One

A man should stay alive, if only out of curiosity.

Jewish proverb

Children found the bones more than once. This was one of those times.

They should have known something, of course. They did know. They didn’t know. They had no idea it was as bad as that.

It was a soft, deadly secret that had settled into the small forest, blanketing the ground, wrapping itself around the rough skin of the trees. The people nearby tended it silently, patting its edges, smoothing it, the metallic taste of it always in their mouths. As soon as they thought they knew it, though, as soon as they believed they could run their hands along its contours in their sleep, they would remember something else, hear about something else, something they had forgotten or perhaps never knew. Then the secret would assume a different shape, a new form, still soft and baleful.

The black vans. The barking dogs. The shooting in the night. They closed their eyes, their ears, they stuffed their fists in their mouths, desperate to escape the clammy terror. They knew instinctively that secrecy was the only possibility for these things, that this was the only way to survive, even after so many years. They knew it without a word to each other, a mute understanding that bound them — reluctantly — together. But even after these things were gone — and who would know when they were gone forever? — the fear remained, settling in along their spines, so much a part of them that eventually they began using it to place themselves, to find their bearings.

This secrecy, this silence had an existence of its own, though, its own offshoots. Other things sprouted in it, unbidden, unexpected.

Two boys. Suddenly there, scuffling through the layers of dead leaves, needles, surrounded by the smell of sweet decay. Shafts of autumn sun glinted off their hair, their arms as they wandered through the copse, kicking at fallen branches. From a kalhas nearby, their family was part of the collective dairy farm — herds of coarse-haired cows, vats of buttermilk and soured cream. The older one, Efim: stubborn, wearing a faded red shirt, a mole on his hand. His brother, Makar: pudgier, round-faced. The dog: a dirty white hound, pushing his nose into piles of leaves, digging with his front feet, and then loping on to the next pile, the next rotting branch.

They were curious, recklessly curious — the eleven-year-old cocky with it, the nine-year-old his loyal follower. Something so hidden, so lied about must be worth knowing, and they wanted to know.

They had slipped off after the first milking, dodging around the cows in the sheds, slapping their flanks, the grassy breath of the animals rising in the cool air. Naturally, they had been warned over and over to stay away from the forest, to stay away from these very trees, the spiny larches, the spruces with their drooping boughs. But they had been warned so often that exploring the place was irresistible, and all the evasions had made the older one itchy.

They wandered through the trees now, kicking at clusters of red chokecherries in the undergrowth. The air was old, undisturbed, as if no one had been there for years, something that was almost true. A place of shadows, lost in an uneasy sleep.

The older one picked up a stick and swiped at a tree trunk, marked with the wormy tracks of bark beetles. The stick cracked in the silence and the dog bounded off, lost in a geography of smells. The younger boy stopped to kick at a log beside a buckthorn, the sides fallen in, the wood shredded with decay. A current of wind rustled through the branches of the trees, a hint of the cold weather to come.

Then, suddenly, the dog was back, leaping with young dog joy. He dropped a white knob in front of the older boy, and stood, panting. The boy picked it up, rolled it around in his fingers.

What is it? said his brother.

They followed the dog, watching him pounce and whirl through the undergrowth, attacking bushes, a brown puffball. Then a hollow, a broad depression in the ground, a stretch of sandy earth. The dog was digging into the sand, and poking out of it were odd-shaped branches, blunt ends, an old boot half-buried on one side. He picked up something large, globe-shaped and began shaking it, and they saw the sockets in the front, the gaping mouth, a broken tooth.

Recognition. A hair-trigger shock. The younger boy grabbed his brother in fear, and they began to run, tearing through the scrub, twigs scratching their bare legs. They ran panting, out of the forest, into the secret.

Shush, shush, shush, said their mother comfortingly, as they gabbled away, the smaller boy shivering. It was nothing. Deer bones. Bear bones. Badgers. It was nothing. Nothing at all. No more talking about it.

A few days later, the older boy woke up in the middle of the night, in the middle of a bone dream, and thought:

But what about the boot?

···

This is Belarus, a country of shifting boundaries, a map reshaped so many times that its edges are frayed. Home to godwit birds, red deer, and a collection of wary people, people given to fits of yearning, bouts of knifelike courage. No accident that their folk tales are filled with mischief, with sudden twists of fate.

A landlocked country, bounded on all sides, not an ocean to be found. Someone looking for salt water would have to travel south down the Dnepr River, through Ukraine, and all the way to the Black Sea. Or go west across the Dvina River, through Latvia, and into the Gulf of Riga to arrive at the algae blooms of the Baltic Sea. Or — less likely — travel west again along the looping Nyoman River, through Lithuania, to the Curonian Lagoon and into the Baltic by that route. Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania — together with Russia and Poland, the five countries that surround Belarus, that fence it in.

A restless group of neighbours, something of a misfortune at least, if not an actual curse. Some of them are on the peevish side, quick to give offence, even quicker to take it. Or they attempt to lay claims to pieces of the country from time to time, to use it for their own ends. The result? A nation invaded, divided, annexed, given away, retaken. A place of turbulent beauty, forced into constant rebirth.

But it was in the late eighties, the tail end of the last century, when a hawk-eyed archaeologist began asking questions. He had heard whispers about the bones, and he had his suspicions. Tell me, he said to the people who lived around the forest, tell me what you know. And because he sounded as if he knew already, that it was only a matter of filling in a few facts, they did. They told him stories that had been building inside them for years, the details spilling out. It was my nephew, my cousin, the schoolteacher. My son. It was the vans rumbling by in the dark, the crack of the guns, the dogs, always the dogs. It was the blood in the earth, the blood that made the garlic head mushrooms grow in pink. The archaeologist took it all down in notebooks and saved it, waiting until the time was right, waiting until he thought someone else might listen.

A flickering, a loosening of the climate, and he was ready. Finally, the Procurator’s Office was forced to do something. A flock of people — criminologists, doctors, more archaeologists — descended on the sunken earth in the forest. They measured and dug intersecting trenches, they drank hot tea, they made drawings and took photographs. When they had excavated down to the first layer, they drew maps, noted depths, the smoke from their pungent cigarettes curling around their heads. Then they began — methodically, gingerly — exhuming what they had found: bones, skulls, rotten clothing, combs, buttons.

Bullet holes, said the medical experts, turning over the skulls.

Russian guns, said the ballistic experts, holding cartridge cases up to the light.

A grim job, said a young criminologist later, studying his glass of vodka as if there might be some additional findings there, a finger bone or a vertebra.

Grim, but fascinating, he said reverently after two more glasses. In a terrible way, he added quickly.

A report was submitted to the Procurator’s Office, full of treacherous facts. Among them, though, this one stood out, this one was the starkest:

Thirty thousand bodies.

