The only place outside the house she could access was Rafael’s sweets cart. She retrieved the ledger in the morning when collecting the newspapers and tucked it back in her chamber between the dresser and the wall. The many hours the ledger was in her possession stretched on. Batya jumped at the sudden noise of a copper pot dropped on the tiled floor, at the odd note from a musician adjusting his violin strings, and at the screech of a bird.

She was relieved when the house quieted before dawn. She tore off a page and hid it in the wall, then slipped out of the house, the ledger secured under her skirt with a belt. Its edges pinched her skin with every step.

The streets were quiet at this hour, when the music in the cafés and milongas had stopped, drunkards lay asleep on the curbs, and more respectable customers were home in their comfortable beds. Stray dogs slept, the milkmen hadn’t yet begun their rounds, and laborers were still inside their makeshift huts erected at construction sites. Batya was exhausted, but the chilled night air was fresh and fragrant with the scent of flowers and herb gardens. The moon at the edge of the canopied sky hung above as if it were her private protector.

She stopped a distance from Rafael’s corner to verify that he had stretched out his nightly canvas to create a tent. Approaching, she listened through the canvas to Rafael’s uneven breathing.

The shafts of the cart were raised onto wood blocks to keep the cart bed level. Batya crouched and reached under the canvas to feel the cross beams, like the ones that had reinforced her father’s cart. They were narrower than she had anticipated. The ledger couldn’t be secured there. She straightened and stood still for a minute, her hand resting against the cart’s leather-upholstered bench.

A rooster crowed, and its cock-a-doodle-do reverberated over the houses, reminding Batya that the night was lifting. In an empty lot nearby, someone lit a small fire and began boiling coffee. Its aroma wafted toward her, teasing her. Soon, the municipal street sweepers with their two-wheeled carts would come out to collect debris. Batya contemplated her options. Her fingers searched the leather covering the seat—and detected a spot in the back where it had come undone. She raised the loosened section, careful not to pop out more nails, and explored the cavity. The bench had been constructed as crudely as the rest of the cart, and Batya’s fingers found a large enough gap between the planks forming the seat’s frame.

Without waking Rafael, she tucked the ledger into it and snuck away.