“All right, then,” Kitka says, kicking a splash or water out of his airplane with the toe of one Roper boot. “Hey, listen. You take care.”

“I don’t really know how to do that,” Landsman admits.

“You had that in common, then,” says Kitka. “You and your sister.”

Landsman clatters down the dock and tries the knob on the steel gate just for fun. Then he tosses his satchel to the other side of the gate and clambers up and over the grille after it. As he goes over the top of the gate, his foot gets caught in the bars of the grille. His shoe falls off. He tumbles and spills down to the other side, landing with a meaty thud. He bites his tongue, and there’s a salt spurt of blood. He dusts himself off and glances back at the dock to make sure Kitka got all of that. Landsman waves to show that he’s all right. After a moment Kitka waves back. He closes the door of the plane. The engine snaps awake. The propeller vanishes into the dark sheen of its own revolution.

Landsman starts the long climb to the top of the stairs. If anything, he’s in worse shape now than he was when he tried to conquer the stairway in the Shemetses’ apartment building on Friday morning. Last night he lay awake on the stiff gritty packet of a motel mattress. Two days ago he was shot at and beaten in the snow. He aches. He wheezes. There’s some kind of mystery pain in his rib and another in his left knee. He has to stop once, halfway up, to smoke a hortatory cigarette. He turns to watch the Cessna wobble and hum its way into the low morning clouds, abandoning Landsman to what feels, right then, like a lonely fate.

Landsman hangs from the railing, high above the deserted beach and the village. Down below, on the crooked boardwalk, some people have emerged from their houses to watch him climb. He waves to them, and they obligingly wave back. He steps on the end of his papiros and resumes his steady upward trudge. He has the rush of the waters in the inlet for company, the distant chuckling of crows. Then these sounds fade. He hears only his breathing, the chiming of his soles against the metal treads of the stairway, the creaking strap of his satchel.

At the top, a whitewashed flagpole flies two flags.

One is the flag of the United States of America. The other is a modest white number blazoned with a pale blue Star of David. The flagpole stands in a ring of whitewashed stones encircled by a concrete apron. At the base of the flagpole, a small metal plaque reads FLAGPOLE ERECTED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF BARRY AND RHONDA GREENBAUM BEVERLY HILLS CALIFORNJA. A walkway leads from the circular apron to the largest of the buildings that Landsmun saw from the air. The others are no more than cracker boxes clad in cedar shake, but this one makes a gesture in the direction of style. Its roof is pitched and clad in ribbed steel, painted dark green. Its windows are fitted with transoms and mullions. A deep porch wraps the building on three sides, its pillars the trunks of fir trees, still wearing their bark. At the center of the porch, a wide set of steps leads up from the concrete walk.

Two men stand on the uppermost porch step, watching Landsman come toward them. Both have heavy beards but no sidelocks. No hose, no black hats. The one to the left is young, thirty at the outside. He’s tall, even looming, with a forehead like a concrete bunker and an underslung jaw. His beard is unruly, prone to black ringlets, with a whorl of bare skin on each cheek. His big hands dangle at his sides, pulsing like a couple of cephalopods. He wears a black suit with a generous drape and a dark rep tie. Landsman reads the twitch of longing in the big man’s fingers and tries to mark the vest for the presence of a gun. As Landsman gets closer, the big man’s eyes cool to a light less black.

The other man is about Landsman’s age, height, and build. He’s gone softer around the middle than Landsman, and he leans on a cane formed with a curve from some dark, glossy wood. His beard is charcoal streaked with ash, trimmed, almost debonair. He wears a tweed suit complete with vest, and he puffs a thoughtful pipe. He seems content if not delighted to see Landsman coming his way, curious, a doctor anticipating mild anomaly or a wrinkle in the usual presentation. His shoes are moccasin loafers, laced with leather thong.

Landsman stops at the bottom step of the porch and hitches up his satchel. A woodpecker rattles its cup of dice. For a moment that and the hisses of pine needles are the only sounds. They might be the only three men in all of southeastern Alaska. But Landsman can feel other eyes watching him through the partings of window curtains, through gun sights, periscopes, and peepholes. He can feel the interrupted life of the place, morning exercise, the rinsing of coffee cups. He can smell eggs scorched in butter, toasted bread.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” says the tall man with the patchy beard. His voice seems to spend too long bouncing around in his chest before it emerges. The words come out thick, poured with a slow ladle. “But your ride just left without you.”

“Am I going somewhere?” Landsman says.

“You aren’t staying here, my friend,” says the man in the tweed suit. As soon as he says the word “friend” all friendliness seems to drain from his manner.

“But I have a reservation,” Landsman says, watching the big man’s restless hands. “I’m younger than I look.”

The sound like the bones in their bucket, somewhere in the woods.

“Okay, I’m no kid, and I don’t have a reservation, but I do have a substance abuse problem,” Landsman says. “Surely that counts for something.”

“Mister—” says the man in the tweed suit, coming down one step. Landsman can smell the bitter shag he smokes.

“Listen,” Landsman says, “I heard about the good work you people are doing here, all right? I’ve tried everything. I know it’s crazy, but I’m at the end of my rope, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The man in the tweed suit looks back at the tall man at the top of the steps. They don’t seem to have any idea who Landsman is or what to make of him. All the fun of the past several days, in particular the torturous hop from Yakovy, seems to have rubbed off some of the noz from Landsman’s aura. He hopes and fears that he looks only like a loser, dragging his bad luck in a satchel over one arm.

“I need help,” he says, and to his surprise, his eyes get hot with tears. “I’m in a bad way.” His voice breaks. “I’m prepared to admit that.”

“What’s your name?” says the tall man slowly. His eyes are warm without amity. They pity Landsman without taking much of an interest in him.

“Felnboyger,” Landsman tries, dragging out the name from some ancient arrest report. “Lev Felnboyger.”

“Does anyone know you’re here, Mr. Felnboyger?”

“Only my wife. And the pilot, of course.” Landsman sees that the two men know each other well enough to engage in a furious argument without speaking or moving anything but their eyes.

“I’m Dr. Roboy,” says the tall man at last. He swings one of his hands toward Landsman, like the payload of a crane at the end of its cable. Landsman wants to get out of its way, but he takes hold of its cool dry bulk. “Please, Mr. Felnboyger, come inside.”

He follows them across the sanded fir planks of the porch. High in the rafters of the porch, he spots a wasp’s nest, and he watches it for a sign of life, but it seems as deserted as every other structure on this hilltop.

They come into an empty lobby furnished, with a podiatrist’s flair, in soft beige oblongs of foam. Drab low-pile carpet, egg-carton gray. On the walls hang trademark-trite scenes of Sitka life, salmon boats and Yeshiva bachelors, cafe society on Monastir Street, a swinging klezmer that might be a stylized Nathan Kalushiner. Again Landsman has the uneasy sensation that it has all been installed and hung that morning. There is no flake of ash in the ashtrays. The rack of informational brochures is well stocked with copies of “Drug Dependency: Who Needs It!” and “Life: To Rent or to Own?” On the wall, a thermostat sighs as if suffering from the tedium. The room smells of fresh carpet and extinguished pipe. Over the door to a carpeted hallway, an adhesive plaque reads LOBBY FURNISHINGS COURTESY OF BONNIE AND RONALD LEDERER BOCA RATON FLORIDA.