hand, and together they stood looking down into the pit of darkness, at the bottom of which was the very faintest phosphorescence of faces. He longed-oh, most intolerably-to look once more at the face of Reha Himmelfarb, but it was as though she were directing his vision towards the other, unknown faces, and might even have become unrecognizable herself. The tears were flowing faster, from the unseen eyes. Of blood, he saw, on the back of his hand. The voices of darkness ever swelling. So that the quicklime of compassion, mounting from the great pit, consumed him where he stood. Quite alone now. For Reha Himmelfarb had withdrawn; she already knew the meaning of what they had just experienced together. Himmelfarb climbed up out of his dream into the morning. It was already quite light, though early. For some reason, he saw, he had lain down without undressing, no doubt to be prepared, and now, as if in answer to his foresight, the outside world had begun again to impinge on Herrenwaldau. From his table, through the bull's-eye, between the stone balusters of the parapet, he observed this time a car, followed by a truck, jerking to a stop on the weed-sown gravel. This time an officer trod down. His splendour was unmistakable, and as if in answer to it, Ingeborg Stauffer had already come out to do the honours. She was wearing a simple costume of still fabulous cut, but on which Himmelfarb had more than once observed a crust of pollard along a lapel. Now she stood there, waiting, in the old gum-boots she wore in winter when going out to feed her ducks. It was very quickly revealed to the observer, even at that distance, that he was present on an occasion, certainly not of high history, of vindication, rather, of the individual spirit. The faces of several private soldiers were aware. An NCO had forgotten to give orders. The officer, of course, obeyed all the etiquette of gallantry in carrying out his peculiar duty. Nor did Frau Stauffer forget what she had learnt. Her voice, always lighter when fulfilling its social functions, was carried upward on the frosty air. Naturally, the listener could not hear more than the upward scale of formal laughter. Frau Stauffer was even wearing the bracelet of large golden links, and lumps of unpolished, semi-precious stones, which always conflicted in motion, and would threaten to break up any serious conversation. So she had known, and was prepared. Certainly there was one moment of intense silence in which Himmelfarb could have sworn he heard a sound of most unearthly breaking, so high, so clear, so agonizing in its swift dwindling. Then Frau Stauffer bowed her head, in agreement, it appeared. She got into the car, holding one hand to her breast, not to protect it from the inevitable, but to decorate that inevitable with its measure of grace. When the car was turned round, so sharply, convulsively, that the wheels left their furrows in the drive, Himmelfarb did catch a brief glimpse of Ingeborg Stauffer's face as it looked out at the wilderness of her neglected garden. She, too, no longer in any way belonged, it seemed, to the framework of actuality. So there was no reason why she should protest at being forced so abruptly out of it. As she was driven away, her face was of that perfect emptiness which precedes fulfilment. At the same time, the detachment of soldiers, under orders from its NCO, had begun to billet itself on Herrenwaldau. Voices were burring. Equipment clattered. Himmelfarb, who had got down again inside his room, was resigned enough on finding that his own turn had come. He did not hurry. When he had prayed, and brushed his overcoat a little with his hand, and packed into the suitcase the meagre sum of his possessions, he descended into the body of the house. Although it was now filled with sounds of what might be considered as activity, boots bludgeoning frail boards, voices flouting the damp silence of antiquity, those of the rooms which he entered or passed remained gently aloof from their fate. Intending to surrender himself to the first person who questioned his presence there, Himmelfarb wound farther down. Several objects that he touched were sadly reminiscent. Yet, it was a distant ceiling encrusted with faded blazonry which made him wonder whether it might be possible to take one more look at the town in which he had been born. In the long saloon which the owners had used as a living room, and which was not yet empty of their presence, a heap of cats snoozed on a patch of winter sunshine. A radio was shouting of war. Outside, on the terrace, a stocky youth, of country tints, stood holding a gun, and picking his nose. Himmelfarb wondered for a moment whether to address the soldier boy. But smiled instead. The soldier himself wondered whether to challenge the elderly gentleman, so evidently discreet, so obviously stepped out of the life of kindliness which he understood. In the circumstances, his own always dubious authority dwindled. The gun wobbled. He gave a kind of country nod. Himmelfarb walked slowly on. He sensed how horribly the boy's heart must have been beating for the mildness in himself which he had not learnt to overcome. But the strange morning was already unfolding, in which any individual might