Klein raised his hands toward the ceiling.

"Be civil," the elder Klein said to his grandson. "They've come all this way."

"What you're asking is impossible," Klein said, speaking to Andras and Tibor.

"Impossible, and illegal. You could all end up in jail, or dead."

"We've considered that," Klara said, her tone demanding that he look at her. "We still want to go."

"Impossible!" he repeated.

"But this is what you do," Andras said. "You've done it before. We can pay you.

We've got the money, or we'll have it soon."

"Lower your voice," Klein said. "The windows are open. You don't know who might be listening."

Andras lowered his voice. "Our situation has become urgent," he said. "We want you to arrange our transport, and then we want to get the rest of our family out."

Klein sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. "Get someone else to help you," he said.

"Why should they get someone else?" his grandfather said. "You're the best."

Klein made a sound of frustration in his throat. His grandmother, having finished her preparations in the kitchen, wheeled a little tea cart into the room, parked it beside the sofa, and began to fill ancient-looking Herend cups.

"If you don't help them, they will will try someone else," she said, with a note of quiet try someone else," she said, with a note of quiet reproach. She cocked her head, pausing in her tea-pouring to scrutinize Klara, as if the future were written upon the dotted swiss of her dress. "They'll go to Pal Behrenbohm, and he'll turn them away. They'll go to Szaszon. They'll go to Blum. And if that that fails, fails, they'll go to Janos Speitzer. And you know what will happen then." She handed the cups around, offering sugar and cream, and poured a final cup for herself.

Klein looked from his grandmother to Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana and the babies. He wiped his palms against his undershirt. He was one man against all of them.

He raised his hands in defeat. "It's your funeral," he said.

"Please sit and drink your tea," Klein's grandmother said. "And Miklos, you need not use that morbid language."

They took their places around the table and drank the strange smoky tea she'd prepared for them. It tasted like wood fires burning, and it made Andras think of fall. In lowered voices they talked about the details: how Klein would arrange transport down the Danube with a friend who owned a barge, and how the families would be secreted away in two ingeniously built compartments in the cargo area, and how drugged milk must be prepared for the babies so they wouldn't cry, and how they would need to bring emergency food enough for two weeks' travel, because a trip that ordinarily took a few days might take much longer in wartime. Klein would have to make inquiries about ships leaving from Romania, and where and how they might gain passage aboard one of them.

It might take a month or two to arrange the journey, if all went well. He, Klein, was not a swindler, not like Janos Speitzer. He would not book passage for them upon an unsound boat, nor tell them to bring less food than was needed so they would have to buy more from his friends at cruel prices. He would not place them in care of a crew that would steal their luggage or prevent them from going ashore to a doctor if they needed one. Nor would he make false promises about the safety or success of the trip. It might fail at any point. They had to understand that.

When Klein had finished, he sat back against the sofa and scratched his chest through his undershirt. "That's how it works," he concluded. "A hard, risky trip. No guarantees."

Klara moved forward in her chair and placed her cup on the little table. "No guarantees," she repeated. "But at least we'll have a chance."

"I'm not going to speculate about your chances," Klein said. "But if you still want to engage my services, I'm willing to do the work."

They exchanged a look--Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana. They were ready.

This was what they'd hoped for. "By all means," Tibor said. "We'll take whatever risks we have to take."

The men shook hands and arranged to meet again in a week. Klein bowed to the women and retreated back down the hallway, where they heard the door of his room open and close. Andras imagined him taking a new manila folder from a box and inscribing their family name upon its tab. The thought filled him with sudden panic. So many files.

Stacks and stacks of them, all over the bed and desk and bureau. What had happened to those people? How many of them had made it to Palestine?

The next evening Klara went to her brother to ask his forgiveness. She and Andras walked together to the house on Benczur utca, pushing the baby in his carriage. In Gyorgy's study, Klara took her brother's hands in her own and asked that he excuse her, that he understand how surprised she'd been and how incapable, at that moment, of appreciating what he'd done. She hated the thought that he'd already lost so much of his estate. She had authorized the sale of her property in Paris, she told him, and would begin to repay her debt to him as soon as she had access to the money.

