None of us had actually been thinking about a journey at the moment when it really began; and yet that moment was accompanied by the hollow rumbling … - Ida Fink

Our fate suddenly came to a halt and hung there for a moment, suspended over the abyss it had been racing toward, hung there for a few minutes (five? six?) and then, just as suddenly, turned...This was why I had come here, just for that moment at the crossroads, that sudden turn, that circus trick performed by our fate. (p248-9)

June turned into July; the linden trees perfumed the air; the frogs croaked in the river; the dogs bayed at the moon; the nights were bright and sleepless. The white posters demanded tribute. The Jews gathered gold and silver, coffee and tea, and money, money. The Landrat insisted on silver tableware and valuable china. From nearby towns came news of gold and silver, of coffee and tea and money, money. Gold and silver, coffee and tea, were supposed to buy peace and quiet in the town, peace that was not peace, quiet that was not quiet. "People are naive," Szymon shouted, "whoever believes them is naive. This is only the prelude," he shouted, "only the beginning." He did not say what it was the beginning of. He didn't have to.

It suddenly seemed to me that the further away we got from Poland, the more complicated everything became-nothing was getting easier. We were dragging along all the obstacles we had overcome, and they were spawning new ones, and no sooner did we overcome these than they gave birth to even more. I looked at the young, pink-faced woman, and I could hear her musical, childlike laughter, and her voice, saying, "The important thing is to find a boyfriend." Would she give us away? (p66)