Even before the Koscielny Place fire, I. C. Trumpelman had been a popular leader. This was because of the soup kitchens, the ration cards, and all the boys and girls he had put into school. “Now we are learning, because of our President, Trumpelman!” the students all sang, first thing in the morning. And it had been the Elder who had thought up the idea of using the spinning mills to make the uniforms for the Conqueror’s army. The Ghetto was on its way to becoming one great factory. Everyone in the Balut would have a good job.

But none of these accomplishments counted as much as the rescue of Einhorn. Not that they weren’t important, critical even. But the opinion of the Jews was that another man, an equally skillful politician, might have done the same. To walk through flames, however! To go through burning walls! No ordinary man could do it, no person of flesh and blood. In short, this was a True Judge, a man who was no man: the savior of his people. The Jews began to say, in so many words: Nothing can happen to our Elder. Bullets bounce off him. So nothing will happen to us, either.

A last word about the fire. The heat from the crumbling building at Number 80 eventually thawed the water pumper, which stopped the flames from spreading to the wooden houses on either side. Professor Potash was taken to the hospital, in quite serious condition. The other tenants of the ruined building spent the night at the Housing Department, where, the next morning, they were all assigned to new rooms. As for the burnt boy, Hersh Einhorn: Trumpelman stretched him out on the back seat of his Daimler, got in the front seat himself, and drove off to the Hatters’ Asylum, which had just been resettled within the Balut. On the trip there the Einhorn orphan opened his eyes. He whispered to Lipiczany, who was perched on the jump seat, “Hey! Look!”

Then, while Nisel—not squinting, but staring, amazed—leaned forward, the boy’s scorched fingers fumbled at his yellow star and ripped it away. There was a red star underneath. “Soviet Army,” Einhorn said. “The glorious Soviet Army.” Then he closed his eyes, and they sped quickly on, their headlights dimmed, through the Jewish part of the town.

II

What came to be called the New Hatters’ Asylum was located on the top floor of Trumpelman’s country home, which he named Tsarskoye Selo, after the famous summer palace of the Tsar. It really was a country home, too—except that the Elder slept in it the year around. To one side of the mansion there was a barn, and at the right time of year geese, goats, and sheep came out of it and wandered over the lawns. On the other side were the gardens, with vegetables in them, with garlic growing, and different kinds of flowers. The front of the estate was decorated in the familiar banana-leaf design. Real grapevines climbed the walls.