The following Monday, Ari received a response to the letter he had written to Carla. It was enthusiastic and gave promise of further contact.

“How good it was to hear from you,” her letter began. “And how sad I was to have confirmation of Nicole’s death. I saw her name on the list of victims in the news but wasn’t sure whether that was the same person to whom you had introduced me. I tried to phone you at the Sorbonne, and that’s how I learned you’d gone to Israel. They could give me no forwarding address or phone number. So that’s why your letter was such a welcome surprise.

“And how excited I was to learn that you have a newspaper column of your own—and in such a prestigious paper as The Jerusalem Post! Yes, it was a surprise to learn that you were really Jewish, a Holocaust survivor. I guess that makes you very special in Israel. I can understand why, when you discovered your roots, you wanted to live there. It seems strange to call you Professor Ari Thalberg now after knowing you as Professor Hans Mueller all these years, but I’ll get used to it.”