The key to miniature success, Jake realized as he marveled his way through the Costco of dolls that Sunday afternoon, was not just the level of detail but rather the level of verisimilitude. For instance, consider one item Jake saw on display, a boxed men’s shirt. If the only issue were detail, the miniature-makers would have labored over the box, asking themselves, Does it have the right store’s logo on it? But these craftsmen had a different priority in mind. Instead they asked themselves: first, if the shirt is in a box, can the box be opened? If so, is there a real shirt inside—not merely a bit of fabric but a real, tailored miniature shirt, complete with buttons, cuffs, and a real front pocket? If so, can the shirt be removed from the box? And if so, could a doll conceivably wear it? This was the level of reality Jake witnessed at the International Miniatures Show. It was exactly what he was looking for.

First he bought a complete set of the works of Spinoza, all with actual miniature text inside them. Then a small TV—which didn’t actually work, to Jake’s great regret, though it glowed a blank white at the push of a tiny button—and a VCR that actually accepted miniature nonfunctional videotapes and spit them back out with the tap of a miniature “Eject” button. Jake purchased tiny fake copies of Gandhi, Chariots of Fire, and The Ten Commandments, among others. He bought a set of silvery candlesticks with miniature white candles in them (although lighting them, the saleswoman warned, was not recommended), a silvery wine goblet, and blue and white china service to go on top of an intricately embroidered white tablecloth. He bought a miniature wooden easel, and then miniature palettes, paintbrushes, and a set of oil paints—real paints, of course, miraculously squeezed into incredibly tiny paint tubes, though only a doll could have the agility to actually apply them with a brush to a canvas.

But Jake wasn’t looking for a canvas. Instead he set out for the home utilities section of the show—booths selling miniature hardware, where one could outfit a dollhouse with indoor plumbing, doorknobs, window shades, flagstone porches, and, most importantly, indoor electric lighting. It took some time, but at last, in a booth that exclusively sold miniature light fixtures, Jake found exactly what he needed: a small light panel that could be installed directly on the miniature easel. The perfect size for a slide.

FRANCES WAS only about ten years older than Nadav, which depressed him. To him she was an old, fat, washed-out woman, the sort of person whose presence would have embarrassed him at a party in Vienna. But in her dumpy two-family American house, she was the queen of the castle, and Nadav Landsmann—along with his son Wilhelm, or Bill, as Wilhelm was now called—was her prisoner.