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agnostically. “I read in the newspaper about a home nurse from Ukraine who lived with this old couple for five years. Our people, from Riga. They were like family with her—they took her on their vacations. When it was time for her to go back to Ukraine, she said to them: ‘I hope you kikes rot in hell.’ So you never know.”
    Slava made himself embrace Grandfather.
    “Something I need you to look at,” Grandfather said, pointing to the bedroom.
    “We’re both tired. Let’s do it another day,” Slava said, wanting to return to the living room.
    “Another day with you?” Grandfather said. “Another day with you is a year from now. The deadline is soon. It’ll take only a moment.”
    Grandfather strode toward the bedroom but stopped at the threshold. Slava followed his gaze to the bed, the largest thing in the room. The biggest and softest, Grandfather had insisted to Marat on Avenue Z, and here it was. You could look nowhere else. Now that one had to sleep in it alone, it was grotesque.
    “Her slippers are right there, but she’s not,” Grandfather said. “What sense does that make?”
    Slava put his arm around Grandfather’s shoulder and brought the silk of the old man’s head to his chest.
    “This day has no end,” Grandfather said. “They’re talking out there, but I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”
    Slava rubbed his nose in Grandfather’s hair, soft and straight as goose down, the hair of someone a third his age. The old man nodded helplessly, a fat, lazy tear at his eye. Finally, he stepped into the bedroom and hooked a papery finger into the handle of a bureau, removing a straw pouch where he stuffed mail until Slava’s mother came to translate. She came all the time. The item he wanted was out front, backed by circulars and forms. He sat down in the chair next to the bed, eyeing its satin slipcover like an untouchable object. “Look, please,” he said,extending the envelope.
    Slava pulled out the roughly folded papers and inspected the lettering. He snagged on the Hebrew, blocky but lissome. Then he saw the English and whistled slightly. He had heard people in the office talking about it. “‘Dear you,’” he translated. “‘The Conference on Material Claims Against Germany’ . . .”
    “I know what it says,” Grandfather said. “Mama translated. If you were a Holocaust victim, tell the story and you get funds. They’re saying—depending on what you went through—a bigger piece once or a smaller piece every month for the rest of your life. I did it on the calculator: If you make it ten months, you come out ahead.”
    “Who’s saying?”
    “People at the Jewish Center. On Kings Highway.”
    “Why do you listen to them?” Slava said. “It’s a gossip mill.”
    “Who else for me to listen to?”
    The last page in the packet was blank except for a heading: “NARRATIVE. Please describe, in as much detail as you can, where the Subject was during the years 1939 to 1945.”
    “How do they know who to send it to?” Slava asked, looking at Grandmother’s name in the address bar.
    “Grandmother’s registered in that museum in Israel. Vashi Yashi.”
    “Yad Vashem,” Slava said. “Say it correctly.”
    “Day Vashem.”
    “Yad Vashem. It’s not hard—say it.”
    He glared and pronounced correctly.
    “Sixty years they had,” Slava said, “they do it the moment she dies.”
    “Well.” Grandfather hung his head.
    They investigated the window, South Brooklyn steaming in the dense July night. A clothesline strung with large underthings wavered in the breeze.
    “So,” Grandfather said, turning to face Slava. “Can you write something?”
    Slava nearly laughed. This was Grandfather—the rules were right there, but he was going to ask anyway.
    “She . . .” Slava searched for the word. Gone? Wasn’t ? They hadn’t come to an acceptable word yet.
    “Not about Grandmother,” Grandfather said.
    “About whom, then?”
    “About me.”
    Now Slava