Nisel lay there, half fainting. His bones were not broken, but there was a rope burn on his hand and his cheek. One glove was missing. The cap remained on his head. He knew he had to jump down, to run off, or else he would surely be seen. But he did not move.

The reason for this was that the No. 4 line terminated directly in front of the Hotel Europa. Every few seconds a bell would ring, the pastry shop door would open, and the smell of the buttertarts, the ones with the toasted crusts, would expand through the street, through the air, to Nisel’s nose. The boy could taste them. He could see them, piled up on their white paper doilies, the bottom of one resting on the crust of another, as if there had never been a war. Pyramids! Out of gold! Once Chaim had led all the orphans into the shop: “Tarts for everyone!” Nisel remembered the way they dissolved, without any help from the eater, onto the tongue. How warm they made you feel! How contented! Why should he move? Why fight? Why run? He would stay here forever, the muscles of his body, the whole of his waking mind, both tensed for just one thing: the cheerful tinkle of the pastry shop bell.

Instead he heard the whistle, a kind of shriek really, from the resettlement train. He sat up. The black engine and black tender, the blue third-class carriages, were just disappearing behind the Donati Station, only to appear in a few seconds again. Smoke, like link sausage, shot above the locomotive. The shades were pulled down inside every car. It was going from Nisel’s left to his right. Eastward! Not west! He buttoned his greatcoat and leaped to the ground. The Poles, bicycling by, paid no attention.

Lipiczany followed the tracks for more than half an hour. For much of that time he kept the transport, which moved no more quickly than a man can walk, in view. The light gray sky still had a few birds in it. Here and there the sun nearly came out, the way a picture appears in a rubbing. After a few kilometers all the east-west tracks drew together, in order to pass over the Dolna. It turned out that, since the formation of the Russian front, the bridges over the river were guarded. Nisel had not thought of that. He saw how the Men of Valor stopped all the traffic, whether on foot or not—how they went through people’s papers and searched their carts. There was even a gun there, a big one, which pointed upward in case of planes.

There was nothing to do but veer down toward the river. At the embankment there was a rope-driven ferry, but Nisel did not dare risk getting on. Instead, as soon as he was out of sight of the sentries, he went to the water’s edge. He took off his cap and his shoes and thrust them deep within his pockets. Then, without hesitating, he stepped into the icy Dolna.