His father died in June, and a year and a half afterward Levy’s name, along with the names of all the Jewish men in Dabrowa, was posted for transportation to Belzec. Levy held Leah against him all night; they made love so many times she tried to joke about not being able to walk in the morning. Then she cried and finally, exhausted, she fell asleep. He lay awake until dawn, then he took the book the old man had given him, crossed the village, and went out the gate, telling the guard that he had a gift for his father’s grave. The guard let him pass, and when he got to the ceme­tery on the other side of the little river that crossed the fields, he prostrated himself on his father’s grave. “I know what you want me to do,” he said with his cheek against the dirt, “and I know what the old man wants me to do. But I believe that my soul will be in danger if I do it.” He buried the book next to his father’s grave, then he stretched out on his back, lying over the spot where the book lay, and looked up at the sky until he closed his eyes and fell asleep. It was the first peaceful sleep he’d had since they’d gone to see the old man; but when he woke up, and walked back to Dabrowa, the book’s contents came back to him, along with what the old man had told him, word for word. He tried to forget it, but it stayed with him, like children’s nonsense nursery rhymes. When he and the others were loaded on the train at the siding on the other side of the village, he heard it in the beat of the soldiers marching; when the train started, he heard it in the rhythm of the wheels contacting the rails. He told himself he didn’t have to do it just because he couldn’t forget how, but the day he’d gotten back from seeing the old man he’d told his best friend Isaac Luria about what the old man had taught him.

Levy bent and slid his palm against the muck. It felt right; stiff enough, not slimy like mud, but smooth, cool, and slick, like clay.

Rachel and Willa met at Laurel’s one respectable cocktail lounge in the Cannery Shopping Mall. They got high, tried to laugh, and ended up crying. Rachel ordered a hamburger for them, and they cut it in half; Rachel ate her half, but Willa couldn’t.

“What if Jacob knew you were here with me?”

“Jacob wouldn’t care. It’s Luria; that . . . that pisher . . .”

Willa laughed in spite of herself.