Thirty thousand? The official number. Unofficially: two hundred thousand.

Consternation, alarm. How could they make these facts smaller, fainter, how could they blame them on someone else, how could they make them disappear?

But it was too late. Around the forest, a long, quiet sound began to spread, something that was part sigh, part whisper. The sound of relief that this place of hidden graves was no longer deniable. Relief that the exhaustion of keeping this secret was over. Relief that this distant piece of time, these bodies would in some prickly, solemn way be finally given their due.

They were wrong, of course.

···

2019, a new century, already leaking away. And Leah Jarvis is in the thick of it, called to the bar a year ago, her head still full of radiant law. She is surrounded by doctrines, tenets, precedents, all waiting for the right case, the right time. They rattle around in her brain at odd moments, like scraps of songs impossible to dislodge.

Full of random truths, these doctrines, but high-handed as well. The fruit of the poisonous tree. The doctrine of odious debt. The spider in the web rule. A collection of fables, rumours, hopes, lies. Not only perfect, but so far almost perfectly useless.

She is sitting at a counsel table now, a quizzical face, smooth skin, a flood of dark curls down her back. Ashkenazi hair, says her aunt. Strands of DNA sliding down an ancestral ladder. Although genes can hardly be blamed for a headful of disorderly thoughts, a rueful laugh.

She is almost startled to be in this courtroom today, even though she should know better — she does know better. But sometimes she thinks of herself as a small mutiny against the world of law, a stone in its shoe. You flatter yourself, says law. Still, the idea means that she is often slightly puzzled to find herself performing legal acts, as if these things had climbed out of her law books and taken on lives of their own.

Soon this will all become second nature, though, these hearings and motions and trials. She knows this because other lawyers tell her so, sometimes slapping her on the back a little too heartily. Before long, in spite of herself, she will have acquired the elements of practice, its customs, its quirks in the same way that they have — less of a profession, she thinks, than an unfortunate habit.

She is not much of a mutineer, in any event — she admits this. Too undecided about law, one day a heretic, another day a believer, always hoping for the best. And her face is too transparent, expressions flit across it too easily — serious, mocking, a trace of hilarity. She is working on this, working on developing a more impassive manner, but for now her face, her voice sometimes betray her, her gestures often give her away.

Beside her, the senior lawyer stirs restlessly. Louis Rappoport, in his fifties, bear-bodied, thick-fingered, not a comfortable man.

That morning:

Come with me today, he says. A motion to stay, an interesting case. A war criminal.

He says this casually, gathering papers into his briefcase, as if it had only just occurred to him that a junior might be useful.

Now? she says pointedly. Right now? This very moment?

This very moment, he says. Lucky you, he adds.

A man who falls for nothing else, he falls in love with his cases as swiftly and easily as a cat rolling over. Seduced in a minute by a story with a manila folder around it. Perhaps this is what has sustained him over the years, has kept him from becoming jaded. Even now, after two decades, he is still able to pick shiny pieces out of some wreck of a file.

She is more dubious, a survivor of these enthusiasms, often finding herself stranded in a legal blind alley, cursing his sudden passions. But a war criminal sounds intriguing.

And this is not really an invitation.

Hurry, he says impatiently, and she hurries — running for her legal robes, stuffing them into their blue velvet bag.

Outside, on the street, he walks more deliberately, no sign of a rush. This walk — from his office to the court — is how he girds himself, the peppery city air around him, the rhythm of his strides settling him. A ritual that allows him to arrive at the courtroom door in a particular state of mind. Marshalled. Honed.

In front of them, a man in a reflective safety vest is hosing down the sidewalk, a stream of clay-coloured water running into the gutter. He lifts the hose and for a second — less than a second — the water spray in the sun turns into a prism, colours clinging to the droplets.

Then he lowers the hose again, and they skirt around the small lagoon on the road.

The case? she says.

A deportation. Revoking a citizenship for fraud, for lies and omissions on entry. We’re on the government side for once, asking for the deportation.

A deportation. She almost sighs, but catches herself between the inhale and the exhale. Part of their bread and butter, part of the waves of humanity in motion that make up immigration law. The flow of people coming in, the ebb of people going out, the tide pools of people in limbo. But usually they are acting for the deportee. What happened to the government’s lawyers? Why are they sending this out?

I know what you’re thinking, he says.

Does he? Very likely. A man adept at reading people, when he takes the time, when he takes the trouble. Not something obvious from his appearance — that heavy head, that fleshy nose. Or the offhand arrogance of his manner, an arrogance he wears naturally. He looks like someone more absorbed in himself than anyone else — true more often than not. And his greying hair also gives him a certain unearned distinction, something he finds amusing.

Counsel, says the judge abruptly, startling her out of her thoughts, back into the courtroom.

Louis shifts again beside her. But this is not meant for him, the judge is speaking to the lawyer on the other side, a man making long-winded submissions — all the more endless because the courtroom is hot, the sun pouring in one of the arched courtroom windows.

A trickle of perspiration is starting under her hair. Louis is wearing his summer robes — the sleeveless waistcoat, the lighter gown — but she has only the winter version, yards of black wool, a long-sleeved vest. This spring has been so fickle, so strange, though, that dressing for the weather has become something of a game of chance anyway. Spring? No, this is an imposter of a season. Racing back and forth from winter to summer, one day wet snow coming down in clumps, the next day unsettling heat, staying long enough to fool people into thinking summer has come. This is it, they say with conviction, as if they had some way of knowing, some inside connection to a moody weather god. Or they say it proudly, as if it were all their doing. Then the weather changes again, back into a chilly half-season — and they shake their heads, forgetting their declarations immediately.

Today — the heat, an old air conditioner buzzing uselessly in the corner. She lifts her heavy hair off her neck, twists it up for a moment, and then lets it fall. If the perspiration begins dripping down her face, she has nothing to mop it with except the wide sleeve of her robe. And even a junior should look composed, unruffled. Or at least not visibly sweating.

But they are all sweating, the spectators as well, pushing their hair back from damp foreheads, fanning themselves with statements of claim, statements of defence, anything else they can find. A crowd of applicants, respondents, their lawyers, waiting for their time to speak, to make their cases. All moving now, flapping and fluttering like a cloud of giant moths.

Is there a way to make the perspiration retreat into her pores? Think of something cold.

She thinks hard.

Ice. Ice water. Water. Rain. A storm.

She thinks harder.

