“I know you do not trust Trumpelman! You want to kill him, to shoot a bullet into his heart. But then who will become Chairman of the Jewish Council? Rievesaltes! The archenemy will get the guns! Don’t let it happen! Nisel, my shadow! Run to Lipsky! Tell him to come! I’ll give him pistols and bombs. Then he can kill me, if I am not dead already! Smuggle the weapons out in my coffin! Ha! Ha! Like you once did the cow!”

Friends! If only someone would invent a time machine so that we could fly back over the years. Then we could suddenly appear before Nisel and say, Don’t listen! It’s a trick! He’s cunning! Cunning! And then, if he paid no attention, if he refused to carry out his orders, we could kill the old fox ourselves. Look! The boy is wavering! His arm, the arm with the gun, is going down! We have to remember he was a child, in spite of everything that he’d lived through. He still had to live through more.

“Hurry! Don’t let Rievesaltes take over the Ghetto! Bring Lipsky! The guns will be here at midnight! Run! My son! My child!”

Nisel made up his mind. He moved to the door, threw it open, and jumped over Szpilfogel’s outstretched legs. The Guardsman who had grown a small mustache in the Horowitz manner, woke up in time to see the boy start down the mansion stairs. Then he saw something else, something that made him swallow and gulp. The Elder was sitting up! His feet hung over the edge of the bed. He was moving his arms!

“After him! Follow him! Find out where he goes!”

The Guardsman did not wait for the specter to speak again. In a bound, capless, he took out after the boy in the reddish-brown coat.

The Judenrat President remained propped on the bed. His teeth came out in what once was a dazzling smile. He was watching the children wake up one after the other, using their wrists to rub their eyes. The cock crowed a final time, loudly, loftily, like the one in the fable who thought that his cry made the sun rise.

II

That day, at midday, Verble, Minister of Housing, walked into the Optima Café and got into line. He still looked the same: a mustache with wax, and ruddy cheeks. More like an Englishman than a Jew. In his hands, in his pockets, were hundreds and hundreds of zlotys. His suit was wrinkled, like a brow. The person in front of him was also a Judenrat member, Schpitalnik, of Culture and Entertainment. A stranger, with his hat down, and a mustache that barely covered his lip, stood behind. The line stretched right through the café, so that the waiters had to twist and duck among the close-set tables. There policemen sat, sipping drinks, smoking cigarettes, laughing at popular jokes. For instance, A fat Pole and a thin Warrior fall off the Zgierska Boulevard Bridge together. Question: Which one hits the ground first? Answer: Who cares? In short, the Optima Café was the headquarters of the Jewish police.