“Stop this weeping!” Grundtripp commanded.

“Weeping! Yes, I’m weeping! Because a man like me has to beg from a man like you.”

Before the officer could respond, there was a clatter in the hallway and F. X. Wohltat burst through the door. He pointed a finger at the Elder, who was still on his knees. “Chairman Trumpelman, you broke our agreement. You overacted your part. Valuable property—the roulette, the card tables, it’s all been destroyed. You were only supposed to send the girls home. Now you will have to pay! We have confiscated the Judenrat limousine!”

Was it because the Jews had become so much thinner that the Volksdeutscher looked actually fat? Lipiczany noticed how the man’s arms took up the room in his sleeves, how his neck pushed down his collar.

The tears dried up in the Elder’s eyes. “What?” he said. “The limousine?”

Grundtripp walked over. He seemed to have swallowed his lips altogether. Without speaking he struck Trumpelman on the side of his head, near his eye. The “American” spectacles flew off, shattered. Blood came from a gash in his cheek. The Obergruppenführer swung across his own body, like a backhand in tennis, and the Elder’s head snapped back.

“‘A man like me!’” the Other repeated. “‘A man like you!’”

Wohltat was excitedly walking up and down, wincing, making faces. “Never mind me,” he said. “I’m just a little sausage.” Then he darted in and gave the Judenrat Chairman a kick with his shoe.

Suddenly the two Others pulled back. Miss Lubliver, with the gown only half covering her body, spoke once again. “Day and night. They must work day and night. Smoke will come from the chimneys, flame from the mills. Two shifts! Two shifts until the men drop!”

Nisel, pale, squinting, wrung his white hands. He could not understand why Chaim, such a big man, such a strong man, did not fight back against his attackers. Was he a coward? Afraid of the Others! The thought made the boy choke. He wanted to shout, Get up! Fight them! Kill them! But when the two men closed in again, when they again started to beat him, the great hands of the Elder hung limply down.

II

Late that same afternoon Trumpelman arrived back at Tsarskoye Selo. The Obergruppenführer dropped him off in his new Double Six. The Elder could hardly walk. His clothes were ripped, his cloak gone. There was only one lens left in his frame. He did not go into the mansion, but around it, to the gardens in back. Though early in springtime, the fresh green stems of garlic were pushing out of the ground. Trumpelman sank down among them; wearily, he shut his eyes.

No telling how long he might have stayed there if Bettsack, the schoolmaster, had not walked by carrying what looked like a gigantic squash. Smuggling! said the Elder to himself, and keeping low, keeping hidden, he followed the young teacher to the edge of the plowed-up field. There the orphans—both the old-timers and the ones who had joined the Asylum in the last years before the move to the Balut—were waiting. They all had caps on, and coats, and were holding such things as nuts, the head of a cabbage, and a pink India-rubber ball. The sun had dropped well down in the sky, and the air was chilly now. Bettsack was a thin fellow, poorly whiskered, with threads that stuck up from his collar. He made his way to the center of the field, set down the gourd—it was as big as a washbasin, really—and began to call through his hands.