The Elder broke off abruptly. His laugh, dry, rattling, was awful to hear. But he was alive, panting, opening his mouth again.

“We shall go to that island together.”

Then his last breath, a rush of air:

“Madagascar!”

On the floor, against the walls of the room with their hands curled like little paws, the orphans of the Asylum were sleeping. There was Citron. There Gutta Blit. Left-handed Mann Lifshits, too. Their bare ankles were mixed up, as if they had been thrown together in a pile. Little Gumbiner—age, not yet three, and motherless now like the others—Little Gumbiner was dreaming something. A frown followed a smile across his face, like a fox chasing a hare. About the mountain, the torches, the lion, and all the other adventures, neither he nor the others had heard a word.

Some moments went quietly by. Then one child untangled himself from the rest and stood up. Instead of a nightgown he had on a big, shapeless coat. His feet were inside of shoes. This young man looked around, into the room’s every corner. He squinted, as if even the candlelight bothered his eyes. What he saw was that Elite Guardsman Bass was asleep in a chair, by the foot of the Elder’s bed. His colleague, Szpilfogel, was also sleeping, outside the half-open door. That door the lad pulled noiselessly shut. Then, cautiously, carefully, as if Trumpelman were alive and might hear him, he moved to where the old man lay, his lips in a line, his toes pointing up.

Centuries before, in another geological age, the age of reptiles, of fishes, people used to perish on account of diseases. What a world that was! To die in a bed! In modern times that happened to only one in a hundred thousand. Lucky Trumpelman! To have it happen to him. The boy leaned over the Director of the Hatters’ Asylum. The man’s hair leaped away from his scalp and spread over the linen. A regular fountain of hair. How long his arms were! As long, almost, as his body. And his hand, bigger than a man’s head when he balled it up, when he shook it in the air, now lay with knuckles down, fingers open, like an animal left on its back. The American spectacles were lying on the wooden table. It was the sight of these that for some reason made the boy quake.

Impossible to think of a thing more foolish, more pointless, than the tears that at that moment showed up in the young person’s eyes. Tears! What next? Sobbing? Tearing his clothes? There is no end to how stupid we are—in other words, to how much we are capable of forgetting. Fool! Idiot! Coward! The boy called himself all these names. Nonetheless, his eyes filled right to the brim. He could not help himself. Ladies and gentlemen, where do such things as tears come from? What good are they? And don’t they ever dry up?

“Liar!” the boy said, in a half whisper. “Liar! Oh, liar!” He was speaking to the corpse. “You never crossed the ocean in a steamship! You never went to America! Those stories came out of books!” Elite Guardsman Bass stirred a little and made a popping sound with his lips. The youngster hardly noticed. His tears were splashing about—onto the horsehair coat, onto the Elder’s stubbly face. Then he cried aloud, “You swore we would live! You swore it! You promised to take us to Madagascar! Now look what has happened! You lied!”