The moaning starts in the distance, she can hear the heavy winds rising, filling with water. The sound starts out low, then the pitch begins climbing up to a howl. A storm? No, a hurricane. A few more minutes and there it is, gusts pounding at the courthouse, rattling the windows. The downpour starts, rain whipping across the roof. Then the glass windowpanes begin to shiver and fracture, shards flying across the room, the bailiff ducking, throwing his arms up to shield his head and face. The howling is deafening now, blotting out all other sound, and the pressure, the tension in the air, is impossibly tight. Suddenly, a piece of the roof lifts off, and wind and water come roaring through the room. A torrent catches the opposing lawyer — spindly-legged, sallow-cheeked, a paunch — tossing him into the air, slamming him against a wall. A piece of debris strikes his client on the side of the head, and he is carried off by the water, eyes blank, body spinning around.

Extreme? Probably. Justified? Certainly.

Although she is still hot.

Look, there goes the judge now, caught up in the flood, clutching for a handhold as his dais is swept away. And the spectators? All these anxious people, angry people, the leg-jitterers, the yawners, even the coughers. Thrown against their seats, motionless for a few seconds, their mouths gaping, before they are engulfed, clinging to the balustrades.

Isn’t this satisfying? Isn’t it exhilarating?

No? Perhaps she should try to avoid injuring people, then. Perhaps her storm needs a few alterations. The lawyer on the other side is expendable, more than expendable — he is droning on at the moment — but his client should be kept safe, if only to be deported, to get the reckoning he deserves.

And then there are the spectators again, what should happen to them? Do they deserve to be carried away in a rush of dirty water? Probably not. And the judge? They need him, he is crucial, there is no one here more crucial than him. It would be difficult to say that the court clerk and the bailiff had done anything wrong either. The clerk is mean-silly, but the bailiff is amiable enough — neither one really deserves a watery end.

She sighs, and her storm begins to fade away. In a minute, the courtroom is dry again.

Inordinate delay, repeats the lawyer on the other side, standing at the rostrum. Excessive delay. Extreme delay.

This is the basis for his motion, his attempt to halt the deportation proceedings.

A man with flabby lips, a protuberant face. He looks like a camel, she thinks.

He grimaces at his notes.

A camel with a toothache.

Delay, delay, delay, he says, as if this were needed to express the sheer slowness of it all.

A fact, Louis had said. Nothing we can do about it.

Not a few weeks, not a few months, but decades before the government woke up from its postwar slumber, decided to find these men, to pursue them. Several years after they had identified this man in particular. A good argument, then, but the other lawyer is making it badly. Instead of speaking with any emphasis, any expression at all, he is reading his notes in a monotone.

Of course, this is a common problem, this reading of notes out loud. She has seen other lawyers do it, as if making the notes alone had drained them, as if they had no more to give to putting these thoughts forward, nothing to convey by the sound of their voices. Perhaps this is true, but she is sometimes seized with the urge to go up to them during a break, to whisper to them: At least try. Take a stab at it. Be bold.

Although she is not in a position to give this advice, or really any advice for that matter. She has done only a few cases on her own so far, small cases where the stakes were low, and in the last one she rose to her feet for the final argument, only to find herself inexplicably frozen. Suddenly, bafflingly, her tongue had thickened, her lungs emptied, her heart was banging in her chest. An isolated problem, she hopes desperately. No doubt only a passing difficulty. A brief stumbling block on the road to the republic of law. Something that will be solved by experience. Who knows why these things happen?

She glances at the man across from them now. What does a war criminal look like? An alleged war criminal, that is. Stefan Drozd, a man in his nineties, his face cross-hatched with lines, the skin on his hands like cracked varnish. Sitting stoically as his lawyer makes his submissions, the whites of his eyes yellowed, his neck pouched out. The man the government — their client — wants to deport. Why now? A deterrent to others, to refugees who lie their way in. Or to keep him from benefiting from his crimes. By a remarkable coincidence, says Louis, also a way for the government to rid itself of a moral dilemma, a black eye.

Not so fast, says the man’s lawyer now, shifting from one leg to the other. Look at the delay.

Louis snorts.

Too much time has gone by, says the man’s lawyer, pulling at the end of his nose, tapping his fingers on his paunch. How can he defend himself? Witnesses are dead or lost, documents have been destroyed, memories have faded. And the man has built a new life in this country — an industrial glassblower until he retired. A maker of bottles, vials, flasks.

How is the nature of his job relevant? says the judge impatiently.

He must be hot too, this judge, sitting up there in his sash and robes. A man who spends his days with every flicker, every blink, every expression under scrutiny. The lawyers watching him intently for clues as to how he is leaning, looking for signs that might help them increase their chances, silently amending their arguments on the fly. Was that a nod? A sigh? Which points are reaching him, which ones are falling flat? What should they play up, what should they play down?

The applicants, the respondents are also watching, besieging their lawyers at the breaks in their cases. Why did he write that down? What did that mean? Did he raise his eyebrows? Did he seem agreeable? they say anxiously, their lawyers turned into interpreters, oracles. The lawyers are noncommittal, though, they know too much about the twists and turns of cases, the unexpected reversals and successes. Hard to tell, they say. Difficult to predict. We have to wait and see. But despite their words, they say this in a manner that manages to suggest that the case is going well in some indefinable way.

The judge looks meaningfully at the clock and back to the rostrum. This is a man who was a lawyer himself once, and not so long ago. A sea change, or at least a lake change — first a life of talking, an unnaturally vocal life, rolling out phrases, endlessly turning thoughts into words. Then a sudden switch to a life of listening, at least during the long hours in the courtroom. Do the judges who challenge the lawyers — who get into debates with them — simply miss their own voices, the use of their former skills? Perhaps their mouths become too dry, she thinks, and they begin to panic in some inner part of their beings.

Well? says the judge. Relevance?

The harm, the prejudice suffered by my client, says the lawyer hastily. The life he has built here.

He knows there is little point in saying: How could a man who works with glass — a substance so transparent, so delicate — how could he have possibly committed these acts, these crimes?

Two grandchildren, he continues, a girl and a boy. How could a man who has grandchildren — so genial, so family-like — have done these things?

Only one ear is required for this baggy argument, only half an ear, she thinks. She studies the courtroom instead — one of the older ones, a certain weary elegance. The oak balustrades, worn to a brown-gold by a thousand hands, the carved tendrils twining around the judge’s dais. The floor — mosaic, the grout blackened around the once beautiful tiles, endless patterns of spirals, hexagons, diamonds. Now they are chipped in places, and in one corner the surface is patched with cement, as if the repairers had given up trying to match the tiles, and thrown up their hands instead.

The murals, though, they still have a faded dignity. Lining the top of the walls, Greek figures in white robes, giving the place a shadow life of its own. They sit under date palms, reading scrolls, gesturing to each other. The colours are bleached — pale greens, tans — and the paint has flaked off in places, leaving bald spots. This means that some of the figures are missing body parts, a hand, half a nose, an ear. Despite this, they are still studying their scrolls, their graceful heads inclined, oblivious to their injuries. Oblivious to everything, in fact, the cases in front of them as well — a majestic indifference to pleadings, dockets, arguments.

