“But in exchange for the horse and wagon the peddler would get a fairly good cow. He could take over his daughter’s little dairy business. It could hardly pay less than peddling. He was the only person Yakov knew who peddled nothing and sold it, in bits and slices, for real kopeks. Sometimes he traded nothing for pig bristles, wool, grain, sugar beets, and then sold the peasants dried fish, soap, kerchiefs, candy, in minute quantities. That was his talent and on it he miraculously lived. ‘He who gave us teeth will give us bread.’ Yet his breath smelled of nothing—not bread, not anything.”
Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (1966).
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