“I’m not crying for myself. I don’t care about having to die. Poof! One more Jew! I’m crying for Trilling and Szypper and Professor Zygmunt because they gave up their lives. For what? So that we could behave exactly like their great foe, the Judenrat! Hand one over, we’ll save many! For that we sentenced the ministers to death. It’s the hopelessness, the hopelessness, brothers and sisters! I can’t stop the tears! There is something in history that makes all men act the same!”

Zam’s eyes were a little wet, too. “What’s the alternative? The alternative is to act like the Blond Ones. Go into the street and battle the Jews!”

Faulhaber was gripping his hair, handfuls of it. “The choices!”

“To tell the truth,” said the finisher, Pipe. “To tell the truth, for the first time I feel sympathy for the Jews on the Judenrat.”

The cannibal woman then lifted her dress off her body. Underneath she had panties, probably made out of cotton, but nothing on top of her small, pointing breasts. Naked like that, she went to Lipsky. “Quick,” she said, “Put it on.”

The Commander’s wet head disappeared into the dress, a blue one, with white, daisyish flowers. When it came out again, his eyes were dry and narrow, his teeth made a grinding sound. “Stand back!” he ordered his fellow fighters.

“It’s all right,” said the presser. “No one will stop you.”

“No one,” said Kipnis and Zam together.

The widow of Edmund Trilling had been all her life an Orthodox woman. That explains how she was able to take her hair off and push it down on the head of Lipsky. “Run, run,” she said.

With a gun in his hand, wordlessly, he did so. Out the secret exit, down flights of stairs. Behind him, in the room, the cannibal woman placed her hands on her neck. Her elbows, dropping, modestly covered her breasts. Next to her stood the Widow Trilling. Her head, like a bulb that was planted, sprouted the tiniest hairs.

“What’s the time?” asked a Jew.

No reply.

At street level, Lipsky opened a door a crack and slipped outside. He glanced in both directions, as if looking for traffic, and walked quickly to the far side of the road. There, in the shadows, Szpilfogel nudged the Elder. “That’s the door,” he whispered. “That’s where I followed the orphan boy.”

Trumpelman, in his wheelchair, peered at the approaching woman. Lipsky was a short man; the dress he wore came below his knees, almost to his ankles. But it did not cover his pants cuffs, or his shoes. The Guardsmen raised their rifles, the sweepers lifted their clubs. “Alive,” said the Elder, and released them.

The lawyer saw the ambush just in time. He whirled, he ran, but he tripped on his blue-and-white hem. The clubs fell on his body. The butt of a rifle knocked off his wig. Far off, in the Aryan section, the chimes of the steeple struck the first notes of twelve.