It was not Bass who awoke, not any of the children. It was I. C. Trumpelman. “Where is this? Is this Warsaw?” The Elder was blinking, blinking. Then the lids of his eyes swung right up.

The child was horrified. Even his death was a trick! “Are you alive?”

In the face of the sick man teeth appeared. An attempt to smile. “What’s your opinion?”

A joke! Joking! The boy pulled himself to attention. “It is my duty to inform you of the decision of the Edmund Trilling Brigade. The brigade has decided—I have come to inform you—” Up swelled Lipiczany’s heart. It was like a gag in his mouth.

Trumpelman spoke instead. “Are you one of my orphans? Step closer. I need my eyeglasses.”

Nisel could not stand erect. His head kept drooping. He was shaking, too. Then the Asylum Director, with his right hand, touched the edge of the old winter coat. “Is it young Einhorn?”

“Trumpelman! Elder of the Jews! Because of your crimes against the Jewish people, the Edmund Trilling Brigade has sentenced you to death.”

The Elder’s blue eyes clouded over, like water mixed into an absinthe drink. “But you shot my stallion already! My noble stallion! Braver than a hundred Ghetto Jews!”

The large hand made its fist. The boy had to thrust his own hands deep into his pockets to disguise their trembling. Here was the Elder as Nisel knew him to be. The trembling was from joy that the old man was still the same. But what he said was: “The sentence must be carried out at once.”

Trumpelman lifted his arm, as long, as thin, as a chimney sweep’s broom, and stretched it toward the little table where the spectacles lay. He seized them. They flopped open, dangling. It took him a moment, with his one arm, to put them on. “Who are you? I know you. Wait!”

The boy did not stir. It was as if he were standing on the edge of something.

“Lipiczany!”

The knees of the boy gave way. He dropped, like dropping over a cliff edge, to Trumpelman’s side. “Chaim!” he said. Their faces almost touched. The top teeth of the Elder came out again. A second smile.

“Lipiczany, my own son! I did not think you could still be alive.”

The man turned his head. His chin, his wiry cheek, brushed Nisel’s. Everyone, in his sleep, kept calmly breathing.

“Chaim?”

“Yes?”

“You knew.”

“Knew?”

“About the forest. About the yellow bus.”

“Poor Jews! Poor people!”

“But you still told them to go!”

There were tears on the Elder’s cheeks. His own? Or Nisel’s. “Is it true you have come to kill me?”

Lipiczany, to answer, reached inside his coat and took out a gun.

The Elder, seeing it, shut his eyes. “I can’t even use the telephone. Rievesaltes has occupied the telephone exchange.”

The gun was a large one, with a wooden handle. Like a pirate’s pistol. The boy lifted the heavy weapon. He looked along the barrel. Where to aim it? At the heart? He leaned over the old man’s body, touching his ear to the fallen chest. Here it was! Beating and beating!