Julia emerged from her reverie and repeated: "By then it was too late." She asked whether I remembered Emanuel, who had escaped from Lodz and wound u… - Ida Fink

I heard the gentle click of Aunt Julia's knitting needles. No one knew what she was knitting, but we all knew why. (p18)

The death of Tsaritsa would have remained one of a million anonymous deaths were it not for the fact that it happened on a beautiful, mild day. (I've only imagined that the day was mild; much of what I'm going to say-but only the details, not the event itself-is the product of my imagination.) It happened in the very early evening, when the trees cast long shadows and the air was saturated with a light blue haze that was growing deeper and darker by the minute, although it was still long before nightfall. Tsaritsa's death happened at just the hour best suited for strolling, the hour that lures people onto the streets after a hard day's work. (first lines of "The Death of Tsaritsa")

Finally she says, "What I remember best is the silence. But you can't talk about silence. Silence is the opposite of talk," she explains.