GROSSMAN: EVERYTHING FLOWS: a workshop that employs the disabled

[Jan Zielinski]

Robert Chandler pisze:

>  Ptashkovsky, a tinsmith with a grey moustache, had been taken prisoner by
> the Russians during the First World War (people said he was Austrian, just
> pretending to be a Pole). Suddenly his arms would go completely numb and he
> would freeze there on his little stool, his hammer raised in the hair, his
> face immobile and haughty.  Someone would have to shake him by the shoulder
> to bring him out of this paralysis.  There was one occasion when one man had
> a fit and this set off a chain reaction; in different corners of the
> workshop young and old alike were writhing on the floor and screaming.”
> 
> Does anyone understand just what is going on here?  It seems like the first
> person has an epileptic fit, but epileptic fits are not, as far as I know,
> communicable in this way.

It seems, that the sense of humour can, although very rarely, be contagious.

Jan Zielinski

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