“Gumbiner, listen,” said Trumpelman to the husky boy. “I have a horse. A stallion. You will ride him! Above the crowd.”

Miss Bibelnieks sighed. “Have I lost my mind? I can’t help hearing music.”

“It is music,” the obstetrician replied.

So it was. From far away, over oceans it seemed, an Italian tenor was singing his heart out. A whole orchestra—violins, woodwinds, a trumpet, everything—struck up, and then a woman came in, singing mostly vowels.

Trumpelman, holding the boy in his arms, cocked his head to listen.

Zam, with his Warsaw background, whispered, “Aida.”

The Elder found his wife on the way back to the mansion. He had only to follow the sounds of the opera, which never ceased, which kept repeating themselves: the Italian man, the orchestra, the Italian woman—then all three elements playing at once. There was Phelia, standing with the sole of one foot against a wall. An elbow was cupped in one hand; the other held a cigarette. Her veil was up and in the starlight, and light from the sliver of moon, she looked silver-plated. Trumpelman swayed; he caught his breath to see her. His heart beat like a boy’s. A faint curling smoke stream came from her lips and her nose.

Vieni meco—insiem fuggiamo
Questa terra di dolor—
Vieni meco—io t’amo, io t’amo!
A noi duce fia l’amor.

* * *

The song, with its senseless words, gibberish really, came to an end.

“Again,” said the Ghetto Queen.

The Elder shifted his gaze. A few meters off there was a two-wheeled cart and on it an old gramophone player, the kind where the music comes from a horn. Smolenskin, a well-known figure, with a two-pointed beard, picked up the mechanical arm and put it down at the start of the recording. “It’s wearing out, lady. I have to do this for a living.”

“I’ll pay. I’ll give you a monopoly for the Ghetto. All other instruments must be turned in.”

So Smolenskin turned the handle in a clockwise direction. Let us together flee this painful earth, sang the Italian tenor. Miss Lubliver, like a statuette, in silver, silently listened.

Trumpelman, barely breathing, remained in the shadows. What was the famous opera about? He hardly knew. Ethiopians. Elephants. Something about the river Nile. Was Madagascar, he wondered, such a land? Would Jews sing songs there to each other? About l’amor? Then he shivered. The temperature had dropped all the way down to what was normal for that time of year. Smolenskin, turning and turning the handle, audibly panted. Above them, with its chin practically touching its forehead, was the profile of the old Polish moon.

Strike Day Five, Dawn

The March of the Jewish War Veterans was beginning. The earth temperature, because of so much recent sunshine, was high, but the air was only five on the Celsius scale. The result was one layer of mist on top of another. The defenders of Tsarskoye Selo could hear the crowds coming—the tramp of their feet, the crackle of ice on the road—but they could not see a soul. The King and Queen of the Ghetto, the one in his cape, the other in furs, peered from the top of the reinforced wall. Mist only, white and gray. Szpilfogel squinted, and so did Elite Guardsman Bass. Nothing, just the fog, sprawled like some great bear over the ground. Nomberg’s teeth were clicking together. Hasensprung felt particles of ice form in his nose. Behind the defenders, on the top floor of the mansion, Flicker, Hobnover, Atlas, the curly-blond Citron—all the New Hatters’ Asylum orphans pressed their flushed faces to the window glass.