Are you hot too? she asks them silently, looking up at the walls, at their long-fingered hands, their curled beards. But they are scholars, musing on some point of law, absorbed in their own discussions — they have no time for material things.

And you? she says to the rearing lion and unicorn on the coat of arms behind the judge. They are indifferent as well, though, lost in their own ancient battle, tongues flickering, eyes on each other.

I know what you’re thinking.

This is one of Louis’s talents, this ability to make people believe him, believe things about him, or at least believe the story of who he is at that moment — a story that he is in the constant process of creating. He talks about himself, the happenings around him, as if he is composing a description of his life, revising as he goes along — even at the same time he is living through it. But this description is not only for the benefit of other people — he seems to be continually describing himself to himself, often with some satisfaction.

And if he doesn’t know what she is thinking, then she does. Now, in this courtroom, sitting beside him, now that she has read the pleadings in this case, the facts, now that she has seen the history of the man they are trying to deport, this is what she is thinking:

Brutality. Torture. Murder.

···

The court clerk coughs. Thin, sharp shoulders, he has an entire vocabulary of coughs, and this one, delivered with a slight pinching around his nostrils, means your time limit is almost up. He manages to convey a trace of spite at the same time, something in his tone.

The other lawyer stretches his neck, first one side and then the other, and continues on with his reading.

His youth, he says. Fifteen, sixteen at the time. A mitigating factor.

I’ve reviewed your motion record, counsel, says the judge. No need to repeat things in the affidavits or materials. It would be more helpful if you could highlight your leading points.

This judge — so incisive, so trenchant.

Of course, Mr. Justice, says the lawyer, I’m in your hands. I’m always in your hands.

Then he begins droning on again.

If you were in my hands, Louis murmurs, I would strangle you.

···

Fifteen-minute recess, says the judge.

Outside the courtroom, lawyers are gathered in knots around the columns in the hall.

Over here, says a friend, waving at her.

What’s new? he says as she comes up, and he means it. What does she know?

Faces turn towards her. They have a weakness for rumours, they are as inquisitive as crows. They long to pass on tidings about judges, cases, each other — an affair, a trust fund, a partnership feud. Surprising, this — the tougher they are, the more seasoned they are, the more fascinated they seem to be.

A war criminal, she says.

They look interested in spite of themselves, their robberies, their assaults forgotten.

But Louis is behind her now, and he needs strong coffee, the client as well.

Any chance of an espresso? says Owen Menzies wistfully. A government official, fiftyish, a long face, licorice-black hair, pale skin. He is their liaison, the bureaucrat with the War Crimes Section in his portfolio. A man who selects what he says coolly, carefully, something that has contributed to the longevity of his career. His views are supple, his thoughts adjustable, all apparently at the disposal of his employer.

So different from the people who usually sit beside her in court — the refugees, the immigrants. All those luckless people who have been caught up in cases, who have stumbled unwittingly into the bear trap of law. Sitting there, dressed in cheap clothing, their faces messy with hope.

If this man has hopes, she suspects he would ensure they were unknown to anyone but himself. Although there is no doubt that there are advantages to a more cool-headed client — he is not someone who requires hand holding, who needs amusing, who demands minute-by-minute assessments of the proceedings. Only an espresso.

A stop beforehand at the Lady Barristers robing room, a name from another era, a name that still makes her laugh. The room is deserted at the moment, a whiff of spicy soap at the sink. She strips off her waistcoat, the shirt and swabs herself down with water. Relief. Although the heat is not the only problem. Perhaps what she really needs is a bottle or two of distilled patience, some elixir for suffering fools gladly — at least long-winded ones.

A swift pat dry, and back into her sticky clothing, this costume. She has to admit she is attached to it, seduced by its quiet formality, the close fit of the waistcoat, the folds of the robes, even the starched collar and tabs — the sheer white and blackness of it all. Other lawyers scoff at it, but she suspects this is only a blind. Who can resist clothing that has the power to transform them, to reshape them into more solemn people? Keepers of archaic phrases, old customs. A barrister and a solicitor.

Perhaps she needs this wrapping more than they do. You’re a lawyer? people sometimes say to her, as if this occupation was particularly surprising.

Yes, she says shortly.

Really? they say, as if she might be mistaken about this.

Do they see too much, the traces of jobs to pay for school still clinging to her? Ghost marks of a research assistant, a bartender, a clerk in a bookstore. Then again, perhaps they merely sense her own doubts. There are moments in which she believes in herself utterly, and moments when this fails her, when she starts to wonder if the parts of herself add up to little more than a subtle confidence trick.

Is it possible we bluff ourselves into existence? she thinks, looking into the mirror. Is that how it works? She searches her face, her eyes — yellowish brown, flecked with green and grey — for proof of something, anything.

But the person looking back at her is silent.

She shakes herself, and sets off in search of espresso.

On the way, she passes a stained glass window, the sun throwing patterns on the floor. The light stripes her, the other people walking by for a second or two — their faces, their shoulders briefly lit up in rose, gold, violet.

A burst of laughter from one of the knots of lawyers; most of them are good mimics, polishing their anecdotes. Then she has the coffee in hand, another minute, and she delivers it to Owen and Louis. A few gulps and they are back in the courtroom.

All rise, says the clerk, and they bow as the judge comes in — the lawyers deferential or ironic, the spectators awkwardly or not at all. People are still fanning themselves, the smell of hot bodies floating off them.

Louis begins his argument, his hands holding the rostrum, a pen in one. He does this because otherwise he moves his hands too much, they rise and dip, the palms turned down for emphasis, turned up in disbelief.

Distracting, he says. All that movement. So he keeps them fixed on the rostrum or holds them behind his back in an effort to ensure that the judge will be doing more listening than watching. And listening to Louis is unusually satisfying, his voice has its own liquid intelligence.

Now this, she thinks, this is an argument, something worthy of the name. How does he do it, the shades of tone, the shifting rhythms? She wonders for a moment if it could be set out in a form of musical notation, as if it were some sort of undersong, only with a smaller octave.

Usually he exudes a lazy self-possession, but the laziness drops away when he argues, leaving only the assurance. Once in a while, away from a courtroom, she sees a threadlike crack in this confidence, this presence — a hesitation, a tiredness at the back of his eyes — and she wonders if there is some cost to it, whether it has a weight of its own. But then the crack is gone and he is looking at her, amused by her inspection.

Think about it this way, he says now, setting out his points, his voice rising and falling. Or think about it that way. The value of justice, the meaning of justice. Do these things diminish with time? Surely a delayed justice, an old justice, is better than none at all.

