I bet they're right, said Lars. I never sent my grandmother thank-you notes, and she's never bothered me.

You see? said Mikhail.

But what do you you think? said Lars. Do the dead ever read those letters in crates? think? said Lars. Do the dead ever read those letters in crates?

If the dead do anything, said Mikhail, it's plugging their ears when Stumpf starts to talk.

Lars laughed, and they sat on the wooden platform and shared a cigarette. Neither wanted to go back to the Compound. At night it gave up any pretense of being a place to live and became a mine with an overwhelming mineral smell. When they finished the cigarette, Mikhail lit another and asked Lars if he'd heard from his father.

Lars shook his head. His father was a pastor and had been jailed three times for criticizing Hitler. He was afraid letters could get Lars into trouble and hardly ever wrote.

It must be hard for him without you, said Mikhail.

Hard for me too, said Lars.

On the way back they stopped at the well to take a long drink of water from the tin dipper. Lars shone his flashlight into the woods.

Be careful, said Mikhail. You could tempt someone.

You don't believe in ghosts, said Lars.

No, said Mikhail, but I believe in the SS.

Mikhail and Lars reached the hut, walked down the incline, and took the mineshaft to the cobblestone street, where Elie and Stumpf were on a wrought-iron bench. Stumpf wore his wooly bedroom slippers and was extending his hands in a pleading, importunate gesture. Elie was shaking her head.

I need those gla.s.ses, he was saying. Heidegger deserves to see.

You'll only bury them, said Elie. And you'll never send the letter.

Anyone who finagles a talk in Paris knows you can't expect an answer from a Jew, said Stumpf.

Lars hurried Mikhail down the street. He thought it was hard enough that Mikhail worried about reading letters from people he knew and didn't need to hear Stumpf bemoaning Heidegger's gla.s.ses and the d.a.m.ned Jew-optometrist. But Stumpf raced to catch up with them, and all three walked beneath the frozen stars.

What do you think? said Stumpf to Mikhail, not pretending he needed to explain.

There are a lot of good Aryan optometrists, said Mikhail. Heidegger must have new gla.s.ses by now.

I'm tired of hearing about Aryan optometrists, said Stumpf. A man orders a pair of gla.s.ses and never hears a thing.

Heidegger likes the unknown, said Mikhail.

We aren't talking about the unknown, said Stumpf. We're talking about gla.s.ses. Besides, they were friends. They wrote letters.

How do you know? said Mikhail.

I did research.

Stumpf was always telling Mikhail he did research.

They'd come to the white house with the four artificial rose bushes, the artificial pear tree, and 917 917 on the bronze metal plaque. Mikhail walked around a flowerpot and opened the door. Stumpf shoved Lars away and touched Mikhail's shoulder. on the bronze metal plaque. Mikhail walked around a flowerpot and opened the door. Stumpf shoved Lars away and touched Mikhail's shoulder.

Can I come in?

Stumpf's face appeared pinched, the way people look when they think they might be shot. Mikhail knew that look. He'd seen it in Talia's eyes when the SS raided their house. He'd seen it in his son's eyes when the ghetto police pushed him to the front of the Lodz square.

For a minute, he said. But first let me say goodnight to Lars. You know he worries about me.

Dear Ania,I have waited to write to you for days because the trip was long. But the countryside is beautiful, and there are woods and places for children to play. Please come and join me.All my love,Christofer Oil lamps from the 19th century, a time to which the interior designer, Thorsten Ungeheur, thought the Solomons were still confined, lit a room that both Mikhail and Stumpf had seen only in engravings-a room of dark wood, polished bra.s.s, and velveteen furniture. The living room had purple velveteen chairs, a purple velveteen couch, a rocking chair with a crocheted antimaca.s.sar, and tables with copper-based lamps. The walls had pictures of bearded men in skullcaps-supposedly pictures of ancestors-painted by order of Thorsten Ungeheur who didn't know orthodox Jews don't allow graven images. There were also footstools covered in needlework with Hebrew letters that didn't spell anything. Talia was sleeping in an alcove off the right-hand corner of the living room.

Mikhail lit one of the lamps, and the two men sat on tufted velveteen chairs. Stumpf sat stiffly with his wooly feet on the floor. Mikhail sat casually with his legs crossed. Stumpf offered him a cigarette. Mikhail lit it and said the end was brighter than the stars.

Agreed, said Stumpf. But you can't snuff out stars.

With the right kind of smoke you can, said Mikhail.

Stumpf didn't comment. Instead he handed him a reproduction of Heidegger's letter, which he'd written from memory.

