Tibor’s train departed on the night of Klara’s students’ Spectacle d’Hiver. Andras was to take him to the station and then meet Klara afterward at the Théâtre Deux Anges. The prospect of parting made them both quiet on the Métro; as they rode beneath the city, Andras found himself considering the long list of things they hadn’t talked about during the days that had just passed. Now, once again, they would part without knowing when they would see each other next. They hauled Tibor’s things out of the Métro and took them into the station. Once they’d checked the suitcases, they sat down together on a high-backed bench and shared a thermos of coffee. Across the platform stood the locomotive that would pull Tibor’s train to Italy: a giant insect of glossy black steel, its wheel pistons bent like the legs of a grasshopper.

“Listen, brother,” Tibor said, his dark eyes fixed upon the train. “I hope you’ll forgive my behavior at the wedding. It was abominable. I acted dishonorably.”

So here it was, half an hour before his train departed. “What was abominable?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t make me say it.”

“I didn’t see you do anything dishonorable.”

“I couldn’t be happy for them,” he said. “I couldn’t eat that gorgeous cake. I couldn’t bring myself to dance.” He took another breath. “I did an abominable thing, Andras. Not at the wedding. Before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I did something unforgivable on the train.” He crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his eyes. “I’m ashamed to tell you. It was ungentlemanly. Worse. It was a scoundrel’s move.”

And then he admitted that he’d fallen in love with Ilana di Sabato from the beginning, from the moment he saw her coming across the platform in Florence with her umbrella and her pale green bandbox. There was a little boy with her-her brother, who had come along to help with the suitcases. He had a look of importance about him, Tibor said-importance and great secrecy. But Tibor saw the realization dawning upon him that this wasn’t a game, that his sister was really going to climb aboard a train and go to Paris. The little boy’s face had crumpled. He’d put the suitcase down and sat on it and cried. And Ilana di Sabato sat down with him and explained that it would be all right, that she’d get him to come visit her, that she’d bring her fine new husband home to meet him and the rest of the family. But he mustn’t tell anyone, not for a while yet. You had to see it, Tibor said, how she’d made him understand that.

“I told myself it was natural to feel a certain tenderness for her,” he went on. “She’d been entrusted to my care, and she was entirely without defenses, and she was out in the world for the first time. Everything was new to her. Or not entirely new, because she’d read about it all in books-it was all coming true for her, a world she’d imagined but had never seen. I watched it happen. I was the one she turned to when we crossed the Italian border. It was like watching a person being born. The pain of it, too. I saw her understand she’d left her parents, her family, behind. When she cried after the crossing, I put my arms around her. I did it almost without thinking.” He paused and took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “And she looked up at me, Andras, and by now you’ve guessed it. I kissed her. Not an innocent kiss, I’m afraid. Not a brief one. So you see, I did transgress against your friend. And I transgressed against Ilana. And not just then.” He paused again. “I want to tell you this, because it’s been weighing on me since it happened. I said something to her, here in this station, just before we got off the train.”

“What did you say?”

“I reminded her she still had a choice,” Tibor said. “I told her I’d be happy to take her back to Italy if she changed her mind.” He shook his head and put on his glasses again. “And I confessed myself to her, Andras. Later. I did it the morning we went to see her at Klara’s. When we went to give her that library book.”

Andras remembered the whispered conversation, Tibor’s trembling hands, Ilana’s dismay. “Oh, Tibor,” he said. “So that’s what was happening when I came in from the kitchen.”

“That’s right,” Tibor said. “And for a moment I thought I saw her hesitate. I deluded myself that she might feel something for me, too.” He shook his head. “If I’d gone to see her again, I might have ruined your friend’s happiness.”

“But you didn’t,” Andras said. “Everything went as planned. And they both seemed perfectly happy at the wedding.” He believed it as he said it, but a moment later he found himself wondering whether it had been true. Hadn’t Ilana seemed distressed that morning with Tibor? Hadn’t there been some strange exchange of energy between them in the kitchen on her wedding day? Was she sitting in Ben Yakov’s apartment and thinking of Tibor at that very moment?

“They’re married,” Tibor said. “It’s done. Now my feelings for her are their own punishment.”

Andras understood. He put an arm around his brother’s shoulders and looked at the insect form of the locomotive.

“I’ve been terribly lonely in Modena,” Tibor said. “It must have been the same for you, coming here. But you met Klara.”

“Yes,” he said. “And that was terrible, too, at times.”

“I see how it is between you now,” Tibor said. “So many times this week I was sick with envy.” He pressed his hands between his knees. At the window of the locomotive an argument was taking place between the engineer and an official-looking conductor, as though they were debating whether to make the trip to Italy after all.

“Don’t go back,” Andras said. “Come live with me, if you want.”

Tibor shook his head. “I have to go to school. I want to finish my studies. And in any case, I don’t know if I could stand to be so close to her.”

Andras turned to his brother. “She’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s true.”

There was an almost imperceptible shift in Tibor’s features, a softening of the lines around his mouth. “She is,” he said. “I can see her in that gown and veil. God, Andras, do you think she’ll be happy?”

“I hope so.”

Tibor nudged the corner of his leather satchel with the toe of his polished shoe. “I think you’d better write to Anya and Apa,” he said. “Let them know what’s happened between you and Klara. Tell them as much as you can about her situation. I’ll write them too. I’ll tell them I’ve gotten to know her, and that I don’t consider you mad for wanting to marry her.”

“I am mad, though.”

“No more so than any man in love,” Tibor said.

The conductor blew the boarding whistle. Tibor got to his feet and drew Andras close in a quick embrace. “Be a good man, little brother,” he said.

“Bon voyage,” Andras said. “Have a good spring. Study hard. Cure the sick.”

Tibor crossed the platform and boarded the train, his bag slung over his shoulder. Moments after he’d climbed aboard, the train gave a vast metallic groan; with a series of grunts and screeches it began to roll from the station. The grasshopper legs of the engine bent and flexed. Andras hoped Tibor had found a window seat, where he would have the comfort of watching the city fade into the darkness of the wintry fields. He hoped Tibor would be able to sleep. He hoped he’d get home swiftly, and that once he was there he would forget there had ever been a girl called Ilana di Sabato.

That year’s Spectacle d’Hiver was a quiet and humble affair. The Théâtre Deux Anges was small and shabby and ill-heated, its blue velvet seats faded to gray; the dark upper tiers seemed full of ghosts. Girls chased each other across the stage in costumes of blue and white satin, and a silver snow drifted down from some cold cloud in the flyspace. A group of twelve-year-olds in icy pink tulle put Andras in mind of dawn on New Year’s Day. He thought of Klara at the Square Barye: the flush of her forehead beneath her red wool hat, the crystalline dew on her eyebrows, the fog of her breath in the cold air. He could scarcely believe she would be waiting for him backstage after the recital-the same woman who had kissed him in that frozen park nearly a year ago. It seemed a miracle that any man who loved a woman might be loved by her in return. He rubbed his hands together in the chill and waited for the violet lights to fade.