In his sleep Trumpelman smiled. It was daylight in the dream he was having, not night. The sunshine poured through the picture windows. Stalin, the People’s Friend, and Churchill, the Bulldog, had to wear smoked glasses against the glare. Roosevelt shielded his eyes. Only the thin little Pope looked quickly around without blinking. Then Wohltat came in with coffee cups.

“The plantation is doing well,” he said. He motioned for everyone to look out the window, where the coffee trees were growing on the side of a hill. An antelope stepped out of the forest, and so did deer, and gazelles.

“Have you a peach?” Churchill asked, and at once a real peach showed up in his hand.

This was the Jewish preserve, the sleeper knew. But where were his people, his Jews?

“There they are!” exclaimed Pius XII. He pointed to a number of gentlemen strolling past the window. They were speaking softly together and glancing into various books. “This is how Jews live now.”

Just then a red ball bounced into the room, followed by a broad-chested boy. It was young Gumbiner, who was somehow already grown. Trumpelman smiled at his guests. “Have you met my son?”

The Englishman leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. “Fine boy!” he said.

The boy said, “Father, is he here yet?”

Everyone understood the person they were waiting for was the Big Man. Like the peach, he suddenly appeared. The guests rose to meet him. He looked like his photos, with his hair combed over his forehead. They did not call him Horowitz. They used his right name.

“The whole world thought we were going to kill the Jews,” he began. “But what a fine farm we gave them! The Kingdom of Madagascar will last a thousand years!”

“The Jewish question has at last been solved,” Roosevelt stated.

Stalin said, “Now the war can be ended.”

“No more suffering for the peoples of the world!”

The Pope put his fingers together. “All men—brothers!”

Then the man with the black shock of hair said, “Let us hear from the peacemaker!”

“Speech! Speech!”

Trumpelman stood. His heart was swollen with happiness. The tears stood in his eyes. “Friends!” he began. He knew full well that he was only dreaming. But he felt the dream was a prophecy, a vision of the way things would be. That meant his Jews, with their courage, their discipline, and their patience, would survive. “Friends!” he said again, but the wind howled in the mansion and woke him up.

For a moment he struggled to remember the events of his dream—the end of the war, the homeland for the Jews, the husky child—but forgot them. Then Madame Trumpelman woke by his side. “Stop trembling,” she said.

Her husband groaned. “Gumbiner,” he said. “The boy!”

“We will have our own son.”

But Trumpelman stared ahead. “His mother is on the list.”

Madame Trumpelman put her arms around him; they wound their legs together. Above their bodies the instruments whooped and jangled and pounded. In the Ghetto, and even in the rest of the town, people heard how the whole house was moaning, like a great Aeolian harp.