Soon the songstress appeared. The same black bangs. The white pancake makeup. The only thing different was the tiny twitch, like a tic, she gave to her head. Trumpelman once more sent a pale rose onto the stage. It came back to the sender, during the latest Yiddish hit song, stuck in F. Rievesaltes’ sharkskin lapel.

“Well, Doctor,” said the latter, “when was it you came to town?”

“That rosebud. It was meant to go to a different person.”

Fried Rievesaltes frowned down at the tightly shut petals of the little flower. Then he gave them a flick with his finger. “Miss Lubliver has passed this gift on to me. Perhaps you do not know she is now my intimate friend?” With that he twisted that hat from his head and waved it in the direction of the entertainer. Her head jerked in response. She thrust her white leg through her gown.

Rievesaltes gripped the older man’s arm. “What a neck!” he said.

It was the custom at the Astoria Café to bring the drinks on little metal plates with a watch face painted on one of the sides. By midnight Trumpelman had six of these “clocks” piled on his table; the seventh kümmel was just going down. The waiter, Popower, made the usual joke about the quick passage of time. The doctor put on his hat and walked out the door.

There was the moon, with a fat Ukrainian face. And there a horse, attached to a carriage. Otherwise, the city was deserted. When the former Deputy Chairman of the Public Health Department reached Krzyzanowsky, he took out his latch key and inserted it into the lock. All the lights in the Asylum were out. Trumpelman, using the banister, went up the stairs. In the sickroom, under the overhead bulb, he caught young Doctor Zam stabbing a needle into the child’s wasted hip.

“I was sent for! They called me! It’s the crisis!” Zam stammered, and quickly pulled his instrument out. The Warsaw physician was dressed in what looked like a riding costume, with leggings and spats. His colleague strode to him, at the same time clutching the arm of his glasses. Then he slapped the dandy’s face.

“Out! I cannot restrain myself! I will snap your neck!”

Zam broke for the doorway. “That’s alcohol, you know. I smelled it. I could have you reported.”

But Trumpelman was already next to the bed. For a live person Lipiczany looked amazingly green. His breath came and went without enough force to shake a feather. And then, beneath the doctor’s eyes, the nose of the poor boy started to bleed. Trumpelman dabbed at the stream with the handkerchief he wore in his breast pocket, then turned to the Window and leaned against the black panes. He heard a door slam and an automobile engine ignite. Departure of Doctor Zam. From habit, from his gay nature, the young man gave two toots on his horn. The Lithuanian waited some time, until he thought he could see the outline of things—the top of a hedge, the frame of a bicycle against a tree. Then he returned to Nisel.