* * *

  Padri, Rahela said. I am taking you home. Andemos al Sarajevo.

  For years—in Hong Kong, at Bryn Mawr, in Tokyo, in the Philippines—she had imagined this moment, the moment when she would finally face Padri Rafo again and tell him that she was painfully sorry, that she had been selfish and foolish, that she should’ve never left him behind, that she had been wrong about so many things, and that she had paid a terrible price for it. But now, seeing his closed eyes sunken into his face, the scar under the stubble, his moss-like hair, and the thinness of his neck with the folds of skin cascading over his filthy shirt collar, she could say nothing, and not because she changed her mind, but because no words could match the disorienting immensity of being here, in his presence. She always imagined that the Padri she had remembered would be the one she would offer her penance to, and certainly not this husk of a man, this shrunken memory, a stranger who replaced the father she had left behind. His body gave off a yeasty urine stench, his clothes smelled of vomit, sickness, and smoke. Here was somebody else, somebody she didn’t know, or recognize, and she had no one else in the world.

  I am sorry, she said. I cannot forgive myself.

  Pinto opened his eyes, reluctantly, as if coming to was too much. Rahela’s face floated over him and he could see the tiny nick, like an apostrophe, over her right eyebrow which he had never seen before, and there were white spit dots in the corner of her mouth, and a birthmark on her left temple, shaped like a tear, which he liked to kiss when she was a child. The pebble was dangling over his face, twirling.

  I thought I would never see you again, she said. My God.

  She squeezed his hand, and it was cold and the bones in it felt weak, like bird bones.

  Rahela, Pinto said. I thought I would never see you again. You came back.

  Here I am.

  It is too late. I should be dead. I will be dead.

  Well, you’re not. Andemos al Sarajevo, Rahela said.

  Andemos al Sarajevo, he said.

  I got a passport for Mr. Pinto, Jack said. The Eclipse is leaving tomorrow morning. It’s a repurposed navy ship, so there’re no cabins, just berths, but you’ll be going only to Manila so you should be okay. You can be our guest here tonight. There’s no other place to go to or sleep anyway.

  Is that Henry talking? Pinto asked.

  No, Rahela said. That’s Jack.

  Where is Henry?

  Henry is not here.

  Is he dead?

  No.

  Where is he?

  I don’t know. Last I saw him, he was in Japan.

  Is he coming here?

  No.

  I don’t want to see him.

  You will never see him.

  Please, don’t leave me.

  I will never leave you again.

  She had earrings, tiny silver stars in her lobes. Lenka had pierced her ears when she was eleven, in defiance of Pinto’s prohibition, behind his back. He was supposed to be angry about it, but then discovered that he didn’t really care, and ended up buying her a couple of cheap earrings in the shape of a star.

  Are we going to Sarajevo?

  Yes, Rahela said.

  Do you think it is still there?

  Of course it is still there. Cities don’t disappear or die.

  Well, this one is dying right now.

  No, it is not. It is just becoming something else.

  Sarajevo is very far.

  It is. But we’re going there, however long it takes. We have no other place to go.

  Is Henry coming with us?

  No. Henry is not coming with us.

  He is not a good man.

  I know, Rahela said. It took me a while to figure it out. But here I am. It’s just you and me from now on.

  She wanted to tell him she was pregnant, but Jack was still lingering outside the office. More importantly, she didn’t want Padri to think that she had come back because she was pregnant, because she needed him. She had come back because it was time to go home.

