The Cage

Though the siblings remain together, their well-being is still in jeopardy. While her brothers are still under sixteen, Riva notices that their eyes look tired, aged: “I wonder at the changes that mark us all. We are so old” (52). As she and Laibele joke and play games one day, he wonders aloud if the people outside of the ghetto lead normal lives and, if so, whether they forget about the Jews, who are slowly dying. This hopeless statement frustrates Riva, who reminds Laibele that he is the strongest of all the siblings, that his hope has sustained the other three siblings. To encourage him, she tells Laibele that she is “sure the world outside the cage remembers [them]. They will come to [their] rescue soon, very soon” (53).

As she assuages his fears, she hears a knock at their door. An intruder calls into the house in a “mournful lament” that “breaks the deadly silence” and “fills the house with its grief”; the voice shouts: “There is no one left of my family!” (53). At this moment, though, Riva recognizes the intruder’s voice: it is Shmulek, their neighbor who left, a year earlier, as a volunteer at a labor camp.