The little boy asked again, “Who is the lady?” though, and she forgot everything else, as buried memories from her last life suddenly were reclaimed. She and Lawrence as young people in isolated scenes—she and Lawrence, old and stubborn, defying the establishment. And this little boy was Lawrence. She knew it. What then, Lawrence born again? How could she have forgotten him? And what else had she forgotten? And why?

“The little boy is my cousin,” Tweety said gently to Lydia, speaking too meaningfully for a child.

Lydia just kept staring. The boy’s eyes as he stared back were so innocent and guileless and clear, and so ignorant of her, that Lydia wanted to cry. But already the boy had turned, made a snowball in his snow-caked mittens, and ran to the farmhouse. The back door opened, a slice of light illuminating the dark barnyard. Tweety said, “I have to go. You have to come—” and she, too, ran toward the farm.

Lydia gasped and moved automatically toward the house, drawn by Tweety, but more, toward the memory of Lawrence. How was it that the children had found her to begin with? Why didn’t the boy know he was Lawrence and recognize her? Why—

The children had disappeared inside the house, and moving closer to it, Lydia gasped again. How could she ever have forgotten her love of Lawrence, she wondered, more desperately than she had before. Because now all at once and in a rush, Lydia’s full memory and feeling returned full blast, richer than anything she could imagine, more important than the meaning of life or finding the gods. The feelings roused—what? Desire for life, whether or not she understood it.

At the same time, she peered through the windows of the house. They were iced over on the outside and steamed over on the inside, so she chipped off some small patches of ice in order to see more clearly. What she saw filled her with the oddest nostalgia. The family was gathered at the table in the dining room, bright in fireplace light and further lit by two fat candles. On the thick wooden table sat a gigantic platter of smoked fish, along with loaves of brown crusty bread to which Josef was helping himself. Elgren Hosentauf sat at the head of the table with his eldest son, Jonathan, while Elgren’s wife, Avona, bustled back and forth. The two children slyly eyed each other; they only had soup, no fish, and Bianka, Tweety’s mother, grown stout, was saying: “Lars goes home tomorrow. His parents are coming for him, and that’s that.” Tweety mumbled under her breath, and the boy, Lars, lowered his head.