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By Root 671 0

aristocracy. When visiting Jewish homes, he derided Dr. Chwaschinski, called the apothecary a sucking leech, maligned the County Natchalnik, the Town Natchalnik, the Post Natchalnik, branded them thieves, boot-lickers, lackeys. He even taught obscenities to the parrot. How could anyone start a feud with him? Toward what end? Difficult child-births were his stock in trade. If necessary, he operated. He lanced abscesses and malignancies unceremoniously, with a knife. They called him a butcher; nevertheless, they recovered. Dr. Chwaschinski was old--his hands trembled, his head shook from side to side, and he had grown deaf. His frequent illnesses forced people to go to Yaretzky. When the mayor was his patient, Dr. Yaretzky addressed him in Yiddish as if that dignitary were a Jew.

"Head hurt? Aah--tongue!" and he tickled the mayor under the arm.

The Doctor conducted himself even more outrageously with the women. Before they could say what was wrong, he made them disrobe. Pipe in mouth, he blew smoke into their faces. Once during conscription time, when Dr. Chwaschinski was sick, Dr. Yaretzky became the assistant to the military doctor, an elderly colonel from Lublin, who was forever drunk. Dr. Yaretzky let the Jewish population know that for one hundred rubles he would issue a blue certificate, signifying rejection during peacetime, for two hundred--a white, meaning absolute rejection, and for a five-and-twenty note, a green--a postponement for at least a year's duration. Mothers of indigent recruits came weeping to Yaretzky and he'd lower the price for them. That year, scarcely a Jew was drafted into the service. An informer was sent to Lublin and a military commission arrived to investigate, but Dr. Yaretzky was exonerated. No doubt he bribed the commission or fooled them completely. In Jewish homes he would say: "Mother Russia is a pig, no? She stinks!"

After Dr. Chwaschinski's death the gentry began to try to please Dr. Yaretzky. The mayor pledged a truce with him, the apothecary invited him to a party. The ladies praised his gifts as an accoucheur.

Mrs. Woychehovska, a stout person who, morning and evening walked to church wearing a black shawl over her head and carrying a gold-embossed prayer book, was a gentile marriage broker in the town. Mrs. Woychehovska kept a roster of eligible bachelors and maidens. She frequented the better homes. She boasted that her matches were arranged in dreams by an angel who appeared revealing who was destined for whom. To date, not one of her couples had ever quarreled, separated or proved childless.

Mrs. Woychehovska came to Dr. Yaretzky proposing a highly advantageous match. The young lady came from one of the noblest families in Poland. Her widowed mother owned an estate just outside town. Although Helena was no longer in the first flush of youth, she was single; not from lack of suitors, but from overdiscrimination, Mrs. Woychehovska assured Dr. Yaretzky. She had picked and chosen for so long, that she had been left a maiden. Helena was an accomplished pianist, could converse in French and read poetry. She was known for her love of animals, she kept an aquarium of goldfish in her blue room, and had raised a pair of parrots on the farm. A donkey purchased from a licorice-selling Turk was in her stable. Mrs. Woychehovska swore to Dr. Yaretzky that in her dream she had seen him kneeling alongside Helena before the altar in church. Over their heads hung a halo emanating rays of light--a sure omen that they'd been destined for each other. Dr. Yaretzky heard her out, patiently.

"Who sent you?" he asked her after she'd finished, "the mother or the daughter?"

"For the love of Jesus, neither of them even suspects."

"Why bring Jesus into this?" Dr. Yaretzky said. "Jesus was nothing but a lousy Jew . . ."

Mrs. Woychehovska's face immediately flooded with tears. "Kind sir, what are you saying? May God forgive you! . . ."

"There is no God!"

"Then what is there?"

"Worms. . . ."

"Poor soul, I pity you! And may God pity you! He is merciful. He has compassion even for those who profane