Perhaps it was the tone of this man’s voice; perhaps it was the sight of soldiers in uniforms who now joined the crowd—for whatever reason the Poles turned around. As a matter of fact, more people were coming up every moment, from the main station, the hotel, the various shops; they pressed against the backs of those in front of them, and even jumped a bit in the air. Everyone was trying to see into the interior of the wagon, all gloomy and black, except for low shrubs attached to the floor and dozens of stones that stuck up here and there. These were white or gray slabs, some square, some rounded at the top, and they were all crowded together, leaning against each other like bad teeth in a mouth. A shudder went through the hundreds of people. Tombstones! Markers for graves!

The thin-nosed man, he also had black, slicked-down hair, called out to the crowd. “Poles! Listen! Is it day or is it night?”

Many people swung their heads to look for the sun. There it was, round, bright, and hot enough to keep alive the late summer flies.

“It’s daytime!”

“Yes! Daytime!”

The figure on the platform seemed to have swallowed his lips. There was just a slot where his mouth was. “No! It is night. Night. Look how many stars are out!” He threw his arms over the crowd where some Jews, wearing yellow patches on the front of their coats, and on the shoulders, shuffled their feet and laughed at the joke.

“Yes!” somebody cried. “Like Hollywood!”

A thick-armed Pole looked about him—at the Jews, at the soldiers, and at the Volksdeutschers, who stood at the back, with their leather straps under their chins. Then he crossed those arms on top of his chest. “We wanted a Poland without Jews. Now we’ve got Jews without Poland.”

“Citizens! You are about to see something that really happened.” The man in the gray suit motioned toward the dark box behind him and stepped to one side of what was, after all, a stage. “This is the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. Night. Darkness. Listen, the midnight bell—”

At those words there was a sound like a gong, hidden, deep, echoing. One of the white horses thrust his head downward and rolled his pink eye. On the stage a Jew was standing, wearing striped pants, a cutaway coat, a top hat. A gold chain glistened on his vest. There was a ring on every finger.

The black-haired, lipless man whispered, “Rothschild!”

The gong sounded again and a second Jew appeared from the opposite side of the wagon. This was an old man, his eyes red-rimmed, dressed in a long gabardine and a fur-trimmed hat.

“Aha!” the man in the gray suit exclaimed. “Another Elder of Zion!”

Then the gong rang once more, and a fourth and a fifth time, up to the midnight hour; with each stroke a new Jew appeared, until at last, in silence, with wolf lips and frizzled hair, the representatives of the twelve tribes stood shoulder to shoulder across the front of the stage.