"You're in no debt to me," Gyorgy said. "What's mine is yours. Most of what I had came from our father's estate, in any case. And it'll do little good for you to put money into my hands now. Our extortionists will only find a way to take it."

"But what can I do?" she said, on the verge of tears. "How can I repay you?"

"You can forgive me for operating on your behalf without your knowledge. And perhaps you can convince your husband to forgive me for requiring that he keep the secret from you."

"I do, of course," Klara said; and Andras said he did as well. Everyone agreed that Gyorgy had acted in Klara's best interest, and Gyorgy expressed the hope that his son would seek Klara and Andras's forgiveness too. But as he said it, his voice faltered and broke.

"What is it?" Klara said. "What's happened?"

"He's received another call-up notice," Gyorgy said. "This time he'll have to go.

There's nothing more we can do about it. We've offered a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the house, but it's not the money they want. They want to make an example of young men like Jozsef."

"Oh, Gyorgy," Klara said.

Andras found himself speechless. He could no more imagine Jozsef Hasz in the Munkaszolgalat than he could imagine Miklos Horthy himself showing up one morning on the bus from Obuda to Szentendre, a tattered coat on his back, a lunch pail in his hand.

His first sensation was one of satisfaction. Why shouldn't Jozsef have to serve, when he, Andras, had already served for two years and was serving still? But Gyorgy's pained expression brought him back to himself. Whatever else Jozsef was, he was Gyorgy's child.

"I haven't done a very good job of raising my son," Gyorgy said, turning his gaze toward the window. "I gave him everything he wanted, and tried to keep him from anything that would hurt him. But I gave him too much. I protected him too much. He's come to believe that the world should present itself at his feet. He's been living in comfort in Buda while other men serve in his place. Now he'll have to get by on his strength and his wits, like everyone else. I hope he's got enough of both."

"Perhaps he can be assigned to one of the companies close to home," Andras said.

"That won't be up to him," Gyorgy said. "They'll put him where they want to."

"I can write to General Marton."

"You don't owe Jozsef anything," Gyorgy said.

"He helped me in Paris. More than once."

Gyorgy nodded slowly. "He can be generous when he wants to be."

"Andras will write to the general," Klara said. "And then maybe Jozsef will come to Palestine, with the rest of us."

"To Palestine?" Gyorgy said. "You're not going to Palestine."

"Yes," Klara said. "We have no other choice."

"But, darling, there's no way to get to Palestine."

Klara explained about Klein. Gyorgy's eyes grew stern as she spoke.

"Don't you understand?" he said. "This is why I paid the Ministry of Justice. This is why I sold the paintings and the rugs and the furniture. This is why I'm selling the house! To keep you from taking a foolish risk like this."

"It would be foolish to throw away what we have left," Klara said.

Gyorgy turned to Andras. "Please tell me you haven't agreed to this wild scheme."

"My brother witnessed the massacre in the Delvidek. He thinks it could happen here, and worse."

Gyorgy sank back in his chair, his face drained of blood. From outside came the drumbeat and brass of a military band; they must have been marching up Andrassy ut to Heroes' Square. "What about us?" he said, faintly. "What's going to happen once they discover you're gone? Who do you think they'll question? Who'll get the blame for spiriting you away?"

"You must join us in Palestine," Klara said.

He shook his head. "Impossible. I'm too old to begin a new life."

"What choice do you have?" she said. "They've taken away your position, your fortune, your home. Now they're taking your son."

"You're dreaming," he said.

"I wish you'd talk to Elza about it. By the end of the year they'll call you to the labor service too. Elza and Mother will be left all alone."

He touched the edge of his blotter with his thumbs. A stack of documents lay before him, thick sheaves of ivory legal paper. "Do you see this?" he said, pushing at the papers. "These are the documents assigning possession of the house to the new owner."

"Who is it?" Klara asked.

"The son of the minister of justice. His wife has just given birth to their sixth child, I understand."

"God help us," Klara said. "The house will be a shambles."

"Where will you live?" Andras said.

"I've found lodgings for us in a building at the head of Andrassy ut--it's really quite grand, or it was at one time. According to these papers, we're allowed to take whatever furniture remains." He swept an arm around the denuded room.

"Please speak to Elza," Klara said.

"Six children in this house," he said, and sighed. "What a disaster."

