"Was that all?" Greta began saying, uncommonly tentative. "I mean, what did you think of Rachel?"

I smiled faintly. Greta was always on the lookout for a woman to dispel part of my loneliness.

"It's not in the cards, Greta. No suitability, I'm afraid."

"I see," she said softly, clearly disappointed.

I shrugged. "The important thing is I did a good job and got paid for it. I'm not looking for romance."

Greta seemed about to say something, but thought better of it. The other customer called for more beer. She went to tend to him. I returned to beating myself at chess.

7

An uneventful weekend passed. I finished one western and started another, tore through a stack of newspapers, and watched Burt Lancaster woo Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross at Allenby Cinema. In between, I used the money I had liberated from Yuri's wallet to replenish my supply of black-market sardines, eggs and sausages; sat on a bench in Dizengoff Square, watching pigeons peck nonchalantly at hunks of white bread that prisoners at Auschwitz would have killed for; smoked an inordinate number of cigarettes; and cleaned and oiled my Luger. I slept fitfully and woke with the shadowy dream remnants of lost family, blank-eyed muselmänner, and dead-eyed guards, wafting in the stifling air of my enclosed apartment like smoke from a crematorium.

On Sunday, July 10, three days after my talk with Shmuel Birnbaum, I strode to the corner of Hamaccabi and King George and entered Levinson Drugstore. The store was run by Zelig and Rivka Levinson, who kept it as clean as an operating room. By the spotless front window, on a small waist-high table, stood a bulky telephone attached to a meter. The meter kept track of how much you owed for each call, taking into account duration and distance. Since nearly none of my neighbors, nor I, had a private telephone in our apartments—hardly anyone in Israel did—the drugstore telephone got plenty of use. I had to wait for five minutes while a neighbor of mine lectured her daughter in Haifa on the proper way of raising her grandchildren.

When she'd finished, I rang the offices of Davar and asked to speak with Shmuel Birnbaum.

"Good morning, Adam," he said when he came on the line, sounding chipper. "How was your weekend? Beat anyone up?"

The snapping of Yuri's fingers under my heel sounded in my ears, followed closely by an image of Max's bloodied face as he lay unconscious on Rachel Weiss's floor.

"Not on the weekend, no. Last time I knocked someone out was Wednesday night."