“Hello! Hello! Bialystok? I’ve got Bialystok! Comrades! Our fraternal greetings!” Kipnis turned toward Lipsky for his instructions. Everyone else turned toward him, too. He hesitated. He rubbed the top of his pointed ear.

“How will you get out of the Suburb?” he asked the boy.

“From the Zgierska Boulevard Bridge,” Nisel answered.

“No good. They’ll pick you up in a moment. Let me go. I don’t look like a Jew.” Einhorn, with his flat nose, said that.

Now Szypper interrupted. “There is only one way to find out where the train is going, and that is to put an agent aboard. He can let himself be caught in a roundup. Of course, he’ll hide his gun.”

“At the very least,” added Kipnis, “he can leave a message inside the carriage.”

Said Szypper, “I’m the one for the job!”

Lipsky had made up his mind. He gave the following order to Kipnis: “Inform Bialystok that we shall postpone the operation.” Then he turned to Nisel. “You have only four days.”

“Oh!” A cry came from Professor Zygmunt. He was shaking all over, like a palsied man. “I was definitely prepared to do it!” He began to stagger first this way, then that. You could hear the gasoline sloshing inside the bottles. “I had worked myself up!” With that he stiffened, like something frozen, and fainted onto the floor.

“Help!” cried the cannibal woman. “He’s ticking!”

The members of the Edmund Trilling Brigade rushed forward. They opened the coat of the human bomb and disengaged the wires to the clock.

In the sudden silence, everyone turned toward Lipiczany. But Lipiczany, quick as a monkey, had already darted away.

II

Zgierska was an Aryan thoroughfare even though it cut through the middle of the Ghetto. The only way to go from the one half of the Balut to the other was to climb over the bridge. This was a tall wooden construction that passed over the boulevard at a height of three stories. It had a steep stairway on either side. There were always Jews on it, passing in both directions. For some reason, this structure had become a popular spot for the Baluters to kill themselves. Three people had been known to jump off in a single day. The Conquerors posted two regulations on the uppermost railing:

It is strictly forbidden to interfere with any Jew who is attempting suicide.

And:

Jews wishing to commit suicide are requested to make certain they have proper identification cards in their pockets.

After a time, though, these signs were removed. Perhaps because, by the winter of 1941, not so many people were using the bridge for that purpose. It wasn’t really high enough. There were cases of men and women who had to lie on the pavement, while the crowds of Poles passed around them, as if they, with their broken limbs, did not exist.

At five in the morning the bridge was empty. The sky was as black as tar. Lipiczany moved slowly up the stairs. He had on a cap and gloves and an overcoat that hung to his ankles. The sleeves were held back with pins. Halfway up the stairway he stopped. He swooped the hard air noisily into his lungs. It felt as if the huge, thick coat were completely filled with his abnormal heart. Without removing his mittens, clumsily, he tore the six-pointed patch from his breast. Then he pulled himself higher.