Acrobats and Jugglers

His grandmamma tapped the underside of the bowl with the heel of her hand, whittling the dried flour and egg from the bottom. His grandmamma, she cooked with Chota chocolate and Cajamarca vanilla handpicked and packaged in hemp sallies. Grandmamma, she had a matching set of Cali pots and Valle del Cauca skillets, Zaventem ladles and Brabant teacozies. Sitting at his grandmamma’s skirts he learned how to whisk egg whites and sugar into meringue and prepare heavenly biscuits with unleavened flour and salt. Feeling uneasy around the unprincipled, he chose a life of sycophantry, carousing with upright people, those with high ideals and a low opinion of cads and cheats. On his eleventh birthday his granddad bought him a set of knives and a butchers’ apron, the chainmail branding the skin round his waist. On the day of his birth the Hlohovec-Trnava traveling minstrel, arriving by oxcart and wagon, put on a Purim spiel, acrobats and jugglers, thespians and fire-eaters, the townspeople rejoicing in the beauty and splendor of new life.