Someone emptied kitchen garbage out a third-floor window, and the neighbor below poked her head out and screamed upward, waving her fist.

Batya looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear, and whispered through clenched teeth. “If you want me to believe you, just take me away from Buenos Aires.”

“I promise again that I will—after you tell your story to the prosecutor.”

She stomped her foot. “After I get killed?”

A group of youngsters in school uniforms burst from a building for their midday break. Señor Rosenberg resumed his walk, and Batya followed. When no one could eavesdrop, he murmured, “You and your identity will be kept strictly confidential. I give you my word on that as well.”

They passed a section where many tall buildings were under construction, their iron protrusions making the area look like a petrified Siberian forest. Hundreds of laborers perched on scaffolding. Come evening, these downtrodden immigrants—exhausted, disillusioned with life, and resigned to their low status—would shun their crowded bedrooms, spending their money instead on cheap beer while waiting in long queues for their turns with the poorest, most wretched prostitutes of La Boca. That could be Batya’s fate when she aged out of Freda’s brothel or became sick.

Señor Rosenberg stopped by a vendor seated on the ground who roasted chestnuts on top of a charcoal brazier. He ordered a dozen, and the vendor placed them in a torn newspaper rolled into a cone.

Batya glanced at the stack of square-cut newspapers by the vendor’s side, then stared. On the top was a caricature of Alfred Dreyfus, showing him as a rabbit with an exaggerated hooked nose. The rabbit sat in a copper cooking pot, about to be stewed. One word, in a foreign language, was posted on the pot.

Noticing her stare, Señor Rosenberg picked up the top paper and nodded his head sadly as he handed it to her. “This is why we mustn’t allow anti-Semitism to spread here in Argentina the way it has in Europe.”

“Poor man,” Batya mumbled. “What does the word say?”

“Traitor, in French.”

“He’s innocent. He’s an honorable man.” Batya felt hot with indignation. “May I keep this?” she asked the seller, and after he shrugged, Batya folded the edges around the drawing and tucked the caricature in her pocket.

Señor Rosenberg paid the vendor and accepted the chestnuts. He handed Batya the packet, then asked, “May I?” before helping himself to one.

As they resumed walking, Batya sucked on a meaty chestnut, savoring its earthy, yam-like taste, but the image of the French officer burned in her pocket. She had seen Jewish caricatures in Russia, had cut them away when she and Surale used newspapers to make their Purim costumes.