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was already a generation removed, there was still in that peasant a peasant’s dream: not simply to be free, but to be free to be titled. The New World was required to do more than obliterate the bitterness of the Old. Like the atheist saying to God, “You don’t exist and I hate You!” Pop kept sounding his loud shouts of denial into the deaf ear of the past. When Jacob was earning fifteen and then twenty dollars a week, Deborah had twelve hand-embroidered silk dresses and a German nurse.
    Jacob could not pay for her food. After a while theymoved back into the family home, surrounded by a new generation of neighborhood scorn. Even as a prisoner of her own past, Esther saw that Jacob was unhappy, that he was taking charity from a man who despised him, but her own fear made her subtly and consistently side with her father against her husband. It seemed then as if having Deborah had made her allegiance right. Jacob was consort of the dynasty, but Deborah—golden, gift-showered Deborah—always smiling and contented, was a central pin on which the dream could turn.
    And then they found that their golden toy was flawed. In the perfumed and carefully tended little girl a tumor was growing. The first symptom was an embarrassing incontinence, and how righteously wrathful the rigid governess was! But the “laziness” could not be cured by shaming or whipping or threats.
    “We didn’t know!” Esther burst out, and the doctor looked at her and saw how passionate and intense she was under the careful, smooth façade. “In those days the schedules and the governesses and the rules were god! It was the …scientific’ approach then, with everything sterile and such a horror of germs and variation.”
    “And the nursery like a hospital! I remember,” said the doctor laughing, and trying to comfort Esther with her laughter because it was too late for anything but remorse for the mistaken slaps and the overzealous reading of misguided experts.
    At last there were examinations and a diagnosis and trips from doctor to doctor in search of proof. Deborah would have nothing but the best of course. The specialist who finally did the operation was the top man in the Midwest, and far too busy to explain anything to the little girl or stay with her after the miracles of modern surgery were over and the ancient and barbaric pain took their place. Two operations, and after the first, a merciless pain.
    Esther had forced herself to stay cheerful and strong, to go to Debby’s room always with a smile. She was pregnantagain and worried because of the earlier stillbirth of twin sons, but to the hospital staff, the family, and Deborah, her surface never varied, and she took pride in the strength she showed. At last they learned that the operations had been successful. They were jubilant and grateful, and at Deborah’s homecoming the whole house was festive and decorated, and all the relatives were present for a party. Two days later Jacob got the Sulzburger account. Esther found old names coming to mind from nowhere.
    At the time the Sulzburger account had seemed to be the most important thing in their lives. It was a series of very lucrative smaller accounts and they had gone a little crazy with it. At last Jacob could be free, more than a consort in his own house. He bought a new one in a quiet and modest neighborhood not too far from the city. It was small, with a little garden and trees and lots of children close by with lots of different last names. Deborah was cautious at first, but before long she began to open, to go out and make friends. Esther had friends, too, and flowers that she could take care of herself, and sunlight, and open windows, and no need for servants, and the beginnings of her own decisions. One year—one beautiful year. Then one evening Jacob came home and told her that the Sulzburger account was a vast chain of fraud. He had been three full months discovering how and where the money was going. He said to Esther on