A Röfeh in Apte having declared that the doctor there poisoned his patients, they imprisoned him for three months on bread and water. You think I mean the doctor? No, mercy on us, the Röfeh!
That is why, when Savitzki appeared in the street, it grew suddenly empty. If he looked up at a window, a blind was drawn, or the window was filled up with a sheet, a cushion—anything.
One fine morning the street where Savitzki lived stood empty—all the householders and the tenants had moved away overnight. No one wished to come within his area. It was a real case of "woe to the wicked and woe to his neighbor!"
Savitzki has remarked it, and he is silent. More than that, he has withdrawn himself from the town for the time being—just as a cat will spring aside from a mouse—it won't run away.
He sits the whole day at home, or goes for walks outside the town in the mud. He is sure of his game, then why irritate the people by prying? When the time comes, he will know; doors and windows won't keep the thing in; there will be cries as on the Day of Atonement. The Jews have little self-control. They are a people very much afraid of death, and helpless when face to face with sickness.
Savitzki had lived through a typhus epidemic; he had seen the overflow of feeling, heard the cries and commotion. He seemed to be in a sea of lamentation and wailing. O no, they will never keep it to themselves.
He withdrew from the street. And Yössil withdrew from the street and the house-of-study as well. One wished it, the other had to do it.
Since there was more talk of the pestilence, Yössil's whole melancholy had vanished, as though brushed away by the hand. Indeed, he grew more cheerful, merrier day by day, and would often, without meaning to do so, burst out laughing. He could not help himself, it bubbled up within him; he had to laugh. It tickled him in all his limbs. The paler the householders grew, the ruddier grew he; the lower they hung their heads, the higher he carried his; the more subdued grew their voices, the clearer and fuller Yössil's, and—the more the house-of-study sighed, the louder his laughter: ha-ha-ha! And it was not his fault, something in him laughed of itself.
And at a time when all other eyes were dim and moist, his shone brighter and brighter; they fairly sparkled. At a time when people stood and looked at each other open-mouthed, not daring to move a limb, his feet danced beneath him; he could have kissed every desk, the stove, the walls.
"Is he mad?" people asked, "or what has possessed him?"