Does Sofia feel a warmth, or a tremor, or some kind of deep unlocking inside herself as Saul Grossman disembarks from the ocean liner where he has crouched for two weeks, retching bile into a bucket in the hold along with fifteen other threadbare Jews?

Does she settle down a little, into her preordained spot in the universe?

—

At exactly eleven o’clock at night, two months after he stumbled out of the hold of the SS Hermes into American sunlight, Saul Grossman arrives at the deli where he makes sandwiches for hungry, nocturnal New Yorkers. The icy winter air forces streams of liquid from his eyes and nose, which he wipes with a sleeve as he hurries up the block. He shimmies through the post-theater crowd building outside, lifts the grate on Ludlow, and stomps his feet on the way down to scatter the rats. He is no longer surprised at how many people in New York expect to eat at any time they please.

“I can always hear you comin’, Saul,” says Lenny. “You sound like you weighs four hundred pounds!” Lenny, a three-hundred-pound fixture at the deli, has a slow Brooklyn drawl and a smile that unfolds across his whole face. He exudes a protective gentleness, a slow-to-anger loyalty, a moral compass with a diamond tip. He kept Saul standing and eating when Saul first stumbled into the deli, homesick and haggard.

“We need some cats, Lenny,” says Saul. “I just scared a rat the size of a side of pastrami.”

“Hogwash,” says Lenny. “We got you to keep ’em in line!”

Lenny grins as Saul squeezes past him in the dark basement. In the half-light, he looks maniacal. “Hey, Saul?” he asks.

Saul turns.

“It’s good to see you doin’ a little better,” says Lenny.

“Thanks,” says Saul. “I’ve been trying. I had a letter from home this week.”

“Well now, that’s the stuff,” says Lenny. “Good news?”

Saul shakes his head. “It’s my mother, so she lies. She says everything is fine, that she has been given a job sweeping rubbish from the streets. I’m sure it’s much worse than she admits.” Four years of study in grammar school and months of full immersion had rendered his English nearly perfect, but the German clip of his consonants sneaks in, especially when he is upset.

“She’ll make her way out, Saul.”

Saul nods and walks to the back of the basement. He is exhausted from imagining everything that could have happened to his mother, to his country. He finds an apron and a hat, and leaves his coat on a hook in the staff room. He washes his hands, dries them on his apron, looks in the mirror and blinks the sleep from his eyes before ascending the stairs to the deli floor.