'In the Jewish cemetery in Friedrichshain. In Berlin.'
'That is good. He enjoyed life,' he added, mostly to himself.
Outside it was growing noticeably darker. 'I must be going,' Russell said, 'but...'
'No, no - you must eat with us,' Esther Rosenfeld interjected. 'You can stay the night in Miriam's room. Please, it will give us time to decide what to do.'
Put like that, Russell could hardly refuse. Not that he'd wanted to.
The meal was simple but tasty, a rabbit stew with large chunks of home-made bread. The conversation was sparse - Russell guessed that Leon usually did most of the talking, and on this particular evening he seemed frequently - and understandably - lost in thought.
'I saw your neighbour on my walk up here,' Russell said. 'A woman.'
'Eva,' Frau Rosenberg said tersely. 'We were friends before all this, but now they seem afraid to know us. She does, in any case. Their boy Torsten came to see us last week. Miriam told him she would write to him, but she hadn't.'
Russell put two and two together. 'Did he go to Breslau with her? Someone thought they saw her with a boy by the station.'
'He works in Breslau. He was going to see that she got the right train to Berlin. She had only been to Breslau once before.'
'I'd like to talk to him. Do you know where he works?'
'In a big store. A really modern one, Eva told me. It was designed by a famous architect. You could ask his family, of course. I think they would tell you.'
They went to bed soon after eating. 'We live by the sun,' Leon Rosenfeld said simply.
Miriam's room contained an iron bed, a wooden chest of drawers and a small table. Russell lay in bed watching the candlelight flicker on the ceiling, listening to the shuffling of the horse in the barn outside. On the other side of the inner wall a conversation was being conducted in fierce whispers. He understood Leon Rosenfeld's desperate need to go looking, but he hoped Esther would be able to dissuade him. If she didn't, the only outcome of his own visit was likely to be a third family casualty.
He leaned over to blow out the candle, and thought about losing Effi . Her mystery meeting was tonight, he remembered. He wondered what sort of people she was getting herself involved with - many of her friends and acquaintances had a somewhat tenuous grasp of political realities. Effi was sensible enough when she took time to think, but...
Who was he kidding? There were no riskless paths any more. Safety had only ever lain in keeping one's head down and one's conscience in cold storage. It was too late for that now, for him and for Effi . Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had pushed them both over the edge.
He woke soon after six, the sun streaming through the uncurtained window and onto the wall beside him. The rest of the house was empty, the kettle only warm. After using the latrine behind the house he found Esther Rosenfeld digging up weeds in the kitchen garden.
'Good morning,' she said, straightening her back. 'Leon will take your advice,' she added without preamble. 'He wants to go, but he's also afraid to leave me unprotected. And I encouraged him in that thought, God help me.'
'It's the right decision,' Russell said.
'I hope so. Come, let me give you some breakfast.' She led the way back to the house, placed the kettle on the woodstove and cut some thick slices from yesterday's loaf. A slab of remarkably solid butter was fetched from the larder, a jar of plum jam taken down from a shelf. Tea was made in a Russian-looking samovar.
All in all, it was delicious. Life was apparently possible without coffee. At least for a short time.
'How can I contact you?' Russell asked between mouthfuls of bread. 'When my brother-in-law wrote to you, the postmaster in Wartha denied that the letter had ever arrived.'
She thought for a moment. 'I will give you the name and address of a friend,' she said. 'A goy.'
She found a piece of paper and wrote it out with a slow, steady hand. 'This man is the local blacksmith. He and Leon are still friends, despite everything. Send your letter to us in envelopes addressed to him, and he will bring them to us. Leon will tell him to expect it.'
'Right.'
They sat in silence for a while, Russell sipping at the hot tea, Esther apparently absorbed in thought. 'Do you think our daughter is still alive?' she asked suddenly.
'I don't know. If she was dead, and the police had found her, then I think they would have informed my brother-in-law.'
'There is hope, then?'
'Yes.'
She ran a hand through her hair. 'There is a train to Breslau at around nine. We can hear it when the wind is from the east.'
'Your husband?'
'He is working in the field beyond the barn. He will want to say goodbye.'
They walked out to find him. He was picking cabbages, and judging by the size of the pile had been doing so for several hours.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and shook Russell's. He looked years older than he had the evening before. 'My grandfather bought this land over sixty years ago,' he said. 'He thought they would be safer close to the mountains, and he was right. We should never have sent Miriam away.'
'There was no way you could know that your brother would be attacked,' Russell told him.
Leon was not to be comforted. 'I always said my Miriam was too good for this world,' he said. 'Like an angel.'
Walking away down the dirt-track Russell could feel Esther's eyes on his back. Should he have raised her hopes? Did he have any reason to believe that Miriam was still alive?
Smoke was rising from the neighbouring farm. He thought of stopping to ask where Torsten worked, but the thought of meeting the boy's parents was uninviting. And the clues he had would be good enough. There weren't that many big stores in Breslau, and he was surprised that even one had been designed by a famous architect.
It seemed warmer than the previous day, and he hung his jacket over one shoulder. He walked swiftly, and was approaching the last crossroads, the roofs of Wartha visible across the fields, when he heard the lorry behind him. It was bumping along the dirt-track at a fair speed, belching dust into the air, and showed no signs of slowing down to spare his lungs. A blast of the horn reinforced the message.
Russell stepped onto the verge and beyond, reaching for his handkerchief to cover his mouth. The lorry lurched by, two men in the cab, two standing behind it in the open back.
Enveloped by dust, Russell heard rather than saw the lorry grind to a halt some fifty metres down the track. He saw two shapes climb down from either side of the cab, two more jumping down to the ground. All four shapes walked towards him. As the dust cleared, he saw that the driver and his mate were both wearing brown shirts. That was the extent of their uniform, but it was enough.
'Oh, fuck,' Russell murmured to himself. 'Good morning!' he said cheerily, as if these were the folks he'd most wanted to meet on such a beautiful day.
The response was less friendly. 'Where have you come from?' the driver asked. A short balding man with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, he was a good deal older than the others - around Russell's age - and he seemed to be in charge.
There seemed no point in lying. 'I've been up to the Rosenfeld farm.'
'For the night?'
'It was too late to get back to Breslau.'
'It's against the law, staying with Jews,' one of the younger men offered.
'Why were you up there?' the driver went on, ignoring his companion.
This, as Russell realized at the time, was the moment when he should have said something clever and self-exculpatory. That he was doing an article on Jews who refused to see sense and quit the Reich - something like that. But the last twenty-four hours had reduced his already limited willingness to indulge the local scum, and, in any case, the Rosenfelds deserved a bit of loyalty. 'I was telling them that their daughter is missing,' he said.