Now Batya rose, dressed, and checked the pavilion. No clients waited there. It was early, and the midday meal wouldn’t be served for a while. Freda was occupied in the adjacent house. If Batya used the new tram—now electric—it would take her fifteen minutes to reach the port. She threw on her lightest dress and hat and ventured out. In spite of her disbelief in Kolkowski’s tale, she wished to ascertain with her own eyes whether any part of it could be true.

She had just walked a block when an old woman clutched the bottom of her skirt, and Batya swiveled around.

“Please, señora,” the woman pleaded, her eyes brimming with tears. “Let me launder your clothes.”

Batya took in the cheeks blotched in caked rouge that failed to make them look healthy. Her tone soft, she asked, “Sister, what’s your name?”

“Leila.” The woman held on to Batya’s skirt. “No one else allows me to touch their clothes. I’ll do a good job. I’ll wash and iron everything. Please—”

“Come to that house at siesta time,” Batya replied, pointing. “Now I must rush.”

She disembarked from the tram near the port’s administration building and walked to the wide pier to examine the docking ships. Two women in flowery, ruffled dresses and kohl-blackened eyes approached her. “This is our spot,” one yelled. “Move away.”

Batya shrugged and crossed the road, where she still had a view of the customs gate. Unlike four years earlier, the ships now docked at the new pier, and hordes of immigrants carrying cardboard valises and canvas packages streamed down the ramps instead of being rowed in by small boats. Prodded by policemen into orderly lines, the newcomers joined the mass of humanity crowding behind the high gate. Children cried, men held packages over their heads, fistfights broke out, women called over the crowd to keep their families together. Batya stepped into the shade of a warehouse, afraid she would be seen by someone she knew from home.

But then again, no one would have recognized her now.

She watched as a pretty young woman carrying a carpetbag emerged from the customshouse, then stopped, bewildered. A matronly woman in a carriage called out to her in Yiddish, “Do you need a job? Do you have relatives to take you in?”

After a short exchange, the young woman climbed into the carriage to what Batya was certain would turn out to be a life of prostitution.

A monk marched out of the customs building with four teenage boys in tow. A policeman parted the way for him and let the monk—whom Batya recognized as an Italian pimp—walk out with his new entourage. Even from a distance she could tell that these were girls dressed as boys to fool the customs clerks. She was certain the policeman knew it, too.