He makes the word justice sound as if he had some intimate knowledge of it, as if it were a crony of his. Someone — a little testy — sitting beside him at the counsel table, looking annoyed.

Even the spectators are paying attention now as he goes on, describing the impact of the case, the implications, the consequences. Describing the bigger picture, the smaller picture, offering sharp pinpoints of clarity.

This is what the other side is really saying, this is the gist, he says, beginning to wind to a close. That however terrible the crimes, the passage of time has dehydrated them into a piece of history. But think about the dead now, the tortured, the victims. Imagine them lined up silently against that wall. Too much? Too dramatic? But they can’t be here, surely they should have standing, surely they deserve faces. Delay? Delay? For them, the harm is never-ending — the lives they never led, the children they never had.

He allows a hand to escape for a moment, to make a gesture towards these phantom people.

And delay? This man himself, Drozd, is the real cause of the delay, disappearing into the chaos of Europe during the war. Disappearing, then emerging later into a new life, his history gone. Someone who hid his past thoroughly, but not forever.

Suddenly, the man himself is up on his feet, shouting, harsh-sounding syllables — Belarusian? Russian?

Probably Russian, says Owen. More common even in Belarus.

In any language, his anger crackles across the room. The indignation of an innocent man? Or the deeper outrage of a guilty one?

His lawyer puts a hand on his arm, the bailiff starts towards him. A moment, please, says his lawyer. He whispers urgently, insistently to the man, who whispers back, clearly uncowed. More whispering, and the man begins to droop slightly — reassured? Placated?

We’re ready, Mr. Justice, says the lawyer, although the man’s fury is still hanging in the air.

Louis takes up his argument again. They want to convince you that deporting him, sending this frail old man — harmless now — will do no good for anyone. Not so frail, he says. Not so harmless.

The outburst has been a piece of luck.

Louis. If he has his faults — many, says Nate, the other junior — he also has this gift, this ability to weave strands of words around a reluctant judge, coaxing him, luring him into one thought after another. This is something she hopes to learn from him, something she wants above all from him. Perhaps it will be contagious — rather than learning it manually, studying his techniques, perhaps she will simply catch it if she spends enough time with him.

A minute later, though, his voice starts to falter, and she looks up. He seems lost for a second, as if he had suddenly found himself somewhere unexpected, somewhere unknown. He sways slightly, steadies himself on the edge of the rostrum, and then sits down abruptly at the counsel table.

A moment, Mr. Justice.

He pushes his scribbled notes over to her.

Go on, he hisses.

What?

Go on.

She looks at Owen — no doubt he will want an adjournment to find someone more senior. Needless to say, he will not want her.

But he looks surprised, and then a quick assessment crosses his face, followed by his usual coolness. He hesitates, and then nods.

Not an adjournment? she says, her voice rising.

No, he says quietly. We want this over with as soon as possible, before there is much in the way of an outcry, before the various groups can muster their forces, before they start to harangue us from all sides.

But I’m not prepared, she says, alarmed.

Win or lose, either way has benefits on this one, says Owen calmly.

An orphan case.

This thought should be comforting, but instead, she feels a lurch of anxiety. A war criminal. Doesn’t this matter, doesn’t this count in some legal sense, even some broader sense? Is that her throat thickening?

Counsel? says the judge sharply.

Go, Louis hisses again.

She stands up, her pulse beating in her ears, her hands cold.

···

And? says Nate, back at the office.

A disaster, she says glumly. I ended up reading his notes.

···

Nate — her ally, her accomplice, her rival. A friend, too, with all the hazards this involves. Although he is a careless friend, an uncertain friend — often kind, but unreliable. Tall, wide-shouldered, he shaves his head, his scalp naked and smooth, his eyes grey-blue slits.

An egghead, says Louis dryly.

And a strand running through her work life, a daily presence. He is — they are — a rolling conversation about cases, evidence, strategies. About brief triumphs, smarting losses. About irritable judges, the plights of their clients, about opposing lawyers who attempt to bully or mislead them. Her quick-fire thoughts, his ballast, her restlessness, his calm — these are all parts of this shifting bargain.

There are only the two of them and Isabel, the office manager — Louis no longer hires articling students. They kept turning into lawyers, he said to her. Like caterpillars into butterflies, only in reverse.

Not you, of course, he added, a little late.

A small firm, a splinter of another. But Louis is well-known, even though his practice keeps merging, dividing, dissolving.

Criminal lawyers, says Nate. Unrepentant loners. Even the ones who do immigration law. And notorious for their bare bones staffing.

All of them?

Most of them. Some of them.

So how did he explain it, the sudden handover in court? he says now.

A dizzy spell.

He almost laughs.

There was certainly something wrong, anyway. He seemed to suddenly dissolve into unrelated parts.

Nate is trying not to roll his eyes. He is not trying very hard.

···

She is walking home — Louis’s cure — hoping it will clear her head, will chase the case out of her mind even for a few minutes. The litany in her head: if only she had asked for a few minutes to prepare, if only she had been faster on her feet, if only she had paid more attention. She has replies for these things, explanations, qualifications, but her critic is wily — the more she summons up defences, the more insistent the litany becomes. She is simply no match for herself.

Is it possible they might lose the motion because of her? No, this can’t be right. Presumably the case will speak for itself. She hopes. Fumus boni juris. The smoke of a good right. Something from international law, not applicable here — the first impression of the merits of a case, a measure of its worth. But she is tempted by the idea that rights, that rightness itself might have a scent of their own, a particular odour that can be detected.

But these thoughts are useless. If she walks home along the waterfront, perhaps they will sail away across the lake, billowing out into nothingness as they go.

Don’t be such a worrier, her aunt would say.

Until her last stay in the hospital. Then she said: Now you can worry.

Yes, she is a worrier, but usually her worries are not like this, not things that nag at her. Often she has luxuriant worries, giddy worries, cottony worries — worries that sustain her, that rouse her, that hold out their soft arms to her. And she falls into them, knowingly, ruefully, but unable to avoid them.

The day has changed now, no longer hot, the sun stranded behind layers of clouds. The wind is fresh and raw, shuffling through the leaves of the trees along the wharf, heavy with the uncertainty of rain. Out over the water, the sky — marbled in grey and white — is shifting and changing, clouds rolling across it. For a moment, some light breaks through, casting a silvery gleam across the waves of the lake. Then it fades away again as the clouds slowly drift into each other, gradually merging, separating. She inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the cool air, attempting to blow away the sludge in her head.

Farther on, a man is sitting on a bench, his knees spread out, his shirt straining over his bulging stomach. He tosses bread crusts from a paper bag, and a flock of gulls peck at them, their white heads jerking in and out. One glides in for a landing, graceful, coasting on motionless wings for an impossible length of time.

