9

“Quickly,” said Vörös. “Run!” He grasped Kicsi by her hand.

“What? Where are we going?” She stood. The wolf howled again.

“Come on!” Vörös said urgently. “Don’t you understand? He knows my name. I am as good as dead. We must get to your house and to my pack.”

“Oh,” said Kicsi. Somehow—she did not remember how—they had started walking, and then running. The roads seemed longer, and darker, and turned in unexpected places. She stumbled against an unlit lamp post and sat down.

“Get up,” said Vörös. “Please. We have to go on.”

“No,” said Kicsi. “You go. I—I’m not well yet. I’m not used to running.” She rubbed her sore foot. “Go on without me. I’ll only be in the way.”

“No,” said Vörös. “I need you.”

“Need me? For what? Are you still trying to watch me, to make sure that I don’t kill myself?”

“No. I need you for something. I don’t know what, but I think that it would be good to have you by my side.”

“All right.” Kicsi stood up slowly. “Let’s go.”

They walked on. They could barely see in front of them. Houses and trees seemed to move, to block their way. The road twisted like a river.

“I don’t like it,” said Vörös, moving his hands along a fence. “He is playing with us. The whole village is under his spell.”

“I’m so tired,” said Kicsi. “Can’t I rest for just a little bit?” She leaned against the fence. It seemed to twist itself under her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the sky. “He’s put out the stars.”

“Please,” said Vörös. “We have to go on.” They started off again. The village curled itself around them like a cat. Every step seemed to take minutes, hours, years. The street flowed away from them, and they could not catch up.

“How much farther is it?” said Kicsi.

“I don’t know,” said Vörös. “I don’t know where we are.”

“I feel like I’ve been walking around in circles.”

“We may have been,” said Vörös. “I don’t know.”

Tiny pinpoints of light gathered by the side of the road. “Wolves’ eyes,” said Kicsi. She shivered.

“Don’t stop,” said Vörös. “Don’t look at them.”

“They’re … terrible,” said Kicsi slowly. She wanted desperately to stop, to sit down. The eyes, bright and cold, watched her pitilessly.

“Look!” said Vörös suddenly. “There’s Erzsébet’s house.”

“No,” said Kicsi wearily. “It’s another illusion. Her house had a tree in front of it. And the curtains were a different color. And the door wasn’t brown, it was—” She saw the tree stump under one of the front windows and stopped. “Are we—I guess this is—Well, if this is Erzsébet’s house, then our house—my house—must be very close. We’re almost there.”

They started to run. The points of light that were wolves’ eyes fell away from the roadside like falling stars and followed them. Kicsi saw something that looked like a skeleton caught above them in a tree, but Vörös grabbed her and pulled her forward. “Don’t stop!” he said, panting, and she ran on behind him. Her side burned with each step.

The wolves drew closer. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle and then a trickle of something moist and warm. Her shoe grew slippery with the blood.

“Almost—there!” said Vörös. “I see it—up ahead.”

And then, with no sense of how they had gotten there, they were in front of the house. The wolves fell back. “He is playing with us,” Vörös said again, grimly.

“What can we do?” said Kicsi. She stopped, felt the bite on her ankle carefully.

“Do? Nothing. We have to go on.”

Together they looked at the house. A sign with Russian letters stood outside the door, but otherwise nothing had changed. A man in uniform sat on the front doorstep, leaning casually on his rifle.

“I don’t know if we can get past him,” Vörös whispered, but Kicsi was saying, “Come. I know another way. This way.”

Kicsi led him around to the side of the house and unlatched the gate carefully. She held it open for him, then followed him into the backyard. No one challenged them. “What is it?” Kicsi whispered. “Why are they here?”

“Quiet,” said Vörös. Then, very softly, he said, “It is because of the printing presses. They have taken your house over as their headquarters.”

“Oh,” she said. They walked quietly across the backyard, past the woodshed, and up to the back door. Vörös tried the door. It was unlocked. “At last,” he said. She could almost see him smiling, there in the dark. “A piece of luck for us.” He slid the door open and they went inside.

Once inside it was difficult to tell which were the changes made by the soldiers and which created by the rabbi. Corridors sloped away from them and seemed to end at different rooms than they had before. Furniture had been moved around or broken and new furniture brought in. Everything looked much smaller.

