It cannot be. Even when he goes outside and the woman calls his name he does not believe it is them. He looks at the children. A boy, perhaps six years old, with long peyos. A little girl

Felix picks up a handful of dust and sprinkles it into an envelope. On the inside flap, he writes two verses:

And He created man, dust from the earth.

From dust he comes and to dust he shall return.

He seals the envelope and addresses it to Emmy. He hands it to the postal clerk on Jaffa’s main road and pays for a stamp. Sometime, perhaps, in the next year or so, by 1885, it will arrive in Prague.

Each morning, Felix relies on his fellow porters to strap the day’s weight to his back: firm but not too firm. Spreading the weight. Together, they lash the rope to his waist, chest and shoulders. He sets off, back low, feeling no pain, only focus. One step. Two steps. Turns must be enacted slowly.

All depends upon working in harmony with the load on his back, allowing it to become one with him. There is no thought of his neck, of the awful ache in his hip and knees. There is only Felix, load, destination.

Only when he gets back to his boarding house at night does the pain hit. And it is not only in his joints. All his muscles shiver. He is hot and cold, for his skin grows clammy from the sweat that had nowhere to escape, trapped by his load. Weakness comes over him.

Black beer helps. It is sweet and he drinks it like a baby. But with it, the coins in his pocket become fewer, so it becomes a question: bread or beer. Two days a week he does not eat at all, for those days he saves the money for the room that he shares with a dozen other fools, who call themselves men and work like beasts of the field.

It is on a hungry day when the lady who owns the boarding house calls him from his cot to receive a visitor. A woman with two children, she reports, curiosity making her eyes sparkle.

It cannot be. Even when he goes outside and the woman calls his name he does not believe it is them. He looks at the children. A boy, perhaps six years old, with long peyos. A little girl.

Something jolts inside him.

A girl he once held and soothed and rocked when she cried.

A boy he once lifted on his shoulders so he could stare at the Orloj, showing him how to measure the time and the seasons and the years.

He looks up. A woman…

“Chasya.” He gives a tiny bow and thinks of his dirty porter’s clothes, the beard he has allowed to grow and tangle, the worn cap he wears on his head. He takes a deep breath. “Let me take you to a place where we can drink some coffee.”