Still August 4. Two or so in the afternoon. The light bulb over Trumpelman’s head flickered, flickered, and went out. Occupation by the no-neckers of the weak-current station. A few minutes after that, or perhaps it was at that very moment, the Elder suffered a second, far more serious stroke. One-half his body was frozen. The eye on the left did not blink.

Was this the end of I. C. Trumpelman? It seemed surely so. Every day he was sinking and sinking. Now the Jews talked about him. They talked of nothing else. When a Baluter met a Baluter, he didn’t ask, “How are you?” or “What color’s your work card?” Instead, he said, “What news about Chaim?” Even people who detested the Elder, who blamed him for everything, could not hide their emotion, sorrow it was, when they heard that day by day, then week by week, the last of his strength was ebbing away.

The Balut held its breath. But the rest of the world went on in the usual fashion. One after the other the remaining ghettos were being destroyed. Bialystok’s turn came almost right away. Bialystok! Such a cultured and lively town. Then, early in September, Minsk and Lida were made free of Jews. Suddenly the Balut was the last ghetto in Poland. Perhaps that is the reason the Ghettoites, who had nearly forgotten their Elder, now worried so much about his fate. His life and the life of the Suburb were so mixed together in people’s minds that they thought as long as the old man survived, the Ghetto would, too. It was as if he had some magical power.

No wonder, then, that on September 22, when the rumor spread that the Elder was actually dying, a shudder went through the streets of the Balut. All that day hundreds and hundreds of people walked from the center of the Suburb to stand beneath the walls of Tsarskoye Selo. They huddled there, thousands altogether, silent, not moving; and they did not go home when it got to be night.

The moon came up, half dissolved, like a pill. Dark clouds blew by. Inside the mansion the current was out. But shadows from candles flip-flopped on the walls. The sickroom itself smelled from their hot yellow wax. Trumpelman lay on his back, in bed. In a low voice, not like his own voice, but still lisping a little, he was telling the orphans a story.

“My dear children, a long time has passed since I last spoke to you of the journey of the Morgenstern. So much has happened. It is as if we had all lived ninety years. Never mind! Do not think sad thoughts. It is true, I am ill and at the end of my days. But is it not wonderful that just when my strength has fled, when everything is growing dim, that the adventures of my youth should return with such force to me?”

The Elder was not wearing eyeglasses over his round, bluish eyes. His nose pointed up like a fin. He could not perform the old trick of talking around a lit cigarette. He could hardly speak at all.