“This way,” Kicsi whispered. She felt, suddenly, that she did not need to guide them, that the pack itself was calling to them from behind the bricks where she had hidden it so many years ago.

“Go on,” Vörös said.

The dimly lit hallway stretched impossibly long before her, and she took a step forward. Suddenly she remembered a dream she had had a long time ago, a dream where she had come home from school and started to greet her mother and father only to find that she was in the wrong house, that she was about to walk up to strangers who had turned from their evening meal and were looking at her with curiosity. She could not go on. This was not her house. She could not intrude here.

“Go on, Kicsi,” Vörös said, reassuring her. Very strongly now, she felt the pack ahead of her. She touched the wall with one hand and began to walk.

As her eyes got used to the darkness, as she followed the cunning twistings and turnings of the corridor, she began to hear the noises of the house. Ahead of her, in the living room, men were singing and laughing. She could hear the thump of a dice cup and the hoarse voices of the soldiers rising after each turn, and she felt a sudden unreasoning anger that these men were using the table her mother had cleaned and polished so often. Then she remembered where she was, and the anger passed.

Someone was humming tunelessly in the kitchen. She followed the sound. The walls shifted suddenly. “Here,” she said, stopping in front of the hall outside the pantry. “This is where I hid it.” The feeling that they were near the pack was very strong now.

Vörös knelt and began to pry out the bricks. “Pavel!” someone called from the living room. The steady rhythmic thump of the dice cup had stopped. “Pavel, we need some more sugar for the tea. More sugar, please!”

“Of course!” the man in the kitchen called. Then softer, to himself, he said, “More sugar.” Kicsi and Vörös could hear him stand up, could hear him as he came out to the pantry. The walls flowed around them and closed in. They had no place to run.

They stood. In the distance they could hear Pavel begin to hum again, and then stop. He turned a corner and stood before them, a squat young man with a few days’ growth of beard. “What are you doing here?” he said.

Vörös walked over to him and pushed him lightly in the chest. He fell against the brick wall and slid to the floor. “What are you doing here?” he repeated, but Kicsi could see that his eyes had closed. “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t you—make him stop?” Kicsi asked.

“No,” said Vörös. “I can’t.” He returned to the wall and pried out one brick, then another. A space wide enough for Kicsi’s hand opened up. From the living room someone called again, “Pavel!”

“Hurry!” Vörös said.

Kicsi felt behind the brick wall for the pack. For a minute she could not find it and panic took hold of her. Then she touched it, lifted it out, held it in her hands. As she looked at it, she felt for the first time that she had come home.

“What are you doing here?” Pavel said again.

“Here,” Kicsi said softly. She passed the pack to Vörös. “Let’s go, quickly.”

Someone from the living room called, “Pavel!” and swore. “All right, then,” the man in the living room said. “I’ll come get it myself!” Kicsi heard him start toward the kitchen. They turned and ran back the way they had come.

Kicsi felt time, place, memory fold over and become confused. She was not in her house at all now, but in Erzsébet’s; she was in her house again, but Aladár was watching her put away the pack and saying, “Maybe everything you’ve told me is true.” Corridors beckoned, each one a different path toward a different future. She could not find Vörös. Without the pack to guide her she was lost within the maze of her own house.

She chose one corridor and began to walk. There was her bed with the goose feather quilt neatly tucked into the sides—but what was it doing in the hallway? There was the lamp she had loved as a child, with a beautiful woman’s head at its base, but the shade was gone, and one of the bulbs was out. And whose couch was that? Erzsébet’s family had had a couch like it once, but it had been red, not green … Things floated toward her and drifted away. She felt, stronger this time, that she was dreaming. There was nothing to hold on to. She clenched her fists.

“Vörös,” she whispered. She gathered courage from the sound of her voice and said, louder, “Vörös!” There was no answer.

She tripped against something and looked down. She had stumbled against one of the bricks that Vörös had taken out of the wall. Had she truly gone anywhere at all? Or had she stayed in the pantry and imagined it all? Near her Pavel sat propped against the wall. His lips moved, but he made no sound.

“Pavel!” someone called from the kitchen, the same man who had called to Pavel before. It had taken him an eternity to go from the living room to the kitchen. “What happened to you? Where are you?”

