in order to confirm my own identification, and they all agree that your “razor-machete” is a chalef , a knife for the ritual slaughter of animals as used by a shochet , a Jewish butcher.
From the dimensions one may conclude that it is designed for the slaughter of cattle (the smaller ones are for poultry and lambs), and from the condition that it could still easily be used in many a kosher abattoir. You ought to know that knives for ritual slaughter must be in a perfect state, and the slightest scratch, chip or bump renders them unusable. The blade is tested with a fingernail before and after each use, the point being that only a perfectly sharp knife can cut the oesophagus, larynx, main jugular vein and artery at a single stroke, and such are the conditions for ritual, kosher slaughter. The Jews believe that this is the most humane and painless way of killing (how much truth there is in that is another matter).
I hope this is helpful, and that the knife – by the way, I love the definition “razor-machete” – has not been used for any ignoble purpose ;-)
Yours sincerely,
Janek Wiewiórski
Editor
Szacki read the e-mail several times, no longer thinking about his personal problems at all. So in a churchy city with an anti-Semitic past he was supposed to conduct an inquiry into a case involving themurder of a well-known social benefactress, who had been ritually slaughtered like a cow in a Jewish abattoir.
Someone knocked at the door.
This is going to be a bloody mess all right, thought Szacki, at the same time reproaching himself for the unfortunate choice of words, and opened the door. Klara was standing on the other side of it as naked as the Lord God had made her. He looked at her lovely, supple body, her pert young breasts and the chestnut locks tumbling down her neck. And he smiled happily and encouragingly, without feeling anything for her at all.
But the smile was sincere. Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had a case, and he was very happy about it.
2
Thursday, 16th April 2009
For Jews in the diaspora it is the solemnly observed final day of Passover, for Christians it is the fifth day of the Easter Week and for Poles it is the final day of national mourning following the tragic hotel fire. The Polish Army is celebrating Sapper’s Day, actress Alina Janowska her eighty-sixth birthday and the Warsaw stock exchange its eighteenth. In Włocławek the municipal guard picked up a priest and his altar boy, in their vestments, both roaring drunk and aggressive. They turned out to be laymen who had pinched the outfits from one of their mothers, a seamstress. A British firm has found enormous deposits of gas under Pozna
ń
, and according to the British press, the piece of music most often played at funerals is Frank Sinatra singing
My Way
; also high on the list is
Highway to Hell
by AC/DC. In the second leg of the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup the winners are Dynamo Kiev, Shakhtar Donetsk, Werder Bremen and Hamburg, who face fratricidal encounters in the semi-finals. Sandomierz is outraged by the relocation of its vegetable market, which must vacate its site to make way for a car park serving the new stadium. Whatever their views on this matter, all the citizens have another cold day. The temperature does not rise above fourteen degrees, but at least it is sunny, with no rain.
I
Prosecutor Teodor Szacki did not
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