The whole front row was whispering. Everyone took little looks at Trumpelman’s mate. That woman, pale, with hollows beneath her cheekbones, rose. The Elder rose with her. She gripped his cloak. “Yes,” she told him. “It’s me. It’s what I am. Look at her head. The way it’s twisting. It’s the weight. The pressure. Like a vise!”

The Queen of Scotland, so dark, so dusky, was by then halfway down the stairs. Indeed, she tossed her head. It was like a horse reacting to flies. “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” she said.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” Madame Trumpelman murmured. “She’s suffering!”

Young Miss Blit went the rest of the way down the staircase. In her bare feet, in her dragging gown, she walked to the entranceway. “To bed, to bed, to bed,” was what she was saying. But she did not go to bed. She threw back the bolt of the gigantic door. It swung outward. Immediately wind from a machine blew the hair back from her head. Whoosh! The candle went out in her hand.

Trumpelman and Madame Trumpelman were leaning against each other. They held each other up. She was stroking the cloth his cape was made of. “Chaim. My Chaim. I see into the future. Yes, like a witch. There will be Jews in this future, honey Chaim. The same kind that are living now. Of us these Jews will say, They were bad, they did terrible things, but they weren’t as bad as the Others.”

“Look,” her husband answered.

Everyone did. The queen, so distracted, was stepping out of the castle, into the sudden blast of the wind. It whistled about her. On this sad scene the two sides of the curtain, like a pair of shutters, drew closed.

Immediately something that looked like a palm tree came tripping across the front of the stage and—it’s the only way to describe it—sat down. This was from right to left. Then, from left to right, a thick bush darted out and crouched next to the palm. A pine tree with needles came after, and then two or three little shrubs. Before you knew it there was a line of vegetation across the whole front part of the stage. Their branches were trembling. They shook their green leaves.

The curtains parted. The scene was set in an open place. There were rocks and, here and there, an evergreen tree. The wind was still blowing from some spot offstage. It shook the curls of Macbeth’s thick blue-black beard. “Come, put mine armour on,” he said. He was already wearing his metal breastplate, and his tight leather helmet was pulled onto his head. He was the soldier of old. But he wanted more protection. “My armour!” he repeated. A Hatters’ Asylum orphan ran about, tying on layers of padding and new pieces of mail. Lifshits was swelling. It looked as if, under such a load, he could barely stand. But he drew his sword left-handedly out. Then he laughed. A long, loud laugh that made, inside his armor, a hollow sound.