missing, the beautiful jewel made of turquoise, coral and white gold, which Helen had inherited from her own great grandmother, Lili said it was Tildy who’d misplaced it, although all of the older children had been playing with it, even Ferenc, who’d held it high in the sky and said he’d bury it in the field unless someone cleaned up his side of the room for him. But then it went missing. Helen had scolded Tildy when Lili told her and said she’d have to stay in her room for two days until it was found. It was only then that Lili went on a hunt for the jewel and discovered it under the white wardrobe she now hid behind.
Was this really Sodom and Gomorrah? There was much wickedness, now that Lili thought of it; the examples abounded. When Abraham pleaded with God to spare Sodom, God said He would do so if fifty righteous people could be found in the city. When fifty could not be named, He reduced the number to thirty, then twenty, then ten. The Lord’s angels found only one, Lot, Abraham’s own nephew, and his family. His daughter had been good, too. She gave bread to a beggar, and when the townspeople found out, they smeared her with honey and hanged her from the city wall until she was stung to death by bees. It was her screams that sounded the alarm for God to level the city.
Could it be that Tolgy was this bad? Could it be that it was worse even than other places? Could this be as big as that? Were they entering a new day of miracles? What was God thinking now? Whose screams reached his heavenly ears?
Lili remembered a passage she’d recited from Genesis. When people were united and spoke one language and began a tower in Babel to reach the Creator, why did He “confound the language of all the earth” and scatter his worshippers? Were we getting too close, Lili wondered, too perfect? And had this been part of the omniscient’s design, to show us how imperfect we really could be?
Lili suddenly felt older, past needing a wedding dress, scared and excited, significant somehow, standing in the way of something, a force in history that had not yet swept her up. She felt for a giddy moment that she could face the Lord or the monsters of darkness, but she was afraid of the men who’d turned into monsters, because God was always great and the monsters always monsters, but these were men who had gone mad.
Lili’s spirits crashed. She’d been the lark ascending and now she plummeted without a song. Could she be the last person standing in the gale of the oppressors? She could not resist the winds, she was sure. She could not stand up to history. She did not want her name recorded there, her form a curiosity to future students of volcanic eruptions.
Or was Lili’s family all waiting for her? Was she the one whose fate they were talking about? Did Lili stay behind the wardrobe? Did she make it? Was she captured and taken, while we are hidden and safe? Were they all hidden? Gunfire would surely keep anyone at bay for an extra day or two. It had kept Lili at bay.
Lili stepped out from her hiding place into the bright morning room, stood at the foot of the warm bed, longed to sit for a moment on the blanket box to see the room from another vantage point, but she changed her mind. She crept toward the window and peered out of the lower corner as she had at Dobo. There was no one in the street, no one in the windows of the neighbouring houses. The geese honked some more. Lili crept out of the room, stepping over clothing strewn down the stairs, checking the bowl of cream in the kitchen, peeking into the cold oven, avoiding the scattered silverware and broken dishes.
She spied the outside world through the kitchen window, moved to the front door, then gently unfastened the latch and pulled open the door. She looked all around her as she stepped out, afraid of what she might see. She crept toward Tzipi’s house, looked in the window and saw no one. There was an empty carpetbag on the table and a pair of rolled-up socks beside it. A lamp lay shattered on the floor and a single chair upended, but no other evidence of violence or