Rachel realized that she was afraid of leaving the black man alone in her house, as if he’d steal or break something.

She said, “We won’t hurt anything.”

“I didn’t mean . . . of course you wouldn’t . . .” She retreated out to the hall to get her coat. Then she came back, wrapped in mink. “I’m sorry the tea’s cold. I don’t have time . . .”

She left them alone.

Hawkins drank the cold tea.

“Are most people afraid of having you in their houses?” Rachel asked.

“Only white people.”

She blushed and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. It started to rain, and it was getting dark.

“Does it happen often with white people?” she asked.

“Not so much anymore.”

“Why ‘anymore’?”

“The gray in my hair. I even thought of growing a beard once, to make me look even older. No one’s scared of an old nigger. But it itched and took too long.”

The front door slammed, and Joseph Relkin came into the living room.

“She ran out on us, huh?” He had an accent, not as thick as Levy’s, but the same dialect. “Bridge!” He came into the room and shook hands with Hawkins, but he kept looking at Rachel.

“Shain,§§§” he told her, his hand on Hawkins’s shoulder. “Zare shain. Jacob Levy’s daughter-­in-­law. Adam’s widow.”

Rachel nodded.

“How long now?”

“Two years,” she said.

“Terrible thing. Terrible.” He went to a cabinet across the room and took out a bottle. “Shitty weather. It’s raining again. We’ll have some brandy.”

Relkin brought them balloon glasses a third full. He was red-­haired and big, bigger than Hawkins, and Rachel stared at him.

“Big ’un, right?” He laughed. “Big for a Polack . . . big for a Jew. Some Hun got in there somehow.” More laughing. “Big man . . .” He stared at Rachel, his meaning clear, and for a second she was afraid that he was going to open his fly to show them how big, but he only winked at her, then sat down next to Hawkins so he could go on staring at her.

“I saw you at the funeral. You didn’t see me, and they wouldn’t introduce me, so we’ve never met. I’m Joe Relkin.” He took her hand, squeezed it, kept smiling. “You were very mysterious on the phone, but I couldn’t turn down Jacob Levy’s daughter-­in-­law, could I?” He finished the brandy, then went back to the cabinet and brought the bottle with him. He raised his glass. “To the great Jacob Levy!” he said without irony, then drank. “Now, what could you . . . daughter of Zion . . . want with a rich outcast importer who hasn’t been to shul for thirty years?”

Hawkins answered for her.

“You were at Belzec.”

Relkin put his glass down.

Hawkins went on, “With them.”

Relkin didn’t ask whom Hawkins meant by “them.” “I was at Belzec from 1940 until 1945.”