His footsteps sounded nearer. The thump of the dice cup came louder, like heartbeats. Desperately Kicsi opened the door to the kitchen and looked inside. She saw smoke and ashes, and the outline of barbed wire. The sound of the dice cups became the clatter of machine guns.

She gasped and closed the door quickly. “Pavel!” the man called. “I can’t see you. Something’s happened to the lights …”

She turned. Something moved at the edge of her vision, and she turned again. The fat gray cat, the cat that Sarah had stayed to feed, came toward her.

The cat could not possibly still be alive. Yet it continued to walk toward her, brushing against her legs. She could not feel it against her. It walked down the hall to a point where three corridors converged and without hesitation chose the left one.

Kicsi followed it. She came up behind it and called to it, but it ran lightly away from her. It turned a corner, and Kicsi recognized with a start the back hallway. The cat walked up to the back door and was gone. Kicsi did not see it go. She opened the back door and stepped outside.

The night was as dark as the inside of caves. She breathed in the cold air. “Vörös,” she whispered. “Vörös, where are you?” For the first time she felt real fear, as she wondered what would happen to her if the rabbi found her without Vörös.

“Over here,” someone whispered, and, very dimly, she could see the outline of a black coat. “Step over this way. The gate’s over here.”

Carefully, Vörös in front, they went across the yard toward the gate. Vörös unlatched the gate and stepped through. Kicsi followed a few paces behind him. Suddenly Kicsi heard Vörös stop and gasp aloud. Before them, where there had been only empty road, stood the rabbi.

He was thinner than Kicsi remembered, and taller. His gray-black hair streamed out behind him. A light shone in his eyes, a light that was not a reflection of the stars, which had been put out, or of the lamps, which had not been lit. Kicsi crouched near the gatepost.

He lifted his hand. The pack flew out of Vörös’s hand and landed without a sound a few feet away, near Kicsi. Vörös took a step back.

“You are a dead man, traveler,” said the rabbi.

“Yes,” said Vörös.

“You are a dead man,” the rabbi went on, as though he had not heard Vörös speak, “for three reasons. I know your name. You no longer have your pack. And here, where I have lived all my life, my magic is stronger than yours. My magic comes from the people and the strength of my village. That is a strength you do not know.”

“Yes.”

“So.” The rabbi stepped back slightly. Kicsi could see them both clearly then—two figures dressed in black, facing each other without speaking. Why doesn’t he do something? Kicsi thought.

The rabbi began to speak. Mist washed around him, began to take on form. Kicsi heard the rabbi speak Vörös’s name, his true name—Gershon, the stranger. She thought she could see in the mist old women and young boys, men in fancy furs and hats and men wearing farmer’s clothing. She saw people dressed in ancient armor, carrying swords, and skeletons with jewels winking on the bones of their fingers. A shape with no head held the hand of a small boy wearing tatters. A muffled sound, of sword against iron, of sighing, came from the figures.

She knew them, the dead from the synagogue. She should have warned Vörös. She remembered a day long ago, standing in front of the synagogue with Aladár …

“These are the unavenged dead,” said the rabbi. “They have been killed in wars or in pogroms. Some have been killed so long ago that only they remember the name of their oppressor. They came to the town foretelling catastrophe and I bound them to me. They will do as I say now. If I tell them to avenge themselves on you, they will.”

Vörös nodded. “Then they are very much like you, rabbi,” he said. “You want your revenge, and because there is no one else, you will avenge yourself on me.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “Because you killed my daughter.”

“I did not kill your daughter, rabbi.”

“You did. Just as surely as if you sent her to the furnaces yourself. Why did you speak the words of evil omen at her wedding if you did not want her dead?”

“I was—I was not myself. I saw the deaths coming, and I wanted your people to be warned.”

The rabbi said nothing. He leaned against his cane and looked down at the road for a moment. Vörös turned and took a step back, toward his pack. Fire leapt from the ground, singeing his coat. “You lie!” said the rabbi, looking up at Vörös from under his bushy eyebrows. “I will listen to your tales no longer.”

The dead stirred at the sound of fire. Behind her, Kicsi felt, without seeing it, Vörös’s pack.

“All right, then,” said Vörös. “Perhaps there is someone else I can reason with. You, over there. From your looks I would say you lived and died over a hundred years ago. What is your quarrel with me?”

