s, yes, we understand," murmured the sympathetic Stauffers. Who remained obsessed with, and perhaps really only understood, an uneasiness of their own. In their unhappiness, and to assist their once more becalmed guest, they began to talk about Schönberg, and Paul Klee, and Brecht. As liberal Germans, they offered up their minds for a sacrifice, together with liqueur chocolates, and _Kognak__, and a genuine Havana. But every gesture they might make, it was felt by all three, could only be dwarfed by those of circumstance. Stauffer was slightly drunk. It made him look like a man of action, or at least an amateur of sabotage. Probably he was one of those intellectuals who had discovered the possibilities of action too late in life, perhaps too late in history. He was burning to do something, if not to destroy the whole tree of moral injustice, then to root out a sucker or two. As he sprawled on the oriental rugs which covered his too opulent divan, the skin had become exposed between the cuffs of his trousers and tops of his socks, which gave him the appearance of being younger, more sincere, if also, ultimately, ineffectual. Frau Stauffer was combing the hairless skin of her arm with long, pale nails. Under the film of oil which she affected as a make-up, her long, pointed face understood at least the theory of serenity. Konrad was bandying the names about: Morocco, the Pacific, the Galapagos. But came closer to home, because that was what he knew better. He would know the Riviera best. All of it Himmelfarb heard without relating it to life. "Bern," Konrad was discoursing; at last he had come very close. "A dull, but decent city. Where we could meet for lunch. On Thursday. If you decide, Himmelfarb. I suggest, though, you carry nothing heavier than a toothbrush." A gentle snow could have been falling through the Jew's mind, without, unfortunately, obliterating. Its soft promise was forcing him to stand up. "I must go," he announced. Finally, fatally; all knew. "I must go home to my wife. There is a dog, too. At this time of night, the dog expects to be taken out." "Your wife?" Frau Stauffer's breath was drawn so sharp, she could have been recoiling from a blow. She was wearing a bracelet from which hung big chunks of unpolished, semi-precious stones, which tumbled and jumbled together, in a state of painful conflict. "I did not realize that your wife," Stauffer kept repeating. The Jew was actually laughing. He laughed through fascinating lips, the horrifying, magnified blubber that flesh will become. Because nobody could realize how his wife was present in him, at all times, until for one moment, that evening, when God Himself had contracted into first chaos. "I am afraid," the Jew said, "I may have been guilty tonight of something for which I can never atone. "I am afraid," he was saying, and saying. The crumbled Jew. "No, no!" begged the Stauffers. "It is we! We are the guilty ones!" They could not apologize enough, Konrad Stauffer, the unimportant success, and his oversimplified, overcomplicated wife. "We! We!" insisted the Stauffers. How her bracelet cannoned off itself. The Jew, who was seen to be quite elderly, made his own way to the door. "I dare say there are reasons why _you__ should not be included in a mass sentence," he pronounced gently. "_We__ can never escape a collective judgment. _We__ are one. No particle may fall away without damaging the whole. That, I fear, is what I have done. In a moment of unreason. Tonight." They had reached the hall, and were standing in the orange light from the oriental lantern. "But this is most, most horrible!" Stauffer was almost shouting. He had become personally involved. "We understood, in the beginning, you had come here to take refuge"-his voice was reverberating-"because tonight"-always hesitating, choosing, however loudly, words-"we were told, in fact, by telephone, just as you arrived"-here his voice blared-"they are destroying the property of the Jews!" "_Ach, Konrad__!" His wife moaned, and might have protested more vehemently against the truth. But a fire-engine seemed to confirm what her husband had just told. It shot through the solid silence of the German suburb, leaving behind it a black tunnel of anxiety. Only Himmelfarb did not seem surprised. He was even smiling. Now that everything was explained. Now that contingency had been removed. "When all the time you did not know! Your wife!" By now Stauffer was wrapped, rather, in his own horror. His man's expression had become that of a little boy, round whom the game of pirates had turned real. Frau Stauffer's oiled face was streaming with tears as she held an ash-tray for their guest to stub out his genuine Havana. Then the little, unprotective door-chain grated as it withdrew from its groove. And Himmelfarb was going. He had already gone from that place, forgetful of his truly kind friends, whom he would have remembered with gratitude and love, if there had been room in his mind. Sud Park was still, though attentive. A layer of exquisitely concentrated, excruciating orange was seen separating the darkness from the silhouette of the town. It is seldom possible to resume life where it has been left off, although that appeared to be the intention of the figure hurrying through the streets, topcoat flapping and streaming, flesh straining. In the Krôtengasse groups of Jews stood in a glitter of glass. The voices of women lamenting quickened his pace. In the Bismarckstrasse a man was crying at the top of his lungs, until some of the crowd began to punch him, when the sound went blub blub blub blub, with intervals of bumping silences. Himmelfarb was not quite running. He bent his knees, rather, to move faster, closer to the pavement. His own breathing had ceased to be part of him. He heard it panting alongside, like an unwelcome animal which refused to be shaken off. At the corner of the Königin Luise Platz the flames were leaping luxuriantly. In the Schillerstrasse the synagogue was burning. This more sober. An engine parked against the curb. Several firemen were standing around. What could they do, actually? The rather ugly, squat, practical old building had assumed an incongruous, a Gothic grace in its skyward striving. All could have been atoned now that the voices were finally silenced. As he entered the Holzgraben, the drops were falling from Himmelfarb, heavier than sweat, his neck was extended scraggily, in anticipation of the knife. This was his own street. Still quiet, respectable-German. A power failure, however, caused by the disturbances, had plunged the familiar into a dark dream, through which he approached the house where they had lived, and found what he knew already to expect. Of course the door stood open. It was stirring very slightly, just as it had on those several other occasions when he had found it in his sleep. The house was a hollow shell in which the pretending was over, although he could not yet feel it was empty for the darkness and silence that had silted it up. He went in, feeling with his feet, which were long, and wooden, like his sticks of fingers. In the darkness he stooped down, and touched the body of the little dog, already fixed in time, like the sculpture on a tomb, except that the lips were drawn back from the teeth, denying that peace which is the prerogative of death. Most horrible to touch was what he realized to be the tongue. Then the Jew began to cry out. He called, "Reha! Reha!" And it returned from out of the house. Always he had imagined how, in the worst crisis, she, his saviour, would come to him, and hold his head against her breast. So he went blundering and crying. He called to God, and it went out at the windows, through the bare branches of the trees, so that a party of people a street away burst out laughing, before they took fright. He was mounting interminably through the house. The scent of spices was gone from it forever, and the blessed light of candles, in which even the most stubborn flesh was made transparent. Moonlight shifted and fretted instead, on the carpets of the landings, and in the open jaws of glass. Cold. When the searcher did at last arrive in the upper regions, he found the old servant. She began to cry worse than ever, principally for her own fright, while stifling it for fear of the consequences, since even the furniture had turned hostile. Gradually she told what no longer needed confirming. They had come, they had come for Himmelfarbs. But what could she add that he had not already experienced? So he left her to babble on. He went, whimpering, directionless, somewhere down, into the pit of creaking darkness. Calling the name that had already fulfilled its purpose, it seemed. So he descended, through the house, into darkness. And in darkness he sat down, as much of him as they had left. He sat in darkness.