"What was she like?"

"Like?"

"Yes. For instance, how was she with the baby? Was she close to him?"

A small shrug. "How close could she have been? She wasn't his real mother."

"Mira told me Esther loved Willie."

He pursed his lips. "Well, then I suppose she did. Mira knew her better than I did. I only saw her once with the baby, when I took their picture. The other time I was at the Klingers', he was asleep in another room."

"Anything else you remember of Esther?"

He thought for a moment. "One time I was there, she told me she wanted to join the Irgun, to take action against the British. She seemed very motivated. But eventually she did nothing. A lot of maapilim were like that—they were enthusiastic about taking part in the struggle in the first few days after getting off the boat. As weeks went by, their fervor died down. They became engrossed in day-to-day living—their jobs, that sort of thing—and forgot their previous declarations of dedication and willingness to sacrifice whatever was needed for the sake of the Jewish people." He fixed me with his steely gaze. "You know, the British did not get out of our country because they wanted to. They left because we drove them out." He punctuated the "we" by thumping his chest with his fist, and I recalled Goldberg expressing his admiration for the Irgun's fighting spirit, if not their politics.

"Were you part of any resistance group? Did you fight the British?" he asked me in a challenging tone.

"No."

"When did you get to Israel?"

"September 1947."

"Well," he said, mollified, and perhaps a touch embarrassed by his emotions, "by that time the work was nearly done. And you did do your part in the war."

He sipped his beer. I took a last drag and mashed out my cigarette in the ashtray.

"Did you have any contact with Esther after she left the Klingers'?"

"No."

"When you saw her there, did she seem to get along with them?"

Another small shrug. "She and the Klinger woman—I forget her name—seemed friendly enough. The husband I didn't see after the first night. Not that I missed him all that much."

"Why do you say that?"

His face tightened with anger. "A young, able-bodied man, and all he was willing to do was dole out the occasional contribution and host poor immigrants for a few days. And even that they stopped doing after that time. We needed fighters, not innkeepers."

I leaned forward, my skin tingling as it did when I was on a case and had just uncovered something that might prove important. "Esther and Willie were the last immigrants the Klingers ever sheltered?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I didn't hear about it directly from them. All I know is that we never brought more immigrants to their house."