That’s how things stood until one night in February, a really cold one—the children wore gabardine coats on top of their sleeping gowns—when as usual Trumpelman was talking around a lit Sport cigarette. Suddenly there was a noise in the corner, and on went the electric lights. Lipiczany was there, stark naked, squinting, doing a kind of dance. He lifted his knees, first one, then the other; then he did this more and more quickly, until it seemed the floor was on fire and neither foot could touch there for more than an instant without being burned. His black hair was flying. His head flopped around. Immediately the doctor ran over, trying to grab him. But remember he was then a man in his sixties. Nisel darted away. Nellie and Myer Krystal closed in behind him, while Miss Bibelnieks blocked his forward path. The crazy dancer, with his elbows, his heels, knocked Krystal and Brilliantstein down. With a whoop the other children came after, diving at his flashing legs, throwing their coats at him like a net over a bear. But Nisel leaped free. Then, with nobody near him, alone, he stiffly fell over, his arms at his sides. Everyone stopped, amazed at the force with which the back of his head struck the floor.

The boy was in a coma. They put him in a room of his own, overlooking the bare, snow-spotted garden. Lipiczany had been a lively, popular fellow, able to crack walnuts open with only the palms of his hands. Thus many friends crowded in to stare with real interest at the hollow spot in the center of his breastbone, over which a thin layer of skin was visibly shaking from the heartbeats underneath. To this spot Trumpelman hourly placed his ear. The rest of the time—for weeks, then months—he stood alone at the window, whose top pane was open in order to draw the smoke from his Sport like a thread through the crack.

It was by this same window, with its unwashed glass, that Trumpelman was standing one day in late March. Behind him was Lipiczany. The boy lay on his back with his mouth open, his lips fallen away from his teeth. His wet dark hair stuck to his forehead. Another breath. Another thump from his heart. A breath again. There was a shout on the other side of the glass. All the children ran into the garden. Miss Bibelnieks began counting, while the wards of the Hatters’ Asylum, like inverted bicycle riders, rotated their feet in the air. Springtime! Spring! For the first time since the epidemic, Trumpelman left the Asylum and took a walk in the town.

Where to? It’s not important. Perhaps for a steambath under the Geyser’s high dome. Perhaps for a walk by the boarded-up Lepecky Number 6. Or else he just rode here and there in the electrified trams. It is more interesting to note that no one recognized him until late that same evening, when he walked through the door of the Astoria Café. Then the whole crowd, which had been talking and eating and drumming their fingers, swung around. Baggelman, the orchestra leader, stood frozen, his baton in the air. “Please!” somebody shouted. “I have requested ‘St. Louis Blues’!” Then all the men and women got up to dance. Trumpelman slid behind the same rear table where, years before, he had begun.