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By Root 617 0

open. Only two young officers began to hoot and clap their palms along their striped trousers. Dr. Yaretzky himself turned pale, but quickly recovered and said: "If Mohammed does not come to the mountain, the mountain comes to Mohammed. . . . Since I neglected to kiss Lady Helena's hand, the Lady kissed mine," and he took Helena's hand and kissed it three times, twice on the glove and once on the exposed wrist. Only now did the ladies begin to titter, prattle. In a second, the story had spread through the ballroom. The guests found it incredible. Everyone was overcome with curiosity and a sense of scandal. The town would have something to gossip about for months to come. Even the lackeys, coachmen and servant girls outside quickly learned of the incident. Their eyes widened. Was she insane? Was she madly infatuated with him? Had someone bewitched her? The musicians came to life, as if revived by the indiscretion and both orchestras began to play with renewed vigor. The violins sang, the bass fiddles buzzed, the cellos shrieked, the trumpets wailed, the drums throbbed. The dancers' feet grew light, reacting with satisfaction to the spectacle of another's downfall. A debauched mood infected everyone. Couples previously inhibited now danced into the corridors or the courtyard and openly embraced. If Helena could kiss Dr. Yaretzky's hand before everyone, what need was there for decorum?

In ten minutes the widow and Helena had left the ball. Her mother held her train in one hand and pulled Helena along with the other. Helena did not walk but shuffled slightly. The coachmen snickered, pointed, whispered a muffled innuendo. The widow's coachman quickly came up to help the ladies into their carriage. The widow could not raise her feet and the coachman had to lift her up by her hips. Helena collapsed into the carriage. The driver mounted, cracked his whip and a great cry came up from everyone--catcalls, hooting. Children who should have been asleep mingled with the adults, running behind the carriage, screaming frenziedly, flinging stones and horse dung. Someone at the ball had overheard the widow admonish Helena: "Wretched girl, what can you do now but dig a grave and lie down in it?"

After the widow and Helena had left, the ladies flocked around Dr. Yaretzky with increased enthusiasm. They chattered, smiled, lured him with their eyes, as if each were Helena's mortal enemy, and savored her disgrace. They tried to extract from Dr. Yaretzky a word, an explanation, a passing remark, even a jest--anything that could be repeated later. Dr. Yaretzky seemed perturbed, his face pallid. Without either answering or apologizing, he forced his way past those who surrounded him. He left the ballroom, not through the main entrance, but through a side door. Since he lived near the club, he'd come on foot, and now he headed home. Someone against whom he happened to stumble maintained that the Doctor had not been walking, but running.

Alone at last in his office, Dr. Yaretzky asked aloud: "Now, what sort of nonsense was that?"

He did not light his kerosene lamp, but sat on the couch in the dark. Since his arrival in town he'd enjoyed many triumphs, but today's conquest was not to his taste. Obviously, Helena was madly in love with him, but to what end? She was no eager matron, simply an old maid. He had no desire to saddle himself with a wife, to become a father and to raise sons and daughters--to perpetrate all that absurdity. He had his share of money and affairs. On this same couch he'd experienced adventures which would have been branded pathological lies by him, had they been claimed by someone else. Long ago he had concluded that family life was a fraud, a swamp to mire fools--since deceit is as essential to women as violence to men. It was not too likely that Helena would deceive him, but what use was she to him? He appealed to women because he was single. As soon as a man marries, other women treat him like a leper. "I'll ignore the incident," Dr. Yaretzky decided. "They'll gossip about it until they forget it. Every scandal grows stale