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lepek story in my heart since the days of Mendl’s touching letters with their air of hunger, but now I saw its time had come.”

He is already leading Neigel through a thick forest near Borislav, and down the lepek mine under a boulevard of pipes from the drilling site outside the city. Thirty years now the mine has stood abandoned, and throughout that time no one needed lepek. But when the war began and oil became expensive—Wasserman weaves his story—a group of people was sent to work the lepek mines.

“And a very special group it was, Herr Neigel. A band of lavaks, Jews and Poles, one Russian and an Armenian and various others, and their leader, Otto, Otto Brig, and Otto’s sister, whose name was Paula, watched over them and prepared the meals, and they rarely emerged from the mine for fear of the big Carpathian bears only Fried could tame … Yes, Herr Neigel, there they dwell in isolation, and once a week Otto Brig walks to the nearest town to bring in the lepek yield and carry home a bit of food for the mouths of his hungry crew, but with your permission, Herr Neigel, I will need a few extra facts about the place and its inhabitants, and about the mines, too, because in Warsaw there were libraries with books and mountains of learned journals and bibliographies, while here in our camp … in short, all I have is you. Perhaps you could take a little trip to Borislav, sir, to fed the atmosphere?”

Neigel, of course, reacts to this with amused laughter (“Do you hearwhat you’re saying, Wasserman? I am running an extermination camp here! The Communists are advancing in the East, and you want me to drop everything and take a trip to Borislav for you?”) and I, too, find that Wasserman has gone too far, though he certainly does seem confident. (“Because I have come to understand Neigel’s soul, and I know that he is enthralled by the story, and that it is not so simple as it seems. I have also perceived that he is quite eager for the facts and details, and a man like him will not leave the story adrift in a sea of imagination without a cast-iron anchor under the boat, ai, how different he is from my poor Zalmanson, who was also keen on the facts, only for a different reason, because he abominated them! By presenting them in all their paltriness and carrying them to the brink of the absurd, he could sneer at them and rest firmer in his belief that there is no God but the God of laughter, illusion, and confusion, ai, the crooked liar … Nu, how did we get to that? Et! Be that as it may, I was setting the bait for Neigel by telling him ‘to feel the atmosphere,’ which was the very expression used by the Children of the Heart before they set off on their adventures, and I knew that Neigel would bite the hook.”)

And here Neigel finally wakes up and asks a most pertinent question (“Tell me, please, who will they fight this time? Bears? Ants? The oil companies?”), a question Wasserman evades (“Who is a prophet to know? The story has not even begun yet”), till the German demands a better answer (“We will not produce any writing against the German Reich of Adolf Hitler, is that clear, Wasserman?”), and the writer: “We will produce anything we wish to write, Herr Neigel! For this is the mettle of our situation, which you were good enough to describe earlier. Think of it, we two share a wonderful secret! And we must never betray our sacred trust! It is a great boon, the privilege of being here, completely free. For me, but also for you! Oy, Herr Neigel,” says Wasserman, wagging his head this way and that, “I do not know in what campaign sprouted the medal on your chest—” and Neigel says, “The battle over Lake Ilmen Shemaga. Theodore Eike’s Deadman’s Skull Brigades!” “Nu, yes, as you say, where was I? Aha! There I am certain you did not need half the courage I require of you now as you help me breathe life into our new story! Will you retreat in fear? Will you prove yourself fainthearted by asking for an idle tale smothered in the dunghills of the petty life with all its anguish and care?” (“I swear to you, Shleimeleh, where I found the courage I do not know. WithZalmanson, who never asked permission to rob me of my finest sentences, never was I impertinent. Like a sheep I hung my head and smiled at him in silence.”) And Neigel, stubbornly: “No no. We will not allow ourselves to be anti-German.” And Anshel Wasserman: “Let us allow the story to lead where it will. I cannot decide anything in advance.” And Neigel: “Is that how you always write?” Wasserman: “Almost always. Yes.” (“But to tell the truth: it was not so. Even my Sarah, my chosen one, used to say in jest that for every shopping list I wrote at least three drafts.”)

“Perhaps,” says Neigel suddenly, “perhaps I could go through Borislav next week, on my way home on leave. I worked in the region for a few months once, and I have some matters to … attend to there. Yes. And also a few people I used to know. Perhaps it’s time to pay a little visit.” And Wasserman, his expression unchanged, points out that “a small map of the region and the oil wells there would be of great help to us.” And he overcomes the temptation to ask the Nazi to investigate the Jewish community of Borislav and find out if if anyone from the old days is still around, and Neigel, a highly efficient officer, writes something in his notebook. (“It was only later, Shleimeleh, that I discovered it was in this book that Esau noted his requirements for extermination gas,