ISSER DIDN’T WEAR his father’s tfillin. He hadn’t even kept them. They were in a trunk in Adela’s room, in the Pinskers’ attic, with everything else that had belonged to Isser’s parents. Safe, and half-forgotten.
He unbuttoned the embroidered case and spilled its contents onto the floor with shaking hands. The counterfeit censor’s stamp hit the carpet with a thump and Sorel picked it up, turning it over to inspect it. She’d never seen one before, but she knew the shape of it. This was the stamp that made her father’s political books look legitimate, if you didn’t know what you were seeing. It had never occurred to her that the stamp might be a fraud.
The other thing in the bag was a pamphlet, on cheap rag paper bound with three stitches. The strong medicinal scent of it made them sneeze. Sorel flipped this over too, eyes skipping over the lines of Hebrew that neither of them understood.
Sefer Dumah.
A dog barked outside, deep and loud, and suddenly the shutters were thrown open. Adela leapt through the window, landing awkwardly. The lamp flickered in the sudden breeze.
“What is it?” Sorel-Isser stuffed the pamphlet back in the tfillin case, rolling it up and tucking it into their coat pocket. Adela had fallen to the floor and the shutters were clattering as something outside scrabbled against them, something heavy and ungainly trying to get in by throwing its weight against the heavy wood. Sorel-Isser ran to shut the windows, trying to twist the broken latch back into place, but it was useless. A deep, low growl sounded from outside.
“A dog,” said Adela, breathless. “Your father has a guard dog?”
“No, he doesn’t.” They grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet, backing toward the door as the dog slammed itself against the shutters again and again. How long would it take for the dog to stop and try another way? The shutters weren’t locked. It was pure luck that Adela had managed to slam them closed behind her. If the dog wedged its snout under the edge, it could open them. “I would have told you if he had a guard dog. He does not have a dog.”
Their heel hit the door. They felt for the handle without taking their eyes off the window, pushed it open, and fled into the hallway, slamming the door behind them. There was no lock, but there was a cabinet in the hallway, a heavy, polished piece with a candelabra on it, its only purpose to show off Kalman’s wealth and good taste. Sorel-Isser grabbed one end of it and Adela grabbed the other, dragging it across to block the door just as they heard shattering glass inside the study.
“What the hell is that?” Adela gasped. They could hear it panting, sniffing around the room as if it were searching for something. The quiet scratching of its claws was worse than the thundering bark. The rest of the house was silent as a grave. Surely the barking would have woken someone. The servants, Kalman, the guests.
“I don’t know,” said Sorel-Isser, grabbing her hand again. They ran for the kitchens, to the door that would take them to the stable-yard and out of the house and as far from the dog as possible. “It’s been following me for days. It killed—”
They stopped as someone stepped out of the kitchen, blocking the hallway in front of them. They’d left the lamp in the study, and the only windows were at the end of the hallway behind them, so the light pouring in from the kitchen blinded them for a moment. A silhouette stood before them. But they didn’t have to see his face to know it was him. They didn’t even have to think.
He was holding a lantern in his hand, which he lifted to their faces as they stood frozen in their tracks, blinking in the glare of the light. His face was dazed, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep, and there were bags under his eyes.
“Israel?” he said, in a tone of confusion, then leaned closer, blinking as if he too had been blinded. He lifted his empty hand to their face, tucked his fingers under their chin, and turned their head from side to side, scrutinizing every angle of their features as if it were a difficult holy text, written without vowels. “Soreh?”
“Papa,” Sorel breathed, and then Isser said, “You killed me.”
“No,” said Kalman. He took a step back, looking suddenly very old and fragile. Sorel realized they were the same height. She had always thought that he was taller. But she’d never really looked him in the eye before. “No. Who are you?”
Sorel-Isser took the tfillin case from their pocket and held it up to him. “Where did you get this? This is mine. His. You had those men search my room.”
“Yes,” said Kalman. He took their wrist, in a strangely gentle grip, and pulled them toward the kitchen door. They followed, dragging Adela behind them. She shut the door and stood against it, holding the latch and listening for movement in the hallway.
In the better light of the kitchen, Kalman set his lantern on the table and looked them over again, with that same searching look. “It is you. Both of you. Sarah, and Israel—but one of you is dead, and the other—I’ve been looking for you.”
“Looking for me?”
“Ostap said you’d run. Disappeared. I sent messengers to the shtetlach, trying to find you and the book, and nothing. I always knew you were clever. I thought I was more so.”
“What do you mean, looking for the book,” Sorel protested. “It’s here, you have it.”
“Take a better look,” said Kalman, with a bitter twist of a smile. “You outfoxed me, Israel. Rebound it, hm? All that work to convince you, and you were never planning to hand it over.”
Sorel-Isser dropped Adela’s hand to take the pamphlet from the bag and look it over again, turning the pages. The outer pages were right, printed in cramped Hebrew. But the inner pages—Sorel recognized the text. It was a women’s prayer book, in Yiddish. “But then, where’s the real one?”
Adela peered over their shoulder.
“I sent Ostap to find you,” said Kalman. “To get it. He came back with nothing. We searched your rooms, and again—nothing. Not a sign of you. And no one in Kuritsev had seen you come through to tell Adela where you’d gone.”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” said Isser. “I never left. Don’t lie to me! You knew where I would be—the Papermakers’ Shul. You knew I’d have the book. And you didn’t want anyone to know that I’d taken it for you, so why wouldn’t you kill me? I’m not your Kaddish. I’m a tool to you.” They threw the pamphlet to the floor and stepped forward. “So what did you do with my body?”
“Isser,” said Adela cautiously, reaching for their hand again.
“How can you keep looking me in the face and lying?” Sorel-Isser demanded. Kalman Senderovich, in his dressing gown, no longer looked untouchable. Their hands were shaking, but it wasn’t fear anymore. Now it was anger. They wanted to grab him, shake him, throw him off his feet. They wanted to sink their teeth into him. “How could you do any of it? Destroy the city’s protection, just because it’s out of your control. Make me steal from the rebbe, make me marry his son while you’re lying to him, calling him your friend while you’re trying to destroy him. What’s wrong with you?”
“That is not what happened,” Kalman breathed. He had not stepped away. But he didn’t draw himself up. He stood half-slumped, leaning lightly on the edge of the table. “I did everything for you. Everything. So that you would have a better life.”
“You didn’t do it for me.” Sorel-Isser spat. “You did it for yourself. For your legacy.”
“Isser,” said Adela. “Alter! Listen.”
They all stopped for a moment, holding their breaths. The house was still quiet, as if it were only the three of them. Not a sound from the bedrooms upstairs or the servants’ closet just off the kitchen, where the cook should have been waking from her sleep.
And in the hallway, the quiet scuffing of a large dog’s claws on the floorboards.
“How did it get out?” Adela whispered, and then the latch on the kitchen door rattled. They all stood, staring at the door. It was not the scratching of a dog on the other side anymore, but the frantic maneuvering of someone with hands. The latch clicked open, and they all backed away from the door.
The dog was gone.
The person standing in the hallway, barefoot and in his shirtsleeves, was Sam.