V

Rain, rain. It wouldn’t stop. The long, low clouds passed so near it seemed you could touch them. The top floors of the buildings on the Baluter Ring had all disappeared. Sometimes the bulging bottom of a cloud would roll over the ground, splitting, spilling; or just a crooked finger of mist would descend, suddenly, as if it meant to lift a Jew by the collar. And how wet these Jews were! The water streamed off the brims of their hats like Spanish tassels. Their skin was wrinkled, like after a bath. They did not mind. They hardly noticed. Six deep, numbering thousands, they stared into the center of the park, where the damp wood of the scaffold showed through a cloud that bubbled and frothed like the head of a beer.

Rievesaltes was on the platform and so was Lipsky. They both stood on square boxes and both, from their beatings, were bruised and blue. There were nooses around their necks already. The odd thing was that these knots were made out of either end of a single rope, a rope that went up and through a wheel, a pulley, attached to the scaffold beam. Verble was on the platform, too. He was the new head of the Jewish police. By himself, without a speech, without anything, he kicked the box out from underneath each doomed man.

Naturally, Rievesaltes went down and Lipsky, a slight man, ascended. Verble pushed the boxes beneath both men again. Then he gave a command. Four policemen—one was the old hand, Pravenishkis—jumped onto the platform. They began to drop stones, cobblestones, into the seat of the lawyer’s pants. Again Verble removed the boxes. Rievesaltes sank, but more slowly. Lipsky still rose. The test was repeated. Now Lipsky, with stones in his pockets, stones in his crotch, actually dropped—while Rievesaltes, whose vest had only a single pearl button, climbed into the air. A final test. A perfect balance. Both men weighed exactly the same.

The policemen dropped down from the platform and arranged themselves on either side of the Elder’s wheeled chair. Vigorously Trumpelman raised his arms.

“Jews, listen! Lwow! Sosnowiec-Bendzyn! Bialystok! Minsk and Lida! All these ghettos have been liquidated! They no longer exist. And now, fresh news! Weep, Jews! Vilna, a center of learning, of light—yesterday Vilna disappeared! Any idiot can see, if we had not caught these traitors, yesterday would have been the end for us, too. But here they are! Look at them! The big shots!” Here the Elder waved over his shoulder toward Lipsky, toward Rievesaltes, each standing on his own special box.

“Where are their armies now? The police force is stringing its own minister up! Ha! Ha! And what about the anarchists? Those snot-noses with popguns? Why don’t they rescue their leader? It’s because they don’t dare! Those pipsqueaks know the Elder has got back his strength! He’s not the one who’s going to die! What about that, Mister Rievesaltes? What, Mister Lipsky? Let’s hear your last words!”