People of the Book

In London, Hanna goes to the Tate Museum to look at her father’s artwork. She begins to sob uncontrollably when she sees his painting. She is angry at her mother, wondering, “Why hadn’t she told me? At least I would have grown up with [...] the ability to look at the beauty he left behind” (261). Hanna returns to her hotel room and wakes refreshed the next day. She stays at her friend’s tiny home in Hampstead, trying to spend a few days working on her paper on the Haggadah. Meanwhile, she makes an appointment with a specialist at Scotland Yard to get more information on the sample of white hair found in the book.

While working doggedly on her manuscript, trying to “give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it” (264-65), Hanna gets a knock on the door. It is a letter from Frau Zweig, the curator in Vienna, who had more information on Mittl and the clasps. She found a photo with part of the clasps made into earrings and said Mittl died of arsenic poisoning from syphilis treatments soon after his work ended at the museum. Hanna realizes she is nearly late for her meeting with the Scotland Yard lab and takes a taxi into London. A scientist meets her and talks to her about hair samples and what can be determined by looking at them.

As she has been in London, Hanna has been trying repeatedly to call Ozren, with no luck. Finally, another man answers the phone at Ozren’s apartment. Hanna recognizes his voice as Amitai, the Israeli book expert. Hanna learns from Amitai that Alia is dead, from a fever and infection in his brain. She makes plans to go to Sarajevo, and soon after hanging up the phone receives a call from the scientist at Scotland Yard. The hair sample was from a cat, and strangely, seems to have been dyed.