He turned into the Main Street Extension and saw hedges and the dark strip of Sutter Lane ahead. It started to rain lightly. His hair and shoulders got wet but he went on. He stopped at the shul and looked up the path through the break in the hedge. The main floor was dark but the basement was still lit. He leaned the bike on its kickstand and went up the path around the side of the house. The hedge blocked the next house and he felt alone. He leaned down and looked in the window. Everything looked the same. The night light shone dully, the curtain hung straight. Nothing happened. There was no obliging draft this time and his knees started aching. He stood up and went to the cellar door at the back of the little house, but it was locked. Then he went back around the front and up the stairs to the porch. He expected the front door to be locked, but it wasn’t. He opened the door and went inside. If someone saw lights at that time of night, they might call the rabbi, or worse, the police, so he’d brought his utility lantern and he switched it on and shone it around the vestibule. The basement stairs were to the left; there was no door at the bottom, and he went down the stairs by the light of the lantern and into the basement room. The room was uncannily silent, and he looked up and saw a celotex ceiling that would soak up noise. Then he crossed the room to the wooden box and stood in front of the drawn curtain. He didn’t want to pull it, but he knew he was too much like his father not to. He’d come this far and he had to see once and for all what was in the box, and he reached out for the drape.

Levy dreamed that they were beating Reuben Smolska to death again. He was crying, falling, trying to get up, but they kept hitting him. One club smashed his back and he was down again, blood and spit running out of his mouth. The Germans stood over him, light shone on their insignias, guns, belt buckles, buttons. Their uniforms were black, the fronts splattered with blood. One pulled Reuben up by the hair. One of his eyes was closed, the other was full of blood, his front teeth were gone. They hit him on the chest with the club, in the belly, and Reuben fell on his hands and knees. They pulled his pants down so they could hit his bare skin. One German had an erection and Levy thought he was going to vomit. Then the German looked at him and smiled and Levy was overcome by rage he never thought he could feel.