Denis again: starting putting words in a line again at last

Further along, the shopping streets give way for a while to some more open areas, flanked by grass- and tree-planted green spaces with benches and flower beds, and sometimes a small bandstand or an over scale chess set.

Then you came to the part of town where all the [Jews] lived: the poorer [Jews], that is – the men with their beards and their funny hats, and the women with their proud faces and their bold way of looking at everybody, as if they didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, living here in this poverty and squalor.

There were Jews in his story books. Richer Jews, not like the ones who lived close by in his city. They weren’t always called Jews, as far as he can remember, even though there were sometimes references to the ‘the rich Jew’, or ‘the Jewish shopkeeper’, or the ‘miserly old Jew’, but the parental readings of the books, and the accompanying commentary and the answers to his ‘What’s that? Why? Why? Why?’ questions made it clear that these characters were Jews.

These characters usually lived alone, in the last cottage in the village, or in a large, dark, looming house in the city, with bare tree branches in front of the windows and the moon rising above the chimney pots. The front doors of the town houses were always black, with a door knocker in the shape of a monster’s head – all scales and teeth and blank eyes beneath venomous lids.