Suddenly there is an explosion of beaks and wings, shrill cries — a fight. The birds scatter for a second or two, and then they are back, searching the ground.

As she nears them, they turn towards her and then begin waddling in her direction, expectant.

If hope is the thing with feathers, what does that make you?

They look at her with foolish faces.

Birds. Dimwits on the ground, maestros in the sky.

To one side, the lake swells and retreats, leaving strings of seaweed, ruffles of dirty foam on the beach. In the shallows, the tiny pebbles are rust-coloured, green, grey. The smell of a dead fish, half-buried, catches in her nose — she sees it in the sand, a piece of driftwood snagged around it. Behind that, the sense of space — the water and sky stretching out until they disappear in the slate-blue mist of the horizon.

Ahead, a woman in a cardigan is sitting on a rock, her posture unfinished. She watches a ferry churning towards the quay, trailing streams of white wake, the gulls circling it, dipping and soaring. Lifting her head, she wraps her arms around herself, then looks towards Leah for a moment — her eyes drifting, hungry for something.

A minute later, she is seized with an impulse. She steps off the boardwalk, kicks off her shoes, pulls off her stockings, then buries her feet in the sand, cold and soft. Now into the water — even colder — up to her ankles, her knees — a dense, blunting cold.

The breeze catches her hair, the air smells like algae. The shallows around her are dark green, and farther out, the surface of the lake wrinkles and smooths. A hawk soars overhead, climbing the wind currents.

Her feet are aching, but her head is clearer. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees small shapes flitting through the water. Fish, she thinks with surprise. No bigger than goldfish, dark bodies quivering, shooting forward.

In a minute, her feet and ankles are numb, and she wades back out of the water, onto the sand, sitting down on the remnants of a bleached log.

The wind picks up again, and a life preserver bangs on a pole.

He wants to see you. An hour after the motion, Isabel had been at her door — pale hair, dry skin. A poet from Colombia, someone who helped to put out a literary journal that had been too brash, angering the wrong people in a country prone to violence. Forced to flee, now one of the people in limbo, working in the office until her claim is decided, until she has more means, more possibilities. In spite of her ethereal appearance, she is as practical as soap, scornful in both English and Spanish.

He wants to see you, she said again, a warning in her voice.

Louis — sitting back in his chair, his barrel body turned to one side. Often he seemed to have more grain, more presence, than most people — to occupy an additional area around his physical being. All the better to keep people at a distance, something he did well. What did she know about him, after a year of working there?

She knew this: he was a reader, more than that, an urgent reader — unable to stop himself, unable to help himself. Books sustained him, fed him. Not the tiny legal library they shared with another firm — his own office shelves were filled with hardcovers, paperbacks, some leather-bound in maroon, slouching between bookends. Usually five or six open at one time, on his desk, on a chair, on the floor, many of them with torn covers, page corners folded over, coffee stains. He had an intense relationship with them, as if they were a group of papery, argumentative lovers.

Legal philosophy, legal history, even religious law, anything but the statutes or reports that might apply to cases, that might be useful. He seemed to be drugged by words, an endless inflow that soothed something in him, a craving that could only be eased in this way.

Perhaps all these words have fed his arrogance, though. Last month, a few glasses of wine into a Bar Association dinner, he began holding forth — only half-jokingly — on a taxonomy of stupidity he claimed to be compiling.

Wilful ignorance, he said. Hubris. Disastrous judgment. Extreme recklessness. Outright idiocy. And some people are more than one type, more than one genus. Include them all, and it adds up to a pile of dolts and nitwits.

What about smugness? she wanted to say. Her instincts roused, she was immediately on the side of the dolts. A toast to folly and blunder, long may they reign.

But he has a certain stray warmth as well, something that surfaces unexpectedly — a touch on the shoulder for a client, a rare word of praise for her or Nate. This is oddly disconcerting, particularly since he often becomes more remote afterwards, as if he regretted it. Married to an artist — Carla — often exuberant, someone who teases him gently in front of other people. A little boy as well, a later-in-life child, endearing, wild. Once, when he mentioned him, the look on his face was weak with affection.

Even when he is critical, though, pointing out her shortcomings, he often sounds eerily kind — a tone that was more in sorrow than anger. Not today, though. Today he was caustic.

That was quite a performance. What possessed you? You could barely get a word out of your throat. You embarrassed me, you embarrassed the firm. You embarrassed yourself. You were unprepared, not paying attention.

If there was anything he despised, it was his polar opposite — a lawyer who was stiff, awkward, at a loss for words. Her excuses rushed to mind again, but she could feel his contempt.

How could I be prepared? she protested. It was last minute.

Last minute is a fact of life in practice — better get used to it. That is, unless you want to change professions, which you might want to consider.

What about you? she wanted to say, stung. The man who was stranded mid-sentence. The man who lost his place, lost track of himself for a few minutes, who had to have someone else take over. Was he daring her to raise this? Was this an aggressive way of defending himself? But it seemed too risky to say anything about it, a small minefield.

Some of it’s true, though, isn’t it? said Nate later. You weren’t paying attention.

Nate, not a person of cheap sympathies.

She puts her shoes back on, starts walking again. This time she turns north, across the strip of sand with its plumes of scrub grass, and suddenly — in its city-like way — the lakeshore is gone and she is walking up side streets.

If Louis was so hard on her today, she must ensure he never finds out about the case where she froze up entirely. Now this, this is a fatal problem for someone who wants to be a trial lawyer. This is a dream-strangler.

Take long, slow breaths, say the experts, the suppliers of free advice. But this is a useless idea for someone who is unable to breathe at all. Tense and relax your muscles, they say. But this is impossible when her muscles are already seized up. Imagine yourself performing the desired action, and all the details of what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling. You can create your own outcome, you can produce the result you want.

She finds this last one vaguely surreal. What if the lawyer on the other side is also imagining his desired outcome, the opposite result? Would this create duelling realities, some metaphysical game of Rock, Paper, Scissors?

No, the cure for this is practice, experience, speaking so often in court it will become almost effortless. After a while, sentences will flow out of her mouth seamlessly, long ribbons of words wrapping around cases. Even Louis must have been nervous as a young lawyer — although this is hard to imagine. But eventually the problem will disappear. Eventually it will go away. Why? Because it has to. Because it must.

A few more blocks now, and she is home.

This place. A narrow house, the bottom step to the porch sagging on one side, a stack of newspapers listing precariously on a chair by the door. The window sashes are newly painted, though, a small blow for order in their ongoing feud with decay. And it is a feud, the place is porous, the wood soft with age — water seeping into the basement, drafts hovering around the windowsills. For every advance, a setback.

