From one rear door stepped Obergruppenführer Grundtripp. He was wearing a revolver on his belt. He went around the trembling auto and opened the other back door. The wife of the Jewish Elder slid off the seat. She was wearing a dark gown with dark gloves that came to her elbows. The Mosk mill workers nudged each other. They were trying to determine, through plumpness, or paleness, whether or not the Chairman of the Jewish Council had conceived an heir. But Madame Trumpelman stood straight and thin, her eyes narrow, her cheeks sucked in.

“She’s not,” sighed a presser, “in the family way.”

Sheftelowitz plucked Pipe by the edge of his jacket. “Tell her,” he said, “about the needle.”

But other Jews had cried out to her first. “They want to charge a tax for cracked spools. But the spools are cracked before we get them!”

“Not fair!”

Chaffer, a buttonhole maker, actually dropped on his knees. “Mercy, lady! Your dear husband poured out the soup!”

At that instant, without any warning, a band of Jewish policemen came around Jakuba Corner. They wore their special blue hats, with the orange hatbands, and three-quarter-length coats. Each man carried a leather stick. They formed a line between the workers and the luxury car. Then they forced the Jews back, against the factory wall. One worker, Marbled, cried over their heads, “We demand politeness and consideration!” But the rest stared at the Double Six, whose front doors now sprang open, too.

Out of the car came four Warriors in black. They marched back to the luggage compartment and opened its waxed, shining door. There was a sack of some sort wedged inside. Two of the Death’s-Headers pulled it out. Then all four, with their rifles on their shoulders, dragged this load along the frozen ruts of the street—not in the direction of the Mosk Works, however, but toward the blank brick wall of the telephone exchange on the far side of Jakuba. When they got there they stood the sack up and untied the rope at the top. There was a living person inside.

“Klapholtz!” The Mosk mill workers strained to see over the heads of the Jewish policemen, who kept their own eyes pointing down.

It was the modernist painter. No doubt about it, though his face was swollen and blue. He stood for only a moment, and then he fell down. His knees pointed out in a way that was not possible for a person whose legs were not broken. A Death’s-Header picked him up and pushed him against the bricks. But Klapholtz, like a rubber man, dropped down into another odd position. No matter what the Warriors did they could not get him to stand. His head dangled from his neck and his arms hung down without helping at all. It was frustrating work. At last Grundtripp, accompanied by the former Phelia Lubliver, strolled to the wall. His face had grown thinner, like a Ghettoite’s. It was beginning to resemble the skull on his cap.