The man in the mists that Vörös pointed to said nothing.

“Do I look like the man who killed you?” Vörös asked. “What is your business here?”

“Fire killed me, traveler,” said the man. His voice was thin and whispering, like a broken teakettle. “They came in the night, on horseback, setting fire to our houses, stealing our cattle. I was powerless against them. All my life I have felt powerless, and never so much so as at the moment of my death. And when I kill you, I will feel power for the first time. After that, I can sleep peacefully.”

The rabbi fell back into the mist of the dead. “I have followed you across Europe to kill you,” said the rabbi. “We waste time, talking like this.”

Fire flew out toward Vörös from among the dead. He caught it in his hand and sent it back, and it disappeared into the ranks of the dead. Another flame, from another place, came toward Vörös, and again he sent it back.

“Where is he?” Kicsi heard him say. “If I could see him, I might—He is playing with me.” Again Vörös tried to step back, and again he was whipped by fire.

“You’re mad,” he said. “All of you, you’re all mad. I did not kill her!”

“Do you think that that matters, traveler?” said another of the dead. Water streamed from her hair and clothes. “We want blood. We have waited long enough.”

Vörös took a deep breath. He stood very still and began to speak. The mist lessened, and the rabbi seemed to stand forward, a blurred black outline. Vörös let his breath out slowly, gathering strength. He raised his hand.

The mist enfolded the rabbi, wrapping him around like a cloak. Laughter rose from the dead, a dry muffled sound like stones rubbing together. Vörös dropped his arms.

The dead moved again. Kicsi watched as the mist turned to shapes of people, each one crying for revenge. She saw a tall man on horseback, an archer, a woman holding a candle. Something behind her called to her, called strongly, but she could not move her eyes.

The man on horseback sent a flame out toward Vörös. Vörös caught it quickly and sent it back, and it disappeared into the mist. His face twisted with pain. He was panting, and sweat ran into his eyes.

“Stand back!” Vörös called, and the power in his voice was such that the dead waited, restless. “What will you do after you kill me, rabbi?”

The rabbi looked at the road again. It seemed to Kicsi that he was confused for a moment, that he was considering the strange events that had led him back to his village to kill a man. He was very tired.

Finally he looked up. “That does not matter,” he said. “What comes afterward is none of your concern.”

The dead moved forward again, covering the road, crying aloud in fierce voices. Kicsi could hear them only faintly, as though they were calling to her from beneath the water.

They were very close to Vörös now. When they kill him, she thought, will they come for me? She felt, much stronger than before, that she should turn around, that there was something very important that she had forgotten to do. She looked over her shoulder and saw Vörös’s pack.

Then time seemed to stop for her, to remain poised between one stroke of the pendulum and the next. Two voices argued within her head like Rachel and the gray-haired woman arguing over her life long ago.

Save him, one said.

Why should I?

Why? You care about him.

No, I don’t. I don’t care about anyone but myself, and I want to die. That’s all I care about.

You cared about Ali, once.

Y—yes, I did. What about it?

Ali would want you to save him.

Ali is dead.

Ah, and you want to join him. You think you can be as heroic as he was, simply by dying. But it doesn’t take courage to die. That’s easy. It takes courage to live. Ali had that courage.

Ali would—would want me to live?

Ali would, and so would your parents. Your family. Do you honestly think they would want to see you die?

M—maybe not. But I want to. I want to die.

That isn’t true. You don’t want to die, not really.

I—I don’t?

No. Why did you run?

I ran because—because Vörös forced me. Because I had no choice.

Certainly you had a choice. You didn’t have to stay with Vörös. There was nothing he could have done to keep you with him. You want to live. You want to, but you don’t think you have the right.

That’s right. What have I done? I don’t deserve—

Done? You have done nothing yet. But no one deserves their life. It is a gift, given to all. It is not for you to decide whether or not you deserve it. But if you want a chance to prove yourself, that too is given to you now. You can save the life of someone you love, so that he does not die like Aladár. There has been too much death. He who saves a life, it is as though he saved the entire world.

Then time started again, the pendulum began its downward stroke. Without thinking, Kicsi knew what she had to do. She opened the pack and felt along the necklaces and amulets and herbs until she found a small leather bag tied with a ribbon.

