To my great distress, our beloved papa, may he be blessed with long life, is ill. His cough is getting worse. Every night I pray that he will survive the coming winter. He laughs it away and says, “A Jew lives and breathes with one foot in the grave.” You know how Papa is, never losing faith with our Father God in Heaven. My husband, Duvid, is a very good man willing to take any work, except that there is none. With babies in the house, they should be blessed, and nothing to feed them and no coal to heat our bones, I am sinning gravely by losing hope. Please hurry up and rescue us.

Batya returned to Rafael’s cart. His coconut drink failed to revive her spirit. “I’ll visit you in the dark,” she whispered to him, hating to have to pay with her body, telling herself it was a mitzvah to give this simple good man what he needed.

What else could she do but try again to speak with Señor Farbstein? In the following ten days she visited his office twice more, only to be turned away by the secretary. In spite of the risk of being seen in the street, Batya waited outside each time with the hope of catching Señor Farbstein as he entered or left. She noticed the stream of people that entered the building: some with the dress and demeanor of recent Jewish immigrants, some gauchos with horse-bowed legs, some Argentine officials arriving in carriages driven by uniformed coachmen, but no one who might be Señor Farbstein.

Her plan to meet the Baron’s emissary was not to be. Batya had to face the fact that she must find another way to compel her father to act. Since her fairy tale about her wonderful married life had worked against her, she must tear apart this story to get her father to apply for the resettlement program.

If only Efram would overcome his discomfort with her letters. It would be another week before he received his monthly allowance and, she hoped, visited her. Waiting, all she could do was pray that the Baron’s project in Odessa would still accept her father, sick and old as he was. Duvid should help tilt the balance in the family’s favor; one young man and one useless old man with seven dependents. Nine passages for which she’d stopped saving since Freda had begun to deduct payments for Dora’s purchase price.

It was siesta time, and the house was quiet when Efram arrived, probably cutting classes. He paid Freda the fee, and Batya led him by the hand to her chamber.

“Where are your paper and ink?” she asked as she helped him unbutton his shirt.

“How could I bring them? I’m in the midst of a studying day.”

“Don’t you write there?”

“We only read and recite, or argue Talmudic points.”

“For twelve hours?”