The dampness gives it a spongy quality in the summer, turns it into a drunk of a house. But it dries out in the winter, dries out so thoroughly that the curtains, the pillows rustle with static electricity. This is its best moment, though, dusk, when the lines of the house emerge more clearly, some trick of shape and light, a moment of subtle coherence. Perhaps the builder designed it at dusk, not realizing that these lines would retreat in daylight, would retreat again as dark settled in.

Now she sees Gus has fixed a rain gutter — this morning sagging off the side of the roof. For every setback, an advance.

As she pushes open the door, the pruney smell of old carpets, mice, and cigarette smoke meets her. Rudy is home, fussing over his cooking, a pork stew of some kind. An uncle, one of three — almost part of the house themselves, the walls, ceilings imbued with their hoarse voices, their bristly faces.

Rudy, the oldest — beaky, a puff of grey-white hair around the edges of his skull. A dandelion seed head of a man, sour-sweet, someone with low blood pressure who faints easily. He starts to waver and then looks around frantically for a chair, or sits down on the ground abruptly so that he will not fall and crack his skull. This makes it seem as if he is fainting deliberately, as if he lies down first and then faints, but falling is dangerous, and this move is born of long experience. Eat salt, says his doctor, and he does — sardines, olives, pickles — with little result. He is never out for long, but she learned from an early age how to catch a sinking body, or at least break its fall.

Later, at dinner:

What’s in this slop? says Malcolm, grimacing after a couple of bites.

Rudy glares at him.

You cook, then, he snaps.

Something he says often.

I don’t cook, says Malcolm derisively.

Something he says often.

Then he shakes his head, a little more emphatically than required. A man who thinks of himself as good-looking — a genuine feat of self-deception. In fact, he looks as if someone had dragged a damp cloth across his features, blurring them.

But it is true that Rudy is a poor cook, his dinners are barely edible. His sense of taste is fading, and he has begun adding ingredients almost randomly — cayenne, paprika, bay leaves, celery seed. His tongue is going blind, and his dinners show a frantic longing for flavour, a yearning for something elusive that goes with it. The results are peculiar, but he is their only cook and they need him to cook, however lacking it is; Malcolm and Gus are hopeless, and she has no time and even less interest. The appeal of mixing, baking, roasting eludes her — she is puzzled when Nate exclaims over a fiery pepper, a salty cheese.

Malcolm pushes his plate away and lights a cigarette, dragging in the smoke, his body visibly relaxing. He is a devoted smoker, he loves it in a way he loves nothing else, smoking is his darling. The routines — shaking out the cigarette, the click and flash of the lighter, the first deep inhalation — have worn furrows in him. Gus smokes as well, but not like this — he smokes doggedly, as if it were a requirement, some sort of obligation. Between the two of them, she grew up in a tobacco haze, the rough smoke familiar, comforting, part of the climate of the house.

She tries the pork stew now.

Good, she says, without much conviction.

Malcolm hoots, and even Gus gulps back a laugh.

Rudy glares again and throws down his fork, tines bouncing off the table onto the floor.

Gus makes a mild sound in his throat. He is her soft spot, more than a soft spot, a dough-faced man, burly. A man who still believes T-shirts are undershirts, who leaves glasses around with the dregs of rye and ginger ale. When her six-year-old self ended up in this house, she had been almost feral with shock — her senses enlarged, her body rigid. She had sniffed out a faint trace of gentleness in Gus, something on his breath, on the surface of his skin, and had attached herself to him with an unchildlike ferocity. Rattled at first, he tried to rally — they all tried, even Malcolm went through the motions. Mortified by the man — their brother, her father — who had disappeared a few years earlier, leaving a note and three hundred dollars wrapped in a piece of cloth. I’m sorry, said the note. Only that. I’m sorry.

Then her mother gone, several years later — crushed inside a heap of twisted metal.

What else can we do? said Rudy.

Their brother. Their niece.

None of our business, said Malcolm.

It’s only on weekends, said Rudy. The aunt will take her during the week.

Gus nodded.

And he’ll come back. He’ll hear somehow. This is only for now. He’ll come back once he hears.

You have no idea where he is? said the social worker. I don’t believe it for a minute, said her tone.

No idea, said Rudy. I’m sure he would be here if he knew.

In fact, he was not at all sure of this. The youngest brother, the father — witty and weak and self-absorbed. And a man who was afraid, desperately afraid of — what? Of being ordinary. Of leading a rye and ginger life. Chasing anything that might save him from this, like a distracted dog. A fugitive from the everyday, the commonplace, always searching for a way out.

He’ll turn up soon, said Rudy.

He is far from sure of this either.

The aunt was the formal placement — the mother’s half sister, nineteen years older than her, almost another generation. But a woman whose kidneys were starting to fail, scarred organs slowly breaking down.

I can’t handle her full-time, she said miserably, exhausted by the disease.

The social worker knew enough — too much — about the foster home system to send the child into its labyrinths. So this arrangement would have to work — the aunt during the week, the uncles on the weekend. She did what could be done, the things that were possible. A session on child-rearing, simple advice, checklists on clothing, food, sleeping. The child was the only one who read the lists, though, or tried to — her small finger tracing out the letters she knew until the papers were stained and dog-eared. Hoping that somewhere in there were the clues she needed, the answers to what had happened, how her life had jackknifed so wildly. But she also passed along anything she understood to Gus.

A taciturn man, something that suited them both. He used words sparingly, as if he had only a limited supply, and was storing them for some future use. Instead, he preferred silence, or a range of silences: dusty silences, steep silences, warm silences. A clam, said the social worker to her supervisor. But soon he became used to the child winding around his legs, and developed a clumsy affection for her. Not a man who was a good bet in other ways, though — someone with serial bankruptcies, an instinct for failure.

Raised by your uncles? Nate says in the same tone someone might say: raised by wolves? His voice is dark, slightly hoarse. He is intrigued by this odd household, intrigued as only someone with two card-carrying parents can be.

I raised her, says her aunt. They looked after her.

Anna Rubin. Puffy-faced, her skin floury, her dark eyes circled with shadows. Persistent in her own way, determined that the girl would know something of this other life, that she would have some sense of its latitudes and longitudes.

No such thing as half-Jewish. Don’t let me hear you say that. If your mother is Jewish, you’re Jewish. Halacha. Those are the rules.

Those are the rules, echoed the girl, curled under the woman’s arm.

But her aunt had more to say, much more. A personal mission, built around tzimmes and the ten plagues.

The plague of locusts. The plague of frogs. The plague of water turning into blood.

The girl held up a hand, raising her small fingers.

Only three, she said.

She was a literal child.

A selection of the best, said her aunt.

Behind the scenes, though, her kidneys were silently abandoning their functions, the toxins in her system slowly building. Soon — too soon — it was the uncles during the week, the aunt on the weekend.

