In addition to this he had the following misfortunes: he was unable to extract a pea out of a little boy's ear; a sick man risked his life by taking one of Savitzki's prescriptions and in a week he was dead. But the worst was that he forgot himself one day and declared that fever was not in itself an illness, but a remedy, a weapon by means of which the body would rid itself of the disease. Those who heard him all but split with laughter; and still more did they pant for laughing when it happened that he was called in to a woman in child-bed at the critical moment, because the "town-grandmother" was away on business in a village, and there was no help for it. The ridiculous things he did! He called for a basin of water, a piece of soap. He poured something into the basin out of a little bottle he had brought in his pocket. The people stood and watched him, and concluded he made up his medicines at home to annoy the apothecary—but heaven only knew what it was. Then he just went and washed his hands; and yet his hands were as clean as clean could be, as is the way with Christians. And as if that wasn't enough, he took out a knife and cleaned his nails—really, lehavdîl, he might have been a pious Jewess. Then he rubbed his hands and washed them anew. What more shall I say about his conjuring tricks? Then to business. The woman (it was not her first) said he certainly had smaller hands than the "town-grandmother," and was quicker at it, too, except for his fads.
But who could stand all that fuss?
And when there's no soap to be had? It just happened to have been washing day, but otherwise?
The result of all this was that Savitzki went about like a wicked man in the other world, and at the end of two years and a half he saw he would not be able to hold on there; that his "inexpressibles" were getting too big for him, that he was growing daily thinner, and might fall into a decline; he was preparing to run away and leave his debts behind, and now—it was near.
No, this is not the time to leave a town of the kind; there are golden days coming. They have already sent an order to build a "barrack" for cholera patients and to set apart a house for their families; and although the heads of the community have forked out and bribed the town-justice and the inspectors, to set down the "expenditures" for the barrack as though it had been built, and not alarm the town, everyone felt it was on the move, that it was coming; that it meant peril of death to everyone and good luck to Savitzki. He will get three to four rubles a day from the government, the sick will pay him extra, and those who are well will pay not to be put down as sick. All the Jews will pay, for disinfection and no-disinfection, isolation and non-isolation, for being let in and let out, for speaking and for being silent, and above all, "burial money"—not to be made the subject of a post-mortem and be buried in pitch.
Savitzki revived. His heart grew light within him.
He paced the streets whistling a merry air; he looked cheerily into everyone's face, peeped in at all the doors and windows. Jews like to hide themselves, ah! but he will not allow it. They shall pay him for the past years—he will come into his own.
Then he will leave the dead-alive place and marry. Whom should he find here? The apothecary's daughter—that ugly thing?
——