The day passed that way. The gray sky hung thicker, lower, like a drooping eyelid. Four different times the bus was washed out with barrels of water. Once, with Jews aboard, something went wrong with the engine. It ran for a bit, then sputtered and stopped. How quiet and peaceful the spot became! A Man of Valor, the same one who had put on his gloves on the staircase, walked to the side of the coach. He placed his ear against it.

“Just like in a synagogue,” he said.

Then they cranked the engine and the old omnibus—did those inside think they were on a highway, going past fields and forests and towns—came back to life, vibrating. It was dark by the time the work ended. The rubber-wheeled cart took on the empty water barrels. The Warriors walked beside it, toward the mill.

The night fell without a moon, without stars. Lipiczany walked over the hill like a blind man, hands out. It took him more than an hour to reach the ravine, though it was only a few hundred meters away. The bottom was covered with hard, smooth, flattened stones that clattered as he walked upon them. He could almost see them, they were so intensely white. After a time he came to where the Jews were lying on the ground. He did not stop. He moved forward, among them. His fingers had long since come through the cloth of his remaining glove. He touched the cold, damp skin of the bodies. They were as white as the stones.

“Wake up! Wake up, Jews!” he cried.

It must now be clear that at some point in the day—perhaps at the instant the dark crow settled upon Madame Dickstein’s bundle—Lipiczany had lost his mind. It never occurred to him that the Jews might be dead. He hurried, crouching, from one person to another. He touched their foreheads, their noses, their tightened lips. “Wake up!” he told them. “I’ll lead you to the Suburb. I know the way.”

Something touched his own face. Snow! The flakes were as dark, as weightless, as burned paper. They filled him with urgency. “Widows! Baluters! It is dangerous to sleep in the snow! We have to stay awake! Let’s tell each other stories! About the way it used to be! Do you remember? We lived on Krzyzanowsky Street. The Director gave us raspberry drops. You sucked them until you came to the center. What a center, Jews! Sweet and delicious! Szypper! You know! You remember! In back of the Asylum there was a garden. We grew flowers! Bees came there! It was like heaven! We beat our rugs with a broom!”

Nisel sat cross-legged, chattering happily. Then, while he rested, the others took turns. Madame Dickstein described how the Elder—what strength, what courage he had!—walked into the fire to save her. How all by himself he had rescued everyone. After her, Rabbi Martini. He said he had been in the crowd outside Assisi Street 2. He told everyone how the Elder had saved Jewish daughters from defilement at the House of Pleasure. Next came Pincus Lining. The Elder had personally accepted his petition and saved his room from the fumigation squads. Then, to entertain the Baluters, to pass the time in the night, he blew some glass animals, the kind he used to sell in the street. The biggest one was a bird. It grew and grew. Its glass wings spread over the Jews to protect them. It kept off the black snow.