Kit couldn’t walk on or she’d pass right by them, but if she stopped or turned abruptly away she’d catch their eye, she knew it. She fell in behind two students going up the steps into the library, and went in too, nothing else she could do, feeling the scene she had witnessed go on behind her, precious and lost.

Now what. She moped in the atrium for a time, peeked out the doors when they were thrown open, but there was nothing to see. She couldn’t go back out, for fear he and the woman would be still there, having decided to sit on one of the benches there by the library. She had no chores to do here. She walked in the reading room; she climbed the stairs; she went to the sepulchral toilet on the second floor that no one ever used.

She walked back through the periodicals room and saw him sitting at a table and reading. His coat over the back of the chair and the green-shaded light on his book as though he had been there for hours.

She moved closer to where he sat, going carefully up between the open periodical shelves filled with bound journals, till she found a gap wide enough to see through, see the room and him.

One elbow on the table and the L of his finger and thumb supporting his chin. Slowly and infrequently his other hand turned a page, but the rest of him was very still. What was it he read? She could sense his eyes moving over the big pages, absorbing what he looked at. She stood on her toes to see.

It was an ad, a double-page spread: a huge purple Nash Ambassador of 1955 or ’56, passing diagonally through the white space, gleeful dad at the wheel with hat and pipe. She knew what car it was because Ben had taught her all the cars of those years, all the distinctive grilles and taillights.

He was reading a bound periodical, Life or Look or Colliers. He turned another page: a story of sea rescue; a mom and her new refrigerator; a bottle of Scotch. Don’t spill a drop, that’s Old Smuggler. Was he practicing his colloquial English, learning to be an American?

She walked back down the stacks and came out behind the row of tables where he sat, careful to stay just barely in motion, and not stare, so that no student in his line of sight would puzzle at her, and awaken his notice. He turned the page again.

Kit had sometimes thought heaven would be like the reading of an endless, or eternal, big slick magazine. Always interesting and undemanding, a new page to be turned whenever boredom threatened, to reveal something welcomed and unexpected: new things to desire, but not seriously; new beautiful movie stars or homes you might be or live in; moving stories of children far away, of dangers or bad weather, but not where you were; always more silly or witty ads and clear-eyed people looking right at you and brief cute anecdotes, no end to it ever. Happiness.

It was as though he were feeling or thinking just that: feeling what she felt, looking at the same magazine she had looked at five years ago, the cars and dresses by now already replaced by different ones. Maybe it was she he was trying to understand.

She actually laughed to think this stupid thought, and he looked up and saw her.

“Hi,” she said or whispered, still laughing a little.

“Miss…Malone,” he said.

“Kit.”

“Kyt.” He folded his hands in his lap. She had to lean close to him so that their talk wouldn’t disturb others. “I do not need to ask why you are here. To read books. Poetry.”

“No,” she said. “Actually.”

“Not I either,” he said. He folded shut the huge book, big as a Gutenberg Bible, with a smack that caused heads around the great room to lift and look. “Enough,” he said. “Time for tea, and a smoke. Yes?”

It seemed like an invitation. He took his overcoat from the back of the chair, and his case, and went out and down the stairs, she following his long stride.

“So why were you looking at them, those old magazines?” she asked. “Why do they interest you?”

He shrugged, which didn’t seem to suggest he didn’t know. “To live in any world—in any country—you must know the dreams.”

“Not everybody dreams of a new refrigerator.”

“I think in this way,” he said. “Here as in Soviet Union you are promised a better future. Have always been promised. A bright future. After a time this future grows old, and has no power to come about. Yet promise is not forgotten. Stalin famously said long ago: Life is getting better, more cheerful. Then came purges, then fear, then war.”

The library was closing. They went out under the rotunda with the last stragglers and into the night, which seemed warmer than it ought to be, a sudden warmth, a promise.

“So promises are not fulfilled,” he said. “But they remain, they can be found. And there remains caught in them the happiness they promised. This precious thing.”

Happiness. She was silent beside him, her feet falling alongside his, knowing she hadn’t understood.

“So,” he said, as though he had made himself clear. He had stopped beneath a tall lamp by the path, and drew out a cigarette and lit it with a wooden match. She caught a whiff of its odor, mingled with March night air. He had not bade her good night, so she walked beside him when he set off again.

“Tea,” he said. “Now I think this place just down there, where once we talked, has just closed for the night. We have been long at our studies. We will go to All-Night Cafeteria, I think its name is. Down and left and further down.”

She skipped to keep up with his long stride. She thought how easily she could take his arm to keep up; or she could put her hand in his, though her little spidery one wouldn’t fill his. She could: she could change the world just by deciding to do that. Like a general deciding to throw all his forces at a single point, knowing it would change everything, for the better or not for the better at all, and no going back. Take his hand and stop his walking and make him turn to her; and put her face against his coat’s lapel. She would never dare. Just to think the thought made her burn.

“In June,” he said. “Last year. At graduation ceremonies. Though I had been here but few months, I was asked to sit on the platform, the…”

“Dais,” she said.

“Yes, where sat all teachers and professors. And there listened to speech by the president of university. He said to students that they must be true to their dreams. He said it was not so important what dream or goal or hope they had; most important was that they had a dream. That they held on to this dream, through, through…”

“Through thick and thin?”

“Just what he said, thick or thin. And I thought that perhaps after ceremony I might take him aside and tell him that after all one dream is not like another. Some dreams we do not wish that people stick to: we hope they are weak, and do not cling to these dreams, that they fail to hold on. A dream that one day this world will be free of Jews. That Soviet Union will be destroyed. That all enemies of the state will be crushed. That only one God prevail everywhere.”

“Well he wasn’t talking about that kind of dream.”

“No. Certainly not. I understand. I think how wonderful it is, what wonderful country, that you may speak to young people and tell them to believe always in their dreams, and not be afraid of what those dreams may be.

“Now. Here.”

It was called the 24-Hour Grill, in fact, a funny little streamlined submarine powered by the great fan in its backside, lifting the periscope of a tin chimney. She wondered how he had first found this place, whether there was some memory of home for him in it. The heat inside steamed the windows opaque, and the coffee urns and the griddle steamed and smoked too; the place smelled pleasantly of grease and coffee and burnt toast and people’s damp wool. The jukebox was loud: