“A billion reichsmarks,” she said. “That’s the amount of the fine against the Jews. And there are half a million Jews in Germany. That means each person has to pay two thousand reichsmarks, including children.”

The logic was astounding. He had tried and failed to grasp it. Grynszpan had shot vom Rath; vom Rath had died; November 9, the Night of Broken Glass, was supposed to have been the German people’s natural reaction to the killing. Therefore the responsibility for the destruction of Jewish shops, and the burning of synagogues, and the ransacking of homes-to say nothing of the killing of ninety-one Jews and the arrest of thirty thousand more-lay with the Jews themselves, and so the Jews had to pay. In addition to the fines, all insurance payments for damaged property would go directly to the government. And now it was illegal for Jews to operate businesses in Germany. In Paris and New York and London there had been protests against the pogrom and its aftermath, but the French government had been strangely silent. Rosen said it was because von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, was supposed to visit Paris in December to sign a declaration of friendship between Germany and France. It all seemed a great ugly sham.

From downstairs came the flutter and clang of the afternoon mail arriving through the slot. Elisabet got to her feet so quickly she overturned the chair, sending it backward into the fire screen, then ran downstairs to get the letters.

“I used to have to bribe her with gingerbread to get the mail,” Klara said as she righted the desk chair. “Now she won’t let it sit for half a minute.”

Elisabet was a long time coming up again. When she reappeared, breathless and flushed, it was only to throw a few envelopes onto the writing desk before she ran off down the hall to her room. Klara sat at the desk and thumbed through the mail. One piece, a thin cream-colored envelope, seemed to catch her attention. She took her letter knife and opened it.

“It’s from Zoltán,” she said, and scanned the single page. Her eyebrows drew together and she read more closely. “He and Edith are leaving in three weeks. He’s writing to say goodbye.”

“Leaving for where?”

“Budapest,” she said. “This isn’t the first I’ve heard of it. Marcelle said she’d heard a rumor that they were leaving-she told me last week when I met her at the Tuileries. Zoltán’s been asked to manage the Royal Hungarian Opera. And Madame Novak wants to raise their child near her family.” She rolled her lips inward and pressed a hand against her mouth.

“Are you so unhappy to see him go, Klara?”

She shook her head. “Not for the reason you’re thinking. You know how I feel about Zoltán. He’s a dear friend to me, an old friend. And a good man. He employed you, after all, when the Bernhardt could scarcely afford it.” She went to sit beside Andras on the sofa and took his hand in her own. “But I’m not unhappy to see him go. I’m glad for him.”

“What’s the matter, then?”

“I’m envious,” she said. “Terribly so. He and Edith can get on a train and go home. They can take the baby home to Edith’s mother, to raise it with its cousins.” She smoothed her gray skirt over her knees. “That pogrom in Germany,” she said. “What if such a thing were to happen in Hungary? What if they were to arrest my brother? What would become of my mother?”

“If anything were to happen in Hungary, I could go to Budapest and see about your mother.”

“But I couldn’t go with you.”

“Perhaps we could find a way to bring your mother to France.”

“Even if we could, it would only be a temporary solution,” she said. “To our larger problem, I mean.”

“What larger problem?”

“You know the one. The problem of where we might live together. In the longer term, I mean. You know I can’t go home to Hungary, and you can’t stay here.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Your family,” she said. “What if there’s a war? You’d want to go home to them. I’ve thought about it a hundred times. You must know I thought about it a great deal in September. It was one of the reasons I couldn’t bring myself to write to you. I couldn’t see a way around it. I knew that if we decided to be together, I’d be keeping you from your family.”

“If I stay here it’ll be my own decision,” Andras said. “But if I have to go, I’ll find a way to bring you with me. We’ll see a lawyer. Isn’t there some statute of limitations?”

She shook her head. “I can still be arrested and tried for what I did. And even if I could go home, I couldn’t leave Elisabet.”

“Of course not,” Andras said. “But Elisabet has plans of her own.”

“Yes, that’s just what I fear. She’s still a child, Andras. She wears that engagement ring, but she doesn’t really understand what it means.”

“Her fiancé seems utterly sincere. I know he has the best intentions.”

“If that were the case, he might have consulted his parents before he started filling her head with ideas about marriage and America! He still hasn’t told them he’s engaged. Apparently they’ve got a girl in mind for him already, some beer heiress from Wisconsin. He’s got no attachment to her, he says, but I’m not certain his parents will see it that way. At the very least, he might have thought to ask my permission before he gave Elisabet that ring.”

Andras smiled. “Is that how it’s done? Do young men still ask permission?”

She surrendered a smile in return. “Good young men,” she said.

And then he drew closer and bent to her ear. “I’d like to ask someone’s permission, Klara,” he said. “I’d like to write a letter to your mother.”

“And what if she says no?” she whispered back.

“Then we’d have to elope.”

“But to where, darling?”

“I don’t care,” he said, looking deep into the gray landscape of her eyes. “I want to be with you. That’s all. I know it’s impractical.”

“It’s entirely impractical,” she said. But she put her arms around his neck and raised her face to him, and he kissed her closed eyes, tasting a trace of salt. At that moment they heard Elisabet’s step in the hallway; she appeared in the doorway of the sitting room in her green wool hat and coat. Andras and Klara drew away from each other and got to their feet.

“Pardon me, disgusting adults,” Elisabet said. “I’m going to the movies.”

“Listen, Elisabet,” Andras said. “What if I were to marry your mother?”

“Please,” Klara said, raising a hand in caution. “This isn’t the way we should talk about it.”

Elisabet tilted her head at Andras. “What did you say?”

“Marry her,” Andras said. “Make her my wife.”

“Do you mean that?” Elisabet said. “You want to marry her?”

“I do.”

“And she’ll have you?”

A long moment passed during which Andras experienced terrible suspense. But then Klara took his hand in her own and pressed it, almost as though she were in pain. “He knows what I want,” she said. “We want the same thing.”

Andras let out a breath. A flash flood of relief washed over Elisabet’s features; her perpetually knotted forehead went smooth. She crossed the room and put her arms around Andras, then kissed her mother. “It’s splendid,” she said, with plain sincerity. Without another word she flung her purse over her shoulder and clattered down the stairs.

“Splendid?” Klara said, in the reverberating silence that always followed Elisabet’s departures. “I’m not certain what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.”

“She thinks it’ll make things easier for her and Paul.”

Klara sighed. “I know. If I marry you, she won’t have to feel guilty about leaving me.”

“We’ll wait, then, if you think it’ll make a difference. We’ll wait until she’s finished with school.”

“That’s another seven months.”

“Seven months,” he said. “But then we’ll have the rest of our lives.”

She nodded and took his hand. “Seven months.”

“Klara,” he said. “Klara Morgenstern. Have you just agreed to marry me?”