* * *

It was already cooler than in the daytime, and the Baluters lay on their doorsteps to catch the stray puffs of air. Against the smell they wore handkerchiefs, like in the influenza year of 1918. Trumpelman, passing them, saw only the top halves of their faces, their foreheads, their eyes. Whether because the curfew was coming, or because they recognized the Elder, the people drew away. In a short while the live Jews had all disappeared and only the dead ones remained. These corpses, pale, puffed up, looked like sea mammals that together had run aground.

Then Trumpelman heard somebody scream. The sound came from a narrow alley, off Nowozgierska Street. Of course there was nothing unusual about a scream in the Ghetto. They were as common as, in the old days, motorcar horns. What made Chaim freeze, then? It was a woman’s voice. It rang out once more, urgent, piercing, full of pain. This time another noise followed, a deep sound that the Elder had heard somewhere before. He took a few steps down the alley; by putting his arms out he could touch either wall. After a moment, from nearby, the woman cried out, an awful shriek; again the moan came after, a low sound, like a blast to warn ships of fog. Why was it familiar? Where had he heard it in the past?

Trumpelman came to a door. Locked. He put his shoulder easily through. Inside there was a large abandoned stable, with stalls and carts and cartwheels everywhere. Off to one side there was a stairway, blocked by barrels of different sorts. What a lot of valuable firewood! Then the cry, eeeee, and the response, ooooo, sounded again, directly over the Elder’s head. He sprang forward, knocking the barrels aside. He strode up the steps two and three at a time. At the top there was only a landing with no exitway. Then he saw, on the floor, a trail of dim yellow light. A disguised doorway, then! It swung open to his touch on hidden hinges.

The bright light in the room blinded him for a moment. Then he saw, on a table, on her back, a naked woman. Her legs were held up by straps attached to the ceiling, and her arms were tied down by her side. Two people, with masks on, wearing robes, bent near her, where her sexual parts were plainly exposed.

“A torture chamber!” the enraged Elder exclaimed.

The two persons whirled around. “Chaim!” one of them cried, and removed her linen mask.

Trumpelman was stupefied. “Is that you? Miss Bibelnieks?” So it turned out to be. Her companion likewise lowered his disguise.

“Doctor Zam!”

But before the ex-Warsaw dandy could say a word the woman on the table emitted the worst scream of all, and a small, dark, greasy head appeared out of nowhere between her thighs. Then the whole room shook from the deep answering call.

Trumpelman half turned and strode to where a curtain was strung. With a single movement of his arm he swept it aside. There, with dried grass in her mouth, and the map of the Mediterranean on her side, was the cow from the summer palace.