“Whose?” Kipnis inquired.

“Don’t know,” Einhorn replied.

Szypper: “Someone with connections.”

“Zlotys you mean.”

The Red partisans stared silently down at the distant figures, some of whom were digging, some holding lit torches, a few just standing around.

It was the sort of funeral you hardly saw anymore. In the first days of the Baluty Suburb you could easily get a plot, a headstone, and a rabbi of your own. That was because people died more or less one by one. But only a little later, because of the hunger, because of the typhus, Jews seemed to expire at once, in bunches. It was already the custom to lay them out in the street, covered by pieces of paper, the paper weighted down by stones. After a while the Judenrat picked them up in handcarts and barrows, then threw them in unmarked and sometimes even common graves. There was only one real hearse in the Suburb, because there was only one team of horses. These belonged to Muszkat, the former liveryman, and it was he who had the monopoly of funerals in our town.

Comrade Kipnis, in his dress suit, went down the hill by himself. The suit was blue, and in a moment got lost in the gloom. His companions waited until they saw him show up again among the small knot of mourners; that was his job, to mix with the crowd. Then they, with their milk cow, started down too.

These three did not head for the grave but for the funeral wagon, which stood off to one side. There Muszkat was waiting. He had what were known as “boiled ears,” like a prizefighter’s, and his hair grew like a cap well down his brow. Stealthily, silently, the cow and the smugglers went around to the back of the wagon, where a ramp led to the ground. There she stopped, and would go no farther. Einhorn and Szypper pushed at the back half, Lipiczany tugged at the front. No movement.

“Let me,” said Muszkat. “Meow! I know animals. Meow! Meow!”

At this the Holstein turned one hundred eighty degrees and stared, with her wet eyes, at the torches and the dark mound of earth; at the widow in black; and, under a blanket of flowers, at Fiebig, the financier, who was the dead man himself.

The rabbi held up his hand and cleared a frog from his throat. This was Kornischoner, of the Fur Trimmers’ Synagogue, whose presence at the funeral of such an important and wealthy man was a surprise. Just this matter was taken up first.

“Nomberg,” he said, “couldn’t come.”

There was a pause. The old man looked around. Hair was growing all over his face. You couldn’t see a mouth in it except when he talked.

“Neither could Rabbi Lunt.”

The Widow Fiebig, supported by three sullen sons, took out a red handkerchief, which she waved in front of her eyes. Kornischoner continued.

“I barely got here myself. A big order came in. For powder puffs. For shops in Berlin. They put in a quota. Four hundred puffs a person. Then you get your dinner. Kohlrabi in soup. Broad noodles. One ersatz egg. I started before it was light out. I stopped when the sun went down. Guess how many puffs I made. Eighty-three. And twelve got rejected. That makes seventy-one!” Here tears came out of his very small eyes, and were soaked up at once by his beard. “No soup. No egg. Nothing to eat! What will I do? Who can answer this question? Those little threads! Impossible to work with! I can’t make four hundred puffs!”