have become exposed to contingency. The evader walked with care, under the naked, cawing elms. It seemed as though he had abandoned the self he had grown to accept in his familiar room. It seemed, also, fitting that it should again be winter when he took the long, undeviating road along which friends had brought him-how long ago, months or years? — to experience silence and waiting. The winter air cleared his head wonderfully, with the result that he found himself observing, and becoming engrossed by the least grain of roadside sand. There were occasions when he nodded at some peasant or child, too involved in the living of their daily lives to think of obstructing the stranger. From time to time, he rested, because his legs were proving humanly weak. It took the Jew the best part of the day to cover the miles to Holunderthal. The winter evening was drawing in as he approached the darker masses of the town, which had begun already to receive its nightly visitation. The knots and loops, the little, exquisite puffs of white hung on the deepening distances of the sky, all the way to its orange rim. The riot of fireworks was on. Ordinarily solid, black buildings were shown to have other, more transcendental qualities, in that they would open up, disclosing fountains of hidden fire. Much was inverted, that hitherto had been accepted as sound and immutable. Two silver fish were flaming downward, out of their cobalt sea, into the land. As Himmelfarb entered the town, he concluded the industrial suburb of Scheidnig was the target for the night. There the panache was gayest, the involvement deepest, although, occasionally, a bomb would fall wide and casual into the deathly streets through which he walked. There was a sighing of old bricks subsiding, the sound of stone coughing up its guts, and once he himself was flung to the ground, in what could have been a splitting open of the earth, if the paving had not remained, and the hollow clatter of his suitcase spoilt the effects of doom. As he walked deeper into the town, a wind got up, tossing the flaps of his coat, twitching at the brim of his hat. In the streets, the vagaries of human behaviour had been almost entirely replaced by an apparent organization of mechanical means: engines roared, bells rang, flak reacted, the hard confetti of shrapnel never ceased to fall, innocent and invisible. Through which the Jew walked. It did not occur to him to feel afraid. His mechanism could have been responding to control. Once, certainly, compassion flooded his metal limbs, and he stooped to close the eyes of a man who had been rejected by his grave of rubble. Then wheels were arriving. Of ambulance? Or fire-engine? The Jew walked on, by supernatural contrivance. For now the wheels were grazing the black shell of the town. The horses were neighing and screaming, as they dared the acid of the green sky. The horses extended their webbing necks, and their nostrils glinted brass in the fiery light. While the amazed Jew walked unharmed beneath the chariot wheels. Originally it had been his intention to revisit the house on the Holzgraben, but suddenly he foresaw the vision of desolation, the stucco skin stripped by bombs and human resentment. So he came instead to the police station which he knew so well, at the corner of the Dorotheenstrasse. Now, when he went in, the hands of the man on duty were darting back and forth from official paper to official paper. To occupy himself. He was, it seemed, the only one left behind. "They are belting hell out of the glove factory," the man on duty informed the stranger. "For God's sake! The glove factory!" The man's rather fat hands continued to stray hopefully amongst the official documents. There was a wedding ring on which the flesh was closing. On the plump hand. "Who would have thought," said the man in charge, "that Holunderthal was inflammable! For God's sake!" "I have come," Himmelfarb began, who was rootling in his wallet for the necessary proof of identification; tonight it was particularly important. "To give myself up," he explained. "Now there is only disorder!" complained the policeman. "We no longer have the time, even, to water our flower-pots." His large, bursting hands were helpless. And the broad, yellow wedding ring. If he looked up at all, his mind's eye remained directed inward. "Well?" he asked, though. "What do you want?" "I am a Jew," Himmelfarb announced. Offering the paper. "A Jew, eh?" But the policeman was too distracted by his inability to lay his hand on some other document. "Well," he grumbled, "you will have to wait. A Jew!" he complained. "At this time of night! And on my own!" So Himmelfarb sat down and waited, on a bench, against the wall. He saw that it was, in fact, night, as the man had said, and heard that a miraculous silence had begun to flood the burning town. Somewhere there was a voice, thick with conviction, yet at the same time wavery. "War and peace come and go, Beer and kisses stay…." sang the ageless German voice. "Beer and kisses! Piss-pots!" The policeman snorted. "Enough to make a man burst himself! Beer and kisses is for human beings." Then he looked up. "A Jew, eh?" he said. As the silence seeped in, he was again able to recognize his duties.