General Marton's reaction was quick and sympathetic, but he lacked range: His solution was to secure Jozsef a place in the 79/6th. When the news arrived, Andras felt as though he were being punished personally. Here was retribution for the moment of satisfaction he'd experienced when he'd first heard that Jozsef had been called. Now, every morning, Jozsef was there at the Obuda bus stop, looking like an officer in his tooclean uniform and his unbroken military cap. He was assigned to Andras and Mendel's work group and made to load boxcars like the rest of the conscripts. Through the first week of it he glared at Andras every chance he got, as if this were all his fault, as if Andras himself were responsible for the blisters on Jozsef's feet and hands, the ache in his back, the peeling sunburn. He was roundly abused by the work foreman for his softness, his sloth; when he protested, Farago kicked him to the ground and spat in his face. After that, he did his work without a word.

June turned into July and a dry spell ended. Every afternoon the sky broke open to drop sweet-tasting rain onto the tedium of Szentendre Yard. The yellow bricks of the rail yard buildings darkened to dun. On the hills across the river, the trees that had stood immobile in the dust now shook out their leaves and tossed their limbs in the wind.

Weeds and wildflowers crowded between the railroad ties, and one morning a plague of tiny frogs descended upon Szentendre. They were everywhere underfoot, having arrived from no one knew where, coin-sized, the color of celery, sprinting madly toward the river. They made the work servicemen curse and dance for two days, then disappeared as mysteriously as they'd come. It was a time of year Andras had loved as a boy, the time to swim in the millpond, to eat sun-hottened strawberries directly from the vine, to hide in the shadow of the long cool grass and watch ants conduct their quick-footed business.

Now there was only the slow toil of the rail yard and the prospect of escape. At night, during his few hours at home, he held his sleeping son while Klara read him passages from Bialik or Brenner or Herzl, descriptions of Palestine and of the miraculous transformation the settlers were enacting there. In his mind he had begun to see his family replanted among orange trees and honeybees, the bronze shield of the sea glittering far below, his boy growing tall in the salt-flavored air. He tried not to dwell upon the inevitable difficulties of the journey. He was no stranger to hardship, nor was Klara. Even his parents, whose recent move to Debrecen represented the most significant geographic displacement of their married lives, had agreed to undertake the trip if it was possible, if entry visas could be obtained for them; they refused to be separated from their children and grandchildren by a continent, a sea.

After the drought broke, the journey began to take shape. Klein had identified a barge captain named Szabo who would take them as far as the Romanian border, and another, Ivanescu, who would conduct them to Constanta; he booked them passage under the family name of Gedalya aboard the Trasnet Trasnet, a former fishing boat that had been converted into a refugee-smuggling vessel. They must be prepared to be crowded and hungry, overheated, dehydrated, seasick, delayed for days in Turkish ports where they could not take the risk of disembarking; they must bring with them only what was necessary. They should be glad they were undertaking the trip in summer, when the seas were calm. They would travel through the Bosporus past Istanbul, through the Marmara Denizi and into the Aegean Sea; from there they would move into the Mediterranean, and if they evaded the patrol boats and submarines they would dock three days later at Haifa.

From start to finish the journey would take two weeks, if all went well. They would leave on August second.

Klara had an old-fashioned wooden wall calendar painted with the image of a bluebird on a cherry branch. Three diminutive windows showed day, date, and month; each morning Andras rolled the little wheels forward before he left for Szentendre Yard.

He rolled July through its thunderstorm-drenched days, from single digits into teens, as plans for the trip went forward. They assembled clothing, boots, hats; they packed and repacked suitcases, trying to determine the densest possible arrangement of their belongings. On Sunday afternoons they walked the city together, packing their minds with the things they wanted to remember: the green haze of river-cooled air around Margaret Island; the thrumming vibration of cars crossing the Szechenyi Bridge; the smells of cut grass and hot-spring sulfur in the Varosliget; the dry concrete pan of the skating pond; the long gray Danube embankment where Andras had walked with his brother a lifetime ago, when they were recent gimnazium graduates living in a room on Harsfa utca. There was the synagogue where he and Klara had been married, the hospital where their son had been born, the small bright studio where Klara taught her private students. There was their own apartment on Nefelejcs utca, the first place they'd ever lived together. And then there were the haunted places they would not visit in farewell: the house on Benczur utca, which now stood empty in preparation for the arrival of the son of the minister of justice; the Opera House, with its echoing corridors; the patch of pavement in an alley where what had happened long ago had happened.

