THE FIVE FINGERS OF THE HAND

Translated by Michael Benedikt


An honorable family, in which no one has ever gone bankrupt, in which nobody has ever been hanged
--The Family Lineage of Jean De Niville


The thumb is this fat Flemish innkeeper, lusty and fond of lewd jokes, smoking before his doorway and beneath the sign-board announcing the doubly-potent beers of March.

The index finger is his wife, a shrew as stiff as an old dried herring, who starts each day by slapping the serving-maid
of whom she is so jealous, and gently stroking the bottle of which she is so fond.

The middle finger is their son, a stout lad who'd be a soldier if he weren't already a bartender; and who'd be a horse
if he weren't a man.

The ring finger is their daughter, the shapely and pert Zerbina, who sells her lacework to all the ladies, but refuses even a single smile to the soldiery.

And the little finger, the "ear finger"--he's the youngest of the family, a petulant brat perpetually clutching at his mother's waistband or dangling from his mother's apron-strings--a crybaby sobbing as if speared on the fang of an ogress.

Taken together, this hand and its five fingers can give the most resounding slap in the face ever heard
in the gardens of the noble city of Haarlem.