Then little Flicker, turning slightly to his left and his right, came up to where these grown people were standing, and abruptly stopped. His arms, so long held stiffly before him, dropped slowly to his sides. He gripped his nightdress and lifted it upward. His little male member stood out from his body, and through it he released his water over the American’s pants cuffs and the American’s shoes.

Faulhaber jumped backward. His camera, with its flash reflector, crashed to the floor.

“This is a hoax! It’s been planned!” cried the head of the Public Health Department, making a leap for Flicker. But the boy had let down his nightgown and was already drifting away.

Miss Bibelnieks, with her strong, dimpled arms, yanked the sheet from one of the Konotop brothers. She did the same to Nachman Kipnis. But both boys—Konotop had thick eyebrows which, like an adult’s, grew in a line over his eyes—continued to glide over the floor, as if in a trance.

“What about my shoes?” Faulhaber was asking.

“Stop!” Schneour commanded. “Stop them, Bettsack! It’s an order!” But there was nothing the poor teacher could do. Indeed, just then Rose Atlas, Gutta Blit, and other girl orphans came from behind the folding partition that divided the room. Their hands were stretched before them. Sleepwalkers, too!

You would think the presence of young ladies, even with their eyes closed, would have made unthinkable the next thing that happened. But it did not. Mann Lifshits climbed onto a bedstead and, exposed there, like a statue in a fountain, sent a stream splashing against the lower part of the wall.

It was an awful moment. No one, not Schneour, not Bettsack, had any idea of what to do. Young Szypper was beginning to raise his nightgown. On a different mattress, Kipnis, with a look of rapture, was about to do the same. That was when Trumpelman, holding a burning candle, entered the room. Calmly, he addressed the orphans.

“This is Trumpelman. You are sleeping. Go to your beds.”

The children did as they were told. The girls vanished behind the partition. The boys spread their sheets and put their pillows under their heads. The spell was broken.

Faulhaber turned to Anton Schneour. “Who is this person?” But Schneour only stared dumbly, refusing to identify his former subordinate on the Community Council. The physician blew out his candle flame. So Faulhaber’s words came out of the dark:

“From now on this man is in charge.”

It was in this way that Isaiah C. Trumpelman became the Director of what was called the Hatters’ Asylum.

The old house at the corner of Krzyzanowsky and Piotrkowska changed little over the next few years. Trumpelman had it repainted, in the style of a Baltic villa, white with green trim. In 1937, when the building next door became vacant, the Asylum moved in. The wall between the two gardens was razed, and in the common yard the children grew cabbages, beets, turnips; kept two goats and geese; planted trees for walnuts and plums. In the middle of the city, with its smoke, its trams, its thousands of people, it was like living on a farm.