  For a while after Rahela’s departure, Pinto was spending on opium all the money Rahela had forced Henry to stuff in his pocket. He smoked so much in the Hongkou dens that sores spread and deepened on his right hip, and then on his left one. Osman would just lie pressing himself against Pinto, a wormwood around a rose, caressing his cheek, susurrously singing, Bejturan se uz ružu savija. Sometimes Osman would stop his singing to nag, to tell him that opium was turning him into a decaying plant, as if Pinto hadn’t already known that. But then not even Osman could offer a better way for Pinto to be, nothing better to do, and eventually he stopped nagging him altogether. Pinto would tell Osman—again and again, as if he hadn’t already heard them—the same stories. How Pinto hid from the Bolsheviks in a wall, where he could hear baby Rahela crying, and how he thought he would die inside that wall and Rahela would be an orphan yet again. And how he carried her through the mountains, and stabbed a Cossack in the eye, and how he carried her through the desert, trudging behind a farting camel, and how they almost got buried in a tebbad, and how he cleaned Rahela’s mouth of sand and dripped water into her mouth, and how her tongue came out like a shy lizard to lick the water off her lips, and how he offered to the Lord his life for hers, and the Lord accepted the deal and tortured Pinto for many years to come, particularly after they reached Shanghai, where Rahela would go to the American School to be seduced by her teacher and leave Pinto here to die. Osman knew all that, there was nothing to hide, yet Pinto was riven with guilt and shame. Only once or twice did he unleash the full hatred he harbored for Henry, for his selfishness and arrogance and for his lechery, and in fury he would hiss: I’ve met killers and murderers and beasts, but I’ve never seen evil like that, evil so nicely smelling, so sunny, with his combed hair and clipped nails and cleanly shaven, always taking whatever he wants from other people, ransacking their lives, as if everything and everyone belonged to him, as if everyone else was just passing through the world given to him at birth. He stole our child, Osman. He stole her. The work, my love, the work that goes into just keeping a child alive, there is so much work, I never wanted to do it, I never knew I could do it, but I kept doing it and I kept her alive and I loved her. He is going to ruin her. He is going to make her miserable. He is going to hurt her, and she will be alone among strangers. He does not love her. Childhood is not a garland of roses. Life is not a garland of roses. The Lord is lazy, careless, doesn’t have to look for food where there is none, does not hear the cry of a hungry, suffering child. He does not strive, like we do, to stay alive because something in Him hopes that one day—one day!—life might be worth living. Nor does He have to decide whether to end Himself or stick around to see what happens and whether He has survived. But that man, that Henry, he just wakes up in the morning, decides what belongs to him and takes it, every day he robs others, and he doesn’t just steal, he soils everything too. If I had died a long time ago, back at home in Sarajevo, before we were sent off to war, or in the war, or in Turkestan, if I had died, I wouldn’t have had to suffer, I wouldn’t have had to see the horror, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to stay alive to keep her alive, I wouldn’t have to see how the world is now devoid of all that has ever mattered to me.

  “If you had died,” Osman said, “you would not have met me.”

  I would not have lost you either, Pinto said.

  “Well, I am here,” Osman would say. “You have not lost me. I am the only thing you have not lost.”

  * * *

  Rahela slept on the floor, next to the sofa on which Padri lay, and her back hurt through the night. Jack did not offer her anything to eat, so the smell of food cooked in the offices down the hall made her hungry to the point of nausea. She got up and asked the Chinese lady who was cooking on the desk for a bowl of rice, which she gave her, chattering about her sons coming home with the Communists. Too satiated to sleep, she listened to Pinto’s steady snoring, occasionally interrupted by a gasp or a groan, as if he was being expelled from a nightmare. She finally fell asleep just as the dawn outside was beginning to make day noises: shouts, shots, boat engines grumbling, and that din of many things in a city moving at the same time. When she woke up and saw that Padri hadn’t moved, her first thought was that he was dead, and for an instant she felt relief, immediately followed by a hollowing fear. She leaned in closer to see if he was breathing, if his chest was rising, but she couldn’t detect anything. The gray hair of his face was smothered by the morning light already enfeebled by thick humidity. His hand was cold to touch. She pulled his right eyelid up and the white of his eye was yellow, but then he snorted, startling her, and opened the other eye, and it was clear that for a moment he could not recognize her at all—when he did, what came over his face was a wave of painful sorrow.

  Mi kerida, he said.

  Si, Padri, she said, but he didn’t respond.

  She let him go back to sleep, and stood by the window, looking out. The river stretched far, and across it were the expansive fields of Pootung, and there was the Soochow Creek pushing refuse and corpses into the Whangpoo. Back in her previous life, Padri had made her go to the Ohel Rachel temple, where she was often the only girl sitting among the women, ogled by boys and not a few middle-aged men. He’d never wanted to go, but had keen interest in what had transpired at the temple, and would interrogate her about what she had seen, heard, learned, and then he would proceed to argue with everything. If she was told at the temple that three creations—water, wind, fire—preceded the making of the world, he would say: It was spirit, not wind! Water gave birth to darkness, fire gave birth to light, and spirit gave birth to wisdom. Wisdom! They have none of it at the Ohel Rachel, he would shout. None!

  There was a barricade with a couple of Kuomintang soldiers at the Garden Bridge. They looked so young, small, and helpless that, from above, they resembled pawns. One of them pointed his rifle in the direction of the river, but Rahela heard no shot. It was as if he was playing war, still practicing how to shoot.

