The Puttermesser Papers (30 page)

Puttermesser, whose name means nothing more troublesome than butter-cutter, walks through the white ash of Paradise, herself a shadow though casting none, and longs for the plain green earth.

She has seen into the
sod
of
PARDES
, so this is what she sings:

At the point of a knife

I lost my life.

Butter, butter, butter
,

butter knife
.

If I were alive I wouldn't fault

anything under the heavenly vault.

Better, better, better
,

better life
.

Better never to have loved than loved at all.

Better never to have risen than had a fall.

Oh bitter, bitter, bitter

butter

knife
.

Note on the Author

C
YNTHIA
O
ZICK IS THE
author of numerous acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have won four O. Henry first prizes and, in 2012, her novel
Foreign Bodies
was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She currently lives in New York.