Mikhail nodded when he read about the Reich not understanding the Being of technology and looked bemused when he read about the importance of German root words. When he was finished reading, he put the letter on a piecrust table.

What mental embroidery, he said.

But you can embroider back.

I don't think so, said Mikhail.

Why not? said Stumpf. The letter is straightforward.

Really? Then you answer it.

I'm a practical man.

Mikhail smiled at Stumpf.

But I'm an Echte Jude Echte Jude, he said. I only answer letters in Hebrew and Yiddish.

But you can write a good letter in German, said Stumpf.

Really? said Mikhail. Do you think someone who's studied the Talmud can take any topic and stand it on its head and rattle out a bundle of words that would make any philosopher happy? Besides, my handwriting isn't the same.

Stumpf waved the end of his cigarette: a shooting star.

The letter can be typed, he said.

Goebbels decided Echte Juden Echte Juden shouldn't know how to type. shouldn't know how to type.

I'll decide differently, said Stumpf.

Mikhail began to talk about typewriters: How so many were brought to the Compound. How they lined the main room in hedgerows. How over fifty people typing sounded like artillery.

Stumpf listened without understanding, until Mikhail said the issue wasn't typewriters, but a bargain. Indeed Mikhail had a condition-something only the two of them could know about, and he would write the letter only if Stumpf would meet it.

THE BARGAIN.

Dear Uncle Johannes,I'm writing to you after a wonderful journey to Theresienstadt. It's very beautiful here. There is a place where I can play hide-and-seek with other children and we are going to be in an opera on a real stage. We all miss you. I haven't seen mama and papa for days, but the beds here are warm, and mama and papa have told me to tell you that there is also a lot of tobacco so you can smoke your pipe.Love,Pieter

Hans Ewigkeit had originally planned to line the mine with thick brick walls. But even before losing Stalingrad, the Reich was pinched for money. So instead of brick walls, the Compound had thin pine walls covered with a single layer of plaster. Workers had added five coats of paint. But the Compound was a flimsy sh.e.l.l: Scribes put their hands on their ears when they wanted to think. Mueller had worn earm.u.f.fs.

The only soundproof places within the entire Compound ab.u.t.ted the walls of the original mine. There were four, and by far the best was between two b.u.t.tresses accessed through an air vent in the ceiling of the smallest water closet. It was unpleasant and cramped, but hermetically sealed. And it was to this air vent that Dieter Stumpf and Mikhail Solomon went to discuss Mikhail's condition.

They left the Solomons' house after one in the morning, and Scribes were still laughing in the kitchen. Ordinarily Stumpf would have made a fuss about their being up past curfew. Instead he crept to the narrow water closet with Mikhail. They got on top of a crate, opened the vent, lifted themselves into the jagged cavern, and closed the vent behind them. The cavern was less than a meter high so they had to crouch.

Mikhail and Stumpf adjusted to the s.p.a.ce and kept their distance in the pitch-black dark. They both hoped fervently that no one would use the water closet because sometimes people in this cloistered dark got trapped while one hapless person after another used the facilities. Neither Stumpf nor Mikhail wanted to be confined with the other. Besides, having to hear someone p.i.s.s or s.h.i.t was worse than being intruded upon by another group coming up through the air vent to talk in private. By tacit agreement, every inhabitant of the Compound treated this narrow cavern as a place of asylum. Even if the intruding group included officers, they would apologize and leave.

Mikhail's condition for answering Heidegger's letter was this: rescuing his niece-his sister's only daughter. For the past five months she'd been hiding in a crawl s.p.a.ce under the floor of a house in Northern Germany. Every week SS men came to the house and put a stethoscope to the floor, convinced the house had a heartbeat. Until now they hadn't been able to find the exact location of the heartbeat, but it was only a matter of time. Mikhail wanted Stumpf to bring his niece to the Compound before SS men shot her or had her deported to the camps.

Deportations weren't supposed to be public knowledge, but Stumpf didn't bother to deny anything. Instead, he tried to fob Mikhail off by telling him the Compound had decided not to take children: parents didn't write to small children so they didn't need a child to answer letters. Mikhail said his niece wasn't exactly a child, and it never occurred to him that she would have to answer letters. The issue was saving a life.

But everyone has to be useful here, said Stumpf.

In that case, I can't answer Heidegger because you won't help me, said Mikhail.

Even though Mikhail couldn't see him, Stumpf looked in the other direction to hide his disappointment. Then he asked: How old is this girl?

Almost sixteen. Why?

Because she'd need to walk through the town and act calm, said Stumpf. Can she act calm?

Of course she can act calm. How else could she spend five months in a crawl s.p.a.ce?

