Lipiczany stood alone before the black, blank doorway of Assisi Street 2. Then he stepped inside. Overturned tables. Upended chairs. A smell from hides. Stray light was reflected from bits of glass and fragments of mirror. Overhead the crystal rods of the Szapiro & Son chandelier struck each other, tinkling constantly. Directly beneath it, in a plain wooden chair, with his white hair shining and his glasses turning themselves on and off, sat the leader of our Jews.

Nisel walked toward him. Trumpelman did not stir. His hat, like a beggar’s hat, was upside down on the floor. The pink ribbon lay loose on his chest like a sash. “I would have been a wonderful actor! Ha! Ha! I could perform in the Temple of Art!” He did not look at the boy, who drew near him. “Waif! Tomorrow the whole Ghetto will be covered with pictures! Trumpelman will be a hero!”

The orphan squatted by the chair. He reached for the old man’s hand. “I haven’t a sweet,” said the native of Vilna. “I used to carry them in my pockets.”

Nisel did not reply. He sat there, squeezing the Elder’s fingers. The chandelier tinkled above them, and, like a reflector in a ballroom, filled every corner with mothlike light.

After a moment or two, from high up, far off, a person sang a snatch from a song.

Bai nakht verft der alter fisher, hoopla…

Instantly the Elder was on his feet and moving up the flight of stairs. As fast as he could Nisel followed. He saw Trumpelman standing at the end of the hallway, with his ear by a shut door. Just as the boy reached him, the Elder threw his shoulder against the wooden panel. The two Jews—when you think of it, there was more than a half century between them—went inside.

There was hardly anything in that windowless room. A bed, with two tulip-shaped lamps screwed to the wall above the headboard. A single table. Only two chairs. Under the bedcovers, with black hair, a white neck, and smooth, broad shoulders, was a naked woman. One of them—it was the thin-faced, lipless man—was sitting nearby.

“Miss Lubliver!” Trumpelman exclaimed.

Instinctively the woman sat up and turned away. You could see all the way down her spine, to where two little dents broke the skin, like on a statue of Venus.

With one motion the Elder removed his cape, spun it in the air, and brought it down over the singer’s shoulders. The old man was red-faced. His bucked teeth showed. He stammered.

“I don’t know what to say. There has been an error. An awful mistake. How thin you are, Miss Lubliver! Your face. Your little bones. I can’t help trembling. What if I had not been here to save you? What then?”

“Save her? But she is here of her own free will.”

It was the man in the gray suit, speaking in Polish. Only he was not wearing that clothing now. He was dressed in a uniform—silver, with black piping and black trim. There was a death’s-head on the cap. By then the Ghettoites had learned who this was: Grundtripp, the boss of the Totenkopfers, not just for the city, but for hundreds of kilometers around. An Obergruppenführer.