Page 35 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

this shtetl, as did our parents and as did their parents
before them. That is how it should be." Gitl's mouth
was set in a firm line, and she shook her finger at her
brother.
Shmuel began to laugh, letting it start deep down in
his belly and then rise higher and higher. After a bit,
Gitl joined in. At the last, the two of them were laugh-
ing so loudly they were almost paralyzed by their own
silliness.
Poker-faced, Hannah stared at them. Nothing they
had said seemed at all funny, but that she'd understood
them at all seemed miraculous. For the more they talked,
the more she realized they were not talking in English.
They were speaking Yiddish. And yet she could un-
derstand it, every word. Perhaps of all the strange things
in the dream, this was the strangest.
She suddenly remembered going to the United Na-
tions with her fifth-grade class and sitting in the big
council room. The different representatives had all spo-
ken their own languages—French, Spanish, Russian,
Chinese. Andshe'd listened with earphones that carried
translations of each speech. With one earphone off, she
could hear both languages going at once. It had fasci-
nated her. This was a lot like that, except that the
English translations were going on simultaneously in
her head. It was totally illogical. But dreams, it seemed,
had their own logic.
She must have made a noise, some small whimpering,
because suddenly botfy Gitl and Shmuel stopped laugh-
ing and looked at her tofth concern.