What followed was the confession of Lena Herzfeld. Her transgression had started as a minor act of disobedience committed by a desperate child who simply wanted to touch the snow. She had not planned the adventure. In fact, to this day she did not know what woke her in the early-morning hours of February 12, 1943, or what prompted her to rise quietly from her bed and descend the ladder from the attic. She remembered the hall had been in complete darkness. Even so, she had no trouble finding her way to the bathroom. She had taken those same seven steps, twice each day, for the past five months. Those seven steps had constituted her only form of exercise. Her only break from the monotony of the attic. And her only chance to see the outside world.

“There was a window next to the basin. It was small and round and overlooked the rear garden. Mrs. de Graaf insisted the curtain be kept closed whenever we entered.”

“But you opened it against her wishes?”

“From time to time.” A pause, then, “I was only a child.”

“I know, Lena,” Gabriel said, his tone forgiving. “Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw fresh snow glowing in the moonlight. I saw the stars.” She looked at Gabriel. “I’m sure it seems terribly ordinary to you now, but to a child who had been locked in an attic for five months it was…”

“Irresistible?”

“It seemed like heaven. A small corner of heaven, but heaven nonetheless. I wanted to touch the snow. I wanted to see the stars. And part of me wanted to look God directly in the eye and ask Him why He had done this to us.”

She scrutinized Gabriel as if calculating whether this stranger who had appeared on her doorstep was truly a worthy recipient of such a memory.

“You were born in Israel?” she asked.

He answered not as Gideon Argov but as himself.

“I was born in an agricultural settlement in the Valley of Jezreel.”

“And your parents?”

“My father’s family came from Munich. My mother was born in Berlin. She was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Her parents were gassed upon arrival, but she managed to survive until the end. She was marched out in January 1945.”

“The Death March? My God, but she must have been a remarkable woman to survive such an ordeal.” She looked at him for a moment, then asked, “What did she tell you?”

“My mother never spoke of it, not even to me.”