Comrade Kipnis sat down at once at the wireless set. He cranked the handle around.

Hersh Einhorn struck his fist into his hand. He shouted, “Tell us what to do!”

“The Ghetto shall throw off its tyrants!” Lipsky responded. “We’ll destroy them in their very nest! Yes! We’re going to blow up Tsarskoye Selo!”

“The Elder! The Queen! But how—”

“How is up to Professor Zygmunt.”

Yes, that is who the stranger was. How greatly changed he appeared! How much older! In the Jewish graveyard, just two years before, he had not been bald at all. Now what hair he had grew out of a fringe and hung, snow white in color, to his shoulders. The Professor held up two shaking hands.

“Stand back! Do not come closer. You see before you a human bomb!” So saying, he clutched, and parted, the front of his waterproof slicker.

Everyone gasped, including Lipsky. For inside that garment, strapped to his body, were dynamite sticks and gasoline bottles, all of it wired to a large spring-wound clock. “I have solved completely the technical problems. The results of a bomb blast of this type will be a forceful explosion followed by fire. The summer palace will dissolve in flames and smoke.”

Kleiderman, with his tongue, pushed a toothpick from his mouth. “But how will it work?”

“By elementary chemical and mechanical principles. The explosives involve the former, the detonator the latter. The most difficult problem was the fuse and the timing device.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant by my question. The Elite Guard is everywhere. How will you plant the device without being detected? And how will you know when to set if off? What if the dictators aren’t actually there?”

“Easy, easy, I walk into the mansion and request an audience with him. As everyone knows, she has not left the mansion for months, not since she became pregnant. Once I receive an appointment there is nothing to do but wind up the clock and set the alarm. Perhaps I shall have time for a small cigar. I have some dandelions, which I like to smoke in a cabbage leaf.”

The cannibal woman—they still called her that, even though everyone knew she had not eaten her son, only kept his death secret in order to use his ration card—asked the question in all of their minds: “But where will you be when the alarm goes off?”

Zygmunt gave a little wave of his hand. “Oh, where will I be? Where was I when Madame Zygmunt went off to the distant farmlands? On the other side of the fence, my dear. So frightened that I could not prevent myself from releasing the contents of my bladder. The urine went completely down my leg. You know, do you not, that I was once a professor at Crakow? I taught young men and women about the conversion of heat into light and how all energy in the universe is saved. My damp trousers, I believe, were seen by my wife. Do you remember the financier, Fiebig? The first of us to die? Do you remember the way, in the Central Square, he lit a match? This Fiebig is our example. Similarly, I light my match.”