Stumpf spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness-invisible in the dark. He touched Mikhail's shoulder by accident, jerked away, and said he didn't know what to do. Goebbels's orders were to deliver the gla.s.ses to Heidegger with a convincing answer to the letter. But Stumpf couldn't write an answer himself.

I'm a practical man, he said again.

A dilemma, said Mikhail.

A paradox, said Stumpf.

They made the laborious climb out of the air vent, and Stumpf told Mikhail he would give the matter some thought. He crept past the kitchen to his s...o...b..x of a watchtower and looked down at the Scribes, who were huddled on desks and wrestling with covers to keep warm. It occurred to him they looked like boa constrictors. Someone cried out in sleep. Someone else said to shut up. Then there was a chorus of shut ups shut ups and an upwelling of whispering. and an upwelling of whispering.

Stumpf pounded on the window and shouted, Order!- Order!-a command that made another Scribe shout: Be quiet! We're trying to sleep!

Stumpf watched with contempt while Scribes rearranged more blankets, and papers scattered to the floor. He considered offering all five philosophers a ham and an extra supply of cigarettes in return for writing the letter. But a conspicuous bribe could lead to gossip, and gossip could lead to chaos, and there was already enough chaos in the Compound.

Just last week someone had scrawled Dreamatorium Dreamatorium over the main door. Stumpf had washed it off, but it was scrawled back the next day. He considered going downstairs to wash it off again. But within moments he was asleep in his chair, his head against the gla.s.s of the watchtower. over the main door. Stumpf had washed it off, but it was scrawled back the next day. He considered going downstairs to wash it off again. But within moments he was asleep in his chair, his head against the gla.s.s of the watchtower.

Every afternoon between one and one-thirty it was Stumpf's job to order the Scribes to imagine Joseph Goebbels, the head of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This was to prepare for Goebbels's visit to the Compound-an event that was continually announced and postponed. The reason for the imagining, as explained to Stumpf, was so no one would be in awe of him when he did arrive and could answer his questions. Gerhardt Lodenstein allowed Stumpf to carry out the exercise so he could feel useful-an illusion that spared the Scribes from excessive rants.

For the duration of the exercise, Scribes had to push their typewriters to the edge of the desks and put away pens and letters. Then they had to imagine Goebbels in the proper sequence, starting with his boots, on to his jodhpurs, and then to his face. There was never any mention of his clubfoot. And whoever didn't imagine in the right order would be punished.

Stumpf walked back and forth between desks, sorry he couldn't make the Scribes imagine Heinrich Himmler instead and confused about how to regulate something he couldn't see. He stared at Scribes who were trying not to laugh and gave commands: Imagine more quickly!

Continue imagining!

Proceed in the proper order!

Nafissian was smirking. Stumpf walked to his desk and asked what he was imagining.

Goebbels's boots, said Nafissian.

What do they look like?

Black.

Are they shiny?

Yes.

Wrong. We don't know what kind of day Goebbels will have had when he visits. He could have been walking through mud. Or have a bunion and be wearing slippers.

Be prepared for anything, he continued. Goebbels could be wearing a hairnet. But you won't be looking that high.

Or a housedress, said La Toya.

Shut up! said Stumpf.

The Scribes pursed their lips to keep from laughing. They never tried to imagine Goebbels. Instead they thought about a decent cup of coffee, or whom they'd try to seduce that night if they won the lottery for Elie's old room. They tried not to think about what had brought them here or what had happened to the people they left behind.

But at other times during the day-random times-on their way to the kitchen for coffee, or smoking on the cobblestone street, they saw the five-foot picture of Goebbels near the mineshaft and imagined him against their will. He was their threat and savior, the reason why they were still alive, taken from almost certain death to this place. And only Goebbels's willingness to continue a ridiculous scheme sustained the fuliginous room where they answered letters to the dead that were stored in crates.

Today, when the half-hour was over, Stumpf looked out at the Scribes. He felt-as he always felt after this exercise-relief and euphoria. He tapped on the blackboard and announced that the Compound was going to have a new member-a girl of almost sixteen who would be staying with the Echte Juden Echte Juden.

As you know, he said, we have long needed a child to answer letters from parents to children in accordance with our strict standards of Like Answers Like Like Answers Like. So Fraulein Schacten is going to bring a girl to the Compound. For the most part, this girl will answer letters written by parents who are deemed to be pious. But if time permits, she'll answer letters from parents who haven't been deemed to be pious. So if you get a letter from a parent that is clearly to a child, put it aside for a possible collection.

Possible or probable collection? said Parvis Nafissian.

Both, said Stumpf.

What about likely? said Ferdinand La Toya.

That, too.