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Fwd: eating fish without one's teeth??
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----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:18:52 -0800
From: Carolyn <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Dear Dr Stadlen,
Perhaps to lay your mind at rest - -
The woman buys fish when it is already dark,whereas a traditional Jewish
woman would have prepared the Sabbath meal long before dusk.
Actually - - she doesn't buy the fish, does she? She remembers something and
changes her mind, arriving home just ten minutes after her husband. I
thought she remembered that he didn't have the key, but perhaps she
remembered the Sabbath too.
Thanks to Jansy I can provide the relevant part of the text:
When they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last
dregs of the day were mixed with the street lights. She wanted to buy some
fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to
go home. He walked up to the third landing and then remembered he had given
her his keys earlier in the day.
In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when some ten
minutes later she came, heavily trudging upstairs, wanly smiling, shaking
her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat
and he at once went to the mirror. Straining the corners of his mouth apart
by means of his thumbs, with a horrible masklike grimace, he removed his new
hopelessly uncomfortable dental plate and severed the long tusks of saliva
connecting him to it. He read his Russian-language newspaper while she laid
the table. Still reading, he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth.
My italics, of course, suggest that they did not eat fish - - though fish is
pale, I should think it difficult to eat fish without one;s teeth.
Carolyn
----- End forwarded message -----