Rana Fleischinger walked quickly, but kept close to the buildings, so as not to draw too much attention to herself. She would not have even ventured out, had she not been out of so many staples: sugar, flour, salt, lard. And pears, of course. She ducked into the little alley that connected Koenigstrasse with the Marktplatz and made for the back door of Scheuer’s Market. Stuttgart seemed darker these days, even when the sun was out. The imposing Koenigsbau, with its massive Greek portico and Ionic pillars, once a pleasant reminder of Strauss waltzes and concerts of Brahms and Hayden, now somehow seemed to her like a gigantic shooting gallery. The old Hotel Silber on Dorotheenstrasse, with its white gingerbread facade, was now Gestapo headquarters. The synagogue on Hospitalstrasse, while still appearing largely intact, had been thoroughly gutted by fire three days earlier. The Nazis, incensed by what they considered to be a half-finished job, had hired the architect Ernst Guggenheimer to dismantle what was left of the centuries-old landmark, stone by stone. Each time Rana passed it she would pause to watch, tearfully, as the workers — Jewish prisoners from Welzheim and Dachau; thin, ragged, grey as weathered limestone — struggled to pull it down, little by little, one stone at a time. A labor of hate, Avi had called it.