His father’s hair was black, brilliantined, shining like a count’s. Not just a count’s, a king—which meant of course that Nisel himself was really a prince, cast adrift the way Moses had been. Instantly the boy felt for Isaiah Trumpelman the deepest scorn. The old man was a stand-in, a substitute, a comical Jew. How surprised he would be when the truth was revealed, and the little orphan took his rightful place on the throne. Then the cold sky began to grow lighter, like color coming into a patient’s cheeks; Nisel lifted his head from his knees. He heard a sound like the crack of a whip, and another sound too: gongs, or bells. It’s Muszkat! he thought, half-asleep. The funeral hearse!

The boy got to his feet and trotted toward Brzeszinska, a prominent street in the Ghetto. From that direction he could hear the whip crack again and a voice cry out, “Faster!” That must have been Muszkat, calling to his mare. He heard the mourners, like in the Orient, ringing their gongs and bells. Then, from around Marysinska Corner, came the wagon itself. But this was not the black box of the funeral hearse. For an instant Lipiczany thought it was the Smugowa Street pumper, since it had the same low cylindrical tank, as well as a row of pails, like fire buckets, strung on either side. It was these, striking against the side of the tank, that made the sound like bells.

The four Bloomgarden children, the ones who had jumped from the burning building, had more of these pails in their hands. They ran back and forth between the wagon and the front of each house they passed. There, at every doorstep, was a bucket of urine and feces, and it was this that the children had to transfer to their own pails and then pour into the big metal tank. It was work—there were no sewers in the Baluty Suburb—that had to be done. For doing it, you got a double ration.

“Faster! Hurry up!” Bloomgarden, the father, cracked his whip again. Nisel saw with horror that Einhorn, Kipnis, and Szypper were the horses; they had a kind of yoke over their shoulders, and a leather harness passed over their brows. The fecalists drew closer and closer. But Lipiczany, in the center of Brzeszinska, held his ground.

“Comrade Einhorn! Comrade Kipnis!” he began. Then he fell silent. He saw that around each orphan’s neck there hung a square pasteboard sign. SMUGGLER! it said. Trumpelman had made them an example.

Nisel, directly in the path of the wagon, shut his eyes. The whip cracked. The pails clanked and clanged. The wheels ground around. Then the whole stinking contraption swept by him, without touching a hair.

For a moment the orphan remained alone between the four corners, squinting, swallowing air. Then more Jews came out—not to their work, however, but slowly, keeping together, to some other destination. Nisel followed the crowd.

Assisi Street Number 2 was a large two-story building, which used to belong to the furrier, Szapiro. That gentleman had used it as a storehouse and a factory for furs. The skins came into the big open hall on the ground floor; there they were sorted and sent for stitching to the smaller rooms above. As for the retail business of Szapiro & Son, that had been conducted solely in the Alexsandrowska Boulevard shop, the one with the plate-glass windows and the famous crystal chandelier.