  Padri had a hard time standing up from the sofa, grunting as he pushed himself up, but when he did, Rahela was struck by how short he was, much shorter than when she’d left, diminished like a deflated balloon. He walked toward her at the window with difficulty, a decrepit old man. She did not really know how old he was, because there were no letters, no objects, no pictures from his previous life, no documents or evidence, no family or friends to remember him when he was a child or even young—for all she knew he could’ve been created out of clay, like a Golem. The only thing that confirmed that he was born a human child and had a family and a past were his stories about life in Sarajevo before the war. He had once told her that he was twenty and change when the war started and he had to leave his hometown, but what she remembered him saying might’ve been something she had imagined him saying. It could’ve been a conversation she had never had with him, but nevertheless replayed in her head many times in Hong Kong, at Bryn Mawr, in Manila and Tokyo. Presently, he smelled of piss and snot, his hair was flat on his right temple from lying on his side; he moved like someone who had misplaced his walking stick and was now apprehensive to be upright. She loved him so much at that moment, she loved his suffering and struggles, and the body that had paid the price, and all that he had loved and lost.

  Padri, she said. I want to tell you something.

  Have you talked to Osman? Padri asked.

  Osman? What Osman?

  Your father.

  Padri, you are my father.

  I raised you like a father, but you came from Osman’s loins.

  I know. You told me.

  When did I tell you?

  Doesn’t matter.

  I wonder where he is.

  Where could he be? Rahela said.

  He was here just a moment ago, Padri said. He was sitting on the floor over there, leaning on the wall, watching over you. All night long. He’s worried about you. That’s what he does; he has watched and worried over me every night ever since you’ve left. I wouldn’t be alive without him. And now I don’t know where he might have gone. Probably to find something to eat. But he’ll be back. He wants to talk to you. He wants to look at you. He has missed you. He is your father. He wants to be with you. He wants to go back to Sarajevo with you.

  With us, Rahela said,

  We’ll see, Pinto said. It might be too late for me.

  No, Rahela said. It isn’t.

  * * *

  It took forever to get down the stairs, because Pinto was feeble and afraid that he might fall. Jack and Rahela held him, one on each side. He was light like an empty suitcase. He slipped once, lost his balance, and Rahela tightened her grip to hold him, but she could not have stopped him from tumbling if it wasn’t for Jack.

  Is Osman coming? he asked.

  He’s right behind us, Rahela said.

  Who’s Osman? Jack asked.

  My husband, Pinto said. Her father.

  Jack glanced at Rahela as if to solicit an explanation but she offered none.

  All right then, Jack said. Let’s move along.

  He’s right behind, Padri, she said. He’s coming along with us.

  * * *

  At the bottom of the gangplank, Rahela handed Pinto his passport so that he could hand it over to the grim customs officer. The passport was new, its pages cracking, as in a book just bought.

  What is this? Pinto asked.

  It’s your passport.

  I’ve never had one in my life.

  Well, here it is. It will get us home.

  The customs officer grabbed Rahela’s backpack from her hand as if in a hurry, then rummaged through it cursorily—all he looked for was money or jewels, but what he found was her underwear and a Book of the Month copy of Independent People that she had carried since Manila. The customs officer smelled her underwear and flipped through the book to see if something might fall out of it, but it was empty, and he threw it back in and handed her the rucksack. The ship engine growled, and the stacks belched out smoke, and the gangplank was sagging under passengers shuffling upward toward a grizzled officer shouting in English, then in German, then in some other language she did not recognize. The ship looked rusted and grimy, ready for a scrapyard.

  Where is this ship going? Pinto asked.

  Manila, Rahela said. The Philippines.

  You said we were going home.

  We’re going to catch another ship from there, to Cape Town.

  That will take forever, Pinto said.

  Well, Rahela said. Are you in a rush?

  I am in no rush. Lay me on my side by the road.

  What? What does that mean?

  When the Messiah comes, I will be ready. And if he doesn’t come, just leave me there.

  * * *

  They walked up to the top of the gangplank, where the grizzled officer glanced at their passports and waved them in without telling them where to go. Rahela followed a woman dragging a valise and two docile, tired children. The woman with the kids spoke Yiddish and seemed to know where they were going, but it turned out she was lost too, so they all stood and looked at the Bund, at its grimy marble and the pathetic aftermath of the victory parade and the flags fluttering limply in the hot breeze.

  “I’ve never been on a ship before,” Osman said.

  Neither have I, said Pinto. I crossed the world on foot.