She held the bag in her hand, then lifted it and threw it toward Vörös. Pain lay open her head, her stomach. A darkness that was not the night came and claimed her. She fell to the street.

She wondered, when she opened her eyes, who had won. Vörös, probably, since the dead had not come for her. But the rabbi and Vörös still stood and faced each other. Her eyes had closed for only a few seconds.

The dead moved forward, rippling like clouds across water. And Vörös still stood against them, black, not moving. Then she saw that he held something in his hands. A leather bag.

Vörös opened the bag and poured its contents into his hand. There was a ruby red as the core of fire, a sapphire blue as the depths of the sea, a diamond white as the stars fused together. He threw the ruby into the air, and it expanded, became a red juggling ball. The other stones followed it. Soon he was balancing seven balls in the air.

Kicsi almost laughed. Of all the things he could have done, this was certainly the least expected. And yet he looked so fine standing there, his face changing colors as different colors shone upon it, that she knew he had done the right thing, the thing he had come to the village to do. Many years later, when she would think of him, she would remember him standing like that, a strange mixture of the familiar and the unexpected. She felt a great love for him. She knew then that she was going to live.

The mist had stopped. The light of the balls fell on the faces of the dead, turning them blue, red, green. Their mouths were open, and they called for revenge in languages living and dead.

“You have said, rabbi,” Vörös said, “that you know my name. That is true, but it is also true I know yours. You have said that I do not have my pack. That is no longer true, as you can see. And you have said that your magic is stronger than mine because we are in your village, and your magic comes from the strength of your people, the people of the village. But, rabbi, where are your people? The village you knew is gone, rabbi. You have no magic left.”

The rabbi remained hidden among the dead. Vörös let his hands fall to his side. The balls continued to circle, but slower now, moving with the heavy grace of planets circling the sun. Kicsi could see Vörös’s face as it became orange, blue, red.

“Do you hear me, rabbi? You cannot kill me. The source of your magic is gone. Look.”

A picture appeared within the circle of the balls—a picture of the town as Kicsi and Vörös had seen it earlier that day. Houses were deserted, left open. Strangers walked in the streets. Vörös showed them the synagogue, another deserted house. Its paint was peeling, and many of the windows were gone. Dirt piled up in the courtyard.

The picture changed as they looked at it. They could see the inside of the synagogue now. Rows of chairs had been ripped out, as well as the ornamental fence dividing the men and the women. The ark was open and the Torah was gone. Wind blew in through the open windows.

“Where is your congregation, rabbi?” said Vörös. “Where are your people?”

The mists flowed back. “Dead,” said the rabbi softly.

“Where is your village now, rabbi? Where is the center of your life?”

“Gone,” said the rabbi. “I am powerless.”

Kicsi felt the mist begin to move, to re-form itself. She knew what had happened then. The rabbi had listened to Vörös and had believed him. He had lost control over the dead. And the dead, sensing his nearness, had come after him for their revenge.

Kicsi was able to see the rabbi now, leaning on his cane, standing in the middle of an empty circle. The dead had turned on him, and they were closing in.

Vörös reached out suddenly with his hand. His fingers closed over something, and when they opened again Kicsi could see the red ball caught within his palm. The other balls in the circle closed in to fill the gap.

He strode into the mists. Light from the ball fell upon the dead, turning them the color of blood, giving them the look of life, of health. One of the dead laughed, a high, awful sound, and the illusion of life was broken.

“Here,” Vörös said to the rabbi, giving him the red ball. “Take this. Quickly.” The rabbi took it gratefully, saying nothing. The light dimmed for a moment, then shone out again.

Vörös turned to the dead. “You,” he said. “Stand back. You will stand back.”

The terrible laughter came again. Vörös turned quickly toward the sound. A young woman with an upraised sword came toward him. She had a gaping wound in her side. “Stand back,” said Vörös. “Do you think your ghostly sword can touch me? Stand back. You shall not harm him or me.”

The woman came forward. Her sword cut through the air in front of her, and the dead moved from her path.

“I know you,” said Vörös with amazement. “I fought with you against the same oppressor, many, many years ago. I understand your pain. I feel your death blow. I can help you sleep again. Listen to me, Shoshana.”

