II

The attack of fever began in the Orphanage Number 2, the so-called Hatters’ Asylum, early in the year 1933. This institution was located in a large house, with a garden, at the corner of Krzyzanowsky Street and Piotrkowska. Its funds came partly from the Community Council and partly from the Hatters Young Men’s Benevolent Association, which was a group of Jews, with a Secretary-Treasurer and a Sergeant at Arms, who had emigrated from our town to New York City and who were not, or no longer, hatters at all.

What happened was that Julius Szypper, one of the foundlings, broke out in spots. No one at Krzyzanowsky Street had seen such a thing before. What’s more, an hour later the six-year-old Rose Atlas developed the identical symptoms. By then poor Szypper was running a fever of forty-one degrees, and a bear and a zebra and also a camel, he insisted, were circling around his bed. One of the older girls, pretty, plump Nellie Brilliantstein, had to cry, Shoo! Shoo!, and wave a broomstick, or Julius would tremble from fear. Then Nellie’s own face grew hot, her eyes were running, and soon she too was in bed.

By supper thirteen orphans, eight boys and five girls, were covered with either round pink, or lopsided purple, dots. They all went to bed, warmly covered, but no one thought to call a doctor until Nisel Lipiczany, a boy with a chipped tooth and a squint, suddenly developed a terrific fever, swellings at most of his joints, and a way of rolling ceaselessly over the floor.

The physician who normally attended the Orphanage Number 2 was a young man from Warsaw, Zam by name, all of whose clothing was imported from abroad. At 3 A.M., when his telephone rang, he jumped from his bed, filled a hypodermic injector, and patted his face with cologne. But as soon as he opened the door his muffler blew out from his neck like a windsock and his knuckles turned white inside his gloves. Snowstorm. He called the orphanage back. “It’s nothing!” he shouted into his end of the phone. “Hysterical rashes! We have seen this in Warsaw!” The ancient Fosduk, called upon next, promised to come, with his leeches, the following afternoon.

But it was not the old doctor and not Zam, who, that same storm-tossed night, knocked on the door of the Hatters’ Asylum. Miss Bibelnieks, a large, damp-faced woman, threw back the latch and uttered a cry. For standing before her, in the camel-colored coat that everyone knew, was the former Deputy Chairman of the Department of Public Health. He was thinner than he had been, gaunt almost, and held his hat in his hand. A strong gust of wind sent his hair in every direction. “It’s a mistake,” Miss Bibelnieks said. “We were expecting Doctor Zam.”

Just then, behind her, a small, swarthy child appeared on the stairway and wailed. “Help! Help! Spots!”

This little girl, so dark that many considered her a Gypsy and not a Jew, was rubbing and pinching her blotchy shoulders. Gutta Blit was her name. Above the wind more sounds came from the Asylum. Crashing noises. Shouts from children. Feet running up and down. Into this tumult, this plague, strode Trumpelman, pulling sweets from his pocket. He gave one to Gutta and another to Nellie Brilliantstein, upstairs in her bed; more to Szypper, to the Konotop brothers, to Myer Krystal, who was scratching the skin practically off his bones; and one to Usher Flicker, the single-toothed tot. Slowly, not right away, but as the drops released their magical centers, the children fell silent, rolled over, held still. By the time morning arrived, gray and snowy, the orphans were peacefully sleeping, as if under a single huge blanket, a raspberry-colored rug.