múnstykki

Eventide. Moonlight from a huge full silver disk, clear weather and mild, the end of one holiday and the start of another.

A guest comes to the door. He greets her well, and she receives him courteously, offers him a seat and hands him a glass. There is wine and there is meat. The guest is very gifted in words and he has something to say about many things, those in the past as well as those now. They converse and find much pleasure in each other's speech. Each poses the other many questions and each gives the other good answers. They stay up late into the evening.

He asks her who that Haman had been that the sweet bread they are eating was named after. She crunches the blue poppyseeds between her teeth and tells about an ancient Persian King, about his brave queen, about his malicious advisor Haman and about the queen's cousin. The advisor had condemned the cousin to death and all his people with him; they were also the queen's people. And the queen went to her husband (who was stern and difficult, and did not know, besides, that his queen was of a different people) and she pleaded with him and turned his heart, and instead of the cousin being put to death (and all his people with him), the advisor was hanged high. And the shape of his hat is the shape of the sweet bread folded around the blue poppyseeds.

And they sit up talking about these and many other such things late into the night, long past the proper time for sleep, for with every word that is spoken, another seems to lack, and the moon shines in the window all the while.

The next morning, the guest gone and the sun risen, she takes the bones from the meat and boils them with onions and with fennel.