Vörös began to sing, a slow, soothing melody. The woman dropped the point of her sword. She sank toward the ground.

From another part of the mist the archer moved suddenly, stringing his bow. “Vörös!” the rabbi called. “Look out!”

Vörös said three sharp words and the string of the bow snapped, wrapping around the archer’s fingers. He cried out in pain and fell back.

More of the dead were moving now, coming toward Vörös in groups of three and four. “I cannot hold them all,” said Vörös. “I need your help.”

“My help?” said the rabbi. “I have no help to give. My powers are gone. You told me that.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Vörös. “You should not believe what a man says when he is fighting for his life.”

The rabbi laughed. “I can give you their names, at least,” he said. “Perhaps we can hold them together.”

“We can,” said Vörös. “We will have to.”

The dead surrounded them. Kicsi could see a shape wearing a golden crown and a long cloak full of holes. The woman with no head was there, as was the skeleton with the jewels on his fingers. They fell upon Vörös and the rabbi like waves upon tall rocks and retreated, fell and retreated, as one by one Vörös or the rabbi sent them back to their uneasy sleep. Sometimes Kicsi could see only a white swirling mist, with red light staining the center like blood. Sometimes she could see the two magicians standing clear of the mist, resting for a moment until the dead closed over them again.

The woman whose hair and clothes streamed with water came toward them. Her face and hands were blue, and her eyes glistened like marble. “I was a small sorceress in my day,” she said. “I dealt mostly in death by drowning. I can still remember a few tricks. First I will put out that fire you have there.”

Water drenched the rabbi’s hand. The light of the red ball flickered and died.

“We have no water here,” the woman said, “which is unfortunate. But I can make you believe that you are drowning, that water is filling your lungs, that you cannot breathe …” She spoke on and on. Her voice was a trickle of water, a brook, a river, an ocean.

The two men stood gaping at her. Their eyes opened and closed, and their hands clutched at the air around them. Vörös felt his way toward the rabbi, slowly, as though moving against a strong tide.

“Soon you will cease to struggle,” the woman said, “and the tide will take you. You will have no worries then. It is very pleasant to surrender yourself to the water. I know. I did it myself.”

The rabbi stood without moving. Vörös reached out and took the red ball from his hand, and the light blazed forth once again. Vörös opened his eyes and looked at the woman.

“Return to the lake in which you were drowned, sorceress,” he said. “We will not listen to you here.”

The woman seemed to grow taller. Her hair shone like a waterfall. Then she swayed slowly, rippling like a river, and was gone.

The mist thinned to a network of roots, to small webs, to nothing. Vörös and the rabbi were left standing alone on the gravel roads of the village, saying nothing, facing each other. It was almost morning.

“I—I do not know what to say, traveler,” the rabbi said. “You saved my life.”

Vörös said nothing.

“I was wrong, then,” said the rabbi. The wild light was gone from his eyes. “You did not want to kill me.”

“No.”

“And you did not kill my daughter.”

“No,” said Vörös. “I did not.”

“I misunderstood you,” the rabbi said. “For a magician, that is a very dangerous thing to do.”

“It is over now,” said Vörös. He held the red ball awkwardly. “We can forget it. It does not matter.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “It matters. I know now that you did not kill my daughter. And I know who did kill her. I—I have always known. It is a knowledge from which I have been trying to hide since she died, but I can run from it no longer. I am trapped here at the end of my road. You did not kill her, traveler. I did.”

“You!” said Vörös, but the rabbi raised a hand.

“Let me speak,” he said. “Did you think that you were the only one who could see the future? I too saw the flames and the furnaces, and I knew that I was given this sight to warn my people, to prepare them for the dangers to come. But I did not believe.” The rabbi sighed, leaning forward against his cane. He looked like a weary old man now, nothing more. “You, traveler, you have been around the world and have seen what people can do to each other. I have only been in one small village. I did not believe that such cruelty could exist. I ignored the warning.”

He paused, took a deep breath. “Then you came, stirring up the people, sounding the warnings. I hated you then. I believed that if we could only forget about the horrors they would not come to pass. In many ways, as you know, I am a stubborn old man. I sent you from the village.

“But the horrors came anyway. I was in a neighboring town, visiting a colleague of mine. I had gone for a walk, and when I returned I found that they had arrested my wife and were soon to arrest me. I did not know what to do, what to think. I changed into a wolf.

