“Frightened,” Sol said. “Leo was crying when I left the office. He was afraid I was going to call his son and his son would yell at him.” He inhaled slowly and nibbled at his lip. I saw a shiver run through him. “And the son of a bitch would have yelled, if I had called him. He would have been here in three hours, screaming about dignity, something he knows nothing about.” He sighed a soft, cynical laugh and looked at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t like such people. Will you speak to them?”

“I will. If you think it’ll help.”

Sol shrugged.

He led me from the room and down the corridor toward his office. The doors to the other rooms were closed and the only sound that could be heard was our footsteps on the wood flooring. An attendant, a muscular young man dressed in hospital whites, stood at the end of the corridor. He had a military bearing.

“Is everything all right?” Sol asked the attendant.

“Yes, sir,” the attendant answered. He added, “Mrs. Fisher had to have some medicine. The nurse is with her.”

Sol turned toward one of the rooms, hesitated, then turned back and continued toward his office. I followed, carrying Avrum’s candlestick box.

The three men had pulled their chairs close and they were huddled, waiting for the punishment they were certain they would receive. I knew Leo Gutschenritter instantly. He was sitting between the other two men. His eyes were red and damp. He trembled. I could hear the rasp of labored breathing deep in his thin chest. He seemed too brittle to be alive, and I thought of my grandfather, who had died when I was twelve. My grandfather had fought against death until his strength was gone, and one day he had announced, simply, “I can’t do it anymore,” and he closed his eyes and died.

The men looked up, first to Sol, then to me. So old, I thought. So very old. And I remembered an illustration I had seen in an art exhibit—aging dormice attending a puppet show, their narrow shoulders sloped forward, covered in shawls. They were watching without expression as puppets with painted-on smiles danced on strings before them. I had asked the illustrator why he had given the dormice such tired, suffering faces. “Oh,” he had answered, “don’t you see? They’re being treated as children, but they are not children. What is a puppet show to them? It’s a cheap illusion, a nothing illusion. Why should they care? They’ve lived the illusion of life.” It was the most profound explanation of a work of art that I have ever heard.

Sol stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on them. Then he said, in a surprisingly soft voice, “Gentlemen, I want you to meet someone.”