His voice brought Trumpelman to his senses. “Do you know who this is? How can you think she would come to the House of Pleasure? Miss Lubliver is a valuable artist in the Jewish community and is under the Judenrat’s protection.”

“I repeat that she came because she wanted to come and may go when she wishes to go. No one has said he would shoot her brains out.”

Perhaps it is true that the life one leads shows up in one’s appearance. For Grundtripp, after just six months among us, looked somehow different, altered, as if he had sat for one of Klapholtz’s futurist paintings. One eye, for instance, was slightly but definitely higher than the other, and the left nostril seemed larger than the right. Now, when he leaned toward the singer, only half his mouth smiled. It was as if he, too, like the Jewish maidens, were pressed to a pane of glass. “Will you stay with me? Here with me? Or will you go?”

The woman was clutching the top of the cape to her chin. She stared at the Obergruppenführer. She turned to Trumpelman. “Is it you? The Elder? How can you remember me? What can you want with me? A great man with a worthless Jew?”

“No, no, no! It is I who am the worthless one! I throw myself before you! You could walk on me with your feet, the way a queen walks on a cloak!” Trumpelman gripped her arms. He helped her rise from the bed. Without resisting, willingly, she walked with him toward the door. But when they reached it, she stopped. Then she jerked her head.

“Listen!” she said.

There was a noise in the hallway outside. It was like a clock’s pendulum, making a tick, a tick, but missing on each beat the tock. The Jewish Elder gripped his eyeglass frame. “I know that sound,” he murmured.

The door opened and—with the sole of his special shoe striking the floor—Fried Rievesaltes walked into the room.

Instantly Miss Lubliver wrenched herself from the grip of the older man. Her face was pale and, as Trumpelman said, bony. Her head twitched sharply again.

The round face of Rievesaltes was glowing in the light from the twin tulip lamps. Between his nose and his lip he had started a mustache, just a thin one, as if a child had penciled it in. “This is a private room,” he said to the Elder. Then, to Lipiczany, who stood pressed to the wall: “This is no place for a child.”

Enraged, Trumpelman advanced on the Chief of Police. “Now I understand! You arranged this! You brought her here! As a favor for the High and Mighty!”

“Who then,” answered Rievesaltes, “give favors to the Jews. For example, there is this lovely gown.”

The garment in question was clutched against Rievesaltes’ pearl-button vest. In color it was orange-red, with lace along the neckline and with swollen satin sleeves. Miss Lubliver’s arm darted from the cape, which slipped aside. But she already held the soft silk dress before her. “Lace!” she exclaimed. “Silk! The only one in the Ghetto!”