“I spent a year in beast’s form, existing like a beast. I lived from one day to the next, from one meal to the next, not worrying about the world, the future. I knew that my wife and daughter were dead, but I could have saved others, as—as you did, traveler. But I did not. I could not face the world or my cowardice.

“And then I found you. I blamed you for everything then, because I could not blame myself. I was crazy—crazy with unhappiness—” He bent his head, his shoulders shaking with his grief. “You did not kill her, traveler,” the rabbi said. “I did. I could have done something.…”

“No,” said Kicsi. She stood up from where she had hidden and came forward.

Vörös turned to her. “Kicsi!” he said. “Stay back. Please.” Ha, she thought, almost pleased. I have never surprised him with anything before.

“No,” she said. “I—I have something to say. You are wrong, rabbi. You did not kill your daughter. And it does not matter now if you could have done something to save her or not. To talk about what might have happened is useless. You can think about what might have happened, turn it over and over in your mind until you can’t think of anything else. You can plan your revenge or—or suicide. But none of that can change the past. The dead—your daughter and my parents—they would want us to go on. To live.” She was crying now. She wiped away the tears angrily. “Do you understand?”

“No,” the rabbi said. “I cannot understand. I am an old man, and a stubborn one. It does not seem right to me, as it does to you, that so many people should die and that we should say only, ‘Ah, well, but that is the past. There is nothing we can do about it now.’ It is a terrible thing, a thing beyond my understanding. All my life I have lived with things I can understand—my family, my village, my traditions. And now, at the end of my life, I am faced with something I cannot accept or understand. I don’t—I don’t know what to do. There is nothing that I can do.”

“No, I don’t mean that,” Kicsi said, nervously. She had never spoken back to the rabbi before, and she was not sure of what she would say to him. “I don’t mean that we should forget or—or do nothing. I mean that—well—You knew my parents, rabbi.”

The rabbi nodded.

“And Aladár, Erzsi’s cousin?”

“Yes, slightly.”

“They are dead now. And I—I wanted to die too, because—I don’t know if I can explain this to you—because I knew that I wasn’t as good as they were. It didn’t seem fair that they should die and I should live.”

“But that—that’s nonsense,” the rabbi said. “Of course you should live.”

“I know. I know that now,” said Kicsi. “But don’t you see? You’re doing exactly what I did. You blame yourself for something that was not your doing.”

The rabbi looked at Vörös. “She is very wise,” he said. “Have you been teaching her?”

Vörös smiled. “No,” he said. “She has come to her wisdom by herself. I am very proud of her.”

“It will be hard,” the rabbi said, not looking at Vörös or Kicsi, “to give up my vengeance. It has occupied my mind for so long. I will have to start thinking about the world again, and about my dead. I see now that I must give it up, this foolish idea I once had. But what will I do now? Where will I go?”

“Why don’t you stay here?” Vörös said. “People will be coming back someday. There will be a community here again, though not as big as it was before. They will need a rabbi, someone to lead them, to help them get settled again.”

“No,” said the rabbi. “I can never lead anyone again. I do not understand the world, and I can’t pretend to the villagers that I do. They will be asking me questions for which I do not have the answers.

“I think,” the rabbi said slowly, “that I would like to find the answers. That I would like to travel the world, and to learn. To become a student again, as I was when I was younger. Why did my daughter have to die? I understand now that you are not to blame, traveler, and it may be true, as this young woman has said, that I am not to blame. But I would like to think that there was a—a reason for her death, and for the deaths of so many other people. It may be that there is no answer. It may be—it is likely—that I shall die before I find it. But I cannot accept that her death, so young, had no meaning. That is something I cannot understand.”

Vörös nodded. There was pity in his eyes. “I wish you luck, rabbi,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the rabbi. “Sholom aleichem. And good-bye, Kicsi. I will always remember your words.” He walked away, his feet making no sound on the gravel-paved road, and merged with the shadows. They were never to see him again.

Kicsi felt suddenly tired. She yawned and leaned against the gatepost. Just before she closed her eyes she looked up and saw the juggling balls circling over her head, crowning her with precious jewels. Then she fell asleep, and did not wake even when Vörös lifted her in his arms and carried her away.