One Sunday, two weeks before the second of August, Andras went alone to see Klein. The packet of entry visas had arrived from Palestine. That was the last thing they needed to complete their dossier, that set of crisp white documents imprinted with the seal of the British Home Office and the Star of David stamp of the Yishuv. Klein would make facsimile copies, which he would keep in case anything happened to the originals.

When Andras arrived, Klein's grandfather was in the yard, feeding the goats. He put a hand to his hat.

"You'll be off soon," he said.

"Fourteen more days."

"I knew the boy would take care of things."

"He seems to have a talent for it."

"That's our boy. He's like his father was, always planning, planning, working with his gadgets, making things happen. His father was an inventor, a man whose name everyone would have known, if he'd lived." He told Andras that Klein's parents had died of influenza when Klein was still in short pants; they were the man and woman depicted in the photograph, as Andras had guessed. Another child might have been destroyed by the loss, the elder Klein said, but not Miklos. He'd gotten top marks in school, particularly in the social sciences, and had grown up to become a kind of inventor in his own right--a creator of possibilities where none existed.

"What a stroke of luck it was that we found him," Andras said.

"May your luck continue," the grandfather said. He spat thrice and knocked on the wooden lintel of the goat house. "May your journey to Palestine be exceptional only for its tedium."

Andras tipped his cap to the elder Klein and walked the stone path to the door.

Klein's grandmother was there in the front room, sitting in the armchair with an embroidery hoop in her lap. The design, embroidered in tiny gold Xs Xs, showed a braided challah and the word Shabbos Shabbos in Hebrew letters. in Hebrew letters.

"It's for your table in the holy land," she said.

"Oh, no," Andras said. "It's too fine." He thought of their packed and repacked suitcases, into which not a single thing more could possibly fit.

But nothing could be hidden from Klein's grandmother. "Your wife can sew it into the lining of her summer coat," she said. "It's got a good luck charm in it."

"Where?"

She showed him two minuscule Hebrew letters cross-stitched into the end of the challah. "It's the number eighteen. Chai Chai. Life."

Andras nodded his thanks. "It's very kind of you," he said. "You've been a help to us all along."

"The boy's waiting for you in his room. Go on."

In his file-crowded den, Klein sat on the bed with his hair in wild disorder, shirtless, a radio disemboweled on the blanket before him. If he had been disheveled and ripe-smelling the first time Andras had met him, now, after a month of planning their escape, he seemed on his way to a prehistoric state of existence. His beard had grown in scraggly and black. Andras couldn't remember the last time he'd seen him wear a shirt.

His smell was reminiscent of the barracks in Subcarpathia. Had it not been for the open window and the breeze that riffled the topmost papers on the stacks, no one could have remained in that room for long. And yet, there on the desk was a cleared-away space in which a crisp folder lay open, a coded travel itinerary stapled to one side, a fat sheaf of instructions on the other. Gedalya, their code name, on the tab. And in Andras's hand the final piece, the packet of documents that would complete the puzzle, the legal element of their illegal flight. Never before the planning of this trip had he imagined what a byzantine maze might lie between emigration and immigration. Klein tucked a tiny screwdriver into his belt and raised his eyebrows at Andras. Andras put the documents into his lap.

"Genuine," Klein said, touching the raised letters of the British seal. His darkcircled eyes met Andras's own. "Well, that's it. You're ready."

"We haven't talked about money."

"Yes, we have." Klein reached for the folder and extracted a page torn from an accountant's notebook, a list of figures penned in his thin left-sloping script. The cost of false papers, in case they were discovered. The fees for the barge captains and the fishing-boat captains and their part of the petrol for the journey and the cost of food and water and the extra money set aside for bribes, and the harbor fees and taxes and the cost of extra insurance, because so many boats had accidentally been torpedoed in the Mediterranean in recent months. Everything to be paid in person, incrementally, along the way. "We've been through it all," he said.

"I mean your fee," Andras said. "We haven't talked about that."