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"Hm! . . . and how about my fee?" enquired Finkel, in a jesting tone. "Oh, yes!" Vanda remembered, blushing, and she handed the Jew the rouble that had been given her for her ring. When she got out into the street she felt more overwhelmed with shame than before, but now it was not her poverty she was ashamed of. She was unconscious now of not having a big hat and a fashionable jacket.
She pondered which to go to. "Misha is out of the question; he's a married man. . . . The old chap with the red hair will be at his office at this time. . ." Vanda remembered a dentist, called Finkel, a converted Jew, who six months ago had given her a bracelet, and on whose head she had once emptied a glass of beer at the supper at the German Club.
He was a tall, dark Jew, with fat cheeks and bulging eyes. His cheeks, his eyes, his chest, his body, all of him was so well fed, so loathsome and repellent! "What can I do for you?" he asked, without looking at Vanda. Vanda looked at the serious countenance of the maid and the smug figure of Finkel, who apparently did not recognize her, and she turned red.
She was awfully pleased at the thought of Finkel. "He'll be sure to give it me, if only I find him at home," she thought, as she walked in his direction. "If he doesn't, I'll smash all the lamps in the house." Before she reached the dentist's door she thought out her plan of action: she would run laughing up the stairs, dash into the dentist's room and demand twenty-five roubles.
And his tobacco-stained fingers, smeared with blood, held up the tooth to her eyes, while the maid approached and put a basin to her mouth. "You wash out your mouth with cold water when you get home, and that will stop the bleeding," said Finkel. He stood before her with the air of a man expecting her to go, waiting to be left in peace. "Good-day," she said, turning towards the door.
Although, as we have seen, Leland, who wrote in 1538, mentions Frenchgate and Finkel Street Gate as 'down, yet they must have been only partially destroyed, or were rebuilt afterwards, for Whitaker, writing in 1823, mentions that they were pulled down 'not many years ago' to allow the passage of broad and high-laden waggons.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, digging into it with a steel instrument. "Yes," Vanda replied, untruthfully. "Shall I remind him?" she was wondering. "He would be sure to remember me. But that servant! Why will she stand there?" Finkel suddenly snorted like a steam-engine right into her mouth, and said: "I don't advise you to have it stopped. That tooth will never be worth keeping anyhow."
"The doctor will be here in a minute. Sit down." Vanda sank into a soft arm-chair. "I'll ask him to lend it me," she thought; "that will be quite proper, for, after all, I do know him. If only that servant would go. I don't like to ask before her. What does she want to stand there for?" Five minutes later the door opened and Finkel came in.
But the finkel, or common brandy of Sweden, is a detestable beverage, resembling a mixture of turpentine, train oil, and bad molasses, and we took the milk unmixed, which admirably assisted in keeping up the animal heat. The mercury by this time had fallen to 38° below zero.
"What can I do for you?" repeated the dentist a little irritably. "I've got toothache," murmured Vanda. "Aha! . . . Which is the tooth? Where?" Vanda remembered she had a hole in one of her teeth. "At the bottom . . . on the right . . ." she said. "Hm! . . . Open your mouth." Finkel frowned and, holding his breath, began examining the tooth.
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