Not even a Jewish disease, said her aunt disgustedly, her skin yellow.

No need to tell that social worker, she added.

What do you do when you’re there? Malcolm said once, not so much interested in the girl as the aunt, any possibilities for money.

The child hesitated.

We eat brisket, she said after a minute, the only thing that came into her mind. She had no words for this briny, tender woman, for her kitchen, her houseplants, vines running along mantels, trailing down shelves. For the moth orchids everywhere — windowsills, bookcases — leaning over pots, their grey air roots twisting around them.

Malcolm looked at her uncomprehendingly. The idea that the girl was half-Jewish, the idea of Jewishness itself was so foreign, so baffling to him — to all three of them — that they ignored it. They had an unspoken agreement to treat it as if it were an awkward genetic problem, something that was better left unmentioned. And after a while, she understood that she was not to talk to them about it, that this was something she had — she was — with her aunt.

Is it only for girls? she said to her, early on. Being Jewish?

Who told you that? Full of men. Look at Moses. Look at Einstein. Look at Marvin next door.

Marvin — thinning hair, mild, someone who yawns a lot. Ida’s husband, content to drift in her slipstream. Neighbours.

She’s not the brightest, but she has a good heart. And he shovels my walk in the winter.

And Moses? Einstein? Other neighbours?

Big shots, said her aunt.

That night:

Men can be Jewish, too, she said to Gus, putting her to bed.

He said nothing in an agreeable way.

Look at Moses. Look at Marvin.

More nothing.

She sighed, the world-weary sigh of a six-year-old.

Those are the rules.

···

Half-Jewish. This is unsound genetically as well, she discovers later in biology classes, not a matter of chromosomal halves. Instead, she has a mix of genetic variations, extending in all directions. If some of them mark her as a carrier of Tay-Sachs disease, Bloom syndrome, and an inability to drink milk, one non-Jewish parent will make no difference. This is a mess of a genome.

···

A week after the motion. Nate is sitting on the arm of one of her office chairs, cracking pumpkin seeds in his teeth. Lime, chili, salt — I roasted them myself.

You’re distracting me, she says, although the truth is that she was already distracted. The stay motion has been stalking her thoughts, intruding everywhere. She is waiting for the decision, although this is a wholly pointless exercise — it could be issued tomorrow, next week, or even next month, especially if the judge decides to write extensive reasons, not at all improbable. Still, she feels suspended in the web of this case, in part because she is still possessed by the idea that if they lose, it will be her fault.

Unlikely, says Nate. Although not impossible.

Or that she will be blamed anyway, whether it is her fault or not.

Not quite so unlikely, Nate admits. Give me your hand.

She stretches out her palm, and he leans over and shakes some pumpkin seeds into it.

She studies them absently, and then puts them in her mouth.

But I thought the government didn’t care about the outcome, he says.

It must be a posture of some kind, she says. She still finds it difficult to believe.

Suddenly her mouth is burning, and she grabs for a glass of water on her desk.

How much chili did you put on this? she says, coughing, sputtering, her eyes tearing. You’re a lunatic. You must have a tongue like leather.

You should be hardier, he says, laughing.

She is up now, in search of water, ice, anything.

I brought in some grapefruit sorbet, he adds to her back.

In the tiny office half-kitchen, she spoons up the sorbet, holding it against her tongue, the roof of her mouth, tart, cold.

As she stands there, the case floats by again. Old justice. Louis’s words. What do they mean, aside from a turn of phrase, a flourish? Old justice must be as murky as young justice, whatever that is, whatever it might be.

A skeptic — how could she be anything else? — but she has been at least partly hooked by law, mesmerized, tenet after tenet claiming to make sense out of some particular cluster of circumstances. The doctrine of ripeness. The principle of attractive nuisance. The duty to rescue. The duty to retreat.

Finally, she had thought, finally, she had found the antidote to luck. Luck, that mobster, that tyrant, doling out favours and cruelties on a whim. Now, instead of luck, there would be justice, the reordering of a thoughtless world. Now she would see these rules in action, they would provide remedies, they would rearrange tragedies and jackpots, if only she could put together cases that invoked them. But the cases are turning out to be muddy, or a series of dubious riddles, the law itself full of weak spots.

She is trying to ignore this, though, she is afraid that otherwise air will begin slowly leaking out of her convictions, that she will start to deflate in some strange, professional way. And she often finds law heady, enthralling in itself, a slow two-step of surmise and conjecture, a string of tales turned into logic. A snail in a bottle. A carbolic smoke ball. A hunted quail.

Another spoonful of sorbet, cold against her tongue, her lips.

Don’t knock luck, her aunt would say. But the mobster had gotten to her anyway, her kidneys terminally failing at fifty-nine.

A restless presence, though.

So almost anything is better than luck. And her clients are such fervent believers in law — at least those seeing it for the first time — she wonders whether they might re-inject her with their hopes. All their convoluted explanations, their frantic optimism — they believe more deeply in law than any judge, any lawyer. But only until the wrong verdict comes down. Then they are astonished by this betrayal.

Not Owen, naturally. Someone with a smooth coating, unflappable. Merely trying to return a man to the country he came from.

An Act for the remitting prisoners with their indictments to the places where the crimes were committed.

Where divers felons and murtherers, upon feigned and untrue surmises, by writ and otherwise, before the King in his bench, and cannot by the order of the law be remitted sent down to the justices of gaol-delivery or of the peace or other justices or commissioners, to proceed upon them after the course of common law: Be it therefore ordained and enacted by the authority of this present parliament, that the justices of the King’s bench for the time being have full authority and power, by their discretions to remand and send down the bodies of all felons and murtherers brought or removed into the counties where the same murthers or felonies have been committed and done.

···

Good God, says Louis, paper in hand.

Don’t sound so surprised, she says, even though she is surprised herself.

You better call the client and give him the bad news.

We won? says Owen, disconcerted for once.

All three of them think: now we have to do the case.

···

She is dreaming a twitchy dream. The man Drozd in his shirt sleeves, his forearms freckled with age, veins standing out on his hands. A maker of bottles, vials, flasks. He is creating loops of molten red glass, twirling them into brilliant arcs.

What are you doing here? she says, puzzled.

Now he is adding orange glass, grey glass, sending them into the air in flowing spirals. The glass is so naked and luminous that it makes her dizzy to look at it.

How do you do that? she says.

What are you making? she says.

Doesn’t it burn your hands?

Of course, says Drozd, but he keeps on turning out the arcs, twisting and folding them, rolling them out again.

She puts out her hand to touch the hot glass herself, and wakes up, the dream disintegrating.

Glass.

Soda ash, limestone, sand.

So hard, so transparent.

So beautiful. So breakable.