The days went slowly by. Trumpelman drew all the curtains, so that only chinks of light came into the Asylum. The children lay in their large, dim room, calm in the morning, calm through the early part of each afternoon. Then their temperatures started to climb. That’s when they kicked off their bedclothes, scraped at their skin, and imagined bats swooping, and birds. By dinner, bedlam had come: Gutta clawing, Szypper howling, and Nachman Kipnis knocking his head rhythmically against the wall. Trumpelman came round with ice packs; he squeezed their calves; he straightened Nellie’s wet, tangled hair. Finally, when the lines of light had faded from around the curtains, the children grew quiet. The sweet syrup inside the candies began to dissolve. It was at that hour that the doctor, seated on a wooden chair, himself not visible, told them a story. It became a regular custom.

It was not the stories that calmed the orphans, at least not at the start. No, it was the voice that told them, high-pitched, lisping on S’s, rising and falling out of the gloom. Occasionally a sick child would cry out; often somebody sighed. But bit by bit they all lay back, staring with their brown or black eyes, listening to Trumpelman describe his youth, his adventures, his journey to America when hardly more than a boy.

“My dear children, from my earliest days I have suffered from a wanderlust that has taken me to many places, in many lands. Only now, at the end of my life, have I struck roots—here, with you, in your town. One day, many years ago, I arrived at the port of Memel and for no reason, on an impulse, boarded the steamer Morgenstern, which was tied up at the piers. The decks of this ship were covered with great piles of coal, and seated upon these piles, and in the spaces between them, were hundreds and hundreds of Jews. In the center of the deck was a tall metal smokestack: black clouds, with live sparks in them, were even then pouring from it, covering the Jews, in their black clothing, with an even darker layer of ash. Children, as I stood there, watching this, I began to tremble. Something made me afraid. I knew that this little steamer—it was an old ship, of iron, with fittings for masts and sails—was meant to travel along the Baltic coasts. But then, the many passengers, the coal, the coal piles on the decks—that could only mean an open-sea journey, across the earth perhaps, perhaps to America!

“No sooner did this thought occur than there was the sound of a whistle, and a shower of sparks, all orange, shot into the air. The Morgenstern pulled away from the port. You can imagine my shock, my horror. I had no ticket. I possessed nothing but the clothes on my back. Yet strange as it must sound to you, as the houses of Memel grew smaller and smaller, as the shallow green sea turned steadily gray, my fear fell from me and I grew lighthearted. Many times since, in the course of countless dangers, I have experienced this feeling, this joy. It is the happiness of knowing one’s fate has been taken out of one’s hands. I know now that my life has been guarded for some particular purpose, some task, though what it may be I still cannot say.