Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/104

 "Fallot", but a poveretto, a poor wretch: massimo “Fallot” was questo Tironi.

Tironi was a tiny little man, nearly as tiny as Nicolodi; he was bloated, disagreeably unclean, he laughed loudly until he started coughing, and he smelt of several smells, for which reason everybody whom he came near sought to get rid of his company as speedily as possible. He had been an apothecary at Scutari and was supposed to have got mixed up with both the Serbs and the Austrians. The Austrians had taken and locked him up. Whether he was an Albanian or an Italian was difficult to say. He spoke German well, he spoke Italian, Turkish, Serbian and Greek well,—a Fallot in all languages, in all nationalities according to Budi, a native of Cattaro, who knew him from previous years and vowed that he was a man capable of anything. Tironi was always in a rosy mood, for everyone whom he looked at he had a sweetish smile and a cringing joke,—a stunned conscience bestows upon its bearer just as joyous a calm as does a pure conscience.

And behold, speak of the devil,—and the massimo Fallot was slouching up to us and sat down beside Budi. Papa Declich addressed himself to me with a gesture of loathing, slipped off and went to his bed. Tironi with senile prurience was describing to Budi a visit he had paid to some famous haunt of ill-repute at Constantinople…

"Dušek, Saturday is over."

He guessed what this sentence referred to: “Frank? didn't I tell you beforehand? How many such Saturdays have yet to pass?"

The sound of singing penetrated to us from without. One voice began and then a whole chorus chimed in.

"What is that?"

"The ‘Polish Jews in number 64. Students for the rabbinate.