When morning came Itzik awoke in great pain. He looked around at his dead family and got to his feet. To his surprise, in the middle of the room lay his pouch. He opened it. The hundreds of notes rested snug and untouched.

Like Job he sat on his floor staring at the sunshine outside. Later in the morning the baron came with two soldiers, walked into his house, bent over and took the pouch. Without even looking at Itzik he went out again, got on his horse and rode away.

From that day onward Itzik the peddler was insane. Others had to bury his dead, and for many years after he said not one word to anyone. And one day he walked out of the village in the direction he had taken in years past when setting out on his journeys. It is still told in that region that he walked the whole route, which covered hundreds of miles, and when he had finished he came back to the village and after a few days he died.

Mr Finkelstein stood looking not at the gravestone which was before him, but at the face of his father which floated in his mind. And within himself he framed the old question that he had always asked his father when the story was done.

‘So? What does it mean?’

‘What it means? It means nothing. What could this Itzik do? Only what he had to do. And what he had to do would end up the way he knew it would end up, and there was nothing else he could do, and there was no other end possible. That’s what it means.’

Mr Finkelstein turned away from the grave and started to return to the gravel path when an old man with a curly gray beard came toward him. He recognized the man as one of those who make their living saying prayers for visitors to the graves. He did not like these characters, just as he did not like anything that was formalized and insincere. The man, dressed entirely in black, met Mr Finkelstein as he stepped over a grave onto the gravel path. He asked whether he might not say a prayer for whomever it was that Mr Finkelstein was visiting this day.

‘No thanks, I’m all right,’ Mr Finkelstein said.

Apparently the old man had been watching Mr Finkelstein before, since he pointed at his father’s headstone and said, ‘You didn’t leave anything.’

Mr Finkelstein looked at the headstone and recalled that he ought to have placed a little pebble on it to signify his having paused there and paid his respects. Here and there on other headstones were pebbles of all sizes, like calling cards that would survive the rains. He turned to the old man and said in Yiddish, ‘If he saw me he knows I was here. If he didn’t see me he won’t notice a pebble either. Let be.’

He started to turn to go when the old man said, ‘You saw the broken grave?’