They climbed out of the cab and took Tibor’s things inside. By the time they got to the top, Tibor was taking rapid shallow breaths and bracing himself against the wall. Andras hastily unlocked the door. Tibor went in and lay down on the bed, not bothering to remove his shoes or overcoat, and put an arm over his eyes.

“Tibi,” Andras said. “What can I do? Shall I go to the pharmacist’s? Do you want something to drink?”

Tibor kicked his shoes loose and let them drop to the floor. He rolled onto his side and curled his knees to his chest. Andras went to the bed and leaned over him. He touched Tibor’s forehead: dry and hot. Tibor pulled the quilt over himself and began to shiver.

“You’re sick,” Andras said, one hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“Common virus. I felt it coming on all week. I just need to sleep.”

In another instant Tibor had drifted off. He slept as Andras took his coat off, as Andras undressed him and laid a cool cloth over his forehead. Around midnight the fever broke and Tibor threw the covers off, but it wasn’t long before he was shivering again. He woke and told Andras to get a box of aspirin from his suitcase. Andras gave him the medicine and covered Tibor with every blanket and coat he had. Finally Tibor turned over onto his side and slept. Andras unrolled the mattress he’d borrowed from the concierge and lay down on the floor beside the fire, but found himself unable to sleep. He paced the room, checking on Tibor every half hour until his forehead grew cooler and his breathing deepened. Andras lay down in his clothes on the borrowed mattress; he didn’t want to take the covers from his brother.

In the morning it was Tibor who woke first. By the time Andras opened his eyes his brother had made tea and toasted a few pieces of bread. Sometime in the night he must have spread a blanket over Andras. Now he sat in the orange velvet chair, clean and close-shaven, wearing Andras’s robe and eating toast with jam. At intervals he blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief.

“Well,” Andras said, from his mattress on the floor. “You’re alive.”

“You’d better not get near me, though. I’ve still got a fever.”

“Too late. I took care of you all night.” He sat up and ran his hands through his hair to stand it on end.

Tibor smiled. “That style suits you, brother.”

“Thank you, brother. And how are you feeling this morning? Any better?”

“Better than I felt on the train.” He looked down into his teacup. “I’m sure Signorina di Sabato must have thought me a fine companion.”

“She seemed in good enough spirits when you arrived.”

“She had a few bad moments when we left Florence, but on the whole she was rather brave.”

“Made bold by love,” Andras said.

Tibor gave a nod and turned the cup in its saucer. “Tell me,” he said. “What kind of person is this Ben Yakov?”

“You’ve met him,” Andras said, and shrugged. “He’s a good enough man.”

“Is that the best you can say for him?”

It wasn’t, after all. Andras remembered the talk they’d had at Polaner’s bedside after the attack. It was Ben Yakov who had shamed them both into realizing how little they knew of their friend, and how unlikely it was that he would have chosen to confide in either of them. “He’s a good friend,” Andras said. “He’s a good student. Women like him. He hasn’t always been honest with them, but he’s been nothing but sincere about Ilana.”

“She told me how they met,” Tibor said. “It was at the marketplace. She was there with a friend. She had just bought two live chickens, but they broke their cage and got away. They went down an alley and ran into someone’s courtyard. Ben Yakov caught them. He got them back into their cage and fixed it with wire. Then he insisted on carrying them home for her.”

“Escaped chickens,” Andras said. “A romantic beginning.”

“And then he started visiting her in secret,” Tibor said.

“Yes, of course. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic.”

“And there was the problem of her family’s plans for her. But it all seems rather dishonorable on his part, doesn’t it? He might have declared himself to her father and made an argument for himself.”

Andras gave a short laugh. “That’s just what Klara said, almost to the letter.”

Tibor frowned and put his cup on the table. He laced his fingers over his chest, looking out at the gray sky and the ostrich plumes of chimney smoke fading into its heights. “The girl is nineteen,” he said. “I saw her passport. Her birthday was last week. Do you know what else? She has a birthmark on her neck in the shape of a flying bird.”

“What sort of bird?” Andras said. “A chicken?”

Tibor gave a great helpless laugh, which led him into a cough. He leaned forward in the chair, covering his mouth with the handkerchief. When he sat back, he had to wipe his eyes with his sleeve and drink the rest of his tea before he could speak.

“Why do I bother talking to you?” he said.

“I suppose you got into the habit years ago and never quit.”

“Anyway, we’ve got more important things to discuss. Your engagement to Madame Morgenstern, for one.”

“Ah, yes. By some miracle, Klara Morgenstern has agreed to be my wife.”

“So you’ll be the first of the three of us to marry, too.”

“Unless the world ends before next summer.”

“A distinct possibility, the way things stand at the moment,” Tibor said.

“But if not, she’ll be Madame Lévi.”

“And what about this secret history of hers?”

Andras had refused to write him about it, saying instead that they would talk once Tibor came to visit; he had remembered the elder Mrs. Hász’s caution and decided it might be unwise to send the story via post. Now he joined Tibor at the little table and related Klara’s history from beginning to end, a revelation Klara herself had given him permission to make. When he’d finished, Tibor regarded him in stunned silence for a long moment.

“What a horror,” he said finally. “All of it. And now she’s an exile.”

“And there’s our problem,” Andras said. “Apparently insoluble.”

“You haven’t written to Anya and Apa about this, have you? Haven’t told them you’re engaged, or any of it?”

“I haven’t had the heart. I suppose I’m hoping Klara’s situation will change.”

“But how, if there’s no statute of limitations?”

“I don’t know how, I confess. Until it does, I’ll share her exile.”

“Ah, Andráska,” Tibor said. “Little brother.”

“You did warn me,” Andras said.

“And you ignored me, of course.” He bent to cough into his fist. “I shouldn’t be sitting up so long. I should be in bed. And I shouldn’t be giving anyone advice about love, of all things. Here’s what I know of the heart: It’s a four-chambered organ whose purpose is to pump blood. Left ventricle, right ventricle, left atrium, right atrium, and all the valves, tricuspid, mitral, pulmonary, and aortic.” He coughed again. “Ah, get me back to bed and let me sleep. And don’t give me any more bad news when I wake.”

The next day, when he was well enough to venture out, Tibor suggested they pay a visit to Signorina di Sabato-to make sure she was comfortably settled, he said, and to return a book he’d borrowed from her on the train: a beautiful old edition of the Divina Commedia, bound in tooled leather. When Andras expressed surprise that Signorina di Sabato would be reading Dante, Tibor insisted that she was better read than any girl he’d ever met. From the age of twelve she’d been a secret borrower from the library near her home in the Jewish Quarter. The Divina Commedia belonged to that library; Tibor showed Andras the stamp on the spine. She hadn’t meant to steal it, but as she was packing she realized that if she left it behind, her parents would find out that she’d been borrowing from the library in secret. She had told Tibor about it on the train, laughing sadly at herself as she did: There she’d been, running off to Paris to get married, and what had worried her was the idea that her parents might be scandalized by her having borrowed secular library books.