The descriptions of Aida that Batya had cultivated in her head throughout the evening at Teatro Colón turned sour in her mouth. Images of the fantastically elaborate stage sets of palaces and pyramids in a vast, sunbathed desert melted into the image of Dora in the hole. The haunting beauty of the singing drowned in the muck of the girl’s loud suffering.

Four days later, Dora was brought up right after breakfast. She was dropped on a chair, splayed like a rag doll, head lolling, arms dangling at her sides, legs apart. The wild yet vacant look in her eyes told Batya that the girl had gone mad, and in a way Batya was glad for her. Escaping the torture through madness was better than feeling every iota of it.

Two hundred prostitutes from nearby houses were rounded up in the pavilion, courtyard, and kitchen. The Professor, who had been seated in Moskowitz’s office, came out to address them. He adjusted his glasses and stood silent until all the whispering died down. With great flair that matched his florid prose, his long fingers unfolded a letter he’d written to Dora’s family. Dora could no longer comprehend the words, but the sisters could.

Instead of the flowery sentences describing Dora drinking the nectar of exotic flowers, her queenly chair fashioned out of ivory from African elephants and upholstered in silk from butterflies in China, or her brilliant husband whose scholarly words were strings of pearls the whole Jewish community gathered to collect from around his feet, this letter regretfully informed Dora’s family that she had lost her virtue. Their wayward daughter had fallen in love with a Negro criminal who’d enticed her to work as a prostitute. No amount of begging by her loving husband, Yitzik Moskowitz, who had first tried to take her back, and the rabbi, who attempted to put sense into her contaminated mind, had convinced Dora to change her wanton behavior. Insatiable with lust, she was overcome by the dybbuk of Satan. All she could think about was taking more and more men into her bed.

“Your daughter is lost forever,” the Professor concluded in a theatrical voice. “You should sit shiva for her soul.”

The sisters stood squeezed together in silent shock, their expressions somber. For once, old enemies didn’t bicker; grievances were pushed aside. Close friends held each other, soul to soul connected in shared horror. Batya had known of this practice, yet hearing the words turned her blood cold.