A few minutes later, David stood when Bethia rejoined them in the parlour. She was quiet and appeared to be deep in thought as she sat. After a minute, she looked up. "Pardon my distraction. I'm forgetting I have guests – no, not guests – family. I have family to enfold and to welcome, and here I am, off somewhere in my mind doing business."

"Tante, business is important," Rachel said.

"Never more important than family."

"I was concerned, Tante," Maria said. "I peeked through the curtains to check on you. Who was that elegant couple?"

"They want to buy the Schlachthof, the slaughterhouse. This was their third visit. I've tried to convince them to also take the Metzgerei, but they say they know nothing of this end of the business."

"So where do the negotiations sit?" David asked.

"Their lawyer is coming on Wednesday. I need to find out who our lawyer is. Aaron always did such things – unimportant things to me. People are so much more important. Will you stay?"

"Of course, we'll stay, Tante." Maria nodded. "How can we not support family? David was studying business and accounting before the war. He's wonderfully inventive and creative with everything I've seen. He's wise far beyond his age, so I'm sure he can poke holes in any strange offers and give their lawyer every good reason to be reasonable. How could we not stay?"

"I've locked and shuttered the front, and tomorrow is our closed day. Now we can relax and enjoy each other without interruption. I'm excited by your adventure getting here. Please, Maria, continue the story. More tea?"

Maria continued to unfold their adventure, often pausing in amazement it had happened, or pausing at memories so deeply intense in her nethers and in her soul. She led the story to the door of Tante's Delicatessen.

She looked up into her great aunt's eyes and said, "And that's how we've arrived here, ragged, exposed and vulnerable. Far out on a limb whose strength we're unsure of, but wrapped in the confidence that the power we share will pull us through."

"I'm in awe. What strong people you are. I'm honoured and privileged to have you under my roof."

They sat and caught up on family since Edom had moved Rachel and the children to the Kaiserstühl in 1905. Bethia told stories of people Rachel had long since forgotten, but she kept going back to the relationship among the three of them. She sensed there was more than just David and Maria involved after such a close, intense encounter.

Seeing this, Rachel finally said, "Tante, this may seem strange, but bear with me as I unfold it. I'm not sure where this is going, but there's a strong force inside me pushing. Please don't be taken aback by this question. I need to know. Have you ever experienced an uncircumcised penis?"

Bethia looked her in the eyes and paused only a second or two before she said, "The only non-Kosher men's meat I've seen were a week or less old – before their circumcision. They were the size of the tip of my little finger, and it was impossible to see any detail. I have no idea what a grown one looks like."

"Tante, they are so completely different. The rabbis have been cheating us. Robbing us of God's design. I discovered what the design is during the past week and a half. We must stop the horrid mutilation of our boys."

"Mutilation?"

"Circumcision is a cut so cruel, Tante. It's as if saying God's design is wrong."

Bethia looked back and forth between David and Rachel. "Am I correct in assuming David isn't circumcised?"

"Yes, you are. That tiny skin snip the book and the rabbis talk about, Tante, that snip is a major mutilation. I don't think many are aware of how much is destroyed. Tradition doesn't allow us to venture outside the faith to experience."

"You experienced?"

"Oh, my God! Yes!"

"And you, Maria?"

"So many times."

"What have I missed?"

"Reality. God's design. Bliss."

"I must see this." Bethia looked at David. "Would you mind?"

David had sat wide-eyed through the entire conversation, part of him questioning whether he was dreaming, part of him in awe of the openness and freedom shared by the three women. Three women from three generations, but each so wonderfully open and adventurous. And if it helps stop the mutilation, how can I refuse?

He shrugged and unbuttoned his trouser front. Then reaching in, he pulled out his penis and laid it on the settee cushion.

Bethia stared at it, speechless. After the shock subsided, she said, "Oh, my, my! The cutting impairs its growth."

Maria picked it up and rolled the skin back, gradually exposing the head and continuing to peel the foreskin back, having to take another grip to get it all the way off.

"That's how much the rabbis remove." Rachel grimaced. "Look at it now, peeled to resemble a broomstick. God designed it to slide smoothly within its own glove. Remember you talked about pain from friction? That's not a part of the design. The rabbis design the friction and add the pain."

Bethia watched Maria slide the skin on and off the head, then nodding, she said, "They don't simply snip a piece off the end, as we're told. They cut out a huge section from the middle, wrap up the remains, and hope the ends heal. That's why Aaron had those strange scars and a flap of loose skin. What a horrid tradition. We need to stop it."

"Tante, I had both Jacob and Nathan mutilated. I was unaware of what I was doing. I was following tradition, following the rabbi's instruction, following expectation."

"We've all done that since Abraham. We've blindly done that for two hundred and more generations, Rachel. We now need to work at stopping it. The more women become aware this is horrid mutilation, the more quickly it will stop. But how do we make them aware? We can't haul David around as a demonstration of this cruelty. How will we do this?"

"Look here." Maria moved it across his thigh, pulled the skin back and fingered the wrinkles under the head. "David says these are his most sensitive parts. Mama told us Dada had none. The rabbis had cut them away."

Bethia looked to where Maria pointed. "Aaron's was flat, nothing but scarred skin. The rabbis had removed all the frills, had removed all the thrills. What the fuck are they thinking?"

"Not thinking," Rachel said. "They're blindly following tradition. So, Tante, will you work with me? Will you help educate? It'll be difficult for us because we've slipped outside the faith, but I'm sure some will listen. We need only a few to start expanding the awareness."

"I had never thought it was mutilation." Bethia shook her head and watched it slowly expand from Maria's touch. "Nor that it impairs the growth. Why would anyone want to destroy such a practical and beautiful design?"

"I've thought," Rachel said, "it's because the tradition goes back so far – to Abraham in Genesis and Moses in Exodus. For thousands of years, our people have forgotten what a real penis looks like beyond a few days old, forgotten the beauty and workings of its intended design."

"I've never seen a mutilated one except at a distance in the Army showers." David shrugged. "Those were soft, so I can only imagine what they're like when hard."

"I would think this is the same for the mutilated boys and men," Bethia said. "There would be little opportunity to see others and much less opportunity to see the real design or to understand how wonderfully it is meant to work. This is not the sort of thing men share. Men don't seem to share much of themselves, much of their real being, even with women."

"In the Army camps, I saw that any of the men who took more than casual interest were labelled queer, and they were then poorly treated by the others. Word quickly passed: Be careful with that one, or don't drop your soap near him. Curiosity had to be satisfied with quick, fleeting glances. Men don't discuss these things except in crude jokes and bravado stories."

"Women share much more about such things with each other than men do," Rachel shrugged and nodded.

"You're right, Mama," he said. "I could never talk like this with men. I'd be labelled a queer ... Thinking further, the biggest difference between using a mutilated one and a whole one would be the friction. My method is to keep my head covered while inside and to glide within my own skin. There, I can keep myself excited and wonderfully on the edge and stay that way for as long as my energy lasts. When I want to finish, I need only to lower a hand to its root and peel the layer of skin back to bare my head. Quickly, with the increased friction, I pop."

"That seems the secret." Rachel sighed. "So many times in the beginning, Edom couldn't last long enough inside to satisfy me. We had to do other things to excite me. We thought the problem was me, and I visited the doctor. He said it was normal."

David had allowed his penis to gradually deflate as they talked, then he picked it up, tucked it into his trousers, adjusted it down his leg and buttoned up his front, shrugging as he did. "This is perfectly normal to me